Day 3

Day 3
So I'm going to try to change my tactic today. I went to bed super late and woke up early. Late because I drank two lemonades in a row and then the salt water flush and had to wait for it to go through my body before bed. I have to wake up early because I volunteer. Honestly, I'm not sure if its working or not. Perhaps I'm not that toxic. I can't tell if I'm eliminating enough or not. I'm not sure if I'm over doing it with the water. I'm really scared to get faint, but I'll just try to cut back on the lemonade and definitely the water and make my laxative tea a little stronger in the mornings and see if that helps. I'll take one at night too. I read in the book that the author only did the salt water flush 3 times and the rest was laxative (but he took pills, I don't want to.) So we'll see. Up the laxative strength, lower the lemonade intake to no more than 8 and lower the water. I just don't know what the water to lemonade ration should be.

So far, its 3:10 and I've only had 3 lemonades and my tea, no water. I feel a bit murky in the sinuses which the book said would happen. I feel stuff and my throat feels coated. I just woke up from a nap and want to take another. I hate taking naps in the middle of a sun shiny day, but oh well. I think I'm finally feeling a difference, but not sure. They say day one, thee and four are the hardest, but I don't know in what sense they mean. Hard in the not eating thing, or hard in the getting rid of waste thing. If its the waste, I hope so, If its the food, well its not that bad really. I got really hungry while being out in the garden, but when I came home and made a lemonade, I felt fine. It made me realize how MUCH I rely on eating food for comfort. On good days/months, I eat on a small meals on a schedule. Its hard to do on the weekends. On bad days, I eat whenever I'm hungry. I do like the first tactic because it doesn't give me a chance to starve and I am only using food to fuel my body. Right now, since food is cut out of the equation, I don't even think about it. I do think about how sad it is not to invite friends out for a happy hour or lunch because everything relies heavily on food or drink, so I'm being a bit of hermit, I know. I did go out last night with some friends, and surprisingly, I was fine. I did end up leaving a bit before they did cuz I was super hungry (it had been 5 hours between lemonades) and I smelled baked bread and wanted it really bad. So now, I can kind of see the difference between a craving and wanting. Once I removed myself, I didn't want the bread anymore. But yeah, I usually give into cravings, but now I'll think twice before I really want to do that to my body, cuz a craving is usually a slice of bread or a cupcake.

It's midnight, I have a headache and I'm hungry. Other than that, things are good. I do think perhaps two more glasses would have sufficed. Now I know, but all is still well so far. Six is perhaps not enough.

Day 2

Day 2

After a night of hanging out in the bathroom, (don't ask, I won't tell.) I woke up this morning hitting the snooze. I think my neighbor is still noisy which kind of sucks for me =( Oh well for now. I didn't wake up hungry, nor running the the bathroom, so I got up and went to the kitchen to start the water on my tea. I'm the kind of gal who likes to plan the night ahead because I'm usually rushing around like a chicken with my head cut off, so planning my outfits and packing my gym bag the night in advanced is always a saving grace. So I made my tea and relaxed a bit reading some online news, then began to get ready.
Again, so far so good. I do have a slight headache again, but that could be that the caffeine that I got off of last week is finally hitting me, but its nothing I can't handle for now. I am still a bit sleepy, but that's only cuz I don't go to bed at a good time. Tonight might be the same deal as I have a birthday party to go to and then in the morning I'm volunteering at the farm, so I might just take a few glasses before I head out to tie me over.
It's actually kind of nice not having to deal or think about food. Don't get me wrong, I like food, but I do have a love hate relationship with it. I love to eat it, but I don't like what it does to my body. I work out and I'm pretty healthy, but I started out a chubby kid so I have to try hard to stay fit. I mean, by BMI starndards, I'm "over weight" and sure, I feel a bit squishy around the edges, but I actually think I look and feel pretty good. I think the rest, for me, is vanity. There is a certain weight I wish to attain where I feel just fine. If I really were to go down to day, 110 pounds or something, I'd just be solid muscle with bone, if that. But that's not my goal. I don't want to just be bones and muscles.
So at the end of the day, I'm feeling pretty ok. Onto day 3.

