Day 31

Fruit/Veggie day.  Better, but still not quite back on track.  Another birthday celebration today, but not nearly as bad of a cheat for me - we went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant at 4:30, so the food came in plenty of time to be consumed before 6pm.  I got the vegetarian fajitas with guacamole, and asked them to not put cheese on it (description says they top it with Muenster).  I completely ignored the chips, and gave away the sour cream and tortillas, leaving me with the mixed veggies, guacamole, and pico de gallo.  I had thought it would be onions and peppers and tomatoes, so the order was made thinking I'd only have 3 items to be consuming in various forms (avocado in the guacamole with tomatoes, pico de gallo is tomatoes).  Unfortunately, the mixed veggies also contained broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, carrots... just a little of each.  And of course there was some oil involved in cooking.  So, I had oil, and more than 3 items for the day.  Alas.  But still, not NEARLY so bad as last Saturday.

I started on the yogurt today.  It's a fairly time-consuming process, requiring a seven hour fermentation period, and then an overnight chill.  So I got it started, and it is currently sitting on a heating pad for the next seven hours, doing its magic.  When I wake up in the morning, it should be yogurt, and it will be placed into containers, put in the fridge, and chilled all day.  Tomorrow's quest is to find cardamom  at a price that is not exorbitant (I know, good luck, right?).  There was ground cardamom in the grocery store, but they wanted $12 for the 6oz jar and I said "No, thank you."  There's a number of Indian food stores nearby, so I will head to one of them and see what they've got - cardamom is a pretty standard spice in Indian cooking, so I would imagine they'd have it for cheaper.  I know, that's not standard economics, but it works in my head.

Veggie day tomorrow, and then... LASSI DAY!  I'm so looking forward to it!  Since I had to have some plain yogurt to pitch into the milk to make yogurt, and you can only find plain yogurt in the 32oz tubs, I have plenty left over as backup, in case the homemade yogurt fails miserably.  So one way or another, there will be lassis on Monday.

Day 30

Fruit/veggie day.  Well, THAT was awful.  On the plus side I didn't gain any weight this week with all the "little" cheats.  I still actually lost a pound, which apparently, relatively, isn't all that bad.  When I walked in and Andre asked how I did this week, and I said "It's been a rough week,"  he was fully expecting the scale to read a gain in weight.  Apparently that's what always happens when people walk in and say "rough week".  So, relatively, I'm still doing OK.  Just time to really get back on track.  And really, in retrospect, this was a good week to be bad, considering I'm now basically starting over again anyway.

The spheres have been returned to their original positions, targeting the stomach and liver.  I'm back to an easy rotation schedule of every 2 hours, with mandatory times of 3 and 7 (so rotate on the odd hours and it's easy).  He thinks if I stay strict this week, I should see another good drop like during the very first week, so here's hoping!  I'm also planning to be good about getting  to the gym, with or without company, and at the very least getting in a decent little walk on the treadmill in the evenings.

Hunger hasn't been a problem - so I've never been tempted to snack.  Energy hasn't been a problem - except today.  I'm pretty beat today, but I only had about 5 hours of sleep last night and Mother Nature decided today was a good day to visit.  So really, my big problem has been all the little cheats.  Yes, yes, and that massive huge cheat last Saturday.  I need to really stop going out for lunch, and when I do, I have to make SURE there's no oil in my veggies!

Clean slate tomorrow, veggie day.  And I will be making my own yogurt this weekend for the Monday/Tuesday milk days.  I'm still looking forward to that!  Ooh, 7pm.  Rotatin' time!

Day 29

Fruit/Veggie Day.  I tried my hand at making a smoothie again this morning that would work for the day.  I have decided I should leave the smoothie-making to the professionals.  The blend just never works.  Of course, I keep insisting on trying to get at least some part of a beet in there, and that apparently destroys it.  So after making and dumping the smoothie, once again, it was decided that out to eat was the only option.

We went to Pineland, a middle-eastern cuisine kind of place.  VERY Sadkhin friendly - they have a lot of vegetarian options, and you can ask for their salads to have just lemon juice on them instead of the lemon and olive oil dressing they usually use.  They've also got a number of good smoothies on the menu.  So look for a middle-eastern restaurant near you if you're going through this.  I had their eggplant salad - eggplant, tomato, onion, parsley, cucumber, served cold.  The eggplant was cooked to mushiness so it became the dressing with a  little lemon mixed in.  Delish.

