Diet Experiment Day 12: A Short Hiatus

I have made an executive decision. I’m going to take a couple of days break from the experiment before I dive into the next nutrition challenge.

Now, I’m not going to go off the rails. I’m still going to stay away from wheat and dairy and try to keep to the blended diet that I have been doing, I’m just not going to write about it. Mostly because I seem to be either at a plateau or just generally much improved and at a stable point, so not really much to report.

If something goes completely crazy between now and Monday, then I’ll definitely note it down!

So, a run down on how I did overall based on my original criteria.

I don’t feel crappy! To be honest, I haven’t felt crappy for over a week. I have to say that I was quite surprised at how quickly I went from feeling awful and having painful digestive issues to not having them. It was like I climbed out of this big hole and I have to say I’m really not looking to go back in again! (Hence why I will keep to most aspects of the blended diet.) It may not have been a miraculous turnaround, but it was pretty spectacular.

It’s amazing what not feeling crappy does for your energy and motivation. It allowed me to want to as well as be able to do some more exercise. That then improved my energy and motivation at the same time. Getting better quality sleep also helped, so I was even getting less sleep but feeling rested and ready to go.

Not much weight loss I have to say. The grand total was 3 pounds. However, because I am less bloated and have been working on strengthening my core as well as my legs, my posture is better and I think it looks like I lost more than that. It certainly feels like it. And, as it was low on my priority list, I’m not really upset about that.

As for immunity, I’m still not sick.

The most important improvement is my connection to my body. I have always been amazed by the human body on an intellectual level, and know about all the incredible things it can do. However, it pretty much stayed as mental concept. To pay such close attention to it and to be able to check in and feel the changes as I made adjustments was a bit of a revelation. To be sensitive to and aware of what was going on real time allowed me to fully appreciate it’s amazingness at the physical level rather than just as a mental concept.

Diet Experiment Day 11: Proper Prior Planning...

It was a bit of a weird day.

I realized this morning that there wasn’t a whole lot of food in the fridge. I had a mild panic as to what the heck I was going to eat. There I was, all ready to check to see what food would be good for me today only to find that it was actually more of a question of what food was there to eat at all. What made it even more exciting was, with back to back 90 minute clients, the earliest I would get to eat lunch was around 2:00pm.

Okay. So, it didn’t matter whether or not the eggs and rye bread are what I needed or not, they were what was available. They were also quite filling, and I knew that would be needed. There was a banana available, but it was on it’s last legs, and I didn’t even know if it would still be a solid by the time I got to work.

I also decided that, if I actually got time to eat, I should probably have something prepared. A scan of the cupboards produced some Tasty Bite Indian curry style stuff. (As an emergency, they aren’t too bad. The ingredients on the package are actual ingredients that you can find in your average kitchen, without the hassle of having to cook it.) The chickpea one looked good, so I had that. Then I needed some rice. I cooked up some rice, heated up the beans, put them together and pronounced it lunch. Another look through the fridge turned up some salad I didn’t finish and some beets. Perfect. 

I don’t know why I worried. I only had, maybe 5 bites of the curry and rice and 4 bites of the salad between clients.

Note to self: It would probably be a good idea to have some fairly healthy emergency type food available in case you forget to go shopping. It kind of defeats the purpose of a diet experiment if you don’t have the types of food you are trying to experiment with. Although it does bring up a good point. You can’t always be prepared. Sometimes life just gets on top you and you do something human, like forget to go shopping. I figure, as long as I don’t make that a habit and it is the exception rather than the rule, I should do okay.

Otherwise, weight stayed the same, I got out of bed okay and was fine about facing the day, so not too bad. 

Diet Experiment Day 10: The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown

I’ve been given another challenge.

I have been sent menu plans and recipes for Super Immunity from the nutritional counsellor running the group I am in. I have had a look at the menu plan and there isn’t one bit of animal protein on there. Not only that, the percentage of raw to cooked food is probably around 60-40 or even 70-30 in favor of raw. Essentially the opposite to what I have been doing and not recommended by either of the approaches, one saying that I need animal protein in my diet for optimal health and wellness, including immunity, and the other, just too much raw food. Not to mention that I am 4 days away from finishing this experiment and I’m basically being asked to pony up for 2 more weeks. It also looks, at first glance, like quite a lot of work preparing the meals.