The Master Cleanse-Day 1

9:30 am
My alarm went of at 7:15 but I didn't actually roll out of bed until 8am. I had planned to get up, make my tea, drink it, take a shower, let the tea coarse through my body and drink my lemonade concoction at 8am. Well that didn't happen. Instead I hurriedly made my tea, checked my emails, sipped my tea (cuz it was too hot to actually drink), finished half of it, hopped out of the shower, finished the tea and off to the kitchen to make my lemonade: 2 tablespoons of lemon, 2 tablespoons of maple, 8 oz of water and 1/10 of cayenne, but I only had a measuring spoon for 8. Well, there I went 8:30am and drinking my drink. Reaction: tons of coughing. As Kristin pointed out, I don't like hot things, so the fact that I probably put more cayenne in it than I should have didn't help. Second reaction: its too sweet. I like sugar, but I think I'm done with it for now. Usually, I don't like sugary drinks, I just like them to be sweet. And I've decided, before all this went down, that I'd make this every hour until I got home. I'm supposed to have 6-12 cups in a day, more if I'm working out, so my last one will be 5pm before I hit the gym. After the first drink, I immediately downed some water and vowed to put less cayenne and less maple syrup.
Time to make another glass.

10:30 am (three glasses)
The drink sucks ass and makes me nauseated, but must keep trucking along. So far nothing horrible. I am hungry, but not STARVING like I expected to be. I think that as long as I take them on a scheduled basis, there will be no excuse to get super hungry. Like I might have mentioned, I have a bit of a headache and feel just a tad fuzzy in the head (I couldn't remember someone's name a moment ago) to the point of a bit of light headedness, but other than that, I feel pretty ok. I will say this: I don't think I'll be having any maple syrup with my pancakes any time soon after this . . . YUCK. I also think I'll look for an alternative to maple syrup. I know the book says something about raw cane juice . . . that might suit me better, make me less nauseated? Hopefully.

What I hope to achieve from this is the just clear out my body (my tummy and the intestines) of all the yucky I've accumulated through out the years. I know I have some reactions to a lot of good: onions, celery, garlic, milk, etc, so I want to slowly start introducing those things into my system, with milk being at the end of it. I want to start of my healthy eating fresh. Yes yes, I will indulge in cake and pie and pastries, but I'm hoping that after this, the craving for them will have gone down. I just want to know what it feels when things are functioning properly.

3:00 pm (seven glasses)
Its mid afternoon and I'm feeling sleepy. Just a few minutes ago, I started to get the hunger pangs. I knew it was time. Instead of letting just one hour pass between feedings (um, that's a weird way to put it), I let an hour AND A HALF pass and well, I guess that half hour was just too long. So quickly, I got up and made my drink. With the previous drink, around "lunch" time, I made myself some herbal tea. I decided to stop drinking so much water because I was afraid it would dilute its effects on me, but I think I'm going to start picking it up again.
What I am really looking forward to is going to sleep. After work, I plan on going to the gym to have a light work out, getting some more lemons at trader joes (cuz I don't think I've bought enough) then heading home. Depending on how I feel, I'll either sit and relax with a bit of Bones, or just head to bed. I've been needing a good nights sleep and if anything, this would be the night to do it. The relationship with food, however, has been interesting. Either I don't crave it or the idea of it makes me sick, much like after a hangover I suppose. I walk by the bowl of treats and chips at work and I take a mental "thank you" note to myself because I'm not "supposed" to have it. I mean, I'm not supposed to have candy anyway, I don't even like it, but I will, just cuz (which is the worse reason), but this time, I'm just happy I really "can't" and therefore, won't.

7:45pm (ten glasses)
I just got back from the gym and made my 10th cup. My lips are burning a little bit, but that's pretty much all the discomfort I feel right now. The gym was fine. I decided to take it easy. I did my stretching, then I did some ab work out and hopped on the bike for 20 minutes. When I walk home, I try to take it easy on the cardio as the walk home is exercise enough sometimes. The order of business is this: shower, salt water drink, an episode of Bones and hitting the sack. I think 10 glasses of this stuff is good enough for day one, don't you?

You might wonder whether I have some discomfort from drinking the laxative tea (which I am supposed to twice a day or once and then the salt water flush thing). And yes, it's there and no I will not go into detail because I'm a lady.

I'm gonna do it

Tomorrow, I will start off with day one of the Master cleanse. Yep, here I go. I'm not following the directions very well right now for the "ease" in cuz I'm just too poor to buy any extra ingredients except for what I really need (lemons and maple syrup.)

Since I got back from Mexico last spring, I'd been wanting to do something like this, but I just didn't find it. I did a detox, but it didn't work. So here I go, a year and a half late, but here I go. I'm gonna do it.

So far, I've eaten like sh*t today and I've had cramps for 2 days (sorry, TMI but its true.)

I think I will round off the night with some longed for Burger King and just start fresh tomorrow morning. Hopefully I can hit the gym too cuz lately my cramps have made me feel very unattractive and tired.

So tomorrow: the torture, but apparently, I'm a masochist. So we'll see.

Weeeeeee!

Hopefully, this cleanse will bring some clarity back to my brain too! How many times can I forget where I parked my car?!

