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Day 16 – Week 3 Day 2: Down 1lbs, Down .5in (Down 17lbs & 1.5in To Date) – Lunch Cheat

Posted in Diets, General Comments, Health, Juice/Blend Fasting, Pictures, Walking, tagged 2023 Day 16 (355), 2023 Week 3-Day 2 (355), Beats Per Minute, Bloat, BPM, Cheat Day, Diet, Fasting, Fitbit, Fluid Retention, General Comments, Gout, Health, Heart Rate, HR, Images, Juicing, Picture of Me, Shiva on September 4, 2023| Leave a Comment »

It’s the early evening of Day 16 of my current “Juice / Blend” fast. My hyper-extended my right knee, which I injured two days ago feels almost normal. I’m not sure how it happened or how it “fixed” itself. Just one of those things, I guess. Today was a “real” cheat day…

A few weeks ago, I watched the series “Ted Lasso” and in several of the episodes there was mention of how good (and distinct) West African food is. Well, I’ve never had any so I did a google search for a restaurant in the area. It turns out there are none in our town or in the towns around us. I have to take a 30+ minute drive to get to one…

It just so happens that since viewing the program, we have a new next door neighbor (a family) who is from Nigeria. The family is from Nigeria, but they have been in the U.S. and our town for several years. I asked the mother if she was aware of any West African restaurants in the immediate area as I wanted to try “authentic” food. She replied she wasn’t aware of any restaurants, but she is an excellent cook and would be happy to send me over a sample the next time she makes a native dish.

Well, today (about 1PM) she brought over some meat and rice for me to taste… It was fantastic!! Particularly the rice which looked a lot like Mexican rice, but had a completely different flavor. The two meats were a small piece of goat and a chicken thigh. They were also very tasty, but not quite up to the rice. The surprising thing is I was expecting the food to be extremely “hot” spicy. This wasn’t at all. I don’t know if she toned it down for us or if was just a meal which is not served “hot” spicy.

I had about two cups of rice and the two pieces of meat (maybe, 2-3 ounces). So, this goes down as a “cheat” day. I did have juice / blend for breakfast and dinner.

Diet: I woke up this morning feeling mostly good, again. Still not feeling bloat anywhere. I skipped the water pill again today. (16 Days on the run.) Terrible gout pain in my left foot last night, in the morning, and all day (so far). It turns out that many of the fruits (bananas, raisins) and vegetables (tomatoes, squash) I used in this batch of “Swamp juice” can cause Gout flair-ups in “some” people. I guess I’m one of those “some” people. High fructose corn syrup is another trigger, but I don’t use and HFCS juices in my blends.

Again, better energy reserve today. My energy level seems to be leveling off. I do have to drink at least five(5) ounces of juice before going for my two mile walk around the block. The “oily” / wax candle skin feeling is still with me, but a lot more than yesterday. I don’t remember it going and then coming back on my other prior fasts. Bottom line: no idea what’s up with that…

Shiva’s walk was another short walk. She wanted some variety, so she insisted on going across the road and up and down the length of the school parking lot. (We have grammar school across the street from us.) Dog walk: pulse avg 124bpm, max 106bpm for the dog walk; 14:10min walk.

Personal laps. Six laps: pulse avg 109bpm, max 163bpm for the laps; 1:04:57hr walk. No light-headedness or dizziness. The laps were a lot slower, but this time due my gout and not to my troubled knee. The max of 163bpm is also the highest for a max HR, so far.

Health: No morning phlegm. One pound weight loss today and down .5in for my waist size. Still not sure when I’ll be able to start the “Niko niko” jogging. Probably not for a least another few days just to be on the safe side.

Day 2

Day 9

Day 16

Day 16: Day 2 of Week 3 – weight 355lbs (down 1lbs, down 17lbs total); today’s (muffin) waist 57.5 inches (down .5in, down 1.5in total).

Click here (4 September) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Day 16: Cheat Day

Posted in Diets, Health, Juice/Blend Fasting, tagged 2/20, 355lbs, Almonds, Cheat Day, Day 16: Juice/Blend Fasting, Dental Hygienist, Diets, Health, Mouthwash, Naked Juices, Remineralize Your Teeth, Sip And Swish, Tooth Enamel, V-8 Juices on September 14, 2019| 1 Comment »

The end of day sixteen and the morning of day seventeen… Last night / this morning was my first cheat day. 😦

Morning weight: 353lbs. (on Day 17)
I am down / down “2 / 20”. As in, 2lbs down from yesterday and 20lbs down from my fasting start weight: 373lbs (the morning of Day 1).

