Category: Personal Stuff

Wow, it has been a week since I started this fast! Time has gone by fairly, um, fast. There isn’t really that much to report, but I will make a few notes here.

No hunger pangs this morning. I’ve been drinking a lot of water lately. I keep on running out of lemons, maple syrup and water at home and poor Aimee runs to the store every 3 days to replenish supplies for me. She’s been very sweet and understanding throughout all of this. My tongue is still a little white, but I think it might be slightly less than yesterday.

Fair warning, here’s the icky bit, so skip this paragraph. I didn’t think I had any wastes left in me after 7 days of not actually consuming anything solid. But sure enough, I do. There’s not much, but there it is.

OK, that’s over. The salt water did not taste as nasty today. In fact, it was downright bearable. Someone please do something if I ever say that I like the salt water. The funny thing is I was able to drink all 32 ounces pretty much in one go this morning. That’s definitely a first: I’ve always had to drink half immediately and then the remainder over the next 7-10 minutes.

Back to the hunger pangs for a minute. It’s 1:30 pm now and I’ve only gone about 1/3rd of the way through my flask. Last night, I wanted to eat (I was hungry, but the lemon juice did satisfy that — which irritates me slightly, now that I think about it). I wanted, actually, to eat with my wife. I wanted that interaction you get from preparing a meal and eating it together. The smell of the food she made didn’t help. She had these spinakopita things that really did smell divine (can I say that word as a straight man?).

As it turns out, the running from Tuesday did not leave our muscles sore. I guess the stretches really helped! Because of that, we decided that we will do the third and final run of the week tonight. Sunday starts the second week with 90 second jog/2 minute walk blocks!

See what happened on Day 6

Follow the adventure to Day 8

Edit: added navigation

Well, here I am, nearing the end of the workday for Day 6, and I’m doing quite well today. The cravings are virtually non-existent. There was some food I thought about today, for about 30 seconds, but nothing much, really. In fact, I’m only halfway through my flask of lemonade, because I simply have not been hungry.

Last night’s jog was so great. Aimee and I started our stretches at exactly 6pm (18:00) and 15 minutes later we were at the park doing the jog. Twenty minutes went by sooooooooooo quick, it was amazing. We were surprised that the workout was over when it was. It’s funny, given both our prior experiences with running, that we were both looking forward to last night’s jog. Some of our muscles were sore from Sunday, but a little stretching and we were both doing great. In fact, the first 60 second jog bled into a 75 second jog, because I lost track of time.

So, on our way upstairs, I could smell the cooking from next door. Aimee said it smelled like burgers, I think it smelled like boiling chicken. Here’s the thing though, to me the smell was exactly the opposite of appetising. I felt kinda sick from that smell. I guess it’s a good thing I’m vegetarian, otherwise I’d be in big trouble. Then again, I don’t think I’ve ever really enjoyed that smell. Aimee steamed some broccoli as part of her dinner, and wouldn’t you know it, that had my mouth watering.

Anyway, today was pretty much the same as usual with the morning routine (salt water flush, a glass of lemonade for breakfast, 3 glasses in a flask for the day). Oh yeah, my tongue, in the back of it, is white. Like white. It’s expected, but it’s eerie. I thought it was going to happen on Day 3 or 4, so I’m really surprised. I hope it goes away by Day 9 so I can get off this fast and onto the liver/gallbladder flushing regimen. That one features apple juice and fruit and light food, I think, so at least I’m back to eating (salads and fruits and soups and fruit salads at least I think).

See what happened on Day 5.

See what will happen on Day 7

Edit: Day 5, not Day 4, was yesterday. Navigation to day 7.

Now this is interesting. For most of the morning, I have not had any cravings for anything. For a few minutes, I fancied having some chocolate. Specifically, I was craving cold chocolate: like ice-cream or mouse or something. Cake, even. When I went to the cooler to get a refill of water, I passed by a veritable cornucopia of chocolate in candy form. None of it appealed even slightly (despite the presence of plain old milk chocolate, my favourite).

