40 Day Detox

Waking up feeling not so good

Over the last few days I’ve noticed that I’ve been waking up with a tingly feeling in my fingers. I feel weak and just don’t feel as energetic or as healthy as I have done during the earlier part of this detox when I wasn’t restricting my diet to just liquids during the day. I don’t think what I’m doing right now is healthy – even though I haven’t stuck to it that strictly. I’ve also been struggling to write. Even though I haven’t been exercising so that I can focus on catching up with these blog posts, it seems my brain is finding it hard to concentrate and I feel very tired. Actually I feel malnourished. 

All my readings this morning stayed constant: Weight: 67.7kg; Body Fat: 17.1%; Body Water: 56.9%; Body Muscle: 43.1%. 

Rice milk, quinoa, blueberries and agave nectar

I had a hot lemon juice first thing in the morning followed by a mug of decaf coffee (I didn’t know at this point in time that decaf coffee contained caffeine). I then ate quinoa and blueberries with calcium fortified rice milk. Like other alternatives to cows milk, rice milk also tastes quite nice. It tastes a lot better than soya milk and slightly different to oat milk. I do prefer the taste of oat milk and coconut milk though. Rice milk mixes well with a hot beverage like decaf coffee. Soy milk, oat milk and coconut milk however all start to curdle when put in a hot drink. 

Apple and carrot soup (tastes nothing like apple and carrot juice)

Through the day I snacked on apple and carrot soup and mugs of various caffeine free hot drinks. 

In the evening I went to my parent’s house as my brother is visiting from Dublin. There I snacked on a handful of almonds, a can of sweet corn and an apple from my parents’ garden. They have three apple trees and one plum tree. The plums are really small. I tried one and it was super sweet. I and my wife picked some cooking apples from the garden. When she made the apple and carrot soup earlier this week, you couldn’t taste the apple much. I think if she has another go with these cooking apples she will get much better results. I’ve just done a Google image search and I believe we have picked Bramley apples.

Bramley Apples

Baingan ka Bharta

My dad cooked lamb mince meat with peas and a vegetarian dish called Baingan Ka Bharta. It involves flame grilling a whole aubergine directly on a flame, so that the resulting dish has a delicious smoky flavour and aroma to it. My dad did good. It came out really delicious. I ate it with some salad. Eating food cooked by my dad with my immediate family was a very enjoyable experience. 

Previously when I experimented with vegetarianism, I partly did it for moral reasons and partly experimental spiritual reasons. At the time I perceived the world through a pantheistic perspective and didn’t like the idea of murdering a fellow conscious being and eating its flesh. While I was experimenting with vegetarianism I happened to see animals killed for their meat whilst travelling in the Middle East. These acts of dehumanising brutality re-enforced my disgust for eating the carcass of creatures. After a while however, it’s easy to desensitise yourself when eating meat. It’s easy to see a chicken leg as a delicious piece of food rather than what it is i.e. the butchered leg of a helpless chicken.

Bon Appétit!

When I started this detox, I did not give up meat for moral reasons. I did it for selfish reasons. I reminisced about how good I felt after day 10 of my previous detox. I literally felt fantastic. I was full of energy and felt like skipping down the street rather than just sluggishly walk. I felt psychological and emotional joy at just being. I strongly believe that amazing feeling was partly due to me giving up meat. I was seeking that feeling again. I am well past day ten and passed half way through this forty day detox, and I am afraid I have not regained that amazing feeling. I was hoping to get it again and share the experience with you on this blog. Unfortunately it hasn’t happened. Not yet anyway. But for the first time during this detox when I saw the mince of lamb my family were consuming, I didn’t look upon it with an eye of envy or temptation. I looked at it as what it really was: the mangled flesh of a dead lamb. I imagined it in its raw form rather than the wonderful colour it had with peas and Indian spices. For the first time during this particular detox I felt disgusted at the idea of eating a murdered animal. I am starting to feel as though eating meat would some how make me unclean. 

Dirty meat

I’ll be honest, and confirm that my thoughts about eating meat again after the detox are mixed. If I had regained that amazing feeling I would more than likely stay a vegetarian. However I have not. I also know from previous experience that I have lost fat in the past by eating just vegetables with lean forms of meat like fish while eliminating starchy carbohydrate foods like rice, bread, pasta and potatoes. Though because I am detoxing and not eating meat, in order to get complete proteins from vegan sources I feel like I give myself a better chance by eating rice, buckwheat and quinoa along with legumes and nuts. After the detox I may come back to eating lean meats so that I can get my complete proteins in a lean form and avoid starchy foods altogether and thus accelerate muscle gain and fat loss.

Salmon with salad

I can see the subject of eating meat from many perspectives. Part of me wonders what if vegetarianism and veganism is a more evolved way of looking at the world. Another part of me realises that as humans we have survived all these millions of years and got to where we are because we have a versatile digestive system that is capable of extracting its nutrients from both plant based foods and animal based foods i.e. by being omnivorous. I wonder, if we evolved to just eating foods from plant based foods: could we increase the risk of becoming extinct by decreasing the adaptable abilities of our digestive system? Could developing kindness to animals be a step back in evolution rather than a step forward? Is the ability to be brutal a necessary component of a species that is fittest to survive? I’m not sure, and my mind is not made up. I’m not even sure if looking at things from a competitive evolutionary perspective is the right way of looking at things anyway. Whatever your perspective on this subject I am sure you will be amazed, shocked and perhaps delighted at what is captured in the following video:

After dinner I drank some detox tea (luckily my sister had a few tea bags left) and I snacked on Haldiram’s Spicy Chana Dal. I checked the ingredients and it didn’t seem to break any of my detox rules. All ingredients seemed natural. I also figured the Chana dal would provide me with a source of protein, which I believe my diet was lacking today. I overdid it though. These Haldiram snacks are really addictive once you start. I think I ate half a bag all by myself. I was enjoying the moment, but dreading the impact on my fat content the following morning at the same time. Ah well…

Haldiram's Chana Dal