Also, I used the last of my honey today and did not have time to get more, so, oops.  I also need to purchase stamps.  Tomorrow is back to Sadkhin for ... well, aside from the weigh-in, I'm not really sure.  This is now the end of the detox cycles, so I honestly don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

Day 28

Milk day.  I always get brilliant ideas at the worst time.  I was thinking about lassis, an Indian yogurt drink, and how delicious they are and how I could live on them forever, and I thought, "I wonder if I can find a recipe for those."  So I went looking, and what do you know, it's yogurt, water, optional spices, and sugar.  Sometimes milk.  Well, I can replace the sugar with honey and not use milk.  But since I have to substitute for both days when substitutions are made, I will have to wait until the next two milk days to do this.

Which is 4 days away.  Grr.

So I'm going to try something new - I'm going to make my own yogurt with the rest of the milk that I have, otherwise it will expire and I will have to throw it away and that would just be a waste.  Make my own yogurt, and then I will play with lassi recipes to add to my growing collection of recipes.  Mint and cardamom, honey and vanilla ... popular lassis include mango, but sadly I won't be able to do that.

Fruit/Veggie day tomorrow!

Day 27

Milk day.  Pretty boring, standard day - tea in the morning, lattes all afternoon, tea in the evening.  I did finally manage to get back to the gym, though.  I went on my own, and will attempt to do so more often.  I'm paying for it, after all!  Decided to start working on toning my mid-section, so I found some good ab machines and occupied them for a while, and then found an open treadmill and went for a jog.  Yes, a jog.  I felt like jogging and the music I was listening to had a good jogging beat to it.  Despite not having been to the gym for a while now, it felt easier to keep up the jogging than the last time - certainly went further.  Usually I can only do quarter-mile bursts, if I'm lucky, and then require a good half mile or more of walking before I can get another jog in.  Tonight, the jog went a good half mile before I said enough.  I probably could have gone more if I pushed it - I wasn't feeling as pained as before at the end of it.  But I also figured I was probably pushing it as it was, given I'm only supposed to walk, briskly at best.  I feel great though!

I did sneak a small chunk of cheese when I got home, though, since I know it's good to put some protein in you after you workout.  Wasn't much, maybe half an ounce, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.

Tomorrow brings with it another team lunch thing, and we're heading to bd's Mongolian BBQ.  Kind of a shame that it's a milk day, because if it were a fruit/veggie day, that would be a great place to go.  Ah well, I'll survive! 

Day 26

Fruit/Veggie day.  Wow, day 26 already?  It's gone by so quickly!  Did much better today, so I think I'm back on track.  I stepped on the scale at work and I think it thinks I'm down about 4 pounds, but I'm not sure.  My "calibration" for it was the last Sadkhin visit - when I got back, I stepped on the scale and noted the difference from what the official scale had, and the one at work was reading about 5 lbs higher.  It said today I'm at 192, so with the calibrated difference, I should be down to 187, officially.  Which is very cool.  I'm hoping to get down to 185 this cycle, which is only a 6 pound loss in total.

Today's food was wok-fried green pepper, onion, and asparagus with garlic.  The minced garlic juice stuff seems to work pretty well to keep the pan clean, if you heat it up before putting the veggies in.  I also devoured the pomegranate seeds.  That was a really tasty treat - I may have to splurge for that again.  My stomach is gurgling at me right now, but I don't feel hungry, so I'm not sure what it's trying to tell me.

Milk day tomorrow!

Day 25

Fruit/Veggie day.  So after last night's massive cheat, I started fresh again today.  I was going to do the tea fasting thing, but my stomach didn't want to let that happen.  I still wanted to go "light" though, so I finally decided to give in and give that green smoothie thing a try.  It's a 15.2oz bottle, containing mostly apple, with a little bit of mango, kiwi, banana, and pineapple, along with a healthy dose of broccoli, spinach, ginger, parsley, garlic, and algae.  It tasted like apple juice.  I was really surprised!  So a bottle of that, with tea, was my all-day fare.  Back on track!

More veggies tomorrow!