Took a run with the hubby this evening. It was a brief run to put my knees to the test. Years ago I used to run every day, but I injured my knees and without money or health insurance I was never able to go see a specialist. Lately I started to notice that I was moving relatively pain free where my knees are concerned, this after things had reached such a state that even walking was painful. I haven’t really been doing anything other than drinking goji juice for a few months, not because I believe in the goji juice hype. I don’t want to credit drinking goji juice for the absence of knee pain, but something has definitely helped improve the condition of my knees.

I ran today! To understand how great that feels you would have know how much I loved running, so much that even agoraphobia did not prevent me from going out running every day. I probably won’t attempt to get back into running seriously before I’ve seen a specialist though, because it might not be that my knees are healed and I might just make them worse than they were before; but going out running today reminded me of how therapeutic running used to be. I felt so much better about myself at that time in my life and I was facing some of the most difficult times in my life. I had major family problems. I was a young single mother without a job trying to raise a precocious son, living with parents who were pretty much disgusted with me and wanted me gone, hating myself, lonely, feeling worthless, desperate.

But running kept me sane, quite literally. It helped to give me some little self esteem so that, as worthless as I felt because I had nothing, no money to take care of myself and my son, to get us our own apartment where we wouldn’t have to be reminded daily that we represented something intolerably shameful and disgraceful and burdensome to the people we lived around, and as lonely and desperate as I felt because I had no one in my life and had to be raising a child by myself (I was in a long distance relationship with the man I would later marry but we hardly communicated during those very difficult times), I was able to stay strong enough mentally to maintain my focus and keep pursing my goals and ambitions.

I didn’t run for miles today. I merely ran a few blocks; but I returned home feeling energized and positive.

I confess that since completing my fast I have been afraid to eat. Over the last 8 days of fasting for 3 days and restricting myself to 400 calories and low to no fat on the other days, I’ve lost a lot of the excess fat I’d put on since my last falling off my weight maintenance goals. Now I’m so afraid of gaining the fat back that I’m reluctant to eat. I know how ridiculous and contradictory that all sounds. It would be great if I could project an image of someone well put together but in reality I am a human being and I am only “trying” to develop a healthy attitude about weight and a healthy relationship with food. I have a long way to go.

I have had a long history of starving myself to stay thin. In the last 5 or so years the habit changed to starving myself to lose extra weight gained during long bouts of impulsive eating under the influence of stress and depression. I’ve been in a never ending cycle of gaining 20 pounds, losing 10, gaining back the 10 plus an additional 10, losing 20, gaining back 10, losing it again and repeating this year after year for at least the last 3 years. ( A note for those who might wonder how I know how much weight I gain or lose if I don’t have a scale and don’t weigh myself, my numbers are rough estimates)

8 days ago I started a fast. Since I don’t weigh myself and don’t have a scale I don’t track my weight loss, but I do check my waist and hip measurements and the measurement of my upper thighs. My goal is really to remove the extra fat that I store in those regions. I’m not particularly concerned about how much I weigh. I am, however, concerned about liking what I see when I look in a mirror.

I like what I see when I look in the mirror today a whole lot more than I liked what I was seeing when I looked in the mirror 8 days ago.

The dilemma that faces me is that I can’t starve myself forever. Not only do I want to eat, but I need to eat. Clearly I don’t need to eat nearly as much as I was eating before in order to be sufficiently well sustained to function. I’ve been functioning remarkably well on next to nothing for 8 days; but once I reach my fat loss goal, I will need to eat to maintain my figure so that I don’t gain back the fat I lost and so that I don’t go down to a smaller size than desired. In other words I can’t go back to my old habit for impulse eating and eating whatever the hell I felt like eating because I will only gain back the unsightly fat; and I can’t continue on a 400 calories per day diet as I will lose more weight than I want to lose.

For me a big part of the problem is that I live with 2 men who don’t care what they eat. My husband brings things into the house that I never pick up when I go to the grocery store. I never buy ice cream. I never buy junk food; but if my husband goes shopping he always buys ice cream. If my son goes shopping he always buys junk food. And my ability to resist eating that stuff is only strong when I am feeling mentally strong. Under the influence of stress and depression it’s harder to fight against the impulse to eat whatever I can get my hands on that tastes good.

