The Week After

The following days have been not that much different in terms of diet to the preceding four, I have however relaxed the rigour. It feels good to not be so intently concious of every food label I pick up.
I have eaten some fruit, but only English varieties like apples, pears and bilberries and a touch of honey which tasted way too sweet. I am eating some savoury foods like mayonnaise in moderation but have had no refined sugars in things such as cake, chocolate or biscuits. Avoiding these gluten free treats is quite an epic achievement for me.
Apart from the wedding day meal I have had half a square of chilli chocolate and no more. I can't face fizzy drinks at all and haven't actually wanted fruit juice at all, sticking to sparkling water in the pub and coconut water instead which is really refreshing and very low in natural sugars. I have had two glasses of elderberry wine which was gorgeous and pretty funny as I am now a complete lightweight, but otherwise I don't feel drawn to booze particularly. My digestion has been OK but its hard to say at this stage if the detox has truly worked or not. I have been living back where I was last year for 2 weeks and the diet there never agreed with me, so I'm waiting for things to settle and then see. I need to go back to see Ewa and get an update on what's improved if anything. If it really hasn't shifted, and I don't honestly expect a miracle cure, then another tack will have to be followed. I definiteley believe though that overeating any one thing for me is fatal. I realise that I have been overeating sugar for years and it has done me no good. I can bring it back in my diet now but aim to not actively seek it out. If I do this I will probably get the right amount. I need to see food now more as nourishment and not a source of oral pleasure primarily. I also recognise that sweet treats and snacking plugs emotional gaps rather than actually give my body what it needs. The key is certainly to enjoy my food and not get obsessed by diet and I'm hoping to be housed pretty soon and stop moving around as this has made planning and eating generally much harder. So there will be some more updates on the days after and thanks again to everyone for words of encouragement and interesting insights shared. 

Days 25 - 30 The Final Chapter.......Or is it?..................

