Traveling Sola

It's currently 5am, and I've been up for two hours already.  I am sitting at a terminal in Pittsburgh Intl Airport, waiting for a plane that will take me to JFK in New York for a long layover before catching another flight to Orlando.  This is my first time traveling alone!

I've long been looking forward to this chance to get out of the Westminster bubble (and I'm not going to lie - escaping the cold has been on my mind since before I booked my ticket).  But truly, I'm traveling more for business than pleasure.  I'm spending tomorrow at the University of Central Florida to meet graduate students and faculty.

My mother and I drove down to Maryland on Sunday and spent the day exploring D.C.  We then spent the night in a hotel and visited the University of Maryland the next day.  These college visits harken back to our time spent together four years ago, when I was deciding where to spend my four years after high school graduation.

This time of exploration and uncertainty is familiar, but also very different.  I spent my undergraduate years an hour from home, but this is a chance for me to get out of Western PA and become more independent.  Another difference is that I'm not totally alone in this either - instead, I'll have my best friend by my side.  In a way, this is a beautiful thing because I don't have to fear facing the unknown by myself.  On the other hand, it is very hard to plan our futures together!  Tony is applying to jobs while I'm applying to graduate schools.  We're still waiting to see where we'll be living, and we're hoping that our fates align, and we end up both following our dreams... in the same place.  There are lots of questions that we can't answer, and decisions that haven't yet been made.  We graduate in about a month and a half, and hopefully by then we'll know more.

Until then, we wait.

Detox Day 3

Day three was a day of apprehension.  By the time this day rolled around, we were used to our new diets, but anxious for the next day of liberation.  Breakfast was green and tasted like plants, but I managed to drink half of it.

By the time evening rolled around, we could smell sweet victory.  The afternoon juice wasn't bad - definitely my favorite out of all, but who's to say it was actually tasty, or if it just seemed so after all the nasty beverages?  It was made of pineapple, carrots, and ginger.

Our last veggie drink of the detox is pictured to the left - broccoli, spinach, apples, and ginger.  Want to know a secret?  It was horrible.  Tony and I watched each other as we took turns sipping, gagging, and wincing. 

To add to the inhumanity, we were making oreo balls for the bake sale at the school where I am student teaching... AND WE COULDN'T LICK THE CHOCOLATE OFF OF OUR FINGERS.  It was pure torture.  How unnatural and anti-instinctive is it to wash melted chocolate off of your hands at the sink?  After smelling all of the chocolatey goodness, we couldn't choke down the broccoli drink.  I felt guilty dumping it, so I put it in the fridge pretending that my roommates might want some.  They won't.

We finished our detox with homemade almond milk before bed.  The nut milks were pretty good, and we had two a day throughout the detox.  It was a fair way to end the cleanse, even if we kind of cheated by not drinking ALL of what we made... But truly, we didn't eat a thing - didn't even chew gum or mints - throughout the whole process, so I call that a victory.

Detox Day 2

Day two was easier than day one.  It may have been that our bodies were adjusted, or that we felt like we were making progress, or that we were just keeping our mind off of our lack of food.  We were busy in class or at work or at school.

During the evening, we had to make another avocado drink… The avocados were slightly more ripened, but barely.  Neither of us could choke down the entire smoothie.  We drank maybe half.  It was terrible.

We spent the rest of the night preparing our “food” for the next day.  Without a juicer, this detox is really difficult.  Most of the drinks are juices, not smoothies, so we have to puree them in the blender and then strain them.  It took us probably three hours each night to prepare for the next day, with all the washing, peeling, chopping, blending, and straining.  Also, the detox would be much easier for me if I was still taking college classes instead of student teaching.  I’m away all day, so I have to bring my drinks with me.  Finally, because I go to bed early, I spend almost my entire night preparing my meals when I should be grading tests or working on lesson plans.

I think that this detox is a good experience; we will benefit from it for certain.  All I know is, we are so excited that we’re almost at day three.

Detox Day 1

Buying the ingredients for the entire detox was an experience.  All together, it cost Tony and I about $150, which seemed like crazy at first.  But then we thought about it: $75/person for three days = $25/day... which is about the same as you'd spend for one meal if you went out to dinner.  Plus, it's all produce and nuts, which are HEALTHY expensive food.  For a once in a while thing, it seems fair to me.


The detox plan is all provided in a book by Dr. Woodson Merrell, simply entitled "The Detox Prescription."  It gives different types of plans as well as the science behind nutrition and healthy eating.  I bought it on my Kindle for only about $11.

Choking down my green breakfast :(

Well, let's get down to it.  We started the day with a green smoothie for breakfast: spinach, lime, cucumber, and avocado.  Lamentably, the avocados we had bought were nowhere close to ripened.  They were rock hard.  So when we made out smoothie, there were chunks of almost crunchy avocado throughout.  It was TERRIBLE.  I would highly recommend using ripened avocados, if you're going to try it out.  The drink wasn't good, but we choked it down, and continued throughout the morning combating cucumber burps.

Around noon, we made homemade almond milk.  It's not bad!  It was a mess to make, though.

Already, I'm craving pizza, and Tony is planning out what we'll eat for dinner on Wednesday.

Samedi Gras

My roommates and I have talked about doing a detox for a few weeks now, but there was always some reason not to.  Truthfully, they were usually good reasons.  First, Katherine was on a special diet for her post-cancer therapy.  And then it was my birthday.  Priorities, people.

 

Honestly, it can be really hard to be on the same schedule as your roommates when you’re all busy college students.  We hardly have time to sit down together for dinner once a week.  Recently, though, Tony and I were discussing the cleanse anew and decided, what better time than before spring break?

I had heard about “The Detox Prescription” for the first time when I watched Dr. Oz (for the first and only time… Don’t judge.).  It sounded really interesting to me, because it detoxifies the body and packs all the essential nutrients into three short days.  This quick ‘diet’ consists only of smoothies, juices, and milks – it’s all liquid.

Tony and I decided to start this Sunday and finish on (ironically) Fat Tuesday.  For us, then, Saturday was our Mardi Gras – we snacked all day, went to a late lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant, and had a meal of only chocolate brownie ice cream.

We spent the evening washing, peeling, chopping, and de-seeding all of the ingredients for tomorrow’s first day of the cleanse.  Tonight, though, we’re finishing off our "Samedi Gras" right: down at the fraternity house.  Tomorrow, we’ll be ready to detoxify.