So as I get to the point of needing to break my fast I am trying to figure out what I’m going to do about eating from now on. I need to come up with a nutrition plan for myself. I’m not 15 years old any more. I can’t make starvation part of my lifestyle, but I also can’t just go eating whatever I want because my metabolism isn’t what it used to be. I don’t burn fat very easily nowadays. The stuff sticks to me and does unsightly things to my body. I need to monitor what I eat so that I’m not eating foods that will end up being stored as excess fat in my body; and I need to continue working on breaking the habit of eating impulsively.

What I need to do is put myself on a strict eating schedule and stick to that schedule so that if I am not scheduled for a snack at 10AM but I feel an impulse to eat at 10AM I know I cannot act on the impulse because 10AM is not snack time. We do it to our kids. Why not to ourselves? Nothing is wrong with forcing ourselves to be more disciplined.

One thing I have done over the last 8 days and which I plan to continue doing is not have anything to eat or drink before 9AM in the morning. There’s no particularly profound reason for this choice. It’s just my way of trying to discipline myself. I’ll probably start my eating schedule with tea at 9:AM, followed by fruit at 10AM with a maximum calorie count of 150 and no fat. Vegetables for lunch at noon with a maximum calorie count of 250 and low to no fat. That would put me at 400 calories by lunch time. Then I could have a healthy snack at 3PM that does not exceed 150 calories (low to no fat). Then I can restrict myself to 300 calories and 5 grams of fat for dinner. 850 calories is more than enough to sustain me, leaving room to go over by 100 calories and still be reasonable safe from gaining back the weight provided the fat and sugar intake remains low.

I survived day 3 of my fast. I had 2 cups of tea to drink and nothing else. How do I feel this morning? I’m not sure…. I’m not terribly hungry. I feel like I can go another day or two. Weight wise I haven’t lost more than a pound it doesn’t look like. That tells me I was/am fatter than I realized.

Once upon a time there would be a noticeable difference after 1 day of not eating. Now, after 3 days of not eating there’s no real significantly noticeable difference; but then again, according to my son, husband and former therapist, I have a warped view of my body and see myself bigger than other people see me. Personally I don’t believe that’s the case. I think I see myself skinnier than I am in reality, not fatter.

In any case, I have gone a total of 80 hours thereabout without eating any solid foods and drinking only 6 cups of tea. Yesterday I drank lemon tea with ginger. The day before green tea with ginger.

The big question that faces me now is what will I eat, if anything, today? Should I fast for another day? I think I should. In fact, I will extend my fast. Today I will consume 4 cups of V8 V-Fusion light peach mango and Monday I will play it by ear.

I do no need to make some plans for how I will be changing my eating habits in order not to get back into that habit for impulse eating. I need to make an eating schedule and a daily menu for the month of June.

Other related posts:

• Fasting Day 3
• Fasting Day 2
• How to fast
• 1 day fast

I stumbled across a website today while looking up some information on juice fasts. It was a website about colon cleansing. I admit I had no idea what colon cleansing was ‘really’ all about until I did some reading this morning. The first time I heard someone talk about getting their colon cleansed I was watching Eddie Murphy’s version of “The Nutty Professor”….

So I stumbled across the website for the product DrNatura COLONIX and I started reading an article by Dr. Heather Johnstone, Ph.D., R.N., A.P.N., Director and Chief Academic Officer of the Global College of Natural Medicine titled Are You Clean Inside?.

By the time I had finished Heather Johnstone’s article and looked at some of the horrendously disgusting pictures of what users of DrNatura COLONIX reported ‘passing’ from their colons while on the program, I was quite seriously terrified at the thought that I had things like that inside me. So terrified, in fact, I went researching whether or not colon cleansing is absolutely necessary because I really didn’t want to experience passing anything 3 feet long with bulbous sacks.

