Smoothie Fast Complete... sort of.

So earlier I wrote a post about embarking on the 10-Day Smoothie fast, it was successful. And I am still consuming a smoothie a day, and throughout the day, in order to keep my system optimal. As I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and some food allergies, I have had to make dietary and life altering changes in order to keep on the good side of feeling good.

I did the fast, as subscribed in the book, incorporating lots of green healthy kale, spinach, apples, flax seed, spring greens, berries, and mangoes. This allowed my taste buds to adjust to a lower intake of sugars and salt, while upping my nutrition throughout the day. As a chef, our breed often doesn't eat well, you would think that they opposite was the case, but as we work all day, long hours, often forgoing our brakes, we don't take care of our own nutritional needs. We see and handle food all day long and it can kill your appetite and at the end of a long shift of 12 hours or more, we usually just grab something quick and simple to consume leaving us with deficits and skipped meals.

With that in mind, I am striving hard to always make a blender full of nutrition to take with me during the day and/or be at the ready in the fridge when I need it when I am at home. It is helping me regulate my bowels which has been an issue for me for many years, but increased in the last two to three years. I feel more energetic during the day and I am not reaching for the candy or chips nearly as often.

Just like with small children, we must train out pallets to better habits of consumption. When the traditional habits are not leading to a healthy outcome, then we must do better and create change. Food is medicine and should be the first time we changes instead of asking the doctor for a new pill for this or that. All of the medications that the doctor can subscribe have side-effects that will cause another problem that will need addressing. The average American is taking more than 12 medications a day in order to function. This is not a positive trend nor a healthy one. The pharmaceutical companies are getting rich feeding us chemicals to correct maladies and discomforts. We are becoming zombies dependent upon corporations to feed us and make us remedies for our bad eating habits.

Not everything that is good tasting is in fact good for you. Simple changes and  little effort can make huge differences in our quality of life.   

Conversations About Food - Podcasts

As a companion piece to this blog, I have launched a podcast of the same name. There I will explore the roots of, the relationship of, and the changes of people's relationship with food. Everyone has a history of eating, cooking, loving, and hating some foods. There are all sorts of traditions, religious restrictions, feasts days, fasting days, dieting, likes and dislikes surrounding folks intimate connections with eating and cooking. It's aim will be to talk to professional chefs, homemakers, athletes, musicians, the whole gambit of professions and phases of life.

I will update this list as I post the broadcasts. Please subscribe and tune-in regularly: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon

Ep#1: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon/2016/01/18/conversation-with-chef-yehoshuah-yehudah

Day 4 of My Cleanse

So a few days ago my 18 year old daughter and I embarked on a cleanse together.  Yes , I have deceied the physiology the the American habit of guilty feasting followedby purging and dieting, but this isn't the case with me. Let me explain what the last 4 years have been like living in my skin.

As a chef and married mother of three, I have always been on top of our changing dietary needs, my kids can name a long list of chain restaurants they have never eaten out of and they never ate jarred baby food. I am now 45 years old and my genetic inheritance and the strenuous nature of my job, ecetera, have caught up to me. I have always lived full out, whatever I embarked upon I would try and do my all.

So I had to a couple of small surgeries a little while back but was still not 100%. It seemed like we would get one thing handled only to find another aliment.  It's been a few weeks since I got my diagnosis of a chronic knee pain syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, and fibromyalgia after more than a year of doctor visits and testing. We already know that I was a asymptomatic hypertension patient, in other words hypertension without a clear cause, this condition kicked off after my last pregnancy.

With this in mind, and a desire for greater balance, I have undergone huge diet changes along with shifts in medications. I am gluten free, as I am strongly allergic,  and lactose bothers me.

Long story short, I was encouraged by a relative to try the 10 Day Green Smoothie Cleanse. Sharing my health struggles with her, we discovered that she and I were having similar experiences and she did the cleanse a few months ago.  After her cleanse was over she was feeling better and began to resume adding solid foods back into her diet. She made some toast, or something similar, after not eating any wheat products and she had an huge allergic reaction. After relaying this to her doctors they found out that she had Ceiliac's disease and that all the problems she had been experiencing was connected to the disease which is not easy to diagnose.

Since my issues are similar in several ways, but my test did result in a Ceiliac diagnosis, I  postponed any fasting until we got a handle on things. Up, down, back and forth,  doctor's visits and testing.  Hopefully I can have a few weeks without any lab coats. On of my friends pointed out rather smartly that the irony is thick that the pastry chef no longer can eat her own wares.

January and February, tend to be the slowest months for food service and due to that, I will have a lighter load, and thought that it would be great to so the fast now.

My eldest daughter, the nutritionist in training, decided to join me so off we went to the grocery store. I have often enjoyed smoothies as a treat and a few months ago, when the symptoms got too bad to ignore, I reduced my diet to a couple of smoothies a day and one small meal but I expected this to be a bit rougher. I am doing well and not beating myself up for my little cheating morsels I have had like some chips yesterday.  It will all be fine.

I am hoping that this will aid my digestion, detox my systems, and maybe shed a pound or two. I have had some extra pounds that I have not enjoyed having over the last years but I try very hard to be overly critical with myself. Each pregnancy gave me a long lasting negative effect and now that the factory is closed, no gas, or lights, no little elves to work the machinery, and we think we have gotten to the roots of my discomforts, now improvement can begin.

Thus far, it's been going well. I thought I would be the cranky one of the two of us in the undertaking, but the kid is complaining of hunger and I am not.  I have not been a big eater during my regular day, and mostly had small things to eat and a regular dinner. The recipes in this fast are not bad and the amounts of greens seem to be quite filling to me. Day one, I felt myself urinating more often, but it wasn't until yesterday that I felt as if my body began to release toxins and bowel movements became frequent. I only have 7 more days to go before I get back to solid foods.

I will continue to write on the subject and if you are interested in doing the same, I am including the book information.

Later days....

Smith, JJ (2014-07-01). 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse: Lose Up to 15 Pounds in 10 Days! (pp. 19-20). Atria Books. Kindle Edition