Seemant Kulleen

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 🙂

So, things did change today. Aimee’s cold stepped up in intensity. She’s been achy and throat hurty all day. We decided it was best she go off the fast, and onto some soup. She had some veggie soup tonight for dinner (carrots, celery, red potatoes, white potatoes, mushrooms, squash, onions, and tomatoes). Smelled great. I helped her with the veggie chopping.

Now, I know why this time around has been so easy: there wasn’t any food smell in the house! Tonight was a definite struggle for me. Not that I was craving anything in particular (though I did crave chocolate for a little while this afternoon), just that I wanted to eat something. I decided to, um, stay the course, since I’m almost halfway through the fast anyway. Aimee’s feeling bad and guilty for leaving it, though she has absolutely no reason to. It’s better, I think, she take the soup and stuff to help her body fight the cold.

We’ll probably do another cleanse in January or February, and we’ll do it together then. I’m rather inclined to wait till the worst of winter is over, because frankly this fast does make you a little cold anyway. Granted, the cayenne’s heat helps to warm one up a little, but it doesn’t last overly long. It’s especially cold after a flush.

Speaking of flush, I didn’t even do it this morning, because I woke up so damned late. I have a thing against public toilets, as I may or may not have mentioned in a prior post (I’m pretty sure I did), so I wasn’t going to go to work with a full flush still to go.

Tomorrow will consequently be a big flush, I guess, because it’s been 3 days since I’ve really flushed anything. Here’s hoping.

Today was a pretty good today. I have had no cravings at all. I’ve been hungry — or rather, I’ve had the inclination to eat — several times today, but nothing overwhelming at all. In fact, I’ve not even had overwhelming urges to drink the lemonade. Since this is Aimee’s first time, she’s had cravings pretty much all day: cinammon rolls and deep-dish chicago style cheese pizza in the morning, and homemade spinach/tomato pizza this evening. And, we stopped by this new plaza near here that has a really good ice-cream shop in it. As we walked by it on our way to a gift shop, she was quite tempted by it. She’s being strong though, which is great. We’re done with Day 2 now, which means that we have a little over a week left!

Oh yeah, remember how I said the salt water flush tasted posionous. Well, it’s no wonder. Remember kids, don’t do things when you’re lacking sleep. Instead of two teaspoons of salt per quart of water, I put in two tablespoons per quart. That explains the nausea, the incredible thirst, etc. Today’s flush was very light — I think my body absorbed all the water instead. Weird, because I did drink quite a lot of water yesterday all day.
Aimee had early morning class, so she skipped the flush. The senna tea did have a painful effect on her this morning though.

It’s weird to see what she’s going through with familiarity from having been through it myself. I’ll say that so far, this second cleanse is going a lot more easily for me.

Day 1 went off fairly well without a hitch. We started the day bright and early with a yucky salt water flush. I’d forgotten exactly how yucky it really is on the tongue. I remember it being fairly salty last time, but this time it almost felt like salt-poisoning or something. To boot, it made me feel a little ill to my stomach for a while (until the flush part of it). Aimee had similar symptoms. Strange effect, and I’m thankful it’s a one-a-day type situation. I’m almost dreading tomorrow morning.

Turns out my sister and her fiance started on Thursday, then ate out Thursday night because, well, they got hungry. They realised that that’s not how this works, so they restarted today.

I did not feel hungry today at all. There was free pizza at work for the company meeting and they even had cookies and eclairs for dessert. The pizza smelled great, and the eclairs looked fantastic, but both failed to induce thoughts of fast-abandonment in me. It’s just Day 1 though. Aimee, meanwhile, had a different experience. Her colleague brought in coffee cake, and that did lead to thoughts of abandonment, but she stayed strong. She was definitely hungry by 17:30 (5:30pm) when I got home, so we had our 5th glass each soon thereafter. Our final glass of the evening was at around 20:00 (8pm) and we had senna tea 2 hours later. She stayed strong. My prediction is that the next 3-4 days will be really rough on her. I don’t know how tough it will be for me, but it’ll certainly help to know that we’re doing this together (and hence neither one will have food cooking).

In summary: salt water flush tastes nastier than I remember; it’s as flushy as ever; lemonade tastes great still; cayenne gets hot the longer it sits in the drink; Yogi Tea’s senna tea tastes better than this other brand we bought. (More details + links on the teas tomorrow).