I woke up with pain in my bottom jaw and teeth in one of the areas it had got fractured in September last year. I wasn’t sure what was wrong. At first I wondered if I may have been gritting my teeth in my sleep. The uncomfortable feeling stayed through the day and evening. While looking into reported effects of detoxing I came across a perspective that says: during stage three (day 8 to 15) of a detox, old wounds can feel painful again. It is said that this is due to the body healing that area properly, as during a detox, the body runs at an optimum healing capacity. When the healing took place originally, it was done with the nutrients and capabilities my body had, based on the lifestyle and nutrition I was providing it with then. With the new improved nutrition and less toxic body it is said that the body is able to revisit the old wound and heal it properly. Whether my pain in my jaw and teeth and my chest feeling filled with fluids is just a coincidence, I don’t know. But it is interesting to see that what I am experiencing is correlating with what has been recorded by people who have previously undergone detox regimes.
I did the second part of my experiment by repeating the same exercises completed the night before but this time first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. I weighed myself before and after completing two laps of the park (took me 1 hour 48 seconds) and doing cardio on the cross trainer for 11 min11 sec. My readings before were: Weight: 69.2kg; BF: 17.9% BW: 56.4% BM: 42.7%. After the exercise my readings were: Weight: 69.2kg BF: 17.7% BW: 56.5% BM: 42.8%. That’s a fat reduction of 0.2% and a muscle increase of 0.1%. This is some useful evidence in favour of the idea that doing cardio on an empty stomach can burn fat stores as long as you don’t over do it, which will lead to muscle burning too. I will continue to monitor my weight and do follow up experiments with shorter but more vigorous forms of cardio to see which approach will give the optimum results for my body.
Muesli, raspberries, blueberries, almonds and Agave Nectar
For breakfast I had a hot fresh lemon juice followed by protein shake. An hour or so later I had low fat yogurt with muesli, blueberries, raspberries and the last of the roasted almonds with a drizzle of low GI Agave Nectar.
For lunch I had green lentils with coleslaw and a slice of wholemeal bread with peanut butter.
A couple of hours later I did the second part of my workout. Apart from my first set of lat pull downs in which I did 200 reps, the rest of my workout was not as good as previous days. This may have been partly due to the hot weather, or possibly because I had divided my workout into two and this was the second part (normally I would do resistance first followed by the 2 laps). After my resistance training I did an extra 30 min on the cross trainer.
Post workout I drank carrot juice and a protein shake.
Corn on the cob
A few hours later I ate corn on the cob. Shortly after it was followed up with cottage cheese with salad, coleslaw and houmous. The rest of the evening I drank detox teas.
For breakfast I had a fresh lemon hot drink and muesli with blueberries, blackberries and almonds.
Green lentils, almonds and lemon zest
Beetroot juice
For lunch I had wholemeal couscous with green lentil curry, almonds and lemon zest with a vegetable juice (beetroot, cucumber, carrot, celery, ginger).
We were running out of food so I went to Sainsbury’s. I bought Sainsbury’s Taste the difference soft wholemeal multiseeded batch, its only 3p more than the white bread version. It doesn’t taste as nice as the white version though. Maybe I just need to get used to wholemeal bread.
Trash all breads and starchy carbs?
After all the confusion with breads last week, my initial findings led me to believe the best bread is wholemeal bread. While writing this I thought I’d check the Glycaemic Index (GI) of breads. White bread, as expected, has a high GI of 70. Wholemeal bread has a GI of 69. 69! That’s just one GI less than white bread! And all this time I thought wholemeal bread was way healthier than white bread. Granted, because it’s less processed, wholemeal bread has more nutrients in it. However its effect on insulin levels is virtually no different than white bread. If you eat bread, white or wholemeal your insulin level will shoot up. If your body doesn’t work well with insulin, e.g. you’re diabetic or insulin resistant then it seems eating either is probably a bad idea! From past experience I have personally noticed that my waistline does not respond well to bread. I had hoped wholemeal was going to be different. At this point it seemed reasonable to me, that if you’re going to indulge in bread you may as well just take the one that you like the taste of as there is only one GI difference between white and wholemeal bread. Maybe we should just trash all bread!
