Tilapia medallions

I made this delicious recipe this evening:

I filet tilapia
1/2 C coconut flour
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp white wine
Water for moisture
Cumin, salt, garlic powder to taste
Juice of half lemon

Preheat oven to 425
Cut tilapia into cubes
Put the remaining ingredients on a plate for breading the fish. Add just enough water to make breading spreadable on the fish
Spread breading on fish cubes
Bake for 15 minutes

End of Cleanse

I can safely say I did the candida cleanse for five months, from May to October. I kept thinking I would return to it after the holiday season, so I hesitated in writing a final blog post about it. I am in a different place now, though.

What were my results? My bowel movements have become more regular. They can still get off track when my eating is off track and it is pretty easy to tell when that happens. My go-to helper is flax seeds. This works really well for me when I am backed up. My colon is still on the slow side, but it is far improved from whence I came.

Emotionally, it seems I have cleared out a lot of gunk. Some things I can pinpoint and some things are just evident in the way I generally handle my life and what has come forward in my life from doing the cleanse.

I have come to some interesting discoveries with my relationship with food. These things are not "fixed" but are works in progress. The progress will have to continue in a different fashion, though. Full-on candida cleansing which is very similar to paleo diet is a lot. It is a lot of preparation, a lot of disconnection from other people's ways of eating, and even though it felt good in many ways, it is not the perfect way for me to eat all the time.

Finally, I love cleansing. For me, it is pattern interruption. It challenges me to think differently about myself and what I think is important or necessary. And each cleanse furthers the process for the body and allows parts of the body to rest and recuperate for a time. I like this. And I get a little more self-intelligent each time.

Overall, I am proud of myself. This was quite an undertaking and I did it for five months. Whew.

Training Day

Day one: I went to the gym today in order to begin my training for hiking in four weeks. What I did:
ten minutes on recumbent bike level 5. Purpose-begin circulation in body and respiration.
Ten minutes on elliptical level 5. Purpose-increase circulation and respiration, particularly in diaphragm.
Ten minutes on BoSu ball balancing and then attempting a squat. Purpose- get finer muscles working. Also, I heard recently balancing helps to reset the nervous system.
Ten minutes on treadmill-loosen muscles back up after BoSu experience.
Full squats until I lost my form-I did maybe fifteen or twenty with no added weight. Strengthen legs and work on quads tracking evenly over patella
Back to treadmill 5 minutes with slight incline-again, get muscles loosened up after squatting.
More squats to fatigue (maybe five or seven) and ten standing lunges each side.
Then stretched and showered.
What was my favorite part? All of it. At minute 17 of my warm-up I felt the endorphins kick in. I felt so satisfied from there all the way through to the shower where I felt my sympathetic nervous system relax. How is it I manage to forget how much I love exercise?

Day two: ten minutes of warm up. Then lat pull-downs, dumbbell rows, shoulder lift, shoulder press, bicep curls and ten minutes on treadmill. Then repeated all again. Then did scissor kicks for 15 minutes to open up my hips more. Purpose-strength train upper body starting with my large, weaker muscles (back and posterior delts) and ending with smaller, easier for me to define muscles. It was a little emotional today. When I was on treadmill between lifting I felt some emotions go through me. I was also a little less clear about what I wanted to do. When I used to work out, I did upper and lower body equally. Now, working the upper body is a little confusing to me. Not sure why. Perhaps because it is weaker and takes more time to feel like everything is moving the way I want it to.

Day 3: 30 minutes on treadmill

Day4: break

Day 5: 20 total mins warm up on level seven, recumbent bike and elliptical. Then two self-made circuits of  -squats, dead lifts, treadmill (done twice) and then -lunges, hamstring curls, quad press, rowing (also done twice). Then some brief shoulder presses and bicep curls. Then on treadmill for ten minutes. Then some brief chest press (only because I couldn't stop thinking about doing it)

Day 6: up A mountain and down three times

Day 7: upper body training at gym

Day 8: break

Six months

It has been just over six months  and a week since I began my cleanse. And I have spent the last month and a half testing myself to see what it would take to put some weight back on my body. This testing is a little sardonic, admittedly. And it took all of this time, with increasingly fewer filters on what I'm eating to gain back five pounds. In one way, it is kind of cool that my body so resisted adding back the weight. In another way, it is a little ridiculous that my emotional body finds it necessary to be so consumptive and abusive to itself.

