Starting a new Dry Fast

I'm starting a soft Dry Fast today and I'm thinking to buy 2 Bone Broth jars on my way over, so I can break this fast with the Bone Broth in few days. Because of the TOM I don't feel extremely well, I did not weight myself today because I'm confused, between the gym, my weight gain and the period, I don't know exactly how much fat I gained vs muscle or water retention. The Dry Fast will definitely help me with most of these symptoms. I wish I could stay all day in bed today, I might leave earlier if I don't feel staying in the office, there's not much to do for me here today anyway.

So far I'm taking every day probiotics, one in the morning with 50 billion and one in the late afternoon with 30 billion, going forward though I want to stick with only an 80 billion per day – I found it way more effective for me and easy to remember than 2 dosages. I didn't take anything this morning though, because of the Dry Fast I don't want to ingest anything that might need to be processed by my body; I want just to be focused on healing whatever needs to be healed. I still have some problems on my right knee, especially when I go into the cold, I wish all the issues I have on my ligaments can be fixed with this Dry Fast, sometime I'm afraid that exercise can further damage whatever is wrong with it.

 I am not crazy about Dry Fasting I must to say but – based on my researches – it is the most effective and absolute Fast out there, so whenever you're doing such an extreme action for your body you want to go with the most effective way on doing it. But in general I want to give another chance to Dry Fasting, I feel my body needs to be accustomed to this type of Fast to get all its benefits, plus every time we fast is different from the previous one. It also helps with the water retention and since I'm under TOM in these days, it would definitely help my body with that.

Yesterday I went for a 20 minutes run outside, it was a bit cold but not much to be unbearable during the run, what I didn't like though it was the pollution from the traffic on the street that I breathed while I was running. I can feel it now, coughing here and there….but I don't have a park nearby my place where I can go running and using the thread mill is not always appealing to me, sometimes I just want to try doing some HIIT changing speed while running. I know that often people say to change city, location if living in such polluted places, but seriously do you think I wouldn't like living and working in Costa Rica? Eating fresh juicy fruit every day? Staying in the sun every time I can? Of course I would! Who wouldn't?! But I live in Canada and we're not in the Tropics here - let's face it, this is a huge city and pollution is the least we can expect when living in the downtown area of such a big metropolis. Fasting also helps to get rid of those toxins we ingest, breath every day – it might not help with the Vitamin D but at least cleanses something else from the body.

A New Water Fast - Cleansing and Detoxing

I just want to start on saying: thank goodness the holidays are over! I gained enough pounds to feel like a balloon on my mid-section.

Today is my Day #3 in my newly started Water Fast, so far so good, this morning I registered high traces of ketosis with 80mg/dL. I'm planning to keep going for at least 7 days, hopefully a bit more than that. My weight this morning was 57.9Kg, which is way higher than a month ago when I was between 53 and 54Kg. I'm also trying to go to the gym as much as I can, and I believe that slowly is somehow working. This coming Friday I have my first Colonics, I'm actually excited on doing it, I think it will be very beneficial for my cleansing and detoxing process. During a Water Fast is essential doing a colon cleanse, either Colonics or enemas, especially important during fasting since the BMs are really not easy to have and it could be very painful if nothing is used to help the bowel movements. So keep in mind that if you're starting a Water Fast you need to buy few packages of enemas – or whatever product you prefer for this type of procedure.

So my Raw Whole Food Plant Based Diet is going well so far, I had some cooked food during these holidays, but always vegan, no animal products, just roasted nuts or seeds, a veggie burger, deep fried or roasted tofu and some steamed vegetables. But overall I eat all raw if I'm cooking at home, those episodes were mostly when I didn't have much choice while going out with friends.

I have to say that I ate a lot of bananas recently and for the amount of fruits or in general raw food I was having, my weight did not go crazy as it used to go, I believe is due to the raw food and my exercises that help me to keep my weight under control. After my Colonics, when I break my Water Fast I want to be more disciplined with my food intake. I'm planning to have a mono-fruit breakfast in the morning, like papaya, mango or watermelon, some fruits to snack during the day and for lunch a spinach salad with tons of fruits as I used to have, which I really love; only for the evening I will have a salad with some sort of fats. Fats are the culprit of my weight gain, I get addicted very easily so I promised myself not to buy anymore nuts, only seeds and avocados to provide the 10% of fats that I need, but I'll take it slowly after the end of this Water Fast.

