Fasting Failure

I started this Wednesday fast with optimism and faith. Up at 5:15 A.M – dawn, my usual time – I started with house cleaning followed by a delivery of forty-eight boxes from Baxter, the supplier of needed items for my husband’s peritoneal dialysis. After rearranging a few things for the nice delivery guy, I set about dusting and moving furniture around for the new living room chair we purchased Labor Day. A very cute chair, by the way, bought actually the day after the holiday. Mom took us down to the outlet to see the chair she almost bought the day before but had hesitated. I feel in love with it and handed the salesman my American Express while she hymned-and-hawed over the retro mid-century piece. But I digress.

Paul and I headed to the podiatrist after Baxter left. He has an ongoing foot wound from the end of May that keeps reopening. He decided to pick up his insulin and needles at the hospital pharmacy next door. There is a long ramp from where we were located to get to the pharmacy which required Paul to pull on the wheelchair while I pushed. To make a very long story short, we waited two hours and ten minutes to get his $100 bottle of insulin, receiving it only after I demanded to speak to the person in charge. The store ran out of diabetic needles. True. We left with only the insulin.

Five hours after we left home, we got to the parking lot. We were tired, hungry, and frustrated. The car keys were not in my purse. I checked again and again. Leaving Paul in his chair, I dashed back to the pharmacy retracing our steps looking for the keys. I asked each of the nine cashiers at the counter, all of the pharmacists including the supervisor I had slammed earlier and the handful of patrons still left in the place. None had seen the keys. Paul sat patiently by the car. We went through my purse together. I kept sticking my hands in the front pockets of my jeans like the keys would magically appear.

Out of lack of any other option, I called Mom and asked her to come pick us up. If she got us home, I was pretty sure there was a spare key in my junk drawer. Mom had a spare house key. The only other car key was in Paul’s backpack locked in the trunk of the car. Rather than wait, I retraced our steps one more time – a good hike under normal circumstances. Failing to find anything, I returned to the car. As I stepped toward, Paul my hand slipped into my back pocket and found the keys. I showed Paul. He laughed. He said that it has been a long time since I was able to put my hand in my jean’s back pocket. He was right.

After calling Mom and cancelling the emergency pick up, we decided that maybe I should get something to eat. I bought lunch at Mel’s Diner. Paul had a bacon burger and fries. I had a steak, blood-rare.

Fasting Wednesday

It’s the first of September and I’m starting my fasting Wednesdays. The fast is not as easy as I remembered it. The mind plays cruel tricks sometimes. I did okay until eleven o’clock, when I tried to convince myself that a banana smoothie somehow fit a fasting Wednesday. Keeping occupied has helped move my thoughts away from food.

I now know how my skinny co-workers had so many new clothes. They spent money on themselves and not on food. Image if you didn’t eat once a week what that could do for your budget. What if your husband or housemate didn’t eat one day either? Could you afford a new blouse this month? Kids and pets don’t fast so drop that fantasy.

The cost of food for this diet has been for items I never had in the house – powdered wheatgrass, brewer’s yeast, seeds for sprouting, and containers for sprouting. The almond milk, kale, and coconut just replace other less nutritious items in the weekly shopping. What I normal spend on food for myself has dropped by at least half. In the long term, decreasing costs will probably continue.

For example, I ran out of lettuce a few days back. Rather than drive to the store, I used some sprouted sunflower seeds as a base and made my salad. The next day I used the sprouted lentils with a different mix of vegetables. I sprouted mung beans overnight for a wonderful new luncheon faire. I love the change in flavors and textures. The sprouted seeds cost pennies where the organic lettuce cost dollars.

Oh, I made my own pickles. Yes. Using a mandolin slicer, I trimmed up some cucumber, stuffed them into a clean used pickle jar – appropriate – added garlic cloves, pickling spices, and organic vinegar. Left it in the refrigerator for three days. Now I have raw organic pickles. Yum!

How did I get on food? So eight more hours till bedtime then sleep then breakfast. I think I’ll have that banana smoothie.

FIVE POUNDS TO TRANSPLANT WEIGHT GOAL!

