Day 14-
Today's diet:
On waking: Hot water with a slice of lemon.
Breakfast: Gluten & wheat free muesli with rice milk, lecithin, psyllium husks and honey. Green tea.
Morning snack: Carrot sticks. Peppermint tea.
Lunch: Jamie Oliver's spinach and feta pie (N.B without the butter or chedder cheese, still delicious). Peppermint tea.
Afternoon snack: Nuts and seeds.
Dinner: Chicken satay with fried rice (brown rice, spring onion, garlic, ginger, 3 different coloured carrots, cauliflower, beans).
After dinner snack: Lemon & Ginger tea with honey.
At least 2 litres of filtered water throughout the day.
Exercise: 20 minutes of running up and down the hallway with my daughter.
Sleep: About 8 hours, woke up once during the night, but then got up at 7am.



Another good day, though was very tired all day despite getting a really good sleep including...wait for it.. a block of 6 hours uninterrupted! Brilliant! We had parents' group this morning and I decided to make Jamie Oliver's spinach and feta pie. I make this quite regularly, and if I take the filo pastry off, (which I admit I didn't) the pie is completely within the Detox rules. Anyway, I got about 4 small pieces as it was swooped upon by parents and children alike. Delish.

I did manage to knock back a coffee too, even though it smelled divine as it was brewing. But I just sat there and sipped my peppermint tea. It sounds really bad to say this but, as soon as I have finished these 3 weeks I'm having a day of decadence before starting the Maintenance Program. That is supposed to be another 3 weeks minimum, but the idea is that you will have changed your eating habits permanently by then. Well I have completed 2 weeks of the Detox and I'm still not sure about that, I still badly want coffee, chocolate, red meat, tomato-based pasta and the odd glass of wine. But I'm doing good things for my body here and I'm feeling pretty good too. What will stick are some of the habits, washing fruit and veg, drinking filtered water, reading labels more carefully and drinking green tea.

The coffee habit is a particularly hard one for me to kick. Up until a couple of months ago I had a daughter who woke (and needed to be soothed back to sleep) a minimum of 5 times a night, every night, for 2 years... it was awful. The sleep deprivation was like living in a fog, lack of concentration, short term memory loss and mood swings were all part of my day and I stabilized myself with coffee. I really did use it to get through that time and it's very hard to believe I don't need it now. Though it is a little concerning when I read what Joshi has to say about caffeine: "The trouble is that caffeine makes your own natural stimulants (your thyroid and adrenal glands) redundant and lazy. Eventually, these will cease to work properly and what was once a healthy, stimulated metabolism becomes, instead, slow and sluggish." So, possibly caffeine and lack of sleep are part causes of my slow metabolism, lack of energy and weight gain...interesting.

Didn't get a chance to do my liver flush today either, I just have trouble finding time to go for a 20 minute walk, make and drink this concoction and then lie down for 2 hours. My husband isn't working tomorrow, I'll try to get it done then. It's also time to fill in the charts and weigh myself again...

Day 13-
Today's diet:
On waking: Hot water with a slice of lemon.
Breakfast: Gluten & wheat free muesli with rice milk and a banana. Green tea.
Morning snack: Carrot sticks. Peppermint tea.
Lunch: 2 rice cakes topped with avocado and salmon. Peppermint tea.
Afternoon snack: Nuts and seeds.
Dinner: Creamy smoked salmon pasta (smoked salmon, garlic, grated parsnip, spring onion, beans, cracked black pepper, 2 tablespoons of cream cheese and a sprinkling of Parmesan).
After dinner snack: Lemon & Ginger tea with honey.
At least 2 litres of filtered water throughout the day.
Exercise: 2 hours at the pool and 20 minutes of bike-riding with my daughter in her kiddie seat.
Sleep: About 7 hours, woke up once during the night, but then got up at 6:45am.

Another good day, I think that possibly getting out and being active is not only enhancing my mood but my daughter's. We had a great time at the pool today, even if I just spent 2 hours of walking around in the pool, it's great resistance training. And the bike, well that was hilarious! I haven't ridden my bike in about 4 years. My husband does some mountain biking (when he gets the time!) and so to keep his bike ready, he has fitted the kiddie seat to mine and takes our daughter for rides on it. It was great fun, going up the hills was ridiculously hard, but it really got my heart racing and my legs aching. I might try to do that a bit more, I might even build up a bit of fitness and be able to ride to town.

