Heather lasted just 8 days on the detox. Makes me feel better than I made it 18 days, but people, let me tell you, it’s harder than you’d think.
My roommate is about to start another detox, he’s the one that told me about this one in the first place. His new one comes with a bunch of pills and powder that look really cool. It will be fun living with a guinea pig while he goes through this.
Pulled from Dooce’s Website:
Yesterday was also the first day of a 21-day diet cleanse that I’ve decided to do that prohibits me from eating any sugar, gluten, caffeine, alcohol, or animal products. It’s the same cleanse that Oprah did, and when I read about how it was making her feel I became intrigued, bought the book that inspired it, Quantum Wellness, and decided immediately it was exactly what I needed in my life. I’ve been meaning to make some major changes in my life, especially since the recent chaos is only going to get more chaotic, and this book outlines some ideas as to how to take charge of the change I want to make.
They so want to be just like me.
Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become. – Maxwell Maltz
Last night in my MIS class our Prof hit on some really great points about self-image and why people, no matter how often we try to make them change – don’t. The importance of this information was tied into the fact that many large corporations try to implement new processess and policies only to find that they are ignored. This is especially true with “Knowledge Workers” who use their brains to do their jobs and not manual labor. Once we develop a way we like to do things, a way that has worked just fine for us, we don’t like to change it.
According to Dr. Maltz, each individual has a picture of who they are and how the world sees them. This self-image is created over time by our failures and successes and by what people have told us repeatedly about ourselves. “Once a belief about oursevles goes into this picture it becomes truth” Maltz says ” We do not question it’s validity, but proceed to act as if it were true.”
Think about that for a moment. If you were told in the 7th grade that you weren’t good at math, were you ever good at math? I wasn’t. It always came hard for me. For most of my life I didn’t consider myself a creative person, it was only when I started to work for TI that I started to believe I was creative and only then because people told me over and over how creative I was. It took years for me to actually believe that I truly am creative and then to start nurturing and feeding that creativity.
I thought this information was interesting to note especially in the case of Americans and dieting, exercise and general health. Our teacher put a quote on the board form Maltz that said, and I’m paraprhasing, “90% of all patients with heart disease do not change their eating habits or lifestyles even after they have had heart surgery and they know that if they do not change their habits they will die.”
I had an Uncle that smoked cigarettes like a freight train. When I met him for the first time he had no voice box. He used one of those machines that you held up to a hole in your throat and when you talked it sounded like a robot or a Speak and Spell. He had gotten throat cancer and so they removed his voicebox, but he kept smoking. Later, Cancer ate up his entire face. My dad went to visit him int he hospital during his last days and he said the cancer was so bad that his face was mutilated and his lips were so swollen that they stretched back away from his teeth and he couldn’t even close his mouth.
It’s an ugly picture, but a picture that only validates Maltz’s theories about change.
As I have worked hard to diet these last few weeks, as I have struggled for self-discipline and self-control I have noticed areas where I have sabotaged my self. I have been my worst enemy at reaching my goals.
I’m always delighted to learn truths about human behavior. Understanding why I am the way that I am helps me to take better actions for change. It’s gonna be hard, but I can change.
I actually tried to diet on Saturday, but on Sunday I was all – “Why Bother”. By Monday I had put 5 pounds back on. I don’t know if this is a result of my poor eating or my lifting weights or just a fluctuation. What I do know is that I have no plans of putting this weight back on and so I plan on doing a South Beachesque eating regimen. That means I’ll watch my caloric, carb and fat intake and only splurge for planned events – like a game night planned for June 7th at my casa. So this Detox was really just a kick-off to a healthy eating plan that I need to implement for the rest of my life and a daily budget that I have committed to. 10 dollars a day and if I need more than that I need to save from the previous day. This does not include gasoline, that is a separate budget.
A note about my tooth… I have to go back this week to have it finished, however, it should go pretty fast because have of the filling has already fallen out. There is a whole in my tooth where that temporary crap they stuff in there has cratered. The dentist said I couldn’t eat anything like caramel or chewing gum and so I didn’t. I’ve pretty much been eating nursing home soft foods for the last few days… so I blame shoddy teeth stuff, not my eating habits.
Also, if you live in the Dallas area, Kiss FM Big Money What is That? is supposed to start back up today. I’ll be posting the clues on this site if I remember to wake up before 7. However, this morning I woke up at 5:45 and went ahead and got up and now I am at Starbucks getting ready to do some work.
“Inhale peach, exhale green.” It’s a mantra uttered repeatedly by the antagonist in Dean Koontz’s fascinating book, “Dark Rivers of the Heart”. Today it is my mantra.
Yesterday I broke my diet and I broke it hard. I realized my mistake. Every day that I have wanted to mess up or I did mess up, I didn’t eat breakfast and sometimes I didn’t eat lunch. Mistake.
Yesterday I didn’t eat anything until around 1. I thought I could go to an Indian food buffet and get some of their vegetarian entrees and not be tempted by everything else. How stupid. I started with a plate of vegetable and a tiny bit of this chicken stuff I like. The waiter then brought a basket of Indian flatbread and I thought, I’ll just have a couple bits of one piece. Another plate of food and 4 pieces of flatbread later my diet was out the window.
Later that day I went to Market Street and bought a slice of pizza. I just didn’t care. Like the song, my “give a damn” was busted.
I’m still trying to stay on the diet these last two days. I’ve had a banana for breakfast and I am about to head to Yoga.
On an upnote, my tooth is feeling MUCH better. Thank the Lord Jesus. I would rather him call me home than to put me through that kind of pain. I’m such a baby when it comes to tooth pain. I’ll do Yoga with a hurt foot, play Ultimate Frisbee with the most painful heel spurs, and lift weights with tennis elbow without complaint, but give me a little bit of tooth pain and I turn into a big baby. I think that is part of what I hate about it, I’m ashamed of the fact that I can’t handle the pain.
Anyway, I’m so over this detox, but I am not over eating healthy. I’m not going to start drinking caffeine again on a regular basis or indule in High Fructose Corn Syrup.