Month: December 2006

Well, the last day came and went. My tongue (writing this on the morning of Day 11) remained white throughout Day 10, signalling at least a Day 11 on the fast in my immediate future. I don’t really feel hungry any more. I mean some stuff sounds good and I want to eat it, but not physically — there’s no craving. It’s a mental, “I’d like to eat cheesecake or chocolate mousse or both sometime soon” thing. I did the flush in the evening, and that went well.

We went to the grocery store to restock on lemons and maple syrup. And of course, the one we went to didn’t have any organic lemons. So we had to go to another one in Arlington where they usually stock organic lemons. And of course, they were out, too. So, I’m stuck with “regular” lemons for the duration of this fast. Aimee went out for Indian food to the Dhaba yesterday. She didn’t want to bring any food back, but at this point, I’m way over it. The smell of food doesn’t do anything for me. We passed by a Bertucci’s in a mall yesterday. It actually–get this–smelled bad to me.

Gross: I’m still “eliminating” like a freaking madman. This, without ingesting anything other than lemonade, salt water, senna laxative tea. So, perhaps it really is toxins. I mean, 10 days without solid food and I still have eliminations? That’s crazy.

So here’s the thing. I’m bothered and puzzled. I’m puzzled by the fact that even though I haven’t had anything to eat, and I haven’t been flushing consistently (see the two days I missed), I still have to go to the bathroom every morning. I don’t what the reason is — perhaps, I’ve been steeping my senna tea for longer periods this time around (10-15 minutes). Either way, I wake up every morning with cramps/pains — not fun, let me tell you. I didn’t flush again this morning because we woke up late and had to run to the malls to wrap up Xmas shopping.

I’m bothered by the fact that my tongue is even whiter. My last day of this cleanse is day 10 (the day I’m writing this entry), and my tongue is showing no signs of being pink. I fear this means at least another day or two of fasting. I can hack it, but it’s definitely interesting.

Speaking of interesting — I’d gained 4 inches in my waist in LA and Boston. I’m now back to a 33″ or 32″ waist! That’s pretty exciting. All that running and cleansing seems to be paying off!

Well, I had to flush in the evening on Day 8 again, instead of the morning, because of an early morning appointment. So, something strange. I was going to blog today that my tongue remained pink throughout the fast. Alas, that is not the case. On Day 8, my tongue has turned white. This can’t be goodness, because that means this fast goes beyond Day 10. It takes like 3 or 4 days to get it pink again. I’m not craving anything specifically, but I am looking forward to getting off the fast so I can sushi and Indian food and pie and chocolate cake and ice-cream. In different sittings, not all at once, obviously.

Oh yeah, the city we live in has some weird strange parking rules. They don’t bother posting them, you know, on the street, or anything. No, you learn the rules by getting tickets. Apparently, in winter time, regardless of the weather (we haven’t had any snow to speak of), you have to park on one side of the street or the other. So last night, a whole bunch of cars, including Aimee’s, got $10 tickets for parking on the wrong side of the street. We’re going to fight it obviously, because you can’t just ticket people for some hidden rule/law, this isn’t Soviet Russia, sheesh.

Day 7 went off fairly well without a hitch. I did the flush thing in the evening, and it worked for the most part. However, I only wound up drinking 5 glasses of lemonade instead of 6. And I’ve discovered something — the fast isn’t what makes me cold. The flush is what makes me cold. I don’t know why, but there it is.

I can’t believe 7 days have gone by already. On the one hand, I can’t wait for day 10 to arrive. On the other, I feel I could do it for another few days, maybe another week to 10 days. I even had thoughts of Arks (as in Noah’s, you know with the 40 days thing). I won’t, though, at least not this time. Perhaps next summer, though. This time around, since Aimee and I are heading out to a tropical island for the non-denominational holiday beginning on the 25th of– Christmas holiday we intend to eat, man. Yeah, we’ll be chowing down at the resort, I can tell you that.

These updates keep getting later and later. Here I am on day 7 writing about Day 6. Before I jump into it, I wanna share some absolutely useless and tangential information. I’m driving into work this morning, listening to the local KISS affiliate (I usually listen to NPR, but I tune out during the give-us-money drives — I do, in fact, give money, so quell that right there), and they play this new song by Nelly Furtado. The chorus was almost something out of Kylie Minogue, to be honest, which made me a bit happy (because my Kylie CD is now here). Nelly’s voice is a bit deeper and throatier in the verses, otherwise I would’ve thought it to be a Kylie release. Bleh, whatever. Useless, I told you.

So the fast. Yesterday was also a fine day. I flushed a bit. Not all of it flushed, but some of it did. No idea what happened to the rest of the saline. I did not, in fact, flush this morning, because again there was this thing I had to do really early. Pretty much, it was the same thing I had to do on Tuesday, except that Tuesday’s journey was unsuccessful. Today’s was a success. Tomorrow is another early day for me, as we’re looking at a drupal demo bright and early at work. This means that I’ll flush this evening instead. That, in turn, means I should be done with my lemonade for several hours before I get home (usually I finish the last bits of it at 4:30pm/16:30 so it’s only 2 hours till “dinner”). That, in turn, means that I’ll be pretty much famished by the time I get home this evening. Heck, going home at 17:30/5:30pm causes me hunger.

I also couldn’t talk about food on the phone with Aimee yesterday, because that made me hungry. Ironically, the smell of food had no effect. In other news, my sister is still going strong, and her fiance has pledged to reboot his fast on Monday. That should take him right to the beginnings of Christmas (2 – 3 days to transition to regular food, post-fast) foods.

Well, day 5 is almost at en end. As you can see, I decided forge ahead. There were a tempting few moments yesterday, filled with thoughts of veggie soup, sushi and chocolate (in that order), when I thought I’d quit. But since Aimee is pretty much on a soup diet (she a mde a big batch the day before), there won’t be cooking smells around anyway, and hey, I’m at the halfway point besides. So there we have it, I’m going on with the fast. About the flush — I couldn’t yesterday due to scheduling concerns. I have to leave aside almost 2.5 hours for it, and I had some stuff I had to do early yesterday morning. I thought about doing the flush in the evening when I came home. But, I forgot.

Oh yeah, sorry, I’m writing this on the morning of Day 6 instead of the evening of Day 5. So no cravings as such, except for a faint desire to eat chicken at some point during the day. I think it was during the drive. Specifically, it was chicken curry that I had thoughts of.

And, it’s cold. I think probably winter time is not a great time to do the cleanses. In the future, I’ll cleanse before and after, but not during. I definitely feel colder than most. I actually had my big heavy winter jacket on inside the building during the day at work. Granted, the conference room I was in for 90 minutes was colder than the rest, but I really felt it. I came back to the desk and hung out in my winter coat for half an hour. Then that afternoon, just sitting at my desk I got cold, and on came the winter coat.

Today, I’m taking a fleece sweater with me 🙂