Days 25 - 30
I am once again rolling five days' experience into a block, partly due to my stone age laptop's interface with this neolithic wi-fi and also because you probably don't need a blow by blow account of every single day.
I am surprised to feel at this stage of the game some peaks and troughs of tiredness still. I believe this is chiefly governed by how much water I drink and not maintaining protein levels properly. I stress that this is what works for me, and you may be different. I already have certain food intolerances which make my diet convoluted at times. I have taken to carrying bags of nuts, almonds, cashews and walnuts mainly, around with me and rotating which ones I eat each day. I have been advised to avoid "mould" nuts and all dried fruits as "mould" carrying food stuffs but I have to be honest and say I am not entirely sure what this means. Something may be lost in translation from the Polish. I hope that the sugar detox may even improve my intolerancesin the longer term. Yeeha.
I now have a confession to make and am including it as an interesting (if only to me) insight into my own relationship with habits, cravings and my pleasure centres in my brain. About 10 days into this detox I had a tobacco relapse and have been smoking on and off throughout. Nooooooooooo! I hear you squeak. How unhealthy. How un-detoxy-acceptable in a health kind of a way. Yessssssssssss. I hear you and I will be getting back off them pronto. I can only put this down to a teenagery kind of a sulk about not having any "treat" (sweet) foods and feeling like I need to indulge a part of me that I can't put my finger on. The detox has made me realise that I don't need to indulge parts of me every bloomin day and what am I trying to comfort by doing that anyway? Its a misnoma as its not solving anything, comforting long term or nourishing my body to actually feel well. Going to stuff sugary snacks or slosh back wine or toot on a fag are all short term pleasure hits with no real substance. We all know this anyway. I am trying to take a longer term vision with food, looking at it over whole days or even weeks now to see if I can get the right nutrition in. I hasten to add I am not achieving this. However looking beyond "the next meal" can help to maintain energy over longer periods and make me feel more able to take on the day. At 36 I recognise and feel that I do not have the juice I had at 26 and better food stuffs will just help me truck on more efficiently without being frustrated at this. My energy levels can be very variable and bottom out sometimes so keeping things steady is important to me. Knocking out sugar, despite mid afternoon crashes from time to time, has given me a much steadier and more constant energy available throughout the day. The reason that I mention the smoking relapse is that normally when I do this it puts me back on a (double stupid points here) rota with my asthma inhaler. Over these three weeks I have not used it once despite smoking. It is summer and warm and dry, in the damp of winter it is always worse. I am not using this as carte blanche to now become a professional smoker, yet I cannot help but feel that something is happening regarding sugar here. Without sugar inhaler unnecessary. Why is this? The stomach and the lungs are linked in terms of wellbeing and problems in one area can fire off problems in another. What really are the knock on effects of sugar on other areas of the body? Can it really cause poorer breathing in an asthmatic or is that just crazy talk?
The final day of my detox was my friend's wedding and I had already decided to enjoy the wedding meal and one or two drinks. The savoury lunch tasted amazing as I had salad dressing and a carrot and rice concoction with raisins for the first time in a while. A friend made a lemon polenta cake and it was gluten free, so I cut a piece in half and caved in to that with a few strawberries. The hand fasting also finished with a glass of elderflower fizz.The glass of bubbles came first in the day's proceedings and did taste fantastic, the second half glass just tasted sweet and underwhelming. Throughout the day I felt up and down and kept dashing to the kitchen for water. I have drunk a lot of water throughout the detox and it has been important. I have dabbled with hot and cold showering in alternation and wanted to do body brushing. I am still without a permanent base to live, currently the showers where I am are broken, so this has not been possible to keep up but I would recommend it for anyone trying a similar detox for whatever reason to shift stuff on through.
The weddding day was long and there is always much socialising which is also tiring in a good way but the energy ups and downs were frustrating and didn't make me glad to be back on sweet stuff, although the flavours in the foods were hugely welcome. My excursions on the dance floor were brief and flaily but no real change there.......I am actually glad to not be drinking bitter herbs three times a day and sprinkling tintcures on my tongue. The herb tea had to be made up the night before carefully and covered. My last brew ended up with a bar of soap falling into it, evidence enough that I was done with that ritual.
I have decided to slowly re-introduce native fruits into my diet, like apples and pears and berries and a little honey. This morning I had bilberry gluten free flat breads (gorgeous) with fruit harvested on Dartmoor yesterday. I want to stay off refined sugar for longer. I would like to keep updating the blog for another month as to how I feel and also as to the outcome of my second meeting with Ewa to see if the parasite has cleared properly or not. I am fully open to referral to a tropical disease unit to see what is going on if not. Conventional medecine can be useful in equal measures and I am under no illusions as to this being a miracle cure. However my stomach has generally settled and does feel less like it directs my life which is a boon. I also felt at times that my energy on the detox may not be up to full power excerise but I went to the pool in Exeter on Friday and swam a mile comfortably so that was reassuring.
I have realised I can get by on less food generally and not panic. I still do not like to go for long periods food-less (ideally 8 hours maximum) so I am not sure I could ever fast effectively. However it is good to realise I can physically eat less and be fine, I just need to plan well. I am looking forward to the potential prospect of a base in September so I can take better control of my diet and hopefully make it less of a spiky, prominent feature of my life, just something I see to like everyone else. I do not give up things for Lent or Ramadan (although I believe my detox may have overlaid part of Ramadan) but it has been an experience and an adventure. At times it has been a very frustrating and emotional journey, quite literally feeling like death. The height of summer was certainly the time to crack on with it, but a July heatwave was not the easiest choice. The denial of what I thought was essential a really important journey. I invite anyone who says "I couldn't do without", (insert - tea/coffee in the morning, biscuit at 11am or whatever) to do just that. Being tied to things which we don't know for certain we will always have is not helpful. Everything in life moves, changes, grows and eventually dies. Letting go of things allows other things to move in and inhabit the space. It doesn't mean you can't maybe have those things back, but its fascinating to see what takes up the space instead......
I hope you have enjoyed bits of the blog so far and thank you to everyone who has got in touch and shared their thoughts and experiences with me. The blog will go on, for now, and so will I.

Days 22-25 Entering the Final Phase

So I am going to roll these days into one......I am brinking on the final phase of the detox. I am looking forward to fruit being back in the game. The bitter herbs are getting a little tired now, and the novelty of splashing tinctures has passed. There have been no major cravings and I got through my weekend of work where I average 13 hours a day, so that's good. I didn't bottom out like last weekend.
This morning (Day 25) I have a crasher of a headache but that could be the tiredness too. Otherwise my energy is doing OK. I will be interested to see Ewa again and find out which aspects of the detox have been successful. I will certainly be staying off the processed sugar for a while longer, although I will have a little of something on Saturday at my friend's wedding. Nothing major or vastly wild to report so I'm going to keep it short and ....ha ha sweet........