I also notice my shift in focus from bowel movements (I had three yesterday) to weight. I have talked to a few people recently about this. I naturally reached several plateaus along this journey and after about three weeks would begin dropping again. With this plateau, however, I didn't feel ready to drop to the next place. This place, in pounds, is where I stayed for quite some time the last time I was in a very emotionally unhealthy place in relation to the men in my life. My general relationships are healthier now, but I feel those echoes coming back to me.

What's a girl to do? Well, focusing on weight loss has ever been an answer for me. It is good to remember that. Obviously, I am recognizing my resistance and have awareness. I have this whole time, though, and am still testing my own boundaries. Do I want to live a fully realized life, or do I want to go back and forth a few more times over the next years? Do I want to find another reason to get my energy moving in a good/better/best way?

I may have found one. A reason, that is. My step-dad who I have been developing a better and better relationship with over the last years, invited me to a New Year's Day hike in Sedona. I love hiking and have been way out of practice. He is very practiced, and I want to go and not slow him down too much. What a great excuse to get my body moving! I have been picturing myself going and meeting him for his hikes in Sedona. Then, when he invited me on thanksgiving, I knew this was part of my vision offering itself up to me. Now, I get to let the universe know if I am prepared to take on what I have asked for. It is just 4 1/2 weeks from today. I better get myself moving.

Candida Cleanse Throwback

Like I mentioned, I have been off my cleanse for about a month, basically eating whatever. I like the hiatus for now, and believe I will return to the cleanse after Thanksgiving. I checked my older Candida Cleanse posts just to see where I started. This was my beginning, six months ago:

Candida cleanse

5/27/13 I am one week in to my candida cleanse. Very briefly, candida is a naturally occurring yeast in the intestines. It can get out of balance and start overproducing yeast, which is officially called candidiasis. I have felt for many years that I've had this imbalance and, until now, was unwilling to take the steps to clear it out. The cleanse is very regimented and takes a considerable amount of time.

Week one: this week, for me, has been about getting most of the addictive substances out of my body.    This includes coffee, black tea, alcohol, tobacco, dairy, sugar, gluten, etc. Basically, I've been eating meat, nuts, green veggies and non-sugary fruits like avocado and cucumber. I've been drinking green tea, herbal tea and water with lemon or lime. Like I said, very regimented. The cleanse, depending on who you ask, should include almost nothing that breaks down into sugar. It should also exclude foods prone to mold, or fungi, or fermented things.

Why am I doing this? Like I mentioned, I feel I have had an imbalance for years. There are extensive symptoms lists out there if you want to find them. My symptoms are varied, but a couple of weeks before I chose to do the cleanse it seems they had gotten worse. My bowel movements became even more irregular and funky, as far as consistency and frequency. I started to have a white coat on my tongue in the morning. And I really wasn't feeling well. I had this sensation in my digestive system of gurgling and fermenting, and I was having gas all the time, regardless of what I ate, it seemed. Moreover, it felt like nothing I put in my body food-wise was the right thing. So, this was enough. I was ready to take the plunge.

I'm just trodding through right now, feeling along my path as I go. Some websites say it only takes a couple of weeks to clear this out. When I check in with myself, I believe it takes much longer. I've heard several times that three months is the best amount of time, and a friend I just spoke to recently said three months is the minimum and six months is optimal. We shall see. Time seems to go by so quickly, perhaps six months is like a drop in the hat.

5/31/13 It is now over a week and a half of my candidiasis cleanse. I wanted to post how I start my day.

