Successful cleanse and new resolutions

Some people make resolutions in January.  I have waited until June.  Either I am very behind on the resolution making for 2009, or very early for 2010 – take your pick.

I did a cleanse under the supervision of my acupuncturist at the end of May.  It was not one of the starve yourself and drink a mixture of honey, lemon juice and water cleanses – I literally could not stomach that!  This cleanse requires you to eat fruit, raw or very lightly cooked vegetables, vegetable broth, fruit and vegetable juices.  You are actually supposed to drink as much of the liquid as you can hold, so you feel oddly full all the time!  My one complaint was that I had to chew so much during the five days I did the cleanse!  Day three was the worst – the third or fourth day is when your body realizes that all the liquid in your system is not a fluke, and decides to clean house, dumping all the bad stuff out of your system.  I will not describe all the results of the bad stuff leaving your body, but I will say that I had a splitting head ache for about six or seven hours.  I very much appreciated a leisurely visit to the Serrins-Springfield household.  Spending time with friends who were willing to hang out with me, even when I felt pretty terrible was wonderful.  Debra even made a special steamed version of the vegetables so that I could join the family for dinner!

The good news?  when I woke up on day four, I felt amazingly refreshed and rested.  By the end of the cleanse my appetite was significantly reduced, and my craving for sweets is not nearly as strong.  My skin is so hydrated that when I get scratched by a dog, or my own clumsiness, there is almost no mark!  Karen was very pleased with my progress through the cleanse.  I am pretty excited myself.

I decided that it would be a good idea to continue to eat well after my cleanse.  Karen says my stomach will stay small as long as I do not stuff myself three times in quick succession (based on much anecdotal evidence).  I am working on eating several small meals five or six times a day.  This is probably easier for me than for most people, since I am lucky enough to work from home most days.

I am back to tracking my calories and nutrients on NutriMirror, which is a free website that helps you keep up with your food intake and exercise.  NutriMirror uses the food you log to calculate how much of a variety of substances such as calcium, vitamin C, iron, cholesterol, fat, carbs, etc. you take in through food or supplements.  It displays this information in graph form.  For substances you should have a certain amount of, say calcium, the graph is red until you consume enough of that substance during the day.  For substances that you only want a limited amount of, say sodium, the graph starts green, and turns red if you consume too much.  The goal is to have everything on the graph green.  I have come very close to all green on a few days – taking a multi-vitamin usually puts me over the top on the nutrients I need, but I have been trying to get as much as possible through food.  I have been slightly low on both iron and calcium.  I would appreciate suggestions of foods that will fill these gaps.

My workout habits have not been as stellar as my eating habits, which is very backward for me!  I have not met my workout goals for the past couple of weeks, and I have not worked out regularly since before I went to Singapore!  I will go work out with Debra tomorrow morning, so that will be a fresh start!  I am going to aim for 1000 minutes in the month of June.  I only did 120 minutes last week, but I think I can step it up to 300 minutes  per week for the remaining full weeks in June.  I would like to go back to Body Pump – I am really missing it, so I hope to do that on Wednesday.  I will go back to posting a workout summary every week – that way I know someone other than me is watching!  It is so silly, but I really need a coach/cheerleader to feel motivated.  I think this comes from years of having my dad right behind me in every endeavor – he never let me slack off.  He also never failed to tell me how proud he was of my progress – it is a pretty good deal!