Days 20 and 21 - Cruise Control

Day 20
Felt pretty good today. Planned ahead food wise as I was out for most of the day. Finished up with a nice bivvie out in the wilds of outer Bath with my partner. It was strangely relaxing to not really take much food or worry about emergency bathroom moments. Just loads of water. No yearnings for sweet stuff, although I do still yearn after fruit and look forward to its return. Friends who have done the paleo diet say that it tastes really sweet after being without for some time and it will hopefully be enough to satisfy me once the official thirty days of detoxing are over.
This time period has made me have a real re-think about the sweet treats that I eat and why I indulge in them. It certainly fills both an emotional and a physical gap. Its also pretty lazy. I plan to stay off them for longer than my official 30 day detox. I plan to gradually re-introduce fruit and then honey and then go from there. Its true that in the longer term avoiding all savoury foods with sugar in would be a real challenge and re-shape many things like eating out and dinners with friends. Eating just whatever savouries you normally do will probably provide enough sugar if it has had any kind of processing however healthy it looks. My friend Simona is vegan and has emailed about her difficulties with finding food on the hop when she is hungry that is actually healthy. She said motorway services are particularly useless. I have really wondered (for those of us who are either car drivers or lift sharers which is most of us) where the wisdom lies on this. Driver's pit stops are simply laden with overpriced junk, sugary food and coffee. Cars weigh about a tonne and people jump in them to spin round often half asleep. Why are the main places to stock up for a reviving travel snack just filled with rubbish? Its ridiculous. They are certainly one of the easiest places for people to grab junk, particularly people on the move for work from salesmen to musicians.You have to do what I have termed the "Walk of Will", where you avoid eye contact with all sorts of brightly coloured tempting packages. Everyone deserves to be able to access healthy foods without this plethora of kak or paying 7 quid for a full plate of hot food at a services that is probably a baked potato and salad and won't do much for you either. Incidentally my sister's husband you can now buy pre-baked potatoes with toppings for re-heat. What planet Janet?

Day 21
Started the day with a river swim. What a winner. Pretty chilly by the time we hoisted out and the sun broke through to turn our fingers back from white to pink. Bit hungry but able to decamp to Bath for a bite to eat. Ate quite light with a bit of meat. Yesterday and today I found I got the 4pm energy dip. It seems directly proportional to how much meat and nuts I eat. I don't ever really buy meat and have not been endeared when I recently bought fish and chicken from a well know retailer. The fish was not fresh (that was when my housemates commented) and the chicken was off on its sell by when I opened it. I had bought it as it was organic, so not impressed. The fish I later discovered was also caught EITHER by "line, net or trawl". For anyone interested in fish issues The End of the Line documentray makes depressing viewing. Line catching is perceived as a good option. However the lines are miles long and baited at intervals. Sea faring birds such as the endangered albatross dive for the baits and get caught and die. Net catch hauls in a variety of unfortunate marine life, no matter what they say about sizes of net hole to let smaller fish out. I have witnessed this at grass roots level when I went out on a small traditional Sri Lankan fishing bought. We accidentally caught several things that were dead by the time entangled, one of them a beautiful Dragon Fish. Trawling as if anyone needs to know, uses huge metal rakes to literally scrape the sea bed bringing up everything in its way and leaving the equivalent of desertification on the ocean floor. So the idea that actually fish is a "healthy" option over red meat is deeply questionable for me. Just because we don't see fish in fields and they are not cute or furry it is still a very thorny ecological issue. I am trying to re think it at the moment although I don't eat alot of fish.
Food purchasing it seems to me is a real minefield. We are turned into scholars at the supermarket reading endless labels to avoid certain nasties or additives. We are faced with "local or global" food issues. I love rice but it travels thousands of miles to me around the world and I don't know much about workers rights in these countries or conditions in the paddy fields. Or environmental impacts. I read that it takes 140 litres of water to produce one cup of coffee grown to the new "full sun" more intensive method of farming. Higher yields are produced but at what cost? Shade grown coffee (literally utilising the shade from surrounding forest trees) is more sustainable, yet produces a lower yield. It supports more biodiversity. The coffee flavour is supposedly better too. Guatemala can be a good area for this and also for coffee dried on tables in the traditional style. Try to fins out where your coffee comes from and support traitional growing methods. Something else I have learned recently is that the western world's ongoing interest in buying quinoa has driven up prices in the countries where it naturally grows and now local people can't afford it. I believe as far as possible local is always best but sometimes just not achievable without huge effort and commitment. I fall short of the grade I know. Do we have the time or the patience to unpick these issues? Can we use more of our "wasted" space in cities to grow food. Personally I think we should look at going up. There is plenty of available wall space and for me vertical gardens in cities may be the future. Check out this website where walls are no barrier to greening. Patrick Blanc has got some very cool ideas. http://www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com/
I have certainly gone off the point about sugar, but my point is that f we had more fresh fruit and veg available to us that we could freely harvest around towns and cities without waiting a week for a veg box to arrive we could eat healthily on the hop and start to re-shape our eating habits..........

