Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Picking a Program

Erin's Weight on her newly purchased Weight Watcher's* scale from Rite Aid:  138 lbs (I am 5'5'' tall)
Erin's weight goal at the end: 128 lbs.
How often Erin cheated today:  countless times...  (I'm not starting until January 1) dark chocolate, apple strudel, two cups of caffeinated tea (no sugar though),  maple syrup on pancakes, a pear, dried fruit, juice blend containing fruit... 


A lot of really caring, concerned people want to save me from having to detox.(Or maybe they want to save themselves from listening to me complain about the detox...)  Thank you, if you are one of them.  I appreciate your kind concern.  And it is warranted.  First of all, my appearance doesn't immediately suggest that I need a detox.  In a crowd, I don't think I'd get singled out as the one girl who just has to cleanse her system.  But anyway, I do need to and I mean, I REALLY need to.  The other reason the concern is really well warranted is that detoxing is a bit hazardous.  You ought to study it for awhile before you do it.  If you are the type of person who just wants to take a bottle of pills for 15 days and be done with it, well that's not likely to work, quite frankly.  First off, the reason you need to detox is probably mostly due to what you have been eating for a LONG time.  And so 15 days of pills just isn't going to cut it.  My trouble, I'm fairly sure, is my flora - as in, my system doesn't contain the right kind of little microbes right now.  After years of too much sugar in my blood stream and frequent antibiotic use, well it's no shock that I'm in trouble.

The first attempt at detoxing I did was during a 40 days of yoga program.  It was a giant failure.  Baron Baptiste's 40 days to Revolution (of yoga) was a GREAT work out program, but it wasn't a great detox program.  He wants a 3 day fast (during intense exercise, explain that?) and he wants us to only eat fruit and drink water.  First off, if you have too much candida yeast infesting your system (as in you eat too much sugar so you are all out of whack in the flora department) then you are just feeding it like crazy if you do a fruit only detox.  Also, I had too much acid in my system to start with.  I was under a great deal of stress at the time and drinking coffee (very acidic) so I could get up at 4:30 in the morning and kill myself in boot camp style work outs for two hours every day.  A fruit only diet made me ill.  I didn't make it more than 12 hours before I thought the pain in my stomach was going to kill me.  I called my mommy and she told me to eat normally.  So, I ate an egg, had some bread and felt much better.

Next my girlfriend Elizabeth mentioned a good detox program to me.  It is Dr. Joshi's 28 Day Detox.  It is a vegetarian detox and I think it's probably FABULOUS.  I strongly recommend vegetarians check it out.  It isn't for me.  I firmly believe that I need to eat some meat.  I understand, I am a yogini and there is a karmic load by eating the flesh of other animals.  Indeed, also, I see that animals higher on the food chain have more toxins in their systems because of the additive effect of eating all the animals below them in the mix.  I also understand that meat probably encourages aggression to some extent, stimulating the adrenals or something.  Thing is, I'm not supposed to eat soy beans or other beans due to my cystitis.  I also had a b12 deficiency when I was trying to be a vegetarian.  AND I think God made us who we are, omnivores, that's the niche we fill.  We are mammals that were made to hunt and eat meat. We evolved to be hunters, in so many ways.  Anyhow, the point is, we are supposed to consume some flesh - I'm fairly sure that's the animal niche we fill.   And thus, I am going to eat meat during my detox.  BUT it's going to be low toxicity meat.  And it will only be once a day after I break this yeast problem I have. 

The next book I picked up to detox explained why the first attempt was such an unhealthy failure.  It is Natalie Rose - Detox for Women.   That's what I plan to follow for this attempt. It explained to me about the candida yeast and the sugar.  It explained about getting the toxins out through elimination - bowel movements.  In short, if you aren't getting it out then things are very wrong during a detox.  You have GOT to go and go alot.

Then my mom told me about Brenda Watson.  Now, upon looking her up online, I realized she really peddles supplements.  I want to reiterate that if you are looking for magic 15 days of pills to fix you, well I'm not on board with that notion.  I am going to buy her supplements, however, to use them with my diet changes.  So... I purchased her probiotics and candi-gone.  I also purchased a 15 day first time detox kit.  I'm thinking I will detox with the diet and supplements and then, do some research on her 15 day program to figure out when the best time to try that is.  Cause it might be too much all at once.

According to Natalie's guidelines I have a systemic candida infestation... ugh, that sounds serious.. and so I have to be really strict about the sugar for some period of time until the symptoms of that subside.  This is what terrifies me the most.  I mean, how long can a person make it starving the yeast to death before they collapse of hunger them self?  But we shall see.

So I'm hoping a week of sugar starvation will be enough, but I don't know... I mean, I'm pretty addicted and I assume my yeast is too...

Next installment will include more info on Natalie's specific diet and what supplies and groceries I'll need to pick up.  


*BTW if you simply want to lose weight I really do recommend weight watchers.  It is simple and it works for people.  This detox is about changing my body's flora and chemistry to be healthier, weight loss just happens to be a side effect of doing that.

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