Wake up

Water

Liver flush-olive oil, juice of one fresh lemon, three to four cloves of garlic. Blend together and swallow. Garlic is one of the best candida fighters. And doing a liver flush is really good idea because the liver has to work pretty hard while the candida is dying off, and you want it to be in optimal condition. I've also substituted the olive oil with coconut oil. The concoction tastes terrible, but coconut oil is another one of the best natural candida fighters.

Then, to end my day, I drink a bentonite clay/psyllium husk shake in water. This is to help clear out the colon so all the stuff I am detoxing has an exit route. I purposely don't drink this shake within an hour of supplements or foods, because it can inhibit absorption of nutrients.

When I decided to do this cleanse, once I made a decision about how to begin and end my day, the middle stuff didn't seem too daunting. The morning and evening are simple, effective and purposeful. I like that.

6/6/13 I was reading this article, as I like to do when cleansing, to keep me motivated. It discussed bowel movements and how people think it's normal to go once per day or every other day or once per week. I've never considered that healthy, but I know it's many people's experience. This article then mentioned it in terms of meals. Think about how long in between bowel movements, and how many meals you've had during that time. That's how much you're carrying around in your intestines. And if your movement is small, then you're still carrying most of it around. So, that's pretty gross. All that stuff just churning and fermenting and rotting in there.

Just some other interesting tidbits: my skin seems to be breaking out a little. Either that or I have some strange bug bites. My throat has been mildly sore for a few days. I'm pretty tired throughout the day with some bursts of energy. I feel some movement and churning in my colon. I'd like to believe this is candida die-off, since this wasn't happening when I first started the cleanse, but it's been happening since being constipated, and I haven't added any foods that might restart symptoms. My food dreams are changing. I'm barely hungry at all. I'm eating mostly functionally. I guess once the food cravings are gone, the body doesn't need as much as we think it does.

6/13/13 I am in the middle of week four of my candida cleanse. Up until I began week four, I still felt like I was beginning. Now I feel like I'm really into something. I'm just noting how I feel. I've been pretty gasy the last few days. I have upped my supplements, but I have also added in some new foods, so I'm not sure if this is candida die-off or if the foods I'm eating are creating a reaction. I tend to think it is die-off. Time will tell. My cycle is beginning soon, so I've been pretty carnivorous and less strict about the quality of food I've been eating in order to keep ahead of my cravings. Once I begin my cycle, I will get a cleaner again.

I was really surprised during week three and the beginning of this week that my cravings came back with a vengeance. I had a rough three days or so last week where I was freaking out about what I couldn't eat.

 I finally feel clearer in my head. I was feeling pretty foggy throughout the day, and now it seems like I'm thinking normally. Perhaps my body has gotten used to its new energy source now.

Overall, I'm optimistic. I'm one third of the way through this. That makes a huge difference in my thinking around it. And food-wise, it will only get easier from here.

 

 

Back Again

Here I am at this place-it seems I remember it pretty clearly. I guess it was only six months ago that I felt this way, and it took merely one month to feel it again.

I feel filled with mucous. I feel energetically heavy and mildly depressed. It feels like my food is fermenting inside my body-I don't know how else to describe it. For one month I have been kind of eating whatever and drinking whatever. I have consistent pain that has been increasingly reaching more and more parts of my body. This is not how I want to feel.

The Morning After the Day After

Like I said, two days ago I ate whatever at a company potluck. I was still feeling mentally unfocused and unwell yesterday. It was also a challenge not to eat more of the same. Sugar is a drug. There is no doubt in my body. I know I have heard this from many sources, and I am one to have to experience things myself in order to believe them. Then it usually takes several experiences before I live by my beliefs. My body is still in pain too. I feel it the most in my joints. I didn't realize on my cleanse when I stopped being in pain until I ate this or that that brought it back. And the more consistently I eat this or that, the longer the pain resides.

I am eating whole foods now. I like that a lot. There is more permission in it and sanity as well.