So my symptoms:
Digestion issues. I seem to have an averse reaction to almost every food.
Clarity: I need to learn how to focus again. I feel like I'm in a fog.
Fatigue: Yeah, I've been tired.
Aches and pains: Yeah, I have those too.
Slightly blue mood: yeah, its so, but it could also be the period.

Off I gooooooooooo!

Argentine Tango

There are two superficial thingsI am scared of in this world. (I say superficial because the actual *real* things I'm scared of carry more weight, like my parents dying and me growing old to the age of ninety childless, with no one who loves me. Now, those are my real fears.)

So, the two things I am scared of in this world: sharks and touching strangers. As I've mentioned before, this is the year to fix my body and try new things. I've been to doctors, played volleyball, tried yoga, starred at sharks for longer than 3 seconds (on TV mind you) and now: Argentine Tango.

There is something that draws me to this dance more than any of the others I've danced or watched. In high school, I was big into swing dance and I carried that with me to college. In college, I began ballroom dancing which two of my very good friends were involved with. From ballroom, I branched out into Salsa, Cubmia and Merengue which most of my new Latino friends were really into. With those, there was something about the sounds and the rhythms that really drew me in.
As I grew older, I continued with the latin dances adding Bachata to me repertoire but there was ALWAYS something about tango and yet, it alluded me. It was mysterious and enthralling, angry yet romantic, frantic but smooth. I liked all those contradictions in one dance. Something I can identify with very well. Yes, I know there are different kinds but I'm sure the first introduction was in the movie "Scent of the Woman".


The fact that the lead danced so close, but yet made no advances made me feel comfortable. I like salsa because it lets me get the booty shaking out of me, but at the same time, it still makes me feel shy and uncomfortable. I don't like the feeling of loosing and trusting a partner completely or of a strange man rubbing up against me which many of the Latin American dances tend to do, much like hip-hop.
Now don't get me wrong, I KNOW Argentine Tango is a dance of closeness, but it also seems like a dance of distance of privacy. There is something emotionally intimate, yet emotionally protective. Yeah, I'm stalking you, but I"ll protect you is what that dance says to me. It also say, um yeah, you are going to be held close, so if you can get over that, you'll enjoy me (the dance.) I think the reason I never wanted to try Tango was because I was scared of it. I was scared that it would let me know how horrible I was, that I sucked at hit. I wasn't ready to confront that just yet.
Today was my first Argentine Tango class. There were about four couples and 6 women. Yep, I was one of those woman. So when they say "choose a partner" it always feels like you're the one getting picked last for the kick ball game.
When I finally had to do some of the movements with a male partner, I got nervous. Not because I like the dude or anything, but because I actually have LOOK AT HIM and PUT MY HANDS ON HIS SHOULDERS. Oh, and get this . . . CLOSE MY EYES. I could have fainted right there and then, or also grabbed my crap and ran out so fast I'd left a little dust cloud. But I didn't. The part of me that wants to run and hide is the part of me that I am every so slowly trying to chisel away at. The part of me that stayed is the part of me I want to be more like on a day to day basis: take a challenge head on. Yes, I'm scared, yes I'm nervous and yes, my hands are getting very sweaty from holding this dudes shoulders, but I'm here and I want to be here. Again, its the music, the movements, that draw me to it. Right now, all I've learned is to "stalk", and walk in small and long strides forward and backward. That's pretty much it. But there is so much more I want to learn. I want to perfect it. I want to rehearse, I want to watch myself over and over and figure out how I could make myself better . . .
One thing I didn't realize even though its a "well duh" moment is that this dance is a social dance, much like all the other dances out there. In my mind, Tango is choreographed. Everyone knows exactly what the other will be doing because its all been rehearsed. That is not the case. So sub-scary part to number two is: touching more strangers at a tango club! Ay!
I think Argentine Tango will really open me up and let me know there is nothing to fear. Why do I even have this fear? I don't know. It's more of a feeling of invasion and uncomfortablity. I don't want it, I really don't. I want to go out onto the dance floor (also the "floor" is a metaphor to "the world") with the attitude of "Yeah, I'm not the best dancer, but I'm good at the little I know and I can learn" rather than "OMIGOD PLEASE DON'T TALK TO ME, BUT I WANT TO DANCE, OH GOD DON'T LOOK AT ME, WHY ISN'T ANYONE ASKING ME TO DANCE!"

So fear #1: Sharks. Well. I don't live in shark infested waters so I think I can put off overcoming that fear for a while.

And fear #2: I'm on my way.

What a world

There are two things this Ah-Mexi-can thought she'd never do:

-Acupuncture.
&
-Watch Star Trek in any form.