The three(3) pounds I had gained two days ago to yesterday is mostly gone. Two(2) pounds of it, anyway. The “high” weight was a loss of 2lbs. My “low” weight was a loss of 1lb. Whatever it was that caused the three pounds gain appears to be sorting itself out and I’ve started going back down. Since I had coffee the last two days, it seems unlikely the coffee (or caffeine) is what caused the uptick. If the weight keeps dropping for the next few days, I’ll just have to leave it as an unresolved aberration in the weight loss pattern. If I spike (bump up) again, I’ll have to consider the cause may be something else. My weigh-in was performed before my “cheat(s)”.

So… The problem wasn’t really yesterday (Day 16), as much as it during the night / this morning (Day 17)…

I woke up at 2:30am last night and couldn’t fall back to sleep. After laying in bed for awhile, I got up and went to log on to my computer to read my ever-growing backlog of emails. Normally, I get up, weigh in, take my BP / HR and walk the dog (1 mile, 30 minutes). Then, I prepare my “daily” blend. “Prepare” means I pour my saved blend into a larger bottle, add two or three goblets of ice cubes and then top up the bottle with fruit or vegetable juice. The “vegetable” juice is “V-8” brand or “Naked” brand, depending on which I have available and my taste for the day (saltier or sweeter respectively). Our neighborhood is not very well lit by streetlights, so we don’t normally walk the dog in the dark. It’s too difficult to see if we’re getting up all of the poop. This morning, that meant waiting until dawn to walk the dog. As it is not practical to drink loads before going out to walk the dog, I was going to be stuck for some time just feeling hungry…

To make a longer story a little shorter, I had a couple of cheats during the wait. I had a palm-full (8 to 10) of almonds about 3:15am and then another about 5am. I walked the dog a little after 6am. So, technically, my blending “ONLY” fast is broken. 😦

However, being the forgiving person that I am, I’m going to let it slide and pretend it didn’t happen. IF it happens again, I will face up to the “fast” being over. Until then, I’ll just keep counting the days as fasting.

So… How did yesterday go? Not too badly. I am still (after two weeks) missing the act of chewing. Yesterday, I was mostly missing the taste of eating. When I make a week’s worth of blend, there simply isn’t much variety in the taste from one day to the next. (To me, this taste variety is THE main benefit of preparing your juice prior to drinking it or in the morning for that day.) This is why I vary the “juice” I add to the daily bottle a more “straight” fruity juice (apple, pineapple, grapefruit, cherry, etc.) and a more “veggie” juice (the various types of V-8 and Naked juices). Other than the mixture, the only variation is the amount of ice I add over the course of a day. As mentioned above, I start with three 16 ounce goblets of ice cubes, then, depending on the day’s temperature, I will add another one or two goblets of ice. Yes, this makes for a very watery drink for most of the second half of the day, but it has two benefits: 1) it keeps the drink cold; and, 2) it dilutes the sugar and acidic content of the drink.

The benefit of a cold drink is two-fold: 1) it cools you off on a hot day; and, 2) your body has to expend additional calories raising the fluid’s temperature up to your body’s temperature. It may not seem like much, but every little bit helps in the weight-loss process. The benefit of diluting the sugar (by volume) content is obvious. The reduction of acid may be less so to the average person. I have no scientific “proof” of this, but my teeth “feel” different when I go all day drinking an undiluted blend than they do when I drink with continuously adding ice (or chasing with plain water). When I run my tongue over my teeth, the teeth feel cleaner or “rougher” depending on which I do. So, I either dilute during the day or I keep an extra (small) bottle of water and “sip and swish” the water after drinking some of the blend. I also have a separate brand of mouthwash (which I use every second or third day) which is supposed to rebuild / reinforce the enamel on my teeth. (This was recommended by my dental hygienist who said you cannot “repair” lost / damaged tooth enamel, but you can help “remineralize” your teeth with proper brushing and gargling. She relayed the products recommended by the dentist’s office.) I alternate the mouthwash because I am a creature of habit and my regular mouthwash makes my mouth / teeth “feel” cleaner. The “recommended” mouthwash doesn’t have as much alcohol content, so it doesn’t give me that “burned” cheeks, tongue and gums feeling I’ve grown used to over the last 45-plus years.

And, now you know more than you ever imagined you would ever know about my dental hygiene. And, admit it… You are a better person for it! (LoL)

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Click here (14 September) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.