The Dr. Oz Cleanse vs. My Cleanse

Remember this post where I was all excited about trying a cleanse for the first time? 

Something about the word "detox" just lures me in every time. Like our bodies have some kind of Chemical X floating around and the only way to get it out is via magical cleanses.

Well...let me tell you about that cleanse. If you're interested in trying it out, here is my experience. It could be completely different for you, but I don't think I will be trying it again anytime soon.

So the day before I started it, I cooked up all the food and felt pretty excited to try it all.

This is the quinoa with prunes and almond milk breakfast. I actually thought it was pretty good with a bunch of nutmeg and cinnamon added to it.

(I took pictures of all the food but some most of them are gone...)

So the day I started, I went about my day and felt fine until lunchtime. The breakfast and mid-morning snack were good and kept my pretty full. 

But then I got really hungry at noon. When I had a teeny tiny berry smoothie to eat for lunch. Seriously, it was like a cup of smoothie.

As someone who eats CONSTANTLY, that had me a little worried. 

So I drank that and was still starving. Then, after two hours of shaking and lacking focus, I got a Snickers bar. (Probably not part of the cleanse?)

I immediately felt better and more stabilized. This means one of two things:

1. I hadn't had enough calories at that point and so the Snickers bar helped fill me up.

2. I am a complete sugar junkie who needed a fix.

I think it's probably a little of both.

So I kind of fell off the cleanse train by the evening. I was still eating well, but added a lot more substance to the vegetable soup dinner.

Then the next day I craved a cheeseburger like crazy (thank you PMS) and proceeded to eat my weight in chocolate the rest of the week. 

I'm thinking my timing was a little off.

Because we leave for Ireland on Monday, I wanted to eat well this week to keep myself healthy for the trip. So I set up my own kind of "cleanse" that I could actually stick to.

To give you a rough idea of what I had, here is a typical day:

Breakfast:

-Hot water with lemon (and cinnamon, sometimes.)

-Oatmeal with almond milk, almond butter and berries. (My all-time favorite breakfast. One of the only meals that keeps me satisfied until lunch. Or, well...at least 10 a.m.)

Mid-morning snack: 

Plain yogurt with strawberries and agave nectar

Lunch:

-Hot tea

-Spinach salad with apples, mushrooms, avocado, walnuts and a little olive oil.

Mid-afternoon snack:

-Half an avocado with cottage cheese and a dash of garlic powder (or any spice of choice) on top.

Dinner:

-Lemon Parsley soup (recipe here.)

Additional snacks:

I am hungry constantly, so I eat these throughout the day as well:

-Almond butter and banana smoothie

-Any fruits/ veggies

-Carrots and hummus

-Any kind of green smoothie (I prefer one with a few handfuls of kale, half an apple, juice of half a lemon, a few stalks of celery, a banana and some pineapple.)

So that's what I've been doing instead to prepare for spring break and just generally feel good overall. I have also been doing daily workouts from Blogilates, which I LOVE because all of her workouts are fun and usually filmed somewhere pretty, like the beach, and makes me forget that my life looks like this right now:

Happy Wednesday!!

My thoughts on...Dr. Oz's cleanse

In the spirit of spring cleaning, (and going off of last week's detox post,) I have decided to try a cleanse.

For me, I'm not looking to lose weight. I just kind of want to "spring clean" my system, and undo a little of the damage from the past two weeks or so.

(i.e. croissants, cupcakes, cake, beer, etc.)

But if a cleanse also helps at getting the ol' body ready for bikini season/wedding season/peeling off the sweater season, then so be it!

So the cleanse I have decided is the Dr. Oz 48-hour cleanse. Pros? It does not involve starvation, and the recipes seem like they're probably pretty good and easy to make. 

Cons? Well, nothing yet. Except that I have never done a cleanse before, and am not sure what it will be like.

Some of my preliminary thoughts on this:

-Why in the whole, wide world of produce are artichoke hearts in a smoothie? Because Dr. Oz said so. He could probably tell me to toss in some sardines and I'd do it. Begrudgingly.

-I don't know if I can handle the lack of baked goods/chocolate. Seriously, I am a sugar addict. I eat pretty well most of the time, but that sweet tooth gets me every time! However, I do like a good challenge, so bring it on.

-Epsom salts baths, eh? I tried one tonight. Personally, I'm just excited that someone reminded me there are alternatives to showers, and they are awesome. 

-The weekend would not be a good time to start a cleanse. Just throwing that one out there. The weekend is the time for pancakes and wine and all that. 

So I start this up officially today, and I will report back on my thoughts periodically over the next 48 hours. Get excited!!

Has anyone tried this cleanse, or something similar? What are your thoughts?

Happy March! 

My thoughts on...detoxing

Ello poppets!

