Virtual Hyperbole

Today is the last day of my detox diet. That makes tomorrow the first day of the rest of my life. Honestly, I wouldn't have stuck this out all 13 days if I hadn't publically said that I would. I wish it had been a 9-day detox. It's not that it's been difficult to go without regular food - not since day 3, really. However, I have not received any noticable benefit in the past several days, apart from some more weight loss. My overriding feelings at this point are of utter boredom and moderate annoyance. I am receiving nourishment, but no joy. Yesterday's switch to raw veggies & fruits provided some minor excitement, but I long to be truly sated. I'm glad I did it. I'd even do it again, possibly. No way in hell for 13 days, but maybe for 3-5 every once in awhile to clear my system out. Conceptually, I'm thrilled that my body's clean and that I'm starting from a clear slate, and I'm eager to monitor how I react to my standard fare. Pragmatic...

My friend JJ has a post over at his place that is well worth checking out. I'll do it no justice by trying to capsulize it here, but it's about sexism and hatred and fear. It's wonderful, and I'm still chewing on it and untangling my thoughts about it.

11 days down, 2 days to go. Tomorrow, I will actually get to chew food for the first time in 12 days. It's like Christmas - I want to go to bed early so that morning gets here sooner. Imagine what I'm going to feel like on Thursday night! My brain may shut down. I think the first thing I'll do upon waking on Friday is toast some bread. Sprouted whole wheat bread. With just a little organic honey. Mmmm ... I have been yearning for toast for days now. Oh my god. My brain IS going to shut down. For sure. Holy crap, I can't wait. (You can't hear me, but I just giggled maniacally.)

Monkey decided on Saturday to stop his detox as of today. He went 9 days, and lost 10 pounds and change. YAY MONKEY! Here's his explanation & his reaction to the detox: Thanks homies for putting up with my detox "blog" - This, alas, will be my last entry... it's the 9th day and I've went from 181.6 to 171.6 pounds and will probably lose one more lb. by tommorrow morning, but I'm pulling the plug after today. We haven't even opened or broken into my box of product, so Peggy and I will return it and split the money. We're both fuckin' sick to death of those goddamn powder feedings. She plans on continuing, but I'm happily putting up my gloves. I don't feel any failure; it's clear I have the willpower to finish, just not the reason or drive. EVERYONE seemed to suggest that after day 4 or 5, you'd feel better and have increased energy. This was just not the case for me; I feel fine, but the mind-numbingly DULL grind of clean living ...

My life was normal, okay. Happy even. I had been tagged for nary a meme. I didn't know what I was missing!! Now I've got 2 on my plate! TWO! I am beside myself with anxiety and glee. Memes are like the in-crowd. You're delighted they even noticed you, but now you have to make sure you wear make-up everyday and that your shoes are perfect and that you never have a booger EVER. Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls knows what I'm talking about. The first meme comes from Tina over at The Gallivanting Monkey : I ask you to tell us 3 fantasies about yourself if you were a total, unbelievable success. Like the hero of all future reunions. This meme made me realize that my dreams are humble but fierce. Here we go ... I have the courage & resources to act in alignment with my beliefs. ALL THE TIME. I have built, decorated and furnished a home as green as humanly possible, with only exactly as much space as we need. I clean it all myself (again, green) because I like to clean and it...

I feel good. I'm over the hump, and now it's just a test of wills. I know I can make it through. But will I? There's no chance of me cheating; I don't even feel the need. However, there is a real chance of me simply choosing to stop early. It's not about hunger, and it's not about being a slave to food. It's about the pure sensual, physical, social, romantic joy of eating. Texture, taste, temperature. The contrast & compliment of varied flavors. I really, truly miss it. It's not so much the food, it's the eating. The biggest reason keeping me from quitting early? Vanity, pride, the fact I won't be able to claim that I really did it. I think I'll do it. At this point - why not, right?

As I highlighted in this post , I tend to think of quantifiable amounts in fractions. Yesterday I hit the 1/3 mark, and by the end of tomorrow I will be over 1/2 of the way through this g-d trial of will. Once I hit a fraction that seems substantial and not simply depressing (like day 1 being 1/13 - that’s just sad), I feel ridiculously more comfortable. It seems manageable. I feel ... well, I feel okay. Pretty good. I’m not hungry. I’m hardly getting cravings anymore. Except for the fact that I am not eating actual meals, I feel fairly normal. I’m able to get through work with no problem. I’m able to go to my regular workouts with Cody (although without my usual verve, and he’s altered them a bit to support the detox). But I am still waiting for the surge of energy, the amazing clarity, the euphoria that everyone talks about. It’s like a freakin’ holy grail. I mean, I didn’t really do this to feel normal, ya know? I could have gotten "normal" by not doing a damn ...

