Withdrawal

This is what I wrote on day 5 of our program (12 days ago). We were going through withdrawal from our regular diet. Noah, our 17 year old son, was doing it too (last week he added dairy and eggs back into his diet) and all three of us felt crummy. Withdrawal lasted about 6 days. It felt like a fog lifted when we came out of withdrawal.


Day 5. Today was a tough day. It is snowy and cold and I woke up wanting comfort food. The last few days we've felt a little yucky from about noon on, just tired and achy and today has been the same. I just want to sit on couch and watch TV. After reading the book I realize that I am experiencing withdrawal symptoms.

Not only are we withdrawing from meat, dairy (very addictive), refined carbs, and fat, but also caffeine, salt, all sugars, and all the additives and chemicals in our food (it's scary once you start reading labels). Plus my heart is still flopping occasionally and that freaks me out a bit. So today was tough.

I ran today and tried to take it easy but I can't keep my heart rate within the recommended range and still run. So, that had me worried too. My heart started flopping after the run (VERY slow run - more like a shuffle).

Food: The theory here is that everything you eat has maximum nutrition. No wasted calories.

When you give your body so many nutrient rich foods it blunts your hunger. (You are eating 10 times more nutritiously than the rest of America.) I do not crave sugar or bread or meat...maybe salt, but that is all. Besides withdrawal fatigue I feel good. My stuffy nose and post nasal drip (from the last umpteen years) is gone. My jammed finger feels better, my skin is starting to look better and I am sleeping much better. And i won't even tell you about how this has improved my poops. This is only after 5 days. I won't weigh myself until Monday but Roland weighed today and has lost 10 lbs. I won't loose that much because I am a woman and smaller than him.

The salad dressing recipes in the book are lame. Today I tried to eat a huge salad without dressing. It was awful. I couldn't get any saliva going so it was hard work to eat that salad. Roland felt sorry for me and sprinkled some balsamic vinegar on and that helped me salivate and eat more salad. Then we went shopping at Whole Foods and bought Amy's vegetarian chili and some decent organic natural salad dressings and sampled a whole grain cracker that was salty (mmmm salt). For dinner I steamed some fresh spinach and we threw that on top of the chili and toasted some homemade whole wheat bread - it was wonderful.