What I discovered in my search is that the strongest supporters of colon cleansing and the most stalwart propagators of the “death begins in the colon” propaganda are the people with colon related products to sell. Now I’m not suggesting this industry is out to scam anyone, just based on a single observation. A few hours of research doesn’t qualify me to comment on colon cleansing being necessary or over-hyped to scare people into buying colon cleansing products and making their manufacturers rich; but I did find it curious while reading the testimonials of users of DrNatura Colonix that some people were saying they tried other products that didn’t work, but the DrNatura Colonix product resulted in weeks of passing green things, orange things, black things, slimy things, things that were 3 feet long and bulbous, worms and the like. Somehow it seemed to me that if these things are in your colon and DrNatura Colonix can get them out, other colon cleansing products should be able to get them out as well. Surely the manufacturers of DrNatura Colonix wouldn’t know a secret ingredient for getting those nasty things out of your colon that other manufacturers of colon cleansing products know nothing about?

But what about all those testimonials from people with all those disgusting pictures they took of the things they passed, lining them on on newspapers, lining them up on the seats of their toilets? Seeing is believing right? Unless, as Lisa Barger suggests in her article “Is Colon Cleansing a scam?” those things weren’t inside these people before they started using DrNatura Colonix. She maintains that colon cleansers trick people into believing that they work.

Here’s how Lisa Barger explains the trick:

To fully understand how colon cleansers trick people into believing that they work, it’s important to explain exactly what they are. And what the vast majority of herbal-based colon cleaners are, is just plain old fiber. Now, some have herbs and other ingredients with believed anti-parasitic and/or laxative propeties, but colon cleansers are mainly just fiber. And fiber “bulks up” when when it comes into contact with moisture. In fact, you can demonstrate this yourself by dropping a capsule into water and watching how it expands as the shell dissolves.

So let’s assume that you’re a typical American. You probably eat a diet that’s relatively low in raw fruits, fresh vegetables and whole grains. In other words, you probably have a diet that’s pretty low in fiber. And you probably have only a few bowel movements a week.

But let’s say that you begin a cleansing regimen. Your dietary fiber probably doubles (or even triples) and you now have 2 or 3 bowel movements a day for 2 or 3 days in a row. Maybe your bowel movements are more comfortable and, maybe, you feel “finished” for the first time in a very long time. That’s exactly what fiber does–it speeds up your colon, bulks up your stool, and helps some people feel “empty” after they use the toilet.

Now, isn’t it easy to understand why so many people feel that they’re being “cleaned” when they use a colon cleanser? After all, what could possibly be wrong with bigger, more frequent and vastly more comfortable bowel movements? Excerpted from Lisa Barger’s Is Colon Cleansing a scam?

I’m not saying not to clean your colon. I know I’ve had some days when I’ve left from a bathroom session feeling physically relieved, like I’d dropped a boulder that had been slowing me down without my realizing it; so if cleaning your colon will give you that feeling of relief and renewed energy hey, go ahead and clean your colon; but for now I’m going to pass on the colon cleansing.

I have survived day 2 of my fast. It was not as difficult as Day 1. I had a total of 4 cups of green tea with ginger and peppermint. I was not able to stick to my workout schedule though. I started the morning with 20 minutes of foga, which I have previously explained is my word for the fake yoga I do. You can’t call it yoga if you’re making it up as you go along right?

I was to have done some dance aerobics later on in the day and then a closing day foga session but I was only able to manage the foga session at the start of the day.

Now here I am on day 3 of my fast. Again I will only drink tea today starting with a first cup at 9AM after I have completed a 20-minute foga session and taken a bath. I am thinking I might have to extend my fast by 2 days, but I’ll probably switch to a juice fast for Sunday and Monday.

I have to honestly say I am feeling pretty calm at the moment. I don’t feel hungry right now; nor do I feel weak. The only thing I have consumed in 57 hours is 4 cups of tea. I’m not sure if the way I feel is an indication of just how unhealthy I have become in terms of fat storage. It would seem my body has so much excess fat to feed me on that I could go 10 days not eating before I start to look like someone who hasn’t eaten in days.

I’ve succeeded on day one of my fasting. I have had nothing to eat or drink in 33 hours. My goal was to not eat or drink anything for 1 day. That goal has been achieved, so now I am setting a new goal for today. I will only drink tea today.

Yesterday was difficult. There was still pizza in the house from the previous day and I wanted to eat a slice. The hungrier I felt the more difficult it was to resist the temptation to put my fast off for another day and go have the slice of pizza. I also had to make dinner for my son and husband. Usually I will have to taste the food to make sure it has flavor, but I managed to avoid this by having my son do the tasting. I made my favorite soup so it was not easy to resist taking even a small taste; but I fought and I am proud of myself, not because I didn’t eat, but because I proved to myself that I have the ability to stick out something that is difficult in order to achieve a set goal.