Holy Grail
Wholey Grain
Stop! The search for healthy bread is really like the search for the Holy Grail. It’s a long journey with many twists and turns. There are many deceptive imposters which pretend to be the real deal when they are not. So I have continued to search and here is what I have found.
The Wholey Grain of Breads? Burgen Soy Lin Low GI Bread
Stone ground whole wheat bread tends to have lower GI values than just ordinary wholemeal bread. If it’s got whole seeds and nuts in it as well, then it’s even better. For example Cranks Organic Honey & Sunflower (available at Sainsburys) is made from stoneground (not stonebaked!) wholemeal bread and has sunflower seeds in it. I’m not sure what its Glycaemic Index is though.
Here are some other low-medium GI breads to consider.
Food: Pumpernickel Bread, Glycemic Index: 41, Glycemic Index Rating: Low
Food: Buckwheat Bread, Glycemic Index: 47, Glycemic Index Rating: Low
Food: Oatbran Bread, Glycemic Index: 47, Glycemic Index Rating: Low
Food: Wheat Bread, Glycemic Index: 53, Glycemic Index Rating: Low
Food: Pita Bread, Glycemic Index: 57, Glycemic Index Rating: Medium
Food: Rye Bread (Whole Wheat), Glycemic Index: 58, Glycemic Index Rating: Medium
It looks like another trip to the grocers is due to find myself a “Wholey Grain.” I’ll let you know in due course if I have any luck!
I started an experiment today to compare the effects of working out whilst being fuelled versus working out on an empty stomach. I limited the experiment to cardio. For today’s workout I did the two laps in 58:25 and cross trainer for 11 min 11 sec. I weighed myself immediately before and immediately after the workout. I did the workout in the evening, an hour or so after eating. My readings stayed constant at: Weight: 69.6kg; BF: 18.0%; BW: 56.3% and BM: 42.6%. Nothing changed immediately after the workout. The rest of the experiment will be conducted tomorrow morning.
I noticed that I still had some problems with liquid in my lungs. On my way to the park I was feeling really good and positive. However by the time I finished I noticed my mood had swung completely the other way. I was grumpy and clumsy when I got home (spilled carrot juice all over our new kitchen units). Mood swings are apparently a common experience during a detox.
Carrot juice
When I got home I had a carrot juice and protein shake. For my evening meal I had corn on the cob, cottage cheese and some celery.
Checking my weight, body fat, water and muscle percentages first thing in the morning is like turning up at school results week to find out my exam results. There’s a level of excitement and nervousness about it. After all the hard work I put into the workout the day before I wonder if I let myself down by eating too much, or not eating properly. Recording my progress on a daily basis has been a huge help in motivation and understanding how my body responds to certain foods and exercises. As well as body stats, recording how many reps I did a certain exercise; how long it took me to walk two laps around Valentines Park; and how long I did cardio on the cross trainer motivate me to push harder and beat previous records. By recording and trying to push myself further beyond previous personal records I can insure that I am progressing with my goals.
Coke
I have worked out in the past without recording what I have been doing each session and I have found my motivation during each session as well as the motivation to stick with it overall hit and miss. By recording what I achieve and how my body responds I am finding myself in a position to experiment and see what works best for me. We are all different with different body types. Some of us can eat crap; drink Coca Cola as though it were breast milk to a newborn baby, yet stay skinny, whilst some of us (me) can no longer fit in our jeans after two days of eating the same as the skinny person who is addicted to coke.
So far I have not found the food aspect of this detox hard. As long I have a variety of nutritious food in the flat at all times and don’t go out hungry I do fine walking past takeaway shops and curry houses no problem. If I go out hungry however, then it’s a different story! Within days of starting the detox, I noticed my sense of smell intensify. I can smell bad smells like body odour more intensely and I can smell people’s cologne a mile away. If they come close (within say 5 metres), their scent, good or bad can be overwhelming! If it’s really strong it hits me like a wave and nearly knocks me off my feet. So, naturally, this means walking past a place that’s selling delicious food whilst hungry can be very tempting.