How do I balance this? How can I incorporate 3 different approaches to nutrition that all  have stacks of research or thousands of years of clinical trials as well as my personal experience that validate their efficacy?

Probably, the first thing to do is look to see where they all overlap in terms of specific fruits, veggies and grains that are recommended. At first glance, there is actually quite a lot of overlap (which says a lot in itself if the same foods keep coming up over and over again as foods that are considered healthy across party lines.) Things like cruciferous veg, certain berries and other fruits, certain beans and one or two grains appear on all three lists. If there are any in the meal plan that are considered avoids on both of the others, they won’t be included. If something is on the meal plan and one of the other lists, I’ll muscle test it to see if I should include it.

Then I will adjust some of the immunity recipes to add some animal protein, but try and keep that to a minimum at maybe one meal per day. There are soups, stews and other cooked food included in the meal plan, so I may move them around a little bit so that some of the days that are mostly raw or cold meals are more balanced. That will probably be determined by muscle testing to see what would work best for the day

So, effectively, I’m going to do the best blend of the three that I can manage that maintains their general integrity, ask my body what it thinks, and then see what happens. However, probably won’t start it until I finish with my current experiment. It looks like I will need the weekend to study ingredient lists, get my pantry in order and come up with a plan to execute the plan!

So, I accept the challenge. Sort of.

Diet Experiment Day 9: Whole Foods Hi Jinks

Who knew you could have so much fun grocery shopping! 

Let me set the stage. In order for Steve to muscle/energy test my Spleen/Pancreas, I had to hold my arm down at my side, palm facing backwards so my thumb is touching my leg, with me holding what I want to test in the other hand. Steve then reaches in between my arm and side at the wrist and pulls, while I try to hold my thumb against my leg. If my arm comes away easily, (tests weak) then that food would interfere with the health of my Spleen/Pancreas. If there is good resistance, or he can’t budge it, (tests strong) my body says it’s okay.

The first thing I wanted to do was get a reading for something that has continually tested negatively to work as a control, so we know what it feels like in order to compare it to other things. (It’s not supposed to be a competition to determine who’s stronger, Steve or me, rather if I am strong or weak compared to myself.) Well, I tried to test with some bread in one of those hard plastic containers, but it gave a positive reading. That confused me, so I grabbed some cheese that had a light plastic covering. Steve lightly tugged my arm and my whole body was knocked off balance so I had to take a step or fall over! So that’s a “no”. (I’m assuming that the plastic around the bread was too thick for my body to get a reading.) So, we had a baseline, and then just went about the store, as we usually do, looking at what’s there and seeing what we we would like to eat, except that instead of just putting in the basket, I held the food and he tugged my arm.

I can only imagine what it must have looked like to other people seeing me being tugged around Whole Foods with food in my hands! I have to say it turned something that could be considered drudgery into a really fun game! So we bought food that seemed to agree with me and had a nice, but (because of me) simple dinner. 

I woke up less groggy than yesterday, but not better than the previous days. What was different was my digestion. It had calmed down more than it had been since I started this experiment. Now, that could have been because of a lot of reasons, one being that I have been cleaning out my system for 9+ days. I just find it interesting that it hadn’t happened, say, a couple of days ago. I did lose a pound from yesterday though, so that’s good.

I decided that it was a success, so I wanted to test what to eat for breakfast and lunch today. Unfortunately, Steve leaves very early in the morning, so I had to do it a different way. Luckily, Donna Eden has a method of self testing! Actually, she has several, but I used the one where I am effectively a pendulum. This, obviously, has the same issues as testing with a partner in that you could sabotage it easily. I did my control test again, and my “yes” and “no” were different from hers, but were consistent with me, so I went with that.

I have to say, some things surprised me. My body chose eggs (I was expecting oatmeal or some leftovers) with some rye bread with coconut butter (both chosen last night as food that would work, and both only have like 5 ingredients apiece) and some steak from last night’s dinner, but not the peas or potato, or other leftovers in the fridge. So I try other veggies in the fridge and get negatives. I need a vegetable! Then I spied the kale and grabbed that. I got a yes! Then I start preparing to cook it, when a thought pops into my head: test cooked or raw. My body said that it wanted it raw. Kale?? Raw?? While I was flailing about, my eye caught sight of the avocado that we got that had tested strong. I held them both together and got a “yes”. Well, that’s a little better. That should smooth out some of those rough edges. Because I was having so much fun, I also tested whether or not to have oil and vinegar with it, and then which kinds! The banana tested strong so I brought that too!