Day 19 - All Good

Today I have felt most agreeable, no crazy mood swings and despite eating lightly no hunger traumas. I did cook some haddock for lunch and despite opening the back door still managed to waft the kitchen out. This didn't endear me to my housemates but I don't think they are too concerned. Fish and green veg, keep it coming. I did some good walking around town and had a pretty productive day. Did have a five minute dream about having a glass of mead sometime in August and accidentally but some sugar granules in my flat bread thinking it was sugar as it was in a small bowl next to a packet of salt. But hey, we do the best we can. Also discovered that gluten free oatcakes have palm fruit oil in them, why oh why oh why.....Probably to help preserve them or something...Onwards and upwards......

Day 18 - Sweet Salt

So, I said I would produce a few tidbits of info on the ole sweet salt. But before I do I should mention that my "6 cashew nut butter crackers incident" on Saturday night had me waking up at 5am on Sunday morning feeling quite naseous. That'll learn me..........
The English word sugar can be traced back through the Arabic and Persian languages to a root in Sanskrit, "surkara". It is likely that Italian merchants first brought it to these shores, but it is believed that the first place it was domesticated was New Guinea around 8 000 BC. It seems that India and other parts of south east Asia were the natural home of sugar cane where it favoured the warm climate and plenty of rain. Sugar cane was chewed for its sweetness. I can clearly remember being around 6 or 7 at school, when a girl, whose father worked on a sugar cane plantation, brought in a thick, bamboo-like stick of sugar cane for us all to try. Far more exciting than grabbing a bag of Tate and Lyle and I remember feeling like a monkey or something. In a liquid form sugar couldn't travel far. With the discovery of how to crystallise the sweet one came the ability to transport sugar over greater distances and for it to be kept for longer. Indian sailors carrying this sweet treat and ghee traversed trade routes spreading it wider and travelling Buddhist monks are said to have taken crystallised sugar into China. Crusaders brought home sugar after their trips to The Holy Land and Christopher Columbus apparently returned with an armload in the fifteenth century too after a fling on his travels.
Before the eighteenth century sugar was considered a luxury item in the UK and by the nineteenth century this had shifted to it being classed as a necessity. The drive for sugar supplies at this time helped to power forward colonisation of tropical lands to provide the growing space for the crop. In the early days the labour was back breaking and hard, without the machinery to make the job simpler and many Europeans refused to do it. I am skipping lots of detail here but, as you have guessed the labour was sourced in the worst way imaginable by shipping in slave labour from West Africa. Millions worked the plantations, their natural resistance to malaria and other tropical diseases did nothing to dissuade the traders from shipping yet more to places such as Barbados and Jamaica to fuel the industry. Many died thousands of miles from their homeland. So the history of sugar production is a dirty one for sure. During the Napoleonic wars, sugar beet began to be grown in Europe, as the shipping blockades were making it harder for supplies to get in. In the UK however we continued to import from colonies in the West Indies, India and other areas.
The 5 largest producers of sugar in 2011 were Brazil, India, the European Union, China and Thailand.
In 2008 the average per capita consumption of sugars and sweetners in the US weighed in at around 62 kg a year. (There is 2.2 pounds to a kg). So that's just over 2kg a month which is very roughly half a kilo a week (or just over a pound in weight a week. I imagine weighing it at Scoopaway). I think that is pretty hefty. This figure apparently didn't include any artificial sweetners either.
The average yearly consumption per person worldwide of sugar is estimated at 25 kg by 2015, so just 18 months away. Perhaps it is these kinds of figures that Coca Cola have had to closely consider when in January of this year they issued a statement to the tune of "we might be overdoing it and obesity is a li'l bit of an issue" as it became clear to all who didn't already know that several spoonfuls of sugar in each can was beyond overkill. A cry back to 1903 when the same company were forced to admit cocaine on their list of ingredients and that this might be a bit detrimental to public health too.............