Did the usual salt water flush this morning with the expected/intended results. Followed it up with a glass of the lemon juice. Brought 3 to work, and I’m done with about 6 ounces (it’s 11:30am at the moment) out of 32. I’ve actually been more thirsty than hungry this morning. I drank a glass of water right after my morning juice.

Aimee was so nice yesterday. She went out to the store yesterday afternoon and bought me a whole batch of organic lemons. I’d run out of them on Saturday, so I was stuck with conventional ones yesterday and part of Sunday. The organics are half the size of the conventionals with the same amount of juice. Maybe slightly less, but it’s convenient: one lemon = one glass of juice. Makes the maths easy.

Today’s lunch is not as hard as yesterday. A big part of the reason is that all the devs have a lunch meeting so they’ve gone off to a big room, leaving me alone in the bull-pen for an hour or so. No smell of food == no cravings, I suppose.

Now, I’ve been sort of planning to end this fast with a liver flush. So the new plan is that I’ll finish this fast on Sunday or Monday and segue right into the liver flush regimen, which is basically 5 days of apple juice. The nice thing is that I can actually eat light meals during that, so salads are definitely in, as are fresh apples and stuff. From what I can tell, the liver flush is a combo liver/gall-bladder flush, so that should be good. There’s going to be an unfortunate bit with olive oil, but I’ll report on that when I get to it. So it seems, then, that my fasting period officially ends not this weekend, but next weekend.

The good news is that today marks the halfway point of this master cleanse fast.

Oh, and by the way, Scott Adams has some great advice.

See what happened on Day 4

Follow the story to Day 6

Edit: Added navigation

I suppose, to be more accurate, this fast is a lemonade fast, rather than a lemon juice fast. Here’s the deal:

• 2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons of grade B maple syrup
• 0.1 teaspoons of cayenne pepper
• 8 ounces of spring water

Now, a tenth of a teaspoon is, for some, a pinch and for others, a dash. For me, I round up to about half a teaspoon. I like the spiciness (I’m Indian, after all).

I woke up extra early (5:30) so as to do the salt water flush. In case, I haven’t mentioned this part in previous blog posts, it’s basically 2 teaspoons of uniodised sea salt in 32 ounces of lukewarm water. And you’re supposed to chug that. Look, the first couple of times, I nearly choked the stuff right back up. I had to force it to stay down. Today, I didn’t have to force so much, but it’s by no means a pleasant drinking experience. They say it takes 20 minutes to flush, but for me it’s anywhere between 30 and 75 minutes for 3 flushes. Sometimes longer.

For the curious out there (I can’t believe I’m actually going to talk about this part), I haven’t had anything solid in the flush since day 2. It’s all just been the left-over junk, so it doesn’t take very long. It feels like I’m fairly flushed, but who knows? Apparently, there are other toxins still to be released. We’ll see.

Lunchtime at the office was rough. I could smell people’s food and it drove me bananas (which I craved in the mid-morning, incidentally). I wanted Chinese food. Have you ever eaten a vegetarian Chinese restaurant that serves you those fake meat dishes? Well, Aimee and I had our first experience a few weeks ago when we went down to Chinatown for Sunday lunch. That stuff is delicious. And I’ve been craving it for lunch. Not so much as I write this, but definitely during the lunch hour.

So, back to the morning. I had a glass of the lemonade for breakfast, then made up 3 glasses worth for the day to bring to work. It’s now a little before 3pm (15:00 for the non-USians amongst my readership), and I have quarter of a glass left. I’ll have to ration this remainder till I leave for home. At lunch time, I want a bite of whoever’s burrito was wafting over to my nostrils, and instead have to satisfy my hunger with this lemonade. I mean the lemonade tastes good, but it’s no burrito.

