hello food - i'm back!

making the transition
i finished the cleanse successfully on thursday and started the recovery process on friday. it was a rough day, drinking only orange juice and water. i had headaches and remember that fabulous mood i previously had? it was long gone. luckily i was able to be productive at work.

i had to take public transportation to work so and couldn't find organic orange juice within walking distance. i was hoping the non-organic orange juice would do the trick, but i could honestly taste chemicals. i also wonder if that contributed to the headaches.... i resolved to finishing up at work, taking care of some necessary things, then getting home for some r&r. that mostly worked.

back to food! yes actual food!
while still consuming orange juice, i was also "allowed" to drink homemade vegetable soup broth. one of the aforementioned errands after work was to procure some from the health food place in new rochelle. my mouth watered at the smell of it and the kind woman who works there said she'd take a portion of it home if i wasn't going to eat it all. i felt a little bad about it, but i took it all. after all, this was to be my sustenance for the next few days. anyway, after driving all over manhattan and brooklyn saturday, i returned home and ate my first food since last tuesday!

while the rules are that you can have broth only, i had a recording to do in the evening and could not figure out a plausible way to bring the soup with me. besides, would i even have time to eat it? so i skipped a few hours from the master cleanse book's suggestion and ate the vegetables. i chewed everything until it was liquid, taking me the better part of 90 minutes to finish one bowl. i was doing several other things, including unloading & loading the car for the recording, but still, it takes an awful long time to eat when you chew food correctly. this is where my new appetite control kicks in. i did bring and drink plenty of oj to get me through the recording.

the recovery continues
i should mention while friday was pretty bad, saturday i felt very good. my body was very happy to have veggies in the system. today (sun.) has been about the same, food-wise. i had a little veggie soup earlier before i had to run out. while out, i was able to stop at trader joe's in union square and stocked up on piece fruit, lettuce, tomato, spinach, mushrooms, grapes, strawberries and a simple salad dressing - all organic. i made salad for the evening and some for work tomorrow. it's almost unbelievable to me how sated i could be eating just one bowl of salad. this is good. i'll likely snack on grapes and strawberries through the evening.

what's really happening here is i am building up my digestive system again. after cleansing, the ability of digestion within the small intestine has been all but disabled. between drinking oj, taking probiotics and eating raw foods, i'm slowly bringing my digestive system back into service. i am still not entirely sure what my new diet will be. my friend and colleague silas lent me a book today that i'm quite anxious to read: food and healing by annemarie colbin. i suppose i'll find out what my options are using this book. skimming through, i saw vegetarian, vegan, raw and macrobiotic. i'm curious to read the advantages and disadvantages of each. stay tuned - that weight chart is coming soon.