After the pool we went shopping and I discovered a brilliant health food shop I hadn't been in before. I'll be going back though, they had everything. Finally bought some Lecithin, so can add that to my morning cereal, smoothies, stirfrys, etc. And also bought some fantastic gluten and wheat-free pasta. We had it for dinner tonight and it was only slightly different from regular pasta. Yum! I did cheat slightly by adding a couple of tablespoons of cream cheese to the dish, but according to Joshi, cream cheese, ricotta and feta are not too bad because they are not fermented.

It's funny the habits this Detox has got me into, I never used to bother washing fruit or vegetables, but now I wash or peel everything. It may have been the information Joshi presents on pesticide use:

" The World Health Organisation has listed over 200 known pesticides that are used around the world to stop insects from destroying crops. Most of these will find their way into the supermarket- on food. The Soil Association reports that in the UK alone, around 25,000 tonnes of pesticides are applied to crops every year and 350 chemicals are routinely used in British conventional farming. A Cox's apple, for instance, may have been sprayed 16 times with 36 different chemicals."

Yuck!! Washing all fruit and veg is now a MUST.

Still haven't done my 'liver flush' for this week, better do it tomorrow, this week is nearly over...

Day 12-
Today's diet:
On waking: Hot water with a slice of lemon.
Breakfast: 1 slice of gluten & yeast free bread with avocado, 1 poached egg, salt & pepper. Green Tea.
Morning snack: Carrot and celery sticks, nuts, seeds and plain popcorn. Peppermint tea.
Lunch: 5 falafel balls and salad (beetroot, carrot, baby spinach, sunflower seeds and sheep's feta with flaxseed oil). Peppermint tea.
Afternoon snack: A banana.
Dinner: Salmon coated in herbs and garlic, barley and leek risotto (just pearl barley soaked in home-made chicken stock for 3 hours, then brought to the boil and simmered for 40 minutes, meanwhile adding 1 sauteed leek, salt and more stock as needed), brussel sprouts, snow peas, carrots & broccoli.
After dinner snack: Lemon & Ginger tea with honey.
At least 2 litres of filtered water throughout the day.
Exercise: 2 hour walk & 20 minutes of dancing around the loungeroom like a maniac with my daughter.
Sleep: About 6 hours, woke up once during the night, but then got up at 5:30am.

Good day today, surprising, considering how little sleep I got, but my mood has been great. I have also noticed lately that I haven't felt the need to eat at much. It must be all the fibre in the vegetables or something but I don't feel as hungry at meals and half the amount of food I used to eat is making me full. So perhaps my stomach is shrinking, or maybe the better quality food has that effect.

Super proud of myself today for finally doing some exercise. I pushed my daughter on her tricycle to town and went shopping and then we walked home again. It was really good, despite being cold, we got all rugged up and she jumped in the puddles with her boots on. So getting the blood pumping was probably another thing that made me happier today. I'm hoping to go to the pool tomorrow.

I have found it difficult to remember to take my supplements, which I am supposed to take before each meal, or some of them with food. I'll have to leave them out on the bench overnight so I will see them first thing and remember to take them.

Joshi has also said that vegetable (not fruit or a mixture of fruit and vegetable as it can ferment in the gut and cause bloating) juices are a great aid to the Detox process, but I don't have a juicer. I am going to advertise on freecycle for one- love freecycle, great for passing on things you no longer need and sometimes getting things you do. Hopefully someone has a juicer they don't use any more. I've never tried vegetable juices before but I'm interested in some of the suggested combinations:

Cleansing liver: carrot, beetroot, or beetroot-celery-ginger.
Headaches: celery, carrot-celery-parsley-spinach, coconut milk-carrot.
Improving digestion: beetroot, ginger, carrot.
Kidneys: carrot-parsley-asparagus, carrot-parsley, spinach, beetroot-celery-ginger.
Overweight, obesity: beet greens-parsley-celery, spinach, celery, lettuce.

