Cleanse Day #1

Two dreams last night of people locked behind doors with no food or water - in the first a old woman had put them there and it was my role to rescue them while befriending the woman.

This morning while meditating I opened the door from the first dream and gave them water with a bit of maple syrup to quench their thirst.


Breakfast:
glass of warm water with 1/4 lemon
Quinoa porridge that I made with unsweetened almond milk, cinnamon, vanilla, and nutmeg. Was okay, but could use more spices.

After I dropped Ava at school and taught her O-F-F spells "off") I had a subtle flash of insight: in addition to cleansing my body this week, what else could I cleanse? I thought perhaps to start with cleansing my mind of anger and put peace in its place. We'll see how this goes.

Morning snack:
absolutely starving at 9:30AM...I brought applesauce for a snack, but instead I'm eating the raw almonds on my desk... (10 almonds). Realizing how much I hate feeling starving and not eating!
Okay...make that 19 almonds. We'll see if I want to eat my lunch at 11AM!

11:30 snack
unsweetened applesauce with cinnnamon that I brought for snack

12:15pm lunch
warmed up turkey chili I made last night & put over brown basmati & wild rice

2pm - started to get snacking itch, rallied up some coworkers to walk to sbucks so I could get some kind of plain tea and a 20 minute round trip walk

2:45 lunch continued
hungry again, instead of reaching for the dried fruit in my drawer, or cookies, warmed up the rest of the chili and brown/wild rice to eat with my peppermint tea & added lemon

4:27pm
I'M HUNGRY. HUNGRY HUNGRY HUNGRY. Even the burnt toast smell wafting from the kitchen smells good. I could eat more almonds, but they don't sound good. What sounds good is COOKIES. But fortunately, there are no cookies. There are some spelt crackers in the kitchen I may pilfer though.

Spelt crackers...goooood. I hope I have everything I need to make tonight's dinner and tomorrow's lunch.

Fall Cleanse

Yesterday I went to a cleanse workshop led by Darshana Weill who runs this organization. I had met Darshana during my yoga teacher training just over a year ago when she taught a session on nutrition and being a yogi.

I've been playing with eating less wheat over the last couple months, and some days are better than others, but mostly avoiding giving up wheat, dairy, and sugar at once. So that's why I finally signed up, despite a breakdown or two the day before. Fortunately, this is more of a "be kind to my body" kind of cleanse with three food options ranging from gentle, balanced, to super cleansing. I'm choosing somewhere between gentle and balanced. The cleanse is 7 days, and my intention is to start tomorrow with breakfast.

Today I intended to eat less or no wheat, dairy, or sugar, to prepare myself for tomorrow through Sunday. As you'll read below, I'm doing okay, but not perfect.

I'm thinking perhaps that my goal for this week is to eat less or none of those things, but also to be honest about what I am eating, and *gulp* perhaps learn how to release judgment of what I do eat? We'll see.

Today:
Pre-breakfast:
2 glasses warm water with 1/4 lemon each
1/4 to 1/2 of an apple
leftover brown basmati & wild rice with unsweetened almond milk

Breakfast/Brunch at Hobee's restaurant - prearranged for today with my family of three plus a special guest: my ex-husband. Thus, I am starting cleanse tomorrow, not today!
1/2 cup house cinnamon tea with cream
2 scrambled eggs
3 slices turkey bacon
fresh fruit: watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, and grapes (which I gave to Ava)
5-6 bites of potatoes
5-6 bites of coffee cake

Another glass of lemon water

Lunch -
didn't really eat lunch, but snacked on whole wheat crackers and apple slices
- probably 1/2 or more of the apple and 5-6 crackers
and more lemon water

Snack - 2 bites of sample cheese and one bite of sample toffee at Whole Foods

Dinner -
bites of noodles for Ava's mac and cheese to test for doneness
THIS turkey chili on a bed of brown basmati & wild rice
Recipe mods: added of about 1/2 cup chopped zucchini and went light on the cayenne pepper (1tsp not 2).
And then there were the 4-6 bites of mac and cheese I ate before the chili (Annie's, not the blue box, but what was that I wrote about avoiding wheat and dairy???) and the 4-6 bites I ate after the chili, and the rest of the mac and cheese I'm contemplating eating.

One cleanse challenge I didn't write down is that what I'm going to be feeding my three year old is undoubtedly not going to be what I'm trying to eat...but we'll see.