Conclusions After “Cleansing” Part 2

One of the recipes we discovered, one of our favorites indeed: Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers. Delicious! Next time I’m going to add spinach to the filling just for fun.

Yep, I’m still rambling on about my cleanse. I still have more to say on the subject. I’m also still trying to distract myself from obsessing about sad things by obsessing about more trivial things, like food. So here I go again.

My last post included all the pros I could come up with about eating the way we have been. This post will be a bit more negative and list some of the cons, because there certainly were a few.

Let’s get right to it…

…the cons…

1- Eating this way is incredibly time consuming. I love and adore vegetables, but the truth is, the little buggers are labor intensive. If you’re someone that doesn’t have lots of time to spend in the kitchen or maybe someone who doesn’t like to spend lots of time in the kitchen, this way of eating would be especially challenging. It is true that I’m relatively new at this, and I’m sure the longer I do it, the faster I’ll get at it (it is getting easier), but this last month I spent more time in the kitchen than I ever have before. There were days when I would literally have to drag myself to the kitchen to make yet another meal. I was so sick of cooking! About 2/3’s of the way through the month, I told Mike I’d kill to go out and get a cheese burger, not because I necessarily wanted a cheese burger, but just because I wouldn’t have to cook it myself.

Another time consuming aspect of this is the planning. Lots of planning is required to eat this way. I would go so far as to say, if you don’t plan you won’t be able to do it. If you don’t know what your going to eat, and you don’t have all the ingredients right there and ready to prepare, you’ll just grab for the easiest thing and that isn’t always an apple I’m afraid. I planned a weeks worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and then shopped on Saturday for all the ingredients.

(Although, if I sit and think about it, maybe the planning aspect could be on the pros list as well? Planning meals was also a good thing, even though it was lots of work).

2- Eating this way is costly! $$$$$ Keep in mind that I do not have a monthly grocery total from our previous way of eating for comparison, but we spent quiet a bit on groceries this month. At least it felt like much more than usual. Granted, we hardly ate out, which is something we usually do frequently, so that saved us some money; but still…this little cleanse wasn’t cheap. I heard an argument once that stated that even though eating healthy might be a bit more expensive in the short run, it will save you money on medical bills in the long run. I think maybe there is something to that, although I don’t have any specific numbers to prove it. It makes me a little angry that the society in which we live sets us up to fail when it comes to eating for health. It seems that everything cheap and convenient is bad for you.

3- No, we didn’t eat out much, but when we wanted to eat out it proved quiet challenging. There are a few local restaurants that serve healthy, whole food without lots of added sugar and such, but not many. If eating like this becomes more of a way of life, eating out will have to be limited to just once in awhile, maybe for special occasions or something.

4- Kids! If you have kids, eating like this as a whole family is almost impossible. I know there are kids out there somewhere in the universe that eat all kinds of healthy and different foods, but I don’t know any. They certainly don’t live in my house. This month (and because it was only for a month) Mike I would usually make something separate for the kids, then eat our stuffed peppers and kale salad on our own. I don’t like doing this because I’m a believer in eating together as a bonding experience, and I’m also not too keen on making two separate meals each night. One of the things I’m trying to figure out now is how to incorporate all the good things about eating right, and making it practical for our family.

(One thing I did like though, was that even though the kids weren’t always willing to eat the things we were eating, they were at least exposed to many different things and saw us enjoying them. Setting an example can’t be a bad thing).

5- If you’re strict about your eating, social situations can be kind of a drag. Believe me, when you’re sitting in a room full of people who are enjoying pizza, chips, cookies and cake, and you’re sitting there alone eating green salad and baby carrots (not trying to draw attention to yourself), people don’t take well to you. I know because I’ve been one of those people who was really annoyed by the healthy eaters in the room. They made me feel guilty because I wasn’t eating healthy and I resented them for that, even though I knew it was my own choice. It just feels more comfortable to be doing what everyone else in the group is doing. It’s not fun to feel like the party pooper, or the self righteous health fanatic.  Also…I like pizza, chips, cookies and cake!

6- I’m a pretty firm believer in the concept of Intuitive Eating and this particular program did not allow for that entirely. I truly believe that telling yourself you can’t have something (like desserts) can mess with a person’s healthy relationship with food. I also believe that people should be able to enjoy all types of food in moderation and that pleasure should be a big part of any person’s eating experience. This is why I don’t believe in diets or restrictive eating programs that tell you what you can and cannot eat. They usually end up back-firing. Before I decided to go on this cleanse I thought about these issues very seriously and how doing this program would interfere with all my hard work over the years to become a better intuitive eater. Now I’m even more confused about how to mesh all of my new findings (considering all the benefits of restricting unhealthy foods that I listed in the last post) and my beliefs about eating all together. I’m determined to figure it out though, and I will. I know the secret is balance and I believe that having this experience will indeed help me to become more balanced in my approach to food.

One more thing regarding sugar…

Saturday was the last night of the cleanse and Mike and I went to see Brian Regan (super funny show) with our friend Brandon. Afterwards we went out to dinner to one of our favorite restaurants in Salt Lake. The menu there provided lots of healthy options, but since it was the last day of the cleanse we decided to celebrate and eat whatever we desired. Along with my mostly healthy meal I had a delicious sweet lime-aid (that I’m sure was loaded with sugar) a couple of soft, round pieces of white pita bread to dip in my hummus, and for dessert, we all shared a decent sized piece of baklava.

Here’s the thing…we weren’t ten minutes out of the restaurant when I started feeling terribly sick. My head was pounding and spinning, my muscles ached, I felt nauseous and weak. It was awful! (Mike also reported the same reaction, but not as dramatically) As soon as we got home I changed in to my pajamas and crawled into bed. I stayed there for the rest of the night with the covers pulled over my head. It was quiet the eye opening experience. I’d never felt anything like it, and I know it was the effects of reintroducing copious amounts of sugar back into my system so suddenly. 

I was telling my friend Michelle about the experience the next day. She said, “Well that should teach you never to go off sugar again!” She makes an interesting point. If you keep refined sugar in your system you most likely won’t have terrible experiences like I did Saturday night, but it was still pretty startling to see how much of an effect the sugar had on my body and how quickly it worked it’s evil magic. I know it’s not practical to commit to a life without eating refined sugar (and I wouldn’t really even want to), but I do know for certain there will be much less of it in my daily life from here on out. If that’s the only thing I took away from this month long experience, it was worth it.

p.s. We’ve added gluten, and small amounts of dairy back into our diet and these things have not had the same effect that the sugar did on my system. Pretty sure sugar is at the root of most of the problems I have with my body not functioning at it’s best. Bummer too, because sugar is yummy and I like it a lot.