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...

Day 10-
Today's diet:
On waking: Hot water with a slice of lemon.
Breakfast: Wheat & yeast free muesli with banana and rice milk.
Morning snack: Sunflower seeds and pinenuts, popcorn, lots of detox tea.
Lunch: Chicken and salad (avocado, beetroot, carrot, baby spinach and sheep's feta) on gluten & yeast -free bread.
Afternoon snack: Detox tea, half a carrot.
Dinner: Vegetable stir-fry (broccoli, carrot, bok choy, beans, snow peas, garlic, spring onion, ginger & 2 tablespoons of rogan josh paste) with brown rice vermicelli and tofu fried in olive oil with garlic, ginger, chilli & salt.
After dinner snack: Lemon & Ginger tea with 1 teaspoon of honey.
At least 2 litres of filtered water throughout the day.
Exercise: None at all.
Sleep: About 8 hours but woke up about 5 times thoughout the night.

My daughter had such a restless night and even though my husband got up to her 3 times, I got up to her twice and it took ages to get back to sleep. Still, I had 'Daddy-Daughter Day' today and instead of working, I really did have a day off! A friend came over and we watched DVD's all day. Very nice. Decided to keep lunch simple and maximize the viewing time so we just had sandwiches, and very nice they were too.

So I don't have a lot to report today, but the more I speak to people about this, the more people tell me that they are doing the same sort of thing, but on a more permanent basis. Trying to buy organic, free range and environmentally friendly products and eat in a much more healthy way. It's encouraging to hear and I think that as this sort of food grows in popularity, there will be a greater range and more choice of products. Perhaps even food industry regulations will improve. If a bad diet and bad quality food cause obesity, and obesity is the cause of so many health problems later in life, then surely providing better food and food education would be cheaper than so many unhealthy people putting our already beleaguered health system under more pressure.

I suppose there are signs of improvement. Most primary schools I know of now have a vegetable patch, are taught how to look after the plants, harvest the vegetables and cook them. That can't be a bad thing.

Day 9-
Today's diet:
On waking: Hot water with a slice of lemon.
Breakfast: Wheat & yeast free muesli with honey and rice milk.
Morning snack: A banana, hommus and rice crackers, peppermint tea.
Lunch: Roast chicken with roast pumpkin, corn, beans & broccolini.
Afternoon snack: Peppermint tea.
Dinner: Fritata (for a family size- 5 eggs, chicken and chopped veg leftover from lunch, 1/4 cup of barley flour, a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese, salt & pepper) with salad (rocket, sheep's feta, grated carrot, grated beetroot & mayonnaise).
After dinner snack: Lemon & Ginger tea with 1 teaspoon of honey.
At least 2 litres of filtered water throughout the day.
Exercise: All day doing physical work around the house, yard & shed.
Sleep: About 8 and a half hours (YAY!!!).

Good day today, lots of sleep, but instead of feeling energetic I just feel like flat and lightheaded all day, strange, perhaps my body is unsure of what to do with all of that sleep. My husband's mother came over today to look after our daughter so that we could get a whole heap of work done outside and in the shed. She's a lovely lady and made us all a delicious roast chicken lunch. So good that this is food that I can eat and I don't have to make things too difficult when someone else cooks for me. I have a friend coming over tomorrow for the day and I'm not sure what to feed her at this point but it might be something like fried rice. Other than that, she'll just have to put up with healthy snacks like hommus with carrot & celery sticks.

I've been re-reading Joshi's Detox book and there are some truly disturbing facts about the freshness of the food we eat. Now, granted, he is writing with reference to the UK food industry, but I would not be surprised if the same sort of thing happens in Australia. Here are some of the most shocking:

- Apples and potatoes on the supermarket shelves may have been sitting in cold storage for up to a year.
- Carrots are often cooled in chlorinated water before being packed and stored for anywhere up to nine months.
- Lettuce & salad mix in the plastic bags are treated with a chlorine-based compound, to keep them looking fresh for up to 10 days and preserved using a process called 'modified atmosphere packaging' whereby the normal levels of oxygen and carbon-dioxide are altered to stop visible discolouration.
- Bananas can be picked in another country when they are far from ripe, transported and then exposed to ethylene gas at a later time to bring on the ripening process.
- Most tomatoes and cucumbers are grown hydroponically in rockwool, which is similar to roofing insulation. This means there is little nutritional value (or flavour) in them at all.
- Most of the produce in supermarkets is picked before it is ripe to ensure a longer shelf life.