Four pounds lost this week. Yea! I upped my exercise a tad with the help of an overactive puppy and ate close to the outlined diet. What I’ve been eating of late: a homemade version of V-8 juice, steamed veggies like kale, carrots, green beans, spinach, and mushrooms, soft-boiled eggs, seared tuna salad with balsamic dressing, tacos made of lettuce, raw-milk goat cheese, homemade salsa verde and seared beef, many salads, fresh fruit, fruit, and more fruit gleaned from our awesome overproducing backyard trees.

My latest experiment attempted Japanese cuisine. I picked up seaweed wraps at the local grocery store, grabbed fresh crab meat, raw ahi tuna, avocado, and veg for California rolls. Following the easy instructions for sushi on the seaweed package, I made two California rolls and two tuna rolls for Mom and Paul. Each roll breaks down to eight pieces of cut sushi. Then I ground up sprouted sunflower seeds and lentils into a paste to replace the rice portion of the recipe and made the same type rolls for myself. I served up salads with ginger dressing, edamame, and hot sake. This was a necessary break from the rut I created with the raw diet. The Asian recipes far exceed most European and American faire in variety of flavor and fresh ingredients.

I am still only two weeks from my last three-day fast so I will start my one-day fast next Wednesday, September 1st. For those who think fasting destroys the muscle, I talked with a health professional who says you must fast forty days before destroying muscle tissue. One day ain’t going to hurt and I know my digestive track can use the break – not to mention what it is doing for the food budget.

July 2010

August 2010

Down the Rabbit Hole

When I started this diet I had no idea what new worlds I would find. Did you know that fruitarians exist? They eat only fruit. This is new information to me but part of an amazing labyrinth of raw-vegetarians juicing wheatgrass, dehydrating sprouted seeds to make raw breads, composting, and organically growing – refugees from the communes I read about in the Sixties that became successful all-natural entrepreneurs. Since this quest started, I have found organic wheatgrass farms in New Zealand and a Californian raw “baker” that ships overnight just about any healthy food craving you may have. “Curiouser and curiouser!”

The really bizarre stuff is found in the last half of each book. Just check the chapters on cleansing. You will find page after page detailing the joys of a clean and healthy bowel. How do you obtain such a thing? Glad you asked. The answer is by fasting, enemas, and high colonics. The detailed pages usually include sketches of someone on a slant board inserting a bulb into the underside of well you know. After flushing out the offending items from your system, you are to insert wheatgrass juice to hold for twenty minutes or so then expel. Apparently, this is the key to curing disease.

Now if one book mentioned it in passing… Ha! Sorry. If one book mentioned these procedures, I could have ignored it but all the books including The Cure talks about clearing the intestines. I visualized Steve Martin and Sarah Jessica Parker leaving the colonic spa in LA Story, Parker jumping up and down, reenergized and Martin walking funny, violated.

I am trying to be enthusiastic about juicing and have successfully sprouted lentils and sunflower seeds. But try as I might the idea of someone else or me, for that matter, inserting a green-water-filled bulb in my fanny is repulsive at best. Don’t let this scare you away from some really good health tips and information. The Hippocrates Diet states that specific cleanses are needed for those who are ill. Perhaps if I had colon cancer, colitis, or ulcers, maybe my desire – scratch that – my need could overcome the repulsion. I’m only seeking a lighter weight body through good nutrition...

 "and it really was a diet, after all."

No Plateau – Five Pounds Lighter

Yes indeedie. I lost five pounds this week. This is the forty-first day of the diet including the first week I just added water to my daily routine. With a total loss of twenty-seven pounds, I am averaging – are you ready – 0.65 or three-fifths of a pound per day. That is better than my average weekly loss with Tops, Weight Watchers, Slim Fast, South Beach, or any other program I have done and I have done many.

This past week I included a lemon-water fast followed by a two-day watermelon cleanse. According to “The Cure,” by Dr. Tim Brantley, you must break your fast with one week for each day fasting. I fasted three days so I cannot fast for three weeks. I remember a woman I worked with at Spartan Shops, San Jose State University – Marilyn Railsback. Every Wednesday, Marilyn sat at lunch sipping on tepid lemon-water, talking with the group, ignoring the mounds of food and desserts we stuffed into our mouths. We all thought she was a little off. Now I know she had much more respect for her body than I ever had. A weekly fast now seems the logical move for my system.

