DAY SIX

Today is the beginning of my 6Th day on my detoxing cleanse diet. For almost a week now I've eaten only fruit and vegetables (mostly fresh, some canned and frozen), oils from homemade salad dressings, spices and protein powder for my morning smoothies.

Yesterday I started to second guess this diet. I know that to function well I need carbs from whole food grains and I started to worry that I wasn't eating what I body needs. I was feeling randomly light headed and I really did start to worry. Then I took a step back and really put some thought into this.

I know of a child who eats the same three meals at every sitting and rarely deviates. He's got zero variety in his diet and he's doing just fine (so far). I know people who eat fast food 2-3 times a day and they are still standing (maybe not well, but they are still standing). Recently I saw people at an all-you-can-eat buffet gorging on things like fatty meats and cheesy pastas made with white flour and they were able to function OK (if you can call that functioning).

I realized that by my just eating whole foods with no added chemicals, additives or other things that don't belong in food that I was way ahead of the game. After I realized all the above things I stopped worrying. I decided to add even more variety to my diet. I've been eating tomatoes, cucumbers, avocados, sweet potatoes, squashes, all sorts of berries, all sorts of greens and tons of different kinds of spices. Today I plan on picking up a few more things to add. Maybe some jicama, hot peppers for some spice and some celery root (that thing is so intimidating!).

I'm not going to lie and say that it's been easy. Yesterday was the worst so far. I wanted something, anything that wasn't a vegetable or fruit. I wanted pasta piled high with faux meatballs. I would have loved to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich slathered with jelly made with tons of sugar. If I would have had chocolate or candy in my house I may have been forced to toss it down the garbage disposal. Instead I got a large bowl of frozen veggies and made a simple Asian stir fry with some soy sauce and a spicy pepper sauce.

For the most part I've felt full most of the day because I eat all day long. Every two hours I eat something small and the best part? I've lost 3 pounds. I know that's probably a lot of water weight, but it's still pretty exciting. If I lose a few pounds in the process I'm not going to complain.

I'm feeling more aware of how to use spices to make vegetable taste good. Combinations of different vegetables is quite fun to experiment with. My morning smoothies never taste the same and I've discovered that I really like carrots in my smoothie, especially baby carrots. They lend a sweet flavor. Who knew that I'd like spinach, carrot, banana and blueberries smoothies.

I have one week left of only fruits and vegetables and I hope that even when that time is over that I'll continue to eat the variety and amount of these super foods. Because, really, they are super foods, in more way than one.