My diet & detox journal

Ok. I am putting together some thoughts for my upcoming eBook about PCOS, and I thought I would throw everyone a morsel to wet your appetite…Raw foods were a key part of my journey to balance my PCOS. In exchange for a healthy diet, rich in raw fresh foods, I received clear skin, for the first time since late puberty!

Here you go…

Yes, yes, yes. A favorite subject of teenagers, but a sorrowful situation for an adult, right? Blemishes not only make you want to hide your face under a paperbag, but they can even cause scaring and long term damage to your skin.

As a woman with PCOS, I am no stranger to breakouts. Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome is often characterized by imbalanced hormones. (Did you know that new statistics are showing that as many as 10% or more of young women are dealing with this disorder?)

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I was pondering a few questions today following a webscussion I took part in on a cleansing forum. So, what’s the relationship between cleansing/detox and rejuvenation? Does one need to take a cleanse with a rejuvenating product as well? Can diet be sufficient? Does a raw food or whole food diet give us all we need?

I wrote an article on this topic, which you can find here on my weblog. This is something that we talk a lot about at work, having recently launched some newer product which is incidentally called ‘Renew’. Products which support our body’s nutrient intake, both vitamin, mineral, as well as additional micronutrients like amino acids and essential fatty acids are key to the process of rejuvenation. You can find lots of quality product out there, but is it essential is what I asked myself.

HEre’s my two cents on this question. Even though I do, for my full time job represent a manufacturer of dietary supplements, one which is particularly sucessful selling cleansing products and kits, I don’t believe that its necessarily a PRODUCT that’s key to the cleansing and detoxification process, otherwise for centuries, how did our ancestors cleanse, detoxify and rejuvenate.

As a digestive care educator and cleansing advocate, my feeling is that a healthy diet is crucial to the detoxification process. On the other hand, diet OR dietary supplements can provide your body the tools it needs to cleanse, and in particular, STRENGTHEN our system so that we are better able to cope with what the environment and lifestyle we lead throws at us.

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Wed Feb 2, 2005 9:36pm
day 37
You ever notice that sometimes you just can’t get your sleeping schedule back in gear? The last week or so I have been staying up WAY late. This has caused me to sleep in past my usual habit. I am typically an EARLY EARLY riser. Getting up at 4:45 to do yoga or exercise is nothing for me. But recently, it is all I can do to get up by 7:30am. THis is bad, since i have to be at work by 8:30…Yes I only live 10 minutes from work, only I don’t like to rush. This has meant that my leisurely breakfast has been cancelled. I managed a smoothie again, but I was peeling bananas with my sonicare buzzing on my teeth!

Oh well. The day went really quick. I had the smoothie with greens powder in it for breakfast. (essentially berries, banana and greens in a bit of water.) I had an orange for a snack. Lunch I described on the boards, well, I did have a big greens salad with avocado in addition to that berry banana sorbet I made in the food processer. I shared that with one of the girls at work and she was like, thats raw?! I told her how I made it.

I had two more oranges for snack, and when I got home I had a piece of my cheesy almond dehydrator bread with some tomatoes and cucumber. Raw & healthy…

I was watching some video links of the Gerson Diet that someone had posted on the boards. Reminds me of why I went raw…to regain my health. I think it is so important to keep that in mind. In Alissa’s book she talks about that…Sometimes we forget, and I think it is the forgeting that leads to mindless junk eating & slipping up. I was thinking about how when I first really cheated on this diet over a year ago it was when I was eating not so healthy & not so raw trail mixes…I remember buying the kind with sugared dry fruit…I knew how bad it was, but I kept thinking well, I am feeling ok eating fruit nowadays…the candida won’t come back…and then somehow I was tired and sipped a bunch of coffee…and I wondered why I suddenly had PMS again. It is so quickly we forget when we are feeling well…So, by journaling, I will be able to remind myself why I am doing this. The first year I did a food diary, but didn’t write out a lot about my feelings. I logged my measurements obsessively, but never wrote down when I noticed my symtoms fading..I had to keep all that in my head. So, it is interesting that at 22 months raw, I am still discovering new things about how food affects me.

(Sorry this might be a yucky paragraph, so skip on if bowel habits gross you out) I remember in my first few month raw how I could literally feel my transverse colon as it spasmed & contracted. I had dealt with IBS for years, so spasms were no new thing to me, but it was like I could tell that bathroom time would be coming up like an hour or so before it happened. Weird. It wasn’t gassy colicy feeling, it was seriously like I could feel the food moving though. I remember thinking that that was a good thing. Like as I had lost the weight, I was better able to “hear” my body talking to me.

Nowadays I try really hard to listen…Like if I feel a sniffle coming on, like I did last week, I make sure to eat plenty of oranges. I also dragged out my Garden of Life living C vitamin. I had won that last year when I was still working at the healthfood store. I Also started on the oregano oil. It is a good thing to be back in contact with my body…I think that the dead food standard american diet, with its high concentrations of taste enhancers and cooked wheat “opiates” really shuts down that “voice.” Good thing we have raw.

T just came in the computer room (our home office) to ask if we have any raw sweets. Well, looks like I have some uncooking to do.