Annette passed along four more books relating to this diet. I finished “The Hippocrates Diet” by Ann Wigmore. Similar to “The Cure,” she discusses the elimination of certain diseases from the body through proper diet. In fact, last three books, including Dr. Tim’s, talked so much about how cancer, heart disease, and diabetes all stem from processed food, I felt guilty for feeding poor Poindexter canned dog food. Many of my friends pets died of cancer, making me ask if that could have been avoided by feeding carnivores raw meat like nature intended.

If we could turn back time, I would join Marilyn in her weekly fast and change my diet and my then-boyfriend’s too. We could have stopped the onset of Paul's diabetes or at the very least lessened its devastation. If we could…

Fasted and Feeling Righteous

I’m down to the last few hours of my three day fast: one day lemon-water only and two days watermelon with water chasers – three days longer than I ever fasted. I can’t say the experience pleased me but it kept me out of mischief. That is something.

Yesterday at church, my friend and I engaged in a conversation about fasting, when another joined in the conversation. I said that I managed to get through the experience by remembering that Jesus fasted forty days and I only needed to survive three.

The third person said, “…but Jesus had someone holding his hand.”

I said, “I would like to think the same hand was holding mine.”

“No,” she said, “God was really holding Jesus’ hand.”

“I understand…”

It seems my Christian friend could not believe that the same God that held Jesus hand could hold mine. I believe that Paul and I could not have lived through everything we have without God holding our hands. We are about to face surgery together – husband and wife sharing danger with the hope of a better quality of life. We cannot do that without a little faith.

I did it!

One whole day of fasting! I did it. Around 4:00 yesterday, I wasn't sure that I would make it. Drinking lemon water becomes a task rather than a treat after ten hours. I switched to plain water and made it through the day. This morning little hunger and a lot of thrist hit me. I waited an hour before cutting into that beautiful cold watermelon. First juicy bite tasted bitter. I'm not sure if it was bitter or my taste buds are in shock. In a couple hours I will know when I feast again on the melon. Two days of watermelon fasting awaits...

Attempting the Fast

This past month ranks as a practice run for the true diet. Today, I attempt the near-impossible… the fast. My goal is to fast with lemon flavored water today, followed by two days of watermelon to cleanse. The three days of cleansing will, supposedly, jump start my immune system, clean out my urinary tract, and give my half-century old digestive system a much needed holiday. The question is – can I do it?

I prepped. First I visited one of Mom’s friends, Annette, the local sage on raw diets. She graciously invited me into her beautiful home full of handmade crafts so lovely I felt blessed to be there. Her creations included delicately carved emu eggs, woven baskets the size of a robin’s nest, and surprisingly comical beaded pebbles.

She gave me hands-on lessons in sprouting and juicing – two areas in which I am clueless. Annette had stacks of book for me to thumb through and borrow. I picked, The Raw Food Revolution Diet by Cherie Soria, Secrets of Power Juicing, Jack LaLanne, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Eating Raw by Mark Reinfeld. Annette's patient instruction in sprouting far surpassed the choppy information found in the Idiot’s Guide. I munched on sprouted sunflower seeds as Annette expounded the virtues of mung bean and hemp seed (legal not the other hemp).

I think sprouting helps your system by increasing helpful enzymes and nutrient intake. Annette says the starch normally found in these seeds change to proteins in the sprouting process -- more digestable and better for you. If it adds a bit of variation in the diet, I will be thrilled. I tire of the same flavors my current faire holds and look forward to some change. Thankfully, the recipes in all three books I read were inspirational. According to these guides you can make most cooked foods in a raw version if you have time, patience, an expensive dehydrator, a good food processor, and money. Okay, I don’t have five of the five but I can see where I can enhance what I am doing with some juices and a few sprouted seeds.

In a way, I feel I have dropped down the rabbit hole. Juicing, fasting, sprouting, dehydrating, raw; all so retro-hippie and not-so-much me but I feel great. I have lost 1.6 pounds this week alone. My stomach muscles are tightening on their own. Honestly, I have never had such daily positive affirmation of a diet change as I do with this one. I find myself dancing for no reason, singing to the dog, and thanking God each time I pick a ripe apple off the backyard tree. I must be doing something right.