Needless to say the Master Cleanse is a bust for me. I only had enough lemons for yesterday morning's lemonade and I needed to go to the grocery store to get more, but there was no way I could take Phillip feeling the way he does, and no way I was going to leave him home without me or Wayne. I had pretty much gotten over the hungry feeling, but I was still pretty tired and cranky -- not good things to try and negotiate when you have a sick baby. So, maybe it is just not for me at this juncture in my life.
I am not saying the Master Cleanse is a bad thing, in fact, I think it has helped many people. But, I am no longer trying to lose weight -- thanks to my raw diet, I reached my goal weight. I did want to see if it would help me achieve some mental and emotional clarity about my life, but I think there are other ways I can do that.
Beginning a raw food diet was a HUGE step for me, and it has literally changed my life for the better in so many ways! At the time it seemed like I was making an extreme move, and I needed to do that because my health was very poor. I did not know what I was going to eat if I couldn't have beef tacos, smothered chicken, french fries, and macaroni and cheese. Not that I didn't eat healthy foods, too; I always had a side salad (covered in blue cheese) and a vegetable side. Now I see the choice to eat raw was not as extreme as it first seemed. Instead of swinging widely to some fad diet (as I had done so many times before) I was making a choice to balance my life with the foods that nature really intended me to eat. I said no more to engineered food -- no refined sugar, processed junk, additive and preservative coated meat and dairy products, or salt infused mixes and sauces -- and returned to simple foods. What seemed extreme at the time was not at all, it was returning to the basics. Where and how did I get so off track? I can think of numerous reasons now that I SAD (Standard American Diet) consumer. Like many Americans I was turning a blind eye to the food industry, and I was telling myself, "If they can sell it in the grocery stores or a restaurant, it can't be that bad for me." I neglected opportunities to learn about how my food got on the table. I was consuming exactly what I was told. I was filling my emptiness, disappointments, and heartaches with fat laden, sugar coated, syrup dripping, salt loaded ANYTHING that looked like it couldn't possible come from a garden or farm. I was so disconnected from my food!
When I started this I had no idea what a turnip looked like, or that there were so many varieties of kale. I did not know that a salad could taste so good without croutons and blue cheese. I did not know you could put berries and nuts on a salad. I had no idea that there were so many different types of greens or sprouts. I did not know what tahini or young coconut was or where to even begin to find them in the grocery store. I did not know I could roll sushi (vegetable, of course), marinate vegetables and not cook them, or make raw cookies. I had no clue that I could prepare an entire meal without using the stove, oven, or microwave. I did not know food, real, natural, food could make such a huge difference in how I felt and looked!
Yesterday, I must say I was a little bit disappointed that I could not stick it out through the Master Cleanse. After all, I did all my research, read the entire book, and thought I was totally prepared. I REALLY wanted the clarity. But, as I sit here typing at what is now 4:18 A.M. I am realizing that perhaps the Master Cleanse gave me exactly what I needed after all. I don't want an extreme diet. I want my food to give me balance, health, taste, and goodness and I have all of that already.
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