I am reading up on fasting and I am not sure how I feel about a conscious choice to deprive yourself of food; but I’ve decided to try a 3 day fast nonetheless. Why? Well, while I have stated in “how to fast” that fasting with a primary purpose to lose weight is not recommended I would have to admit that the primary purpose for me right now is to shed some of the excess fat I’ve gained in my belly, waist, arms, back and thighs. However, while that is my primary purpose, there is something secondary and arguably greater that I am hoping to gain.

I have no intention of developing a bad relationship with food as in getting back into a habit of not eating and reciting as my daily mantra “Food is evil. Food is the enemy.” But at the same time I don’t want to have an opposite bad relationship with food whereby I use food to soothe myself, to cope with stress and to punish myself for my various imperfections. This is as much a loss of control over your relationship with food as anorexia. Overeating results in you getting as abnormally fat as under-eating results in you becoming abnormally thin. And in both cases food is not the problem.

I have a long history of bad relationships with food. I’ve been borderline anorexic, though never clinically diagnosed. In my teens and 20s I would starve myself to stay thin. It was easy because I was living with sisters who always “seemed” to be watching you like a hawk waiting to point out to you the moment you gained an ounce. I quote seemed because this was my perception. It could have been paranoia.

In my early 30s I’ve engaged in activity that could have led to becoming bulimic. Living on my own with my husband and son and indoors most of the time because of agoraphobia, I had no one that I had to keep up appearances for except myself so it became harder to starve myself. Having to prepare food for my family meant I was cooking every day. So I started eating every day, and as marital stress began to take over my life, I started working out less, succumbing to depression. I began to gain weight, and when I needed to lose it quickly because family was coming to visit or I tried on my size 1 jeans and couldn’t fit them I would eat but force myself to regurgitate the food right after.

In more recent years, between marital stress, financial stress, stress from raising a teenage son and battling with clinical depression and anxiety, I’ve taken to eating uncontrollably. The consequence has been an ongoing battle with the bulge that sees me fluctuating between wearing a size 4 one month, a size 6 the next month, a size 8 the month after that and a size 10 the month after that and repeating this cycle monthly.

The benefit I hope to gain from the 3-day fast I am attempting is that of rewiring my mind. I will try to explain my thought process. I am not going to be fixed 3 days from now, meaning, I won’t overcome my bad relationship with food just by fasting for 3 days. If I manage to complete the 3-day fast successfully, it will not be the end but the beginning. All I will have done was rewired my mind in preparation for processing on a different channel from now on.

For the last several years I’ve been wired to be controlled by my impulse to eat. Every time I’ve felt a tinge of stress I’ve gotten up and walked to the kitchen in search of food. By doing that, all I’ve been achieving has been programming myself to believe I don’t have the strength or capability to endure or resolve conflict my life. I have also been programming my brain to trigger a food craving every time I feel the slightest hint of stress.

When you’re accustomed to eating every hour on the hour, having to go several hours without food feels like hell. You can’t get much more stressed out and irritated than when you’re in the first stages of real hunger; but what’s amazing is that after you’ve gone long enough without refueling, your brain makes an adjustment and sends out signals to your body that it needs to rely on your fat reserves to help keep you going. Of course starvation is an ordeal that leads to death if prolonged, so I am not making light of hunger by any means. If you read up on fasting you’ll quickly understand that fasting doesn’t mean starving yourself completely. The body needs something to subsist on. It can only go so long on fat reserves, and how long it will go depends on how much fat you have stored to begin with. Some people can go many days without eating, but they’ll eventually die from starvation.

The key for me is to realize that I can endure stress without having to run to the kitchen for food; to understand that feeding stress doesn’t address the problems causing the stress; that, in fact, it creates bigger problems. So making myself go 3 days denying every impulse to eat will begin a retraining process that can only help me take back control over my life.

It’s not like I haven’t gone days without eating in recent times. But I’ve never undertaken a mission to try to rewire my brain for the long haul. I’ve always just starved myself because I’ve needed to lose weight fast, usually because family was visiting; but I’ve always regained the weight because I had no greater purpose than to try to avoid having my family see me so much fatter than they are accustomed to me being.

