So, as mentioned several times, I went to see a chiropractor / sports injury guy for the issue in my foot. He’s been helpful, and I expect to be running again by the end of the week. A pretty good outcome, though I think this was as much shoe related as anything.
My guy is also a nutritionist. Now, I’m a big proponent of eating food. Real food. I don’t always make good choices about what food I eat (though I know how), and I often make poor choices about how much food I eat – that’s the hard part. The key to this, though, is food. Real, chew it up and get your calories and you don’t have to do much to it because we evolved to eat it just like that, food. In particular, I don’t like having to buy special things like shakes or supplements or juices – I think those are silly, and I don’t think they’re necessary outside of specific and relatively rare medical needs.
So, my nutritionist guy did not surprise me and immediately wanted to do a nutritional consult – including daily menu planning if only I’ll pay for it – and a detox. We did a BIA (35% body fat – yuck) and starting talking it through.
In particular, I’m unconvinced about detox. And it isn’t horribly cheap – though in the end it won’t be that much. So my initial thought was no – just, no. But I talked to him about what it was he was recommending and I sort of changed my mind. Sort of.
Yesterday was day one of a ten day detox program. I have “medical food” shakes and a vitamin supplement. I have lists of foods that are approved to eat on each day. That list excludes all caffeine, alcohol, meat, and refined sugar and gets smaller and smaller through day seven, which is restricted to basically leafy green vegetables and the shakes / supplements. Beginning on day eight the list begins to grow until day ten matches day one. Then, in terms of my guy’s practice, I’d transition over to his menu planning and additional supplements. The base detox, including the plan and supplements for 10 days, was $110, with an optional $40 veggie/vitamin thing to be mixed in with the shakes.
I decided to do the detox because I need a jump start. My food choices have been poor, and the weight has been creeping up – enough that I’ve started skipping weigh-ins. I’m starting to get discouraged about not running, even though that is the right thing to do. And I need to get myself invested in something in the short-term so I can build momentum for the medium- and long-term. I actually don’t believe that the “detox” function of this diet has all that much value, and of course this is an unsustainable way to eat long-term. However, for ten days, it may be exactly what I need. My intention is to do this for ten days and then get religion about Weight Watchers beginning day eleven.
And so for the next ten days I will be doing updates on the detox. Daily updates on what I ate, how I felt, what is happening, etc. Buckle up, because here we go.
Day 1 sucked.
Not because I couldn’t eat. This was the least restrictive day in terms of food – I had a veggie omelet for breakfast (no cheese), a quinoa salad with sliced avocado for lunch, and a homemade ratatouille over brown rice for dinner that, frankly, is amazing and will make it into my normal cooking rotation. I had apples, almonds, and prunes for snacks (prunes are legitimately good, by the way). And so I wasn’t starving.
The headache began building around noon. I don’t drink a ton of coffee, but I generally have my one travel mug in the morning and then often a diet soda during the day – so I have a caffeine regimen. And I expected to have some headaches or other “withdrawal” symptoms. But I didn’t expect what I got. By the time I got home last night the headache was crushing. By the time I went to bed it was clouding my vision – it was awful. And it would have been bad all by itself, but…
Turns out, taking a big multi-vitamin commonly causes nausea. My morning dose didn’t cause any problems. My evening dose, coupled with the headache, made me want to vomit from the time I took it until I went to sleep.
I felt like ass. Total ass.
And I told my wife that if I vomited, or if I didn’t feel remarkably better in the morning, I was going to stop. After day one. And to hell with the sunk costs. And then I went to sleep.
So what were my takeaways from day one? They weren’t all negative:
- Food doesn’t need meat or dairy to be delicious. The ratatouille is seriously one of the better things I’ve had in awhile. I will need to start exploring some of these vegetarian and vegan recipes – the food is legitimately good and I can start feeling better about the environmental impact, etc. I won’t ever be full-blown vegetarian, but I can get better about this.
- Caffeine is no joke. My normal daily intake is unremarkable and I’ve taken it for granted for some time. After only one day (one day!) of not having caffeine I was out for the count. Don’t underestimate this as a drug – it is potent. I’m beginning to think about whether I want to add it back in as a daily thing at all after all of this.
- So far, not starving. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Day 2 tomorrow. Fun!
Day 2 can be found here
A Constant State of Hunger 
Yay for back to running! But this sounds tough. Good luck – hope it kick-starts your return to healthier eating.
Thanks … it is time. Looks like you’re still rice-ing – hopefully it doesn’t take much longer.
Thank you. Still rice-ing but feeling more optimistic.