This is hard. Really hard. Day 2 sucked ass. I woke up with that same headache, except a little worse. It diminished a little as I had the first "feeding" (as Monkey calls it, which totally makes me giggle). We distracted ourselves with a movie, and then went to see an apartment for rent down the block. The whole time I kinda feel like shit, but I try (and mostly fail) to have a good attitude and pretend that I can tell I'm rounding a corner. It makes it all the worse that I chose to do this. I actually start to get angry at myself for committing to something so ridiculous. It feels ludicrous, but I am trapped because I told so many people, I'm blogging about it, and I don't want to be a quitter. Which is, of course, why I told so many people & am blogging about it -- so that I wouldn't let myself off that easy. So far it's working. After Monkey left for work yesterday, I was in a bad place. And not just mentally, which is what it had been up to then. ...

I started a 2-week detox diet today, kind of a hard-core one. Monkey's doing it with me (thank god). I am chronicling it over here at my other blog, if you care to read about how it's going and, more specifically, what I'm going through. I've not done anything like this before, ever. I was nervous-excited before I started, but I'm done with that. Now I've got my head down ... it's a buzz-saw at crunch time, people. In other news, I'm going to finally finish my road trip journal entries from last summer. I can't exactly remember why I stopped, but I only cleaned up & posted my notes through July 14th, so I've got about 1/2-month's worth to go. I also need to post about Hawai'i. DAMN! Where have I been? Get on it, PEGGY! Well, enjoy these pics in the meantime. I'm hungry.

Before our detox (naked in the morning after "relieving ourselves" but before eating or drinking anything): Monkey = 181 lbs. Me = 148 lbs. ... we'll see what happens as we go. Today, I have had frequent ... well, not really cravings. They aren't focused enough to be cravings. More like urges - half-formed thoughts of what I might decide to eat before I come to my senses and remember that I won't be eating at all. The only challenging part about today (so far) is trying to stay in the moment. I start to get a little crazy when I think about not eating for 2 whole weeks. I mean, who am I kidding?! I freakin' love to eat. Why in the world would I choose to do this detox? I have gone mad! I start to hyperventilate a little, and then I calm down and realize I only need to concentrate on the next 2 hours. I expect that to get worse over the next 2 days, and then taper off. It will be my greatest obstacle, I think. I haven't felt actual hunger at all. These drin...

Hey y'all, I started a detox! I am on day 1 and I don't have much to say about it yet, except to explain the basic concept, so you can get an idea. It's a regulated all-liquid diet. There are 7 different powders and they're mixed with 8-12 oz. of water or non-dairy milk. One every 2-3 hours, 7 times a day, for 14 days. The powders are all made from whole foods (vegetables, fruits, berries, nuts, seeds, grains, blah blah blah), and each of the 7 is designed to focus on a different body systems (lymphatic & circulatory, endocrine & reprodutive, nervous, digestive, muscular skeletal, respiratory, and finally - whole body). The main focus for me is an overall body detox to give me a quick & good baseline for future eating habits. I do expect to lose weight, and that certainly won't make me sad, but that's not my intent, that's just the icing on the cake. (Which, of course, is forbidden on this diet.) My sweetheart (Monkey) is doing it with me, and th...

So there it is. Me in my bikini. Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess, depending on your point of view), you will not get to see the whole thing. Not on purpose, I just didn't get any pictures of it. And that's because, surprisngly, I hardly wore it. We spent most of our time NOT laying around beaches but rather hiking or swimming in surf a bit too rough for convenient bikini wear. The one beach, Kehena, where I would have worn it all the time was a 1/2-mile from our cottage - it became "our" beach. But it turns out that clothing was not needed at this gorgeous black sand beach populated with free-spirited locals. And when in Rome ...

Thank you, SLOG , for cross-posting this list of commonly misused words . Grammar pedants (you know who you are) will sigh in agonized relief and pound righteously on their desks in agreement. For my part, I will ask the age-old question: Should the dictionary & grammar rules define usage or vice versa? Here's a fun game: Go down the list & count up the number of mistakes you've been making for god-knows-how-long * . No cheating (even to yourself)! *At least according to this list. Which I'm guessing is arguably not definitive.

Puking (due to drinking too much). Preferably: before you go to bed? the next morning upon waking up or soon thereafter?