Yeh you
Having a more enhanced sense of smell is actually quite an interesting experience. Normally I would just walk around in my own head or at most explore my surroundings visually. Now, on top of my visual perception, my sense of smell is far more pronounced. I am literally walking around the streets of East London experiencing them olfactorily. I’ll sit next to a homeless unbathed person on a bus and it would seem as though I am sat next to a rotting corpse. I’ll walk past a 12 year old Romanian gypsy bad boy with a silver earring and a silver chain and smell his Jean Paul Gaultier aftershave ten metres away. As he walks towards me and crosses me the scent grows into a pungent tsunami wave overwhelming me, making me cough as I inhale it through my mouth and nose into my lungs. I’ll cough to desperately gasp for air. I’ll be ten metres behind a chubby English girl in a tracksuit smoking a fag and her potential lung cancer feels contagious as I inadvertently take in her smoke. Though I am a smoker, who, prior to the detox was smoking a few everyday, whilst detoxing, the smell of cigarette smoke smells like an unattractive cancerous poison. I feel like the main character in the movie Perfume.
Speaking of lungs I’ve started to notice my chest feeling clogged up with some sort of liquid. At first I was a bit disappointed as I’m expecting to feel fantastic as a result of this detox. It’s day 10 and last time I did a detox I felt fantastic at day 10. That has not happened for me yet. After looking into the effects of detoxing I’ve discovered this symptom is a normal response to detoxification.
In the morning I went out and fetched some lemons. I was tempted by the aroma of Subway again and decided to buy a wholemeal salad sandwich. As I was running out of dairy products in the flat I said yes to the offer to put cheese in the sandwich. I ate the sandwich with a hot lemon juice drink when I returned home.
Chinese rice with Tofu and Almonds
Green lentil curry
For lunch my wife made delicious Chinese rice with brown rice, soy sauce, sesame seed oil, peas, sweet corn, carrots, tofu and almonds. The brown rice, almonds and tofu provided complimentary forms of protein. I felt hungry again a few hours later and ate the Chinese rice with a green lentil curry my wife made. I added almonds and a garnish of fresh lemon zest which made it taste even better!
I went out for my workout quite late again. I had a fantastic workout hitting 160 lat pull downs for my first set and beating my 2 lap record by 1 min 17 seconds by completing them in 57 min 2 sec. I also extended my cross trainer cardio to 30 minutes for the first time.
Bat
There are definitely bats in Valentines Park, Ilford. I was enjoying my cardio until 20 minutes into it a bat flew with a metre of my head! For a few minutes I was wondering if I had the wrong decision in wearing a red t-shirt. I wondered if bats are attracted to red the same as bulls are or because it’s the colour of blood! Despite the bats I continued training for the full 30 minutes.
Why did the rat cross the road?
The journey home was eventful. I was feeling good walking home until I came across a mouse about to cross my path, but then it turned 180 degrees and hid behind a bus stand I had to walk past. If that wasn’t bad enough to give me the creeps, about 5 metres further on I had an awkward moment with a rat. You know when you’re walking down the street, and then someone needs to cross your path and walk into, say, a shop to your left. Neither of you are sure who should go first. You both try to offer the way to the other, or, you both try to go through yourself while you make the other wait. Well this dilemma happened between me and this rat. I just dodged stepping on the mouse, and then this rat wanted to cross my path. In my mind I was like “Before you sir rat” and I waved him through. He was in two minds too as if he was giving me way. Then when he realised I was letting him go through he crossed the path into the park, where he joined who I assume were three of his pals waiting for him to cross the road to them. As I took a few more steps further another rat darted across the path in front of me. Bloody selfish rodent! He was nowhere near as considerate as the other fella! After playing hopscotch with the mouse and rats and without catching Weil’s disease, I made it safely back home.
At home I had a fresh vegetable juice (cucumber, beetroot, celery, carrot and ginger root) and protein shake. For my evening meal I had a corn on the cob and then green lentils with almonds and lemon zest.
Carrot, beetroot, celery, ginger root and cucumber (forgot to include in photo!) ready for juicing