*Sorry. I don't say that ever...*

Yesterday I decided this week I would do a detox. And I guess what automatically comes to mind are the endless juice fasts that graced the blog world after New Year's. 

Not that kind of detox. But sort of?

See, I believe in all that mind-body connection mumbo jumbo. And I wanted to have a very relaxed week. Even if the events of the week are not relaxed, I wanted my attitude to at least seem calm and happy. Because, well, our weeks are numbered.

Morbid but true.

And I don't want to waste my time being anxious and worried.

I think food plays a major role in that as well, so I am just trying to simplify what I eat, what I have and what I worry about.

I mean, an instant pick-me-up would be some springtime weather, but that's just gonna have to wait. Especially since we are bracing for another winter storm. Not breaking out the peep-toe wedges anytime soon.

So yesterday I kicked off the week with a trip to the grocery store and did some cooking. I spend every Sunday doing at least 2 hours of cooking to prepare for the week. It's pretty therapeutic, actually.

Yesterday I cooked up some chickpea salad wraps and sassy water, both of which I highly recommend.

Then I went for a run around campus in the cold, which was pretty, but...cold. Or refreshing, depending on how you look at it.

Then I felt like a plant would be the perfect addition to any detox week, (logical? who knows) and I found this little guy.

He looked WAY worse yesterday when I picked him up. The poor thing was fifty percent off and so thirsty. I couldn't just leave him there.

Here's to hoping he's around for awhile, because sometimes, as I have admitted to before, things don't work out so well for my plants.

Also, I will take this time to give a shout-out to my wonderful newspaper staff. Together we took home ten awards at the ICPA newspaper awards in Chicago, and made a lot of weird (and awesome) memories.

Here is a crappy photo of the view from my room!

The detox plan continues this week with the following:

-At least 7 hours of sleep each night (One night achieved!)

-Lots of green tea and water

-Some additional workouts from the videos at blogilates

-Getting the paper out in a timely manner

-Spring cleaning in preparation for March! Which is Friday, if you can even believe that.

Have a good week, everyone!

Anxiety.

Hello there!

This is something I have been wanting to post about for awhile, 

but wasn't exactly sure how to present it.

I want to talk about it for two reasons:

1. It makes me feel better to get it out there.

2. Maybe it could help other people.

A little anxiety in life is normal. Healthy, even. It keeps us on top of our game in stressful situations and can even kick in as a survival instinct.

However, for some of us, that instinct is a little out of whack.

I had atrocious anxiety as a child. It went away during high school, but at this point in my life, it came back with a vengeance.

I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which is where you feel anxious and nervous about anything and everything, all the time.

You know how you feel when you think you forgot to do something important that you can't quite remember, and it nags at you?

That's how I feel all the time.

It's pretty common, but it's also terribly distracting.

On top of that, I am a MAJOR hypochondriac. Google is my greatest frenemy.

Pretty much every day I believe that I have some kind of terminal disease even when it has been proven to me that I DO NOT have it. So I look up other things I could have.

It's a vicious cycle, and it's a major time suck.

I spend SO much time, sometimes up to an hour or two, looking up things 

that could be wrong with me. Almost every day.

Do you know what I could be doing with that time?

LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE.

To be honest with you, it's a bit debilitating.

I do see a counselor for this, but it's very difficult for me to convey (for some reason) what I'm actually going through.

And I'm trying to handle it all very organically, because while medicine can be helpful, 

it's just a Band-Aid for the real underlying issues.

So it's a bit of a journey for me right now. I am trying to be very honest with myself and accept that it IS possible to change these ways of thinking, but it takes time.

Plenty of people have overcome anxiety and hypochondria, but it's not a quick fix by any means.

This winter I was diagnosed with something called Chiari Malformation, Type I.

It is not life-threatening, just annoying, and there are many varying degrees of it.

I have the mildest version of it, but it comes with symptoms like random numbness, awful headaches, dizziness, arm pain, blurry vision, muscle weakness...the list goes on and on.

After I had that diagnosis, my hypochondria kicked into overdrive. I wondered what else could be wrong.

I think the worst part for me is that some people treat it like a joke.

When you say you have hypochondria, are anxious about something ridiculous or have convinced yourself you have some kind of disease, people laugh about it.

I know, because they do it to me.

It's easy to try to joke about it or laugh it off, but when it comes right down to it, 

it's very scary to try to deal with. It's extremely challenging to work through. And it is something that absolutely requires the support of family and friends.

I have been lucky enough to have people close to me who do take it seriously and try to support me even when I'm acting crazy.

I think the important thing, first of all, is awareness. I felt better when I found out I had an anxiety disorder because it proved the world wasn't as awful as I thought; my brain was just processing it that way.