Terrible! The thing is, by picking food before it is ripe, the nutritional value is severely depleted. Joshi says that there are more vitamins in 3 vine-ripened tomatoes than 20 which have been pre-packed after being picked up to six weeks before ripening.

So in the case of food, quality really is better than quantity. He suggests trying to buy bio-dynamic food where possible. We have a small bio-dynamic supermarket near us but the last time I went in there, I paid $5.80 for 3 lemons. So I'm going to look how many farmer's markets are around us. Fresh, grown locally, supporting farmers and you can ask them if things are chemically treated. Have found a couple of good websites for farmer's markets in and around Melbourne:
http://www.mfm.com.au/
http://www.vicfarmersmarkets.org.au/



I can't wait to be able to grow my own fruit and vegetables!

Day 8-
Today's diet:
On waking: Hot water with a slice of lemon.
Breakfast: 1 slice of gluten-free bread and 2 scrambled eggs.
Morning snack: About 2 carrots worth of carrot sticks.
Lunch: Chicken 'burger' on gluten free bread with hommus and rocket.
Afternoon snack: 1 banana, peppermint tea.
Dinner: 4 falafel balls with salad (rocket, sheep's feta, olives) & hommus.
After dinner snack: Peppermint tea.
At least 2 litres of filtered water throughout the day.
Exercise: 2 hours of shopping?
Sleep: About 6 hours- awake for about 2 hours in the middle with an ill child.

I went to the produce market again today, stocked up on lots of fresh veg and free-range chicken and fish, did about 85% of the shopping there for $105, then I went to the supermarket to get the rest and spent another $70, crazy. Though, I did spend about $22 of that on supplements. I was able to get Milk Thistle and a B-complex right of the shelf. I'm guessing that I won't be able to find Lecithin so easily, so a trip to the health food shop is on the agenda for tomorrow.

So, after a week on the Detox how is my progress?

- My cough has lessened slightly.
- I now weight 107kg, so I've lost 2kgs, which is progress.
- My tongue still looks vaguely purple and has dints down the sides, so it wasn't the wine and no change there.
- I still crave sugar and coffee like there's no tomorrow and cheated today with a bite of a pastry that friends brought around for afternoon tea. I'm pretty sure this all has to do with my lack of decent sleep.
- On the progress chart where you can mark your improvement in areas such as bloating, headaches, exercise, insomnia, mental clarity, skin problems and a number of other things, I can safely say that only 2 things have changed, I'm slightly less bloated and I think my mood has improved or at least leveled out. I'm still getting headaches, but again perhaps because I'm tired.

Week 2 of the Detox Plan is really the same as Week 1- with the addition of regular exercise. I am supposed to exercise at least 3 times a week. I am going to try again to do some yoga but perhaps I'll have to try to do it at night. A bit tricky though, since that's the time that I usually spend on the computer or finishing laundry. I'm trying to find a few more active exercise DVD's to do with my daughter and also vow to take her to the pool at least once a week, since I get to swim around after her and get a bit of exercise there. I'm also going to try walking a lot more. I used to walk everywhere but since my daughter refused to go into a pram about a year ago, if we walk it has to be at her pace, which is slow and full of distractions. That is fine, but no good for exercise at all. I guess we'd at least be getting some fresh air.

Joshi also suggests having lunch with someone that you need to resolve an issue with or with whom you have unfinished business. I think about the people I might do that with and can't really come up with anyone. The only people I really have major issues with are the ones I'd rather were not in my life anyway, with everyone else I usually sort out issues or problems as they arise. He also reminds us that we need to do another liver flush (oh joy) and that we need to try to get 8 hours sleep a night. Well, I'm trying to.