So, with a combination of intuition and muscle testing, I am determining my diet. I’m curious to see if there are any improvements, if things stay the same or go backwards.

Diet Experiment Day 8: Further Explorations

I woke up a bit groggy this morning, cause unknown, but it may have had something to do with waking up rather early, around 5:30, deciding that was much earlier than the 6:30 that I had planned and went back to sleep. I finally decided (as it happened, just past 6:30) that the bizarre dream I was having really wasn’t entertaining me enough and decided to get up, albeit a bit more slowly than I have been of late. I’m sure the gloominess of the morning didn’t help either.

My weight stayed the same as yesterday, so improvement numbers are pretty low today, probably no higher than a 2.

Now, my body could still be adjusting itself, cleaning out the old rubbish and getting used to this slightly different nutritional situation, but what if it isn’t? What if this is an indication that it needs something a little different? As you can see, my brain is bored. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it also wrong. So, how do I get them to work together, because I want to do what’s right for my body? How do I find out if there is something I can do that is more beneficial than what I am currently doing?

I guess I’ll have to ask my body. I can almost hear you now. “How are you going to do that?”

Well, I think the most straightforward way is through muscle testing, also known as applied kinesiology. Basically by testing a muscle’s strength or weakness, you can determine the health or lack of health to corresponding organs. It was originally developed my Dr. George Dearheart and was further refined to include acupuncture meridians.(http://www.icak.com/, http://www.kinesiology.net/) So by testing various muscles, you can determine if an energy pathway is blocked or not. By testing different foods at different times, you can determine whether or not any particular food, drink or whatever is harmful or helpful.

What this means to me is effectively giving your body a voice. As my actual voice is pretty much in the control of my mind, it’s nice to have a way for me to determine what my body (which can’t speak my mind’s language) has to say.

Although it sounds simple, it’s not really easy. The actual how-to of testing is quite simple, and usually done with two people; the tester and the one being tested. The one being tested extends an arm out parallel to the ground and the tester pushes down on the wrist with two fingers and the says “resist”. Because we are dealing with subtle energies, thoughts (which are subtle energies) can influence the outcome. If you are not really adept at it, you could be engaging more that the one muscle being tested, you could unconsciously be affecting the outcome with preconceptions, and if your body is really out of whack, you could get a false positive, like caffeine testing helpful because your body is exhausted and needs a boost.

However, I’m not going to let that stop me! This is an experiment, and you have to learn somehow!  So, this evening, as Steve and I have to do some food shopping, I’m going to muscle test the foods we buy to see what is beneficial. I’ll also try and muscle test whether or not to have them cooked or raw.The test I’m going to use is one I got out of Energy Medicine by Donna Eden. She has one for Spleen/Pancreas, which is the one linked to digestion in Chinese Medicine. It is also a lot less obvious than me sticking my arm out in the middle of Whole Foods and Steve pushing my wrist! (I have also had this done to me years ago, so I actually have a basic understanding of what I am looking for. If you would like to try it, you may want to either check out Donna Eden's Energy Medicine info http://www.energymed.org/)

Diet Experiment Day 7: How Do I Think I Have Done?

I am one week in now. It seems like much longer than that!

I managed to circumnavigate another temptation. This time it was homemade birthday cake and Kimball’s ice cream! One of my nephew’s had his 15th birthday party yesterday, and it really was all I could do to not have any. I don’t even have a sweet tooth! It was one of those unfortunate timing issues, because if I was at full strength, you could be sure that I would have had some of each! Birthday celebrations don’t happen every day. Hopefully that is it for the temptations for this week.

Because I am feeling a bit feistier, I am going to add a little bit of raw veg today. Not a huge amount, just some broccoli to snack on in case I get hungry. I figure that I have enough cooked stuff to balance it out.

I also switched my energy/aura work back to the morning. I was feeling so good the last 3 or 4 days that I decided to see if I would fall back to sleep or not. Good news! I didn’t fall back to sleep. I was still quite relaxed, though, and thought briefly about the fact that I haven’t really had a day off yet, but really wasn’t so tired or resentful that I couldn’t get out of bed with relative ease. I’ll call that a 3. I also lost a pound since yesterday. I’ll also call that a 3. Overall, I’ve lost about 1.5 pounds in a week. I may need to bump up my exercise.