But now I have to begin trying to get better, and it really is a challenge. But I'm working on it. Exercise, a balanced diet and creative outlets help tremendously. Being alone and drinking caffeine does not. I'm just in the process of finding out what works for me.

So...that's what's on my mind today.

(If you read all of this I'm pretty impressed.)

Mostly I just wanted to get that out there. I would love to hear from anyone going through the same thing, or just any thoughts on it, really.

Sidenote...it's almost the weekend!

Now there's something to smile about.

:)

How I lost 15 pounds (and kept it off)

I distinctly remember a day my sophomore year of high school when I was home sick from school, stepped on a scale in our bathroom and saw the number rise to 150. I had never hit that number before.

(I have no qualms about discussing weight in actual numbers here!)

At 5-foot-9, that didn't exactly make me overweight, but I realized that my energy reserves were zapped, and I often felt sluggish. 

I had probably gained about 15 pounds over the course of a year, and I didn't know how. Looking back now, it was really a case of growing into an adult body with a slightly more "adult" metabolism.

And I didn't know what to do about it.

While I wouldn't sit down and eat six cupcakes in a sitting, I also wasn't overtly "healthy" when it came to food.

I ate sugary cereal for breakfast every single day.

I ate pizza, pop tarts and cookies for lunch.

At home, I would eat more cereal before (and usually after dinner.)

And I LOVED desserts.

Still do, in fact. They just don't love me back.

I wasn't in sports or activities like I had been when I was younger, so my exercise was mostly limited to a stray Seventeen magazine workout here or there.

Fast forward to senior year, when my appendix burst.

It was a very painful incident, and I was terrified of hospitals and surgery, so the whole thing freaked me out. But the surgery went well, and recovery before I could get back to school took about two weeks.

Something about that finally made me pay attention to my body. 

The NUMBER ONE THING I DID, and I still recommend this to anyone looking to lose weight, is to stop drinking sugar and calories. I lost probably half the weight from doing that alone.

I drank water and unsweetened tea, and that was about it.

Even now, the only calories I drink come from alcohol or the occasional pop, and I rarely drink.

I do love a good wine spritzer though!

The summer before college, I went through my first official breakup. It was a little tough to deal with at the time, and that combined with the fact that I was leaving for college soon had me very anxious about the future.

So I started to run.

I found that my iPod, running shoes and a long stretch of sidewalk really did my mind some good, so I kept it up when I went away to school.

I still didn't eat well, however, but I was working out enough that I continued to lose weight and got down to about 135.

Dorm food was fattening and I still loved me some Fruit Loops, so my body still felt out of balance.

Sophomore year came, and it was a pretty tough year emotionally. I went through a lot, and was dealing with things I had never dealt with before.

So I took it out on my body.

Every time I was stressed or upset, which was pretty much every day, I would go to the gym and work out as hard as I could.

As productive as that may sound, it wasn't. It was hard on my body. I thought it would make me feel tougher and stronger, but I was using it as an escape to get away from everything else I was dealing with.

And at the end of that year, I met Tom.

It took months of having something stable to feel like I was calming down, and even the summer we started dating I was still pretty out of sorts. But my junior year of college, in a new apartment (with a kitchen!), a new relationship and a new role in campus media, I wanted to focus on balance as opposed to strength (which in my case had meant stubborn escapism.)

The SECOND TIP I TELL PEOPLE LOOKING TO LOSE WEIGHT is listen to your body!

That year I started cooking. Not well, but I tried. I realized that when I ate eggs and fresh fruit or oatmeal for breakfast, my body felt good. When I ate cereal or donuts, I felt like crap.

It sounds so simple, but it took that whole year to figure out what I was missing, when I needed to eat and what I needed to leave out of my grocery cart.

As it stands now, this is what I do. I am not a nutritionist/fitness guru, and this may not work for everyone, but it keeps me feeling my best:

(This is just a general rundown. After this post I will do more regular health and fitness posts.)

-Cardio workout 3X a week, plus toning and strengthening

-Pilates workout 2x a week

-Water ALL THE TIME. I can't go anywhere without my water bottle!

-Tea all day. I usually have three or four cups, especially green tea.

-Most meals are vegetable-based. Veggies do a body good.

-Hot water with cinnamon is great in the morning. You could also add a little honey to sweeten it up.

-Get moving! The more energy you put out walking/running/just not sitting, the more you will have.
-I rarely eat true "meals." I mostly eat small ones every few hours. Again, I have no idea if that's how you're *supposed* to do it, but that seems to work best for me.

-I even stopped eating my beloved cereal, and I don't even miss it. Or the bloating it gave me.

There is no point to this photo. I just didn't want to scare you with all the never-ending words.

So there you go, the kickoff to my more health-based bloggy home.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out!

Happy Wednesday!