This would be the first time I am consciously using fasting as a means by which to take back control over my life, and I am fully aware that, even if I complete my 3-day fast successfully, it will only be the beginning. I will need to be practicing self-control and self-discipline long enough for it to become as much a habit as the lack of self-control and lack of self-discipline have become.

Fasting is not recommended as a weight loss solution. Fasting to lose weight can lead to developing an eating disorder. It is considered dangerous to fast if you have had an eating disorder in the past as your fasting can trigger a resurgence of the disorder. Fasting to lose weight is also usually ineffective because it means you did not come about the decision to fast with a sound mind and for a greater purpose than vanity, so you will approach the process as an intolerable means to a desired end that has nothing to do with seeking better health and everything to do with seeking to be thin. This will make you more likely to develop an eating disorder wherein you either fall into a pattern of depriving yourself and becoming anorexic, or you develop a habit for overeating or bing eating which is a symptom of Bulimia.

Fasting is also not recommended in the following cases:

• If you have recently had surgery and you’re recovering from surgery
• If you generally feel week or you have anemia
• If you’re pregnant and/or nursing
• If you’re underweight
• If you have a history with anorexia or bulemia
• If you have bleeding ulcers, blood diseases, tumors, cancer or any heart disease
• If you have chronic heart, lung, liver, kidney problems
• If you are hyperglycemic or have other blood sugar problems

Fasting is frequently associated with religion. Some religious people refer to fasting as spending time with God. From a medical perspective, fasting is a way to detoxify your body and is believed to reduce and even eliminate certain medical problems.

3 common fasting programs:

• Dry Fast – you drink 1 quart of fresh water everyday for 3 days to flush out your system.
• Juice Fast – you drink freshly squeezed vegetable and fruit juices.
• Tea Fast – you drink herbal teas (green tea,parsley,nettle,peppermint,dandelion to name a few)

There are other types of fasts you can try. As far as how to fast you will get different information from different sources. How you prepare will obviously depend on the type of fast you choose. For a dry fast you obviously don’t need anything other than water, but many experts discourage against just getting up one day and starting a fast. It makes sense to ease yourself into a fast by gradual reduction otherwise you fight a royal battle trying to fast abruptly and you tend to end your fast just as abruptly and go on an eating rampage.

Being responsible about fasting will always be a better choice than jumping in without preparation or knowledge. You should take the time to understand the benefits of fasting, and you should fast for health benefits rather than as a weight loss method.

Some of the dangers of fasting for cosmetic reasons rather than as a lifestyle health choice include exacerbating a problem with impulse eating. If you are fasting to help speed up weight loss, you are in danger of gaining back your weight as quickly as you lose it once you break the fast because you are not addressing the real problem of impulse control. However, fasting can teach you impulse control if done correctly so that you can use fasting to unlearn your habits for impulse eating.

For a information on how to fast and how to break a fast, here are some good sources:

How to Fast | Fasting Tips | Ways to fast (ygoy.com)

Fasting – How to start (coloncleansingzone.org)

How to fast (healingdaily.com)

And here’s a very interesting piece by Ron Lagerquist that talks about the difficulties faced in staying on your fast.

How to Stay on Your Fast – Ron Lagerquist

Keep in mind that there are side effects to fasting that include headaches, tiredness, hypoglycemia, constipation, acne, increased body odor, and bad breath, fainting, dizziness, low blood pressure, heart arrhythmias, hunger, vomiting, diarrhea, and kidney problems. Usually these problems will be associated with prolonged fasting.

A 1 day fast won’t be good for anything other than helping you recover from having 3 slices of pizza for dinner yesterday, assuming you allowed your son, or some other person in your life, to talk you out of your plan to prepare a nice healthy dinner of zucchini with mango sauce served with wild rice and into ordering fattening meat pizzas from pizza hut. If you did do that, then a 1 day fast might help to prevent that extra fat from sticking to the fat you’re already trying to get rid of.