It’s weird, because the food smells made me hungry (salivation, tummy rumbling, etc). The juice makes me feel full, but still hungry: strange. On the subject of cravings: I’m not craving the Indian food anymore. The funny thing is, I remember craving Punjabi food last night, but I don’t remember craving the South Indian food from Saturday. Maybe, it’s because the Punjabi was under my nose and the dosa not.
Today, I feel indifferent to both. I just want that fake pork dish that we had in Chinatown. I keep plotting, you know, what I’ll have at the end of this fast when I can eat again. Yesterday was Punjabi Dhaba. Today, it’s Chinatown. I don’t even know what tomorrow will be. Oh yeah, for a while yesterday, I was thinking about Ethiopian food, too. Some injera with those veggie dishes on top of it. That still sounds good.

See what happened on Day 3

Day 5 is the halfway point of this fast.

Edit: Added navigation link

Well, today was a little easier with the cravings. Admittedly, I thought about food quite a bit, but looking at it was actually ok (even watched a cooking show on PBS. I do like Ming Tsai quite a lot, and I always wonder why he’s no longer on the Food Network.) Anyway, the real craving came when I drove Aimee to Punjabi Dhaba so she could pick up her dinner. Man, that smelled delish! What else would you expect from the second best Indian restaurant in Boston after all?

When we came home I made up a glass of lemon juice, toot-sweet, as it were. Earlier in the day, though, Aimee and I went shopping for a few things; mainly, we shopped in preparation for a bit of a run. Today was the first day, and I’ll tell you what, it felt good. I’ve never felt good with running, though I’ve always wanted to. By the end of the twenty minutes, we weren’t even jogging, we were actually running (inadvertantly). Great fun, and we’re both looking forward to the second work out on Tuesday night.

And that’s it, I’m writing this just before I drink my nightly cup of senna tea at bedtime, and watching Eye of the Leopard. Fascinating show – I love big cats. And the bit with the baby baboon was heartbreaking.

Day 4 should be interesting.

Not Caught Up? Read about Day 2.

Edit: Added a missing parenthesis. And a missing comma.
Edit Again: Added navigation links

Well, Day 2 began fairly quietly. Just a few note about Day 1: I did have cravings all through the day yesterday. A lot of times, I thought “screw this, I wanna eat Indian food on Saturday,” and other similar thoughts. I didn’t really crave any particular foods, just food in general. I had the mint senna tea last night, and woke up not having to do anything.

Then I drank the salt water flush. Well, I drank 16 ounces (because I thought that was a quart) of it. I realised half an hour later that I needed another 16 ounces. So I drank water instead (because I used the proper measurement of salt, but only half the water in the first drinking). And, OK, yeah, they call it a flush for reason, I realise. ‘Nuff said.

It’s now past lunch. Aimee went over to our favourite Indian restaurant for brunch. That’s our Saturday regular. She felt really conflicted about it, because she’d rather we both go together. But, she doesn’t need to be suffering because of my fast, so I persuaded her to go. Meanwhile, I haven’t had any cravings, and I only realised I was physically hungry a few minutes ago, so I made some of the lemon juice (1.5 glasses worth).

Yesterday, I only had 6 glasses of lemon juice, and I was ok.

Catch up Day 1.

See what happens on Day 3

Edit: Added navigation links

So far, so good, in other words.

When I wrote my quick note last night, I was unsure how much to talk about it, but I’ve had some questions, so here we go.

I’m on a cleansing diet. A lot of things have happened in the last 2 years or so that made me want to go on this fast. In May 2005, Aimee and I finally quit smoking. I’d been a smoker for 10 years prior to that, and had made many unsuccessful attempts at quitting. Last May, we just decided to quit and that was it. We haven’t looked back since.

This past May-ish, we just sorta quit eating meat. It wasn’t a conscious decision (and prior to it, we were choosy about it anyway: we preferred vegetarian fed, free-range, organic type stuff, and it was mostly chicken, with turkey here and there and salmon there and here). Anyway, we just kinda slowed down with the meat, and a couple of months passed by, and we hadn’t touched any meat at all. We met up with the Griffises at one point at a vegetarian Indian restaurant in Lowell one day for lunch (by accident, actually — we just all arrived at the same time). And their story was similar. At some point they declared themselves to be vegetarian. We hadn’t yet, but we were still eating vegetarian food, and sometimes fish (especially sushi).