Acupuncture:
For the longest time, I've always been scared of needles. When I got my blood drawn in Mexico when I was sick, I freaked out! I could feel the little needle going into my vein, sucking up my life juice . . . AAHHH. But, I also knew it needed to be done. See, that's kind of how I am. Even though there are things I do not like to do-get my blood drawn, eat veggies, get a PAPs (sorry, for the TMI, but it is SERIOUSLY something I hate doing more than anything,) but I do them because they are good for you, or keep you healthy or heck, help save lives. I'd donate blood in high school and college because I knew that somehow, I was making a difference. I eat veggies cuz I know they help fight cancer and give me vital minerals and vitamins I need to be healthy. I get PAP because I apparently like the torture . . . Nah, just want to make sure everything is running right. But acupuncture . . . willingly inserting teeny tiny needles into my body at random places that don't seem to make sense? Not so much. I've been going to a chiropractor because at ate 28, I feel it is time to take care of my physical body in ways that the gym and my diet cannot. She also happens to be an acupuncturist. Today was my second visit, but my first experience. And what's my conclusion? Hells no! My whole left side felt awkward and weird. I couldn't move my wrist, it ached. She had like 5 needs in just ONE EAR! I didn't like it. It was not relaxing. I lay there tense, cold and wondering saying over and over to myself "don't move your left wrist, don't move your left wrist!" So, am I going to do it again at my next visit? Yeah, you know it.

Star Trek the movie
As most of you know, I'm not a big sci-fi fan, especially not a Star Trek fan. I find the shows cheesy, badly done and did I mention cheesy? I can NOT take seriously when someone one yells out "launch the photon torpedoes" or some other gargon. Or that planets are called "Romulus", which I mistakenly called "Ramen" and Volcans come from the planet, well, Volcan. I can't handle it! Even writing this all down makes me smirk and want to run away laughing all the way home. I know that I also confuse people with with what kind of sci-fi I really like and they could argue till their blue in the face about how its the same thing. I've never liked Star Trek, if anything, I'd choose to watch Star Wars. I don't like Lord of the Rings, I prefer Harry Potter. I also like anything X-Filesy and science based as well as super heroes. Yes, yes, I see my contradiction here, but I seriously can't handle aliens that act like humans, etc. . . So why did I go see Star Trek? Well, I'm a fan of JJ Abrams and my favorite actor from Heroes is in it . . . honestly, I could care less about the rest of the movie. What I expected was action packed fun in space. And that I got . . . and more. Not only was it action packed, but the affects were amazing and the acting, superb. I have nothing really to compare these characters to so it was all new to me and I found myself really enjoying it. Even though I could see a bit of Syler in Zachary Quinto (kind of hard not too, he has intense eyes) he did a great job of obviously leaving that character in the shadows. I am however, impressed by the make-up artists: good job on covering up those eyebrows!

All in all, this is a year of trying new things, from acupuncture to Star Trek, and don't get too excited, but I did find the science-the physics, the warp speed-quite interesting.

*All Star Trek info provided by Kristin Hanes. Thanks!

Updatecito

Well, it's been a while. Why? Well, I've been injured and sick, sick and injured. For the past 4-5 weeks, I pulled, strained, hurt, cursed a muscle in my butt. It's still not completely healed. I can feel it now and again in certain positions (like when I sleep or get out of the car) but I *think* (hope) its getting better. It got so bad two weeks ago, that I was limping, so I decided to go to a sports medicine doctor. That appointment is tomorrow. My biggest fear is that he'll tell me to not work out and rest . . . but I did that! I did that for 4 weeks and gained 8 pounds! I cannot do that again. On top of the stupid muscle, I got a cold and was out of the gym for 2 of those 4 weeks. I started to feel sorry for myself and instead of curbing my eating, I decided donuts for breakfast was a great solution. Eight pounds later, I'm heavier, unhappy and pissed off! So last week, I was back to it. I was finally feeling better, the leg was feeling a bit better and the eating, well, I'm re-training myself day by day and did really great yesterday. I did yoga twice last week and I hope to do it twice this week but I've made a few plans after work, so if I get a good nights' sleep one of these nights, I'll attempt the 6am yoga. Am I insane? Um, yes, it's also the catholic guilt I feel for having had donuts for breakfast when I should know better.
So gym, yoga, and eating better are top priorities on my list right now. Healing my leg is second. I know I should be losing weight for health purposes, that's the pc thing to want, but honestly, I just felt better 8 pounds lighter. I felt good about myself, I felt like I looked better and my clothes felt better. Everyone I tell that I've gained weight, can't tell, but I can. So really, it's a matter of how *I* feel at what weight and I know, for mental stability, 8 pounds lighter would be great. So, that is my goal for the 3rd time. I'm also going to a chiropractor in hopes of fixing all the cracks and pops of my body. This is the year to fix myself: mentally, physically and emotionally and I think I'm taking the proper steps.

Next up: Argentine Tango!