Today I ate;

2 liters of water

Lots of mangoes (-yay!)

Red leaf-avocado salad w/Bragg's dressing & kimchi 

Spirulina smoothie

Chilled spring pea soup

Plain chai tea

= 1750 total calories for the day

I've got good news! Today is day 1 of my 21 day cleanse. It's kind of a combo. Part of it is based on what I wanted to do back in May (-but I got off track & fizzled out on the idea). The other part is based on the book 'Clean' by Dr. Alejandro Junger. My problem areas are eating too late in the day, too many food combinations that can interfere with proper digestion & eating more than I need to. I feel like the Clean program will help me address all of them. Plus allow my body the extra space (& love) it needs to heal past abuse (-like working with toxic art supplies, too much stress, too little sleep, too much food, emotions not acknowledged or expressed, etc.). Some of the things I like about the Clean program is that it addresses other ways of healing like; meditation, artistic self expression, skin brushing, sweating, massage, laughter, deep breathing, etc.  I do many of these weekly or daily already & it makes a huge difference. I've also tried a juice fast and LOVED the results I got from it. So this 21 day cleanse will be a combination of all of it. I know it will do me wonders if I stick to it. I will be blogging the whole way through. So you will be able to read how it all goes..

This is what the plan looks like;

The Essentials: Do These Daily

1 Plan and prepare your three meals: Liquid meal for breakfast/Solid food meal for lunch/ Liquid meal for dinner, with any supplements you’ve selected.

2 Follow the Elimination Diet guidelines for everything you consume.

3 Leave a twelve-hour window between the last meal of one day and the first meal of the next. Try not to snack in between.

4 Make sure you have a bowel movement before the end of the day. 

5 Drink enough pure water to cause you to pee often. If more than one hour has gone by without peeing, you are not drinking enough.

6 Move. Walk. Take the stairs. Jump. Incorporate more movement into your day, as often and for as long as you possibly can. 

7 Rest. Get enough sleep. And breathe deeply all day long.

The Optional Activities:

1 Exercise. In addition to your increased daily motion, more deliberate exercise practices will pay off big time. Start slowly and increase gradually as the days go by.

2 Five-minute meditation exercise. Clean your mind and emotions as you clean your body.

3 Colonics. Daily bowel movements will do the work. Colonics will accelerate the process.

4 Skin brushing. Spend a few minutes removing dead skin cells before your shower.

5 Hot-Cold treatments. Once in the shower, use this to power up circulation and detoxification.

6 Infrared Sauna. Sweat profusely as often as you can.

7 Massage. Schedule a massage each week if your time and budget permits.

8 Laugh. Try to do something every day that makes you laugh out loud. It changes the body chemistry for the better and releases stress.

9 Lubricate. Drink two tablespoons of olive oil every night before you go to bed.

10 Write. Keep a daily log of what you eat, what your incessant thoughts are about, how you are feeling and how you slept the night before.

11 Record your progress. Take a daily picture of yourself: same angle, same distance.

12 Eat a clove of garlic every day. Have it alone or thinly sliced and sandwiched between two thin apple slices.

13 Read a book related to health and wellbeing, about the food system, or about the environment. Take this opportunity to educate yourself about what is going on today. Understanding will make it more likely that you will want to maintain the results after you complete the program.

14 Express your artistic side. Dance, sing, play your instrument, paint, sculpt. Whatever it is that wets your whistle. This will activate your right brain and more strongly imprint this whole experience in that part of the brain that is more involved with instincts. Far in the future, even if the thoughts of living Clean vanish, your instincts will be stronger than your thinking brain and will guide you to making the right choices for health.

31 weeks till New Year's Eve 'Nasty Fruit' Challenge

OK, I know what I want to do now! I want to go back to what I designed for the 14 Day Cleanse, but add some veggie soups to it and do it for m-u-c-h longer. I would like to follow this diet until the end of the year. My New Year's Eve celebration will be My Nasty Fruit Challenge completion -and- the beginning of a healthier me for 2010!

My Nasty Fruit Challenge;
Hot drinks (hot water drinks made from lemon, herbs, roots or leaves)
Fresh juices (citrus or plain vegetable, no sweet fruit added to the vegetable juice)
Green smoothies (simple combos, no more than 3 ingredients)
Raw soups (young coconut or a little avocado is OK, but no oil or salt)
Whole fruits (mono meals mostly, this includes non-sweet fruits)

The goal is to be consistent, not perfect. (I already know it won't be perfect. I have travel dates planned and weddings to attend, so this could get tricky.) The reason this challenge is so long is because I want to practice being more fruity, more natural and more simple in my diet. I have already had brief experiences of SUPER happiness and SUPER efficiency in my body when eating like this. My mind is also much calmer and at peace. It's usually brief because I swing back to old eating habits and give in to the influence of 'cultural norms'. This time I want to create a new 'norm'. I want being natural to be fashionable again. But not the fashionable 'natural' way we see today, like 'natural' toiletries and bed linens. Just simple living with awareness. Eating less, eating simpler and getting in touch with nature, our higher nature. The natural 'us' that doesn't need to be entertained by food, that doesn't need to take 'comfort' in cooked or fatty foods, that doesn't need to over use and abuse our bodies or our resources. I notice when I eat like this there are no plastic bottles, no glass jars, no foil, no take-out containers, it's mostly peels & seeds. No animal has to die or live to be used (only for it's milk and eggs) just to produce my meal. Most of the time no one has to even make me anything! It's just peel and go! Plus, when I'm consistent with eating mostly fruit the less I need other supplies like soaps, toothpaste and deodorant. (If I'm eating raw high-fat processed foods, animal foods, cooked foods or seasonings, I need it!) So there is a chain effect to the simplicity of the diet, the rest of your life gets simpler and less wasteful. Imagine if everyone's lives were less wasteful and simpler. What a huge difference that would make on our planet's current challenges. Over population and global warming means we must use less, we must take responsibilities for our actions. 

[*A little note about the food list: The reasons green salads are not on my list is because I don't enjoy them without lots of avocado or a salty fatty dressing. Then after eating salt or lots of fat I feel less energized and my digestion slows way down. I usually over-eat and tend to crave more fatty salty foods afterwards. Plus, most dressings that are made with salt & oil are not fresh. The oil or nuts used can be (and usually are) rancid. Fats are very sensitive to oxygen. It's also hard to know exactly what kind of salt is in the dressing when eating at restaurants. Whenever I have salt in my food I get puffy. I don't like getting puffy (and neither does my body). So I think it's best for me to skip the old salad habit and stick to green smoothies or green soups for my greens. Maybe I will develop a palate for plain salads. This will be tough, but I will give it a try. We will see...]

If you have a goal you want to try till the end of the year let me know. It could be giving up one old habit or including one new habit. Maybe eating something raw everyday or choosing organic over conventional when you have the chance. Whatever you feel would make a contribution to your life and the lives around you. Give it a try! Remember consistency, not perfection. It's all a work in progress. We are in this together!