Day 11-
Today's diet:
On waking: Hot water with a slice of lemon.
Breakfast: Wheat & yeast free muesli with banana and rice milk.
Morning snack: None. 2 cups of hot water at playgroup because I forgot to bring my own teabags!
Lunch: Chicken salad (beetroot, carrot, baby spinach, sunflower seeds and sheep's feta). Peppermint tea.
Afternoon snack: Detox tea, celery sticks & snow peas.
Dinner: Spicy fried rice- Brown rice, chicken, cauliflower, beans, carrots, onions, celery, 1 cup of chicken stock (home-made), salt, pepper, turmeric, cumin seeds, cinnamon.
After dinner snack: Detox tea.
At least 2 litres of filtered water throughout the day.
Exercise: Running errands & between appointments all day...
Sleep: About 9 hours, woke up twice during the night.


I forgot to mention that the friend who came over yesterday brought for me a really lovely tasting Detox Tea, by Clipper Teas. It has Hibiscus, Liquorice Root, Nettle & Aloe Vera and smells like berries. I've been drinking a lot of tea lately and another couple I have sampled are from the Qi range, The Detox Green Tea, which is Citrus based and Green Tea Plus, which is Fruity, both very nice.

I have to say, the lack of coffee thing has been made much easier by the brilliant range of teas available to try, I currently have something like 12 different types of tea in my cupboard (may have gone a little overboard) but it really has been lovely drinking them all and you can pick whichever suits your mood. Plus, I have read that Green Tea is actually one of the best things that you can consume for your health. Joshi puts it nicely " It has a very high concentration of antioxidants including flavonoids and polyphenols, which have numerous health-giving properties. Polyphenols, in particular, have been found to be 20 times more effective than the other antioxidant powerhouses, Vitamins C & E." He goes on to say that it can help to prevent diabetes, prevent or reduce the severity of rheumatoid arthritis, controls the blood-sugar levels, helps the liver to function more efficiently, lowers blood pressure and may stabilise or shrink some cancers. I should have been drinking buckets of this stuff for years!

I'm also pretty sure that the fact that we are now drinking filtered water contributes to the taste of the tea. Joshi devotes a lot of space in his book to discussing water (more than 8 pages) and the upshot of this is:

- Water is essential, drink at least 2 litres a day.
- Water quality is just as important.
- Tap water is regulated and checked for contaminants, bottled water is not.
- Bottled water may spend up to 2 years sitting in plastic packaging in warm storage areas and during that time some of the chemicals in the packaging (which have been linked to infertility in women) will leak into the water. Also bacteria can grow in the water during this time.
- The regulations that apply to bottled water are less stringent than those which apply to the public drinking water supply (in the UK and here) so you have less safety control over what goes into bottled water.
- (This one is a bit scary and I'm not sure if it applies in Australia) Tap water is a mixture of rainwater, recycled domestic waste water and surface water from rivers, lakes and reservoirs. It is filtered many times and to a very high standard, however chemicals such as fluoride, chlorine and aluminium are added to it during this process. Also, there are the medications that people take and expel via their urine which make it back into the recycled water we drink. Things like the contraceptive pill, anti-depressants and painkillers may be present.
- Drink tap water but buy a water filter and keep your filtered water cold.

So we have bought a Brita jug and keep it in the fridge, we use this for tea and also to boil rice or noodles. I'm not sure that the filter in this jug is capable of making the water I drink free from other people's medication, but I'm glad to have that extra layer of filtration between me and someone else's antidepressants...