I’m on a mission to eat nothing today in order to offset my bad dinner choice yesterday. So far so good, but then it’s only 7:06AM. In addition to eating nothing ( I will drink water throughout the day), I will do 3 different workout sessions today. I’ll do a 15 minute foga session (foga is my word for fake yoga. Since I do my own yoga-like stuff off the top of my head I call it foga). It’s really just some stretching, wall headstands and handstands that I do to wake up my brain and help myself stay focussed throughout the day. It has been helping greatly depression. So I’ll be doing that at 8 o’clock. Then at noon I’ll do some dance aerobics for 40 minutes. Then at 5 o’clock I’ll do another foga session.

Hopefully I can keep myself busy and stress-free enough throughout the day to make this process easier. I find when I am busy and not under a great deal of stress it’s easier for me to control my eating.

I had 2 pancakes for breakfast this morning. I know they won’t help me shrink my fibroids. I’ll be working them off in a few minutes so that they won’t stick to my sides and the backs of my arms at least. As far as the fibroids go, I am trying to investigate what foods I should be avoiding if I don’t want the fibroids to keep growing. I’ve been reading how a vegan or veg diet can reduce the size of fibroids, but I’ve also been reading how foods with phytoestrogens or “dietary estrogens” can make them grow, and there are a number of items on a vegan menu that contain phytoestrogens.

I do believe that a combination of diet and exercise can help minimize the protrusion of your stomach whereas eating the wrong foods can help exacerbate the problem. I have proven this with my own body. Right now my stomach is a little flatter because I’ve been exercising and trying to watch what I eat. Of course the pancakes won’t help; but the point is, even if you can’t shrink the fibroids, you might be able to tighten the rest of your abdomen so that protrusion will be only the fibroids as opposed to the fibroids plus belly fat. That’s what I’m aiming for right now.

And what has any of this to do with money and being a rich woman you’re wondering? Well, I’ve always found that, just as having money places me in a better mood, feeling good about my looks also helps my mood. When I don’t like the way I look I get depressed and unmotivated. It’s easier to feel sorry for myself and entertain self-destructive, negative thoughts. When I feel fit and attractive my thoughts are usually more positive, I have tons of energy and always feel like I can do anything. So obviously a physically healthy me is more likely to achieve the goals I’ve set for myself.

Having 3 large fibroids is not fun. I’ve had a flat stomach all my life now I always look pregnant. I haven’t been out of the house for a while because I’m embarrassed about how I look. All my clothes are made for someone with a flat stomach and I don’t have money to go out and buy a new wardrobe to go with my new body. I’m lucky that I work for myself at home so I don’t have to worry about going out to work; but it’s summer. The sun is shining and even a homebody and recluse like me would like to go out and live a little. The sun will probably help my mind function better so that I’ll be better able to  come up with ideas for how I’m going to make my money.

So clearly my mind will be the center of anything I could possibly hope to achieve in life. Everything begins with my thoughts, and anything and everything that affects my thoughts affects my ability to make money, because my thoughts control my ability to make money.

Right now I am looking for any information I can find on shrinking fibroids, other than having a hysterectomy; but but I’m not sure I want to jump on the vegan idea without further investigation into this phytoestrogen angle.

I was supposed to have a hysterectomy performed back in April but I chickened out after the doctor went over the risks with me. Even though she promised that the number of people who die during the process of having their uterus removed is low, and that all the other hysterectomy risks come with low instances, I panicked and said I needed more time; but I’ll tell you, having fibroids is not pleasant. What they do to your figure is utterly depressing.

They say the fibroids eventually shrink once you go through menopause, but at age 37 I still have at least a decade to go before menopause. To have to walk around with this big belly for 10+ years just isn’t something that thrills. I can’t remember the last time I felt physically comfortable, and that’s so important when you’re trying to get your life together. You need to feel good physically. Your mind needs that boost that comes with being in good physical condition.

I suppose the only sensible choice is to have the hysterectomy, but I want to believe there are other ways to get rid of fibroids other than having your uterus removed. Not that I have any use for my uterus. But the idea of having any part of me removed isn’t something I can entertain with a casual attitude. If I could find other methods for shrinking fibroids I’d prefer to try those first. But I definitely need to do something about these fibroids because they’re adding to the long list of issues I have to deal with on a daily basis that get in the way of my ambition to rise above my poverty.

In case you accidentally found this page looking  for information about fibroids, here are some pages you might want to visit:

Uterine fibroid treatment alternatives

Shrinking  fibroids