Days 15,16 and 17 - Ups and Downs

Day 15
Decide to take it steady again today. The morning involves the usual doses of herbal tea. I have experimented trying to make this ahead of time in case I am away overnight camping but the resultant brew is pretty rank if left out of the fridge. Force it down to not waste the herbs. Think, not for the first time, that it looks like I am drinking herb pee.
I spend the afternoon on an excursion to a swim spot near Bath with my sister kids and friends. The sun is out, the great British public are happy and camped out practically on top of each other at the small grassy area and no-one seems to mind. I am armed with cashew nuts and cucumber and a pack of plain crisps. Not balanced but a fine mini picnic that will mean I don't sink in the water with my niece in her armbands.
Later meet friends for an evening out. Being outdoors is fine but migrating to the pub later is a bore on the drinks front. I cannot be bothered to cue in a very hot bar for a sparkling water so loiter outside with my water bottle instead. Being surrounded by drunken rowdies is pretty dull too. When you are not drinking you notice that drinkers are less attractive, louder and at worst very repetitive and boring. Luckily this doe snot apply to my compadres but I am glad to exit planet dust and return to my sister's where the fire wok is crackling in the garden instead. Have to turn down some Icelandic liquor but have a sniff instead. Moods are up and down, ranging from fine to very much not fine. My partner Simon is being really supportive from afar as are my sister and her family.

Day 16
Early exit at 7am to hit Ledbury for work. A writer from the Independent is reviewing our company, so our impending group of women on a bushcraft hen weekend are proving slightly more nerve wracking than normal. I spent yesterday morning pre-cooking food for the weekend. Last time I did a minimal amount of this, cooking on site. Although I had a better choice of food stuffs this time around, energy wise I didn't seem to do much better. Its a long day - roughly 8am to 10pm and by 8pm I hit a wall. Earlier I had troughed cashew nut spread delights on corn cakes. Started with 2, ended up as 6. I tried to convince myself it was the protein in them, but I think their naturally sweet taste was sucking me in. Felt a bit fragile at points during the day, when my boss asked me to re-pack the cold boxes that we use due to lack of refridgeration in the woods I squeaked "No give me another job! Anything!" or words to that effect, in a fairly irrational sounding manner. I later explained that my life consists of a lot of packing - re-packing and bag hauling at the moment and I had reached my limit. This has happened a few times over the last month. Got to bed at 9.45pm. I literally lay and didn't move, ususally a sign that I have had it. Didn't even get ear plugs in to drown out the music and the rain and didn't even hear either anyway. I did all I could in terms of food today but our women came indoors tonight as oppose to being out around the fire, due to the rain, and this is always more tiring. It can be very odd to witness a group of people getting wonky when you are on detox and clear headed.

Day 17
Manage to undercook boiled eggs for me and my boss for breakfast and in so doing put myself off them. At times I have over eaten them for breakfast, a meal which I often find a challenge in the gluten and dairy free world without fruit on the menu too. My digestion is a little bizarre again, colourful is all I will say. Energy feels a bit better, but generally spaced out and a bit anxious which could be rooted in several things right now. The day goes well and the group have seemed content all weekend. At the end my boss is pleased so that's good and I have enjoyed everyone's company. I also road tested a new hedgerow recipe today which went well.
I would like to feel a little more upbeat again and have a lighter approach to life but it all seems to be life admin for me right now so I just have to suck it up. Facilitating for groups requires loads of energy (I really do not know how you teachers, Jasmine and Claire, do it day in and day out - hats off to you) and I have used up quite a bit of battery reserves. There is a fatigue element to my situation that I need to manage. Felt a little bored of considering food choices constantly all over again for the coming week and yearned for a bit of chocolate.
Got back at 9pm but motivated myself to knock up a soup with avocado and gluten free baraks (flat breads) on the side. Tiredly missed my mouth with the tinctures and got the herbs brewed up for the morning. Feel OK tonight. I tried a shamanic journey in the peace and quiet of the site after everyone had left earlier. Felt quite hard to do as the rain came pouring in and I convinced myself  a tree could fall in the squall on the bell tent. I noticed some "stuckness", areas of discomfort to work through but realised it was going to take more than one journey to work it through. It was a beginnning, and they always lead somewhere.....