Travel With Mel

It's been about a month since I wrapped up my detox diet so I thought I would take a moment to reflect on how the experience has and has not changed my eating habits.

First, I thought I might stay off caffeine after the detox period was over, and it's amazing how quickly we slip back into our hold habits.  I have to admit that the first cup of coffee I enjoyed after detox gave me such a buzz that the experience may have been worth the 3 weeks without caffeine.  I did stay away from the daily cup of coffee from our Senseo for about another week.  Then work got busy and I started ramping up my running mileage and I needed that cup of coffee to kick start my day. 

I am happy that I have reduced my consumption of alcohol.  I no longer feel like I must have a glass of wine with dinner or to relax after a stressful day.  My body really hasn't been liking too much drinking anyway so this is a big positive.  I'm probably still drinking more than half the nights in a week, but Richard and I don't always feel the need to finish the entire bottle that we open.  Again, progress.

I'm consuming less dairy but I started that before detox.  I have given into mozzarella lately because the heirloom tomatoes beg to be paired with mozzarella and basil.  And Richard home made homemade vanilla ice cream last night that was to die for!  We are eating less meat too.  I no longer feel like a complete meal must have a starch, veggie and meat or fish. 

We're pretty much back to eating pasta and regular soy sauce so I've given up on eliminating gluten from my diet.  Though, we're still enjoying gluten free waffles.  I'm not worrying about eating sugar either, but Richard's birthday cake aside, I don't tend to eat too much sugar.  Having given up both of these items, however, has made me more conscious of what is in my food.  I take time to read labels.  Gluten may not stop me from making a food choice, but when the list gets too long or the ingredients don't seem to be 'real food', I do find myself opting out.  Last week, for instance, I got very excited about bacon salt until I read the ingredients and decided not to add it to my fries! 

Overall, even if the changes in my diet are minor based on my detox diet, it was a valuable experience.  It helped me think more about what goes into my body and along with that we've been paying more attention to where are food comes from.  We recently took an outstanding cooking class at Culinary Communion called the '250 Mile Diet.  Our group made a fabulous local and mostly vegetarian meal.  I feel so much better when I know where my food comes from and what goes into cooking it.

A few people apparently read my blog (this always suprises me!) and have asked about the detox diet so I thought I would provide an update now that I've ended week 2.  I'm sure this comes as no surprise, but I've broken the diet several times in the past 2 weeks.  It is surprisingly HARD to keep caffeine, alcohol, sugar, gluten and animal products out of your diet.  Here are a few observations from the experience so far:

1)  Eating out is nearly impossible.  Even trying to be 'good' one night, I ordered take out thai food and it came with egg.  No egg on the menu!  Pad Khee Mao was not meant to be wasted so I ate it anyway.

2)  We had friends in town and went for Italian at Bizzarro.  Aside from a lettuce salad, there were no options in our diet so I opted for a vegetarian pasta dish.  If I was breaking the diet, I may as well have wine, so I drank that too!

3)  I try to consider myself vegan when I eat out, but that doesn't always work.  Traditional soy sauce has gluten so I know I've broken the diet a few times on this alone.  It's shocking how certain restaurants are so vegan unfriendly.  But props to Cafe Venus.  They make an awesome tofu scramble and even offer vegan bread.  (unfortunately that has gluten-see, this isn't easy!)

4)  I must confess to having wine (a lot) at Lily's birthday party.  I got into the Lay's potato chips and you know, they ARE on the diet.  Just potatoes, vegetable oil and salt.  Personally, I think they shold be marketed as 'natural'.  Even Michael Pollen would approve - he recommends no more than 5 ingredients in his book 'In Defense of Food'.

5)  That same night I got into a cupcake.  Wow - it was good!  After eating very little fat and no sugar for almost 2 weeks, it tasted really good.

6)  The only diet 'rule' I haven't broken is caffeine.  That was hard the first few days, but not a problem at all now.  I'm not sure if I'll go back after this week.

7)  Even with some minor rule breaking, I have a lot more energy and feel much better eating all the fruits and veggies so I'm going to try to relax the diet and stick to some of the principles even after the end of this week.  I've cut out much of the 'crap' in my diet so I'm hoping my pants get a little looser too!

I went for a facial at Gene Juarez last week and the aesthetician recommended trying a detox diet.  She said I would be shocked by how much it would clear up my skin so I figured I'd try one.  I did a little research on the web and ran across Oprah's 21 day cleanse.  It seemed simple and not one of those crazy plans where you just drink liquid.  I just needed to eliminate caffeine, alcohol, animal products, sugar and gluten for 21 days.

Well, it's day 3 and the whole thing has been eye opening already.  Richard agreed to try this with me so we went shopping at whole foods the night before we started.  It's shocking how hidden ingredients like sugar and gluten are in food.  'You mean I can't have ketchup w/ my potatoes'? Richard asked in shock.  'No, honey, sugar.'  We did find sugar free ketchup which isn't quite the same but it does taste like real tomatoes.

So far the hardest part has been giving up caffeine.  I really am going through withdrawl in the mornings, with the headache to prove it.  Our vegan dinners have been amazingly good and this has been a great opportunity for us to use our CSA farm produce share and take advantage of all the fresh fruits and veggies available in Seattle in the summer.  I faced my first real challenge eating lunch out today.  There was probably palm sugar or something in my curried rice noodles but I did the best I could.  Tomorrow I'll face an even tougher challenge as we're having Confab at our place and it usually involves wine.  We'll see how long this lasts...

Last night a few of us girls got together to take Bill out for his birthday.  We were supposed to meet at my place to carpool to Marazul and then come back to Queen Anne to enjoy some live music at Paragon.  Well, one bottle of wine turned into three at the condo.  We even opened the 'Bitch' wine in honor of the fact that Bill was out with his 'bitches'.   I can't remember when he started calling us that but I think it relates back to Hood to Coast and our team's words of encouragement to each other in screaming 'Run Bitch Run'!

We got so caught up in our wine drinking that we didn't get to Marazul until almost 10!  Happy hour starts at 10 but we were more intrigued by the dinner menu (which we were supposed to have there anyway) so we ordered a bit of both.  The drinks were fruity and good and the food was tasty Asian fusion and made me feel like I was in Hawaii.  The rhum bar was swanky and cool and reminded me a little of rumjungle at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.  Sadly, the 'bitches' were a little too drunk and tired to continue partying at Paragon, but judging from my hangover and sleepiness today, I think it's good we kept ourselves from getting into more trouble!