I'm Never Eating Again!

(Photo: teas for my upcoming fast)

What a terrible day I had today. I've been off my raw diet for almost 2 weeks and I feel it has caught up to me. On one day this week the skin on my left cheek hurt really badly- my cheeks had been more darkly pigmented than the rest of my face but had cleared up once I started eating raw. Now the skin is getting a bit rough again and my cheek hurt so badly I could barely touch it! Another thing: I've been congested for days- stuffed and runny nose. I feel (gross-out alert): "mucous-y" as well as "heavy" and slow- like a weight is constraining me. Another thing (prudish people alert): my breasts hurt VERY badly for several days this week. I think it was from all the sodium. I'm just falling apart, people!! At work today I felt all out of kilter, as if I had too many things to do and not enough time to do it. I just needed solitude so I could think. And tonight as I was washing dishes I knocked over a glass and cut my finger rather deeply. I refuse to get stitches, so here I type with one bandaged index finger looking as nasty as I feel.

But waiting for me is the menagerie of teas you see in the photo above. I am so ready for a fast. I need to clean out my body and my mind because I feel like a trash can. I know I can easily fast with water alone for a couple of days, but I decided to make the experience more interesting and flavorful by trying out a bunch of teas I've never had. I made sure they had no fructose, "organic cane juice" (who do they think they're kidding with that one?) or other sugars- except for the Kombucha teas, whose 4 gms of sugars per bottle come from the fruit. I limited myself to 3 kombuchas for this fast.

I didn't pick the teas with any expectation that they will do what they claim; the detox and fasting teas claim to help you in those two areas but if they aren't any more special than any other teas I won't have a fit. I just liked the idea of using a tea called "fasting" and a tea called "detox" while I fast and envision myself detoxifying. I will have molasses daily during my fast, and since I have 5 mangoes, I will have a mango a day until they run out so as not to waste them. I bought a 24-pack of bottled water from Costco as well. How long will I fast? As long as I can stand it. I want to go further than the two days I did before because I remember that on day three I felt better than day two, and if I can make it past day 3, I might make it a week! I will monitor myself to ensure I don't dehydrate or feel weak, etc. (yes, nurse Pam, I said that for YOU!). :-)

I have magazines -Shambala Sun, Tricycle and Yoga - to help me get into a nice, calm mode for the weekend. I also have a lot of studying to do, which should keep my mind occupied as I fast.

So there you have it- I'm undergoing a holistic deep-cleaning this weekend.

I want to say thank you to all of you who have sent me well wishes, urged me to not think poorly of myself, reminded me of how far I've come, sent virtual hugs, shared their experiences with falling off the wagon, and told me to not say bad things about my hair. ;-D