Anyway, we hadn’t gotten off the fish, and I’m not entirely certain we have yet, though it’s been a month since I’ve had any, and more since Aimee has.

Then there’s the medical stuff: I have a fatty liver and some polyps in my gall bladder, and I’m definitely a bit overweight. I think I’m at least 50lbs overweight, but the doctors think I’m 15lbs overweight. So anyway, the veg. diet has been helping and I’ve been doing a bit of Tae-Bo, though not in the last month since we moved into the new house. We have been walking on the weekends quite a bit, but we’ll hopefully step that up to multiple times a week.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks that what I’d really like to do is just cleanse my body from the inside, and do a bit of detoxification. So, remembering that my Dad goes on orange juice fasts every few months for the same purpose, I decided to investigate. I happened upon the lemon juice diet, which I started last night.

I had a glass of the lemon juice and a cup of senna tea (don’t ask, just google, and no I won’t post pictures of the result). This morning, I had another ultrasound exam and some bloodwork, so I’m only now drinking my morning tea (senna again), and have made 30 ounces of lemon juice for the day.

Oddly enough, my last post caught the attention of an old friend from college, so already the good things are starting to happen.

See what happens in Day 2

Edit: Fixed the spelling of my wife’s name, and other spelling errors
Edit Again: Added navigation link

Just a quick note to say that I started my 10 day fast today. It’s mainly for, well, cleansing. My dinner was a glass of lemonade and some night time tea before bed.

See Day 1 of my fast

Edit: added link to first day

Had a nice relaxing weekend. Hung out with aimee, did some chores, bought a few more items of furniture for the apartment. I also had the unfortunate opportunity to watch that “Jackass 2” movie. My god, why is that piece of crap the #1 movie in America? Why would people watch that idiocy? (I didn’t know anything about it, I actually do have an excuse). But here’s the more important question: why would people do all that stuff in there. It’s disgusting and pointless. There were a lot of scenes I couldn’t even watch. Next weekend, I’m going to see that Jet Li movie, man.

Oh yeah, I put a whole bunch of books from Guy Kawasaki finally. I’ve been reading his blog for about 6 months (and incidentally, that’s where I found simplyhired in the first place), and enjoying his insights, so looking forward to reading all his books.

Yep, I’m guilty of it. I hate television, and yet I watch so damned much of it. John Stewart, I blame you partly — because you bring what is so rare: high quality programming. And I’ll confess to being a citizen of the Colbert Nation too, dammit.

Now that’s not so bad, it’s an hour on the weekdays (8pm, if you please: the regular time slot is way too late for me). But then, Comedy Central decided to air the old episodes of Scrubs. Now, Rach had mentioned Scrubs to me a few years ago, while I was still in LA (during the pre-Aimee era of my life, actually), and I never really watched it regularly. The few episodes I did catch were hilarious and I loved them. So now, I’m watching an hour of Scrubs every weeknight too. That’s two effing hours of tv! Ridiculous.

And finally, Aimee is hooked on this Gilmore Girls show, and of course by now I’ve seen most of the episodes too (she netflixed the prior seasons last year, so I’ve been caught up and up to date for damned near a year now). So I’m hooked to that one too, because its new season started last night. (BTW, I can’t believe she slept with Christopher, and I really hope that the previews for next week are misleading — I don’t think I can handle a Lorelei/Christopher relationship. While we’re on the subject, am I the only one not thrilled with Rory’s beau? I actually side with Paris on this one, which feels weird). [Editor’s note: OMG, I can’t believe I actually said that parenthesised stuff].

And of course Sunday night is my night for The Simpsons, and the Stewie show (no link, because I don’t actually know its name), and the show with Michael Rappaport in it (again, no link, can’t remember the name, though it might be The War At Home).

I’m addicted to television, and this makes me sad.