So, improvement ratings for the first week:

Not feel crappy: 6

Have more energy; 6

Be more motivated: 5

Boost Immunity: ?

Lose some weight: 2

I’m going to have a bit more of a look regarding immunity. I haven’t really addressed it, mostly because I haven’t been sick, but maybe I need to talk about how different methods approach the subject of immunity. That will have to be another day as I need to do some reading up on that. 

Diet Experiment Day 6: Temptation Strikes

I think I have made some great progress. My energy levels seem to be improving. I woke up on my own just before 7, checked in and realized that I was rested enough to not be able to go back to sleep. One week ago, I could (and probably did) go back to sleep for another couple of hours. I was even on the Nordic Track before 8 am on a Sunday, and upped my workout from 25 to 30 minutes because I felt ok. No tiredness, no cobwebs and a balanced attitude to the work I need to do today.

Even though my weight remains the same, I have noticed some changes in the way I look and feel. I am not suffering as much from Dunlop’s Disease, (Where my belly “dun lop” over my belt!) and my trousers don’t fit quite so snugly. This could be attributed to the fact that I am holding myself a little differently rather than a huge loss of fat. I am actively using my abdominals during the day to keep my back in better alignment, so my stomach isn’t protruding as much, so it all looks (to me at any rate) and feels like I am making great strides forward. What is the most amazing thing for me is that it has only been a week!

Warning! Tread very carefully because here be dragons!

So, I think I have come to the point in this experiment when I can be tempted to start drifting away from it. Earlier in the week, the temptation was in the form of frustration, to just give it all up as a bad idea because nothing was really happening and I couldn’t see an immediate payoff. Now, I’m feeling much better and this has opened the door to temptation of a different sort. Now, the temptation is a bit more insidious.

One of the things I have noticed is the constant battle I am fighting between my intellect,  my mind (as separate from knowledge and intellectual understanding) and my body. It’s like this strange 3 way tug of war. Intellectually I know that taking care of my body is important and I can read about all these different ways in which I can accomplish that. My mind is telling me that I’ve improved quite a bit, maybe even enough to allow some slack. My body is telling me that it knows what it needs and if I just listen to it, I will find the balance I require. The problem is, when I was feeling awful, my body was screaming loud enough to overcome my mind, and my intellect said “I know what you need!”. Luckily, the intellect and the body were pulling in the same general direction, so they could, in fact, pull me out of the mire.

So, it was Saturday evening. All week I had no desire or craving for any wine or beer with dinner. (I don’t have a sweet tooth, but a wine and beer tooth!) The tug from the body didn’t feel nearly as strong, and my mind decided to throw me a curve ball: I wanted a glass of wine. My intellect knows that it has only been a week and that my body really hasn’t had the opportunity to get it’s full strength back and I am in the middle of an experiment. My body is also telling me the same thing. Unfortunately, my mind is telling me that I am probably stronger than I think if I could bounce back so quickly, so why not have a glass of wine tonight as it’s not a work night? You can go back to abstaining the rest of the week. Not really an issue if it’s 2 against 1 and the intellect and body are on the same side, however, the intellect started to pull more in the direction of the mind and told me that there are studies supporting me having a glass for health reasons. Even Live Right For Your Type said that if you must, you can have red wine, although avoiding alcohol was advocated.

Now, many would argue that this is when you use your will power and force yourself to abstain. I don’t think the way out is through force. I really don’t think it’s a question of mind over matter, because quite honestly, I would rather not expend that amount of energy fighting myself, not to mention that force is limited and burns itself out. I would rather spend that energy finding out about myself by dialoging myself about what my various motivations are, acknowledging how I feel about them and coming to a better understanding about myself. Basically, show some compassion.

Luckily I didn’t have to dialogue with just myself. Steve and I discussed it, and when he saw me really torn between doing what I wanted for my health and doing what I wanted in having some wine, he asked me how I would feel about myself if I had some wine. When I said I would feel disappointed, the discussion was over.

No wine. And I didn’t have to pretend (lie) that I still didn’t want some and I didn’t have to ignore (negate) myself by forcing myself to not want some. I could say “yes, I want some wine, but what I want more is to feel better, keep my promises to myself and others and not abandon the worthy task I set for myself.”