This evening I have a ping pong game with my new boyfriend, not sure if I can say boyfriend yet since it's not even 2 months that we're dating, but for the matter of this post I'll use this label for him. I really hope I won't fall in food temptations, he loves food and he cannot really understand being on a water only diet and not even drinking anything but water! Being around friends eating is really hard while fasting; I would suggest avoiding those types of situations, at least until few days into a fast, like after 7/8 days. At that stage you can feel strong enough to avoid any food temptations.

I often think about food, I'm not into the full fast yet I guess, the idea of quitting and eating something comes often into my mind, but I'm trying to be strong, I know this is normal, we're humans and food is one of the pleasure of the life, well at least it is for me. I would also add that for me is an expression of family love, the way I was raised so it becomes very tough denying myself of this comfort. But I know I will be super happy in few days and even more after successfully completed this Water Fast.

Tomorrow I'll try to go to the gym for a noon class, 45 minutes of my favourite Body Attack class, it's tough usually when I'm eating, let's see tomorrow if I can complete the whole 45 minutes, I won't push myself too much if I feel weak during the class, I've been doing things very slowly in the past 2 days so I can't tell really if part of my energy will be back tomorrow since the Ketosis is high now.

This time around for my Fast I'm having hot water with some lemon juice, so far it's not destroying my lips, which I'm really happy for it. For my personal taste I guess – I have to say that nothing is better than real lemon squeezed into a hot cup of water, all those 100% organic pure lemon juices are a scam, stick on real fruits and you will never regret it!

Taking care of my Fruits & Vegetables - Getting ready for my 7-Day Water Fast

Today I just want to give few updates on how I am doing with my Raw Vegan Diet and my cravings. I'm working from home today so it is generally bad when I do it, because it's just me and my kitchen temptations. I love cooking and I always look forward to find a new gourmet recipe that I want to try, new flavours to taste and so on. So in short I ate like a pig all day basically.

Since I planned to start a 7-day Water Fast very soon, I wanted to be sure I will not waste any of the food that I bought in the past few days, so I started to organize all my fruits and vegetables. Let's face it fruits are very easy to freeze comparable vegetables. So I cut all the ripe fruits and stored in the freezer, so they can be ready to thaw or to use in any smoothie, at the end anything that is frozen does not expire and can be used any time in the future – I'm sure I will have plenty of opportunities, so I'm not worried when I can freeze produce. For the vegetables it's a little be tricky, I had to do a sort of preparation, especially for the tomatoes that I really don't feel confident on just freeze them like a do with the blueberries. To avoid wasting my Roma tomatoes I prepared my first delicious Marinara sauce; I found an easy recipe on Pinterest and turned out very tasty. I used the Roma tomatoes, some extra sweet cherry tomatoes and my organic sundried tomatoes (with no oil). At the end I filled 2 containers that could be used for my zucchini noodles in the future, plus is a very low fat sauce and I like low fat so far.

For the huge amount of carrots that I have a had a different solutions, I saw a recipe of a Raw Vegan carrots cake that I would like to try so I shredded all my carrots and stored in plastic bags in the freezer, so they're ready for the recipe once I'm good on doing it, the only thing I regret of not doing is taking note on how much carrots I had in each bag, I should have weighted and labelled each of them so I had an easier way using it during the recipe execution, oh well I guess I will figured out once I'm doing it the cake.

The 2 odd zucchini that I bought at China Town the other day I just washed and put them in a bag, I didn't want to do noodles really, I might just use them for sauces or something like that, to make the sauce creamer as I do with regular zucchini sometimes. I do have also some chopped carrots and zucchini in the freezer as well, I can always use for smoothies or other blended recipes done with the Vitamix, if I thaw them in the fridge for a couple of days I'm sure they'll be ok….hopefully.

Today I prepared for the first time the vegetable wraps that I always see on those Raw Vegan recipes, I had a bunch of organic red Swiss Chard and I used my veggie-cheese with some carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini noodles, it was delicious! It is really not easy to eat them since they were falling apart but overall the taste was great, I might not do often though, not because they're complicated to do it but just for the general mess while eating, well unless I improve my skills as wraps-eater.

I still need to take care of some of the fruits left behind; I have mangoes, apples, pears, bananas and three persimmons. Once they're ripe enough I'll chop everything and freeze, ok maybe I'll eat a couple of apples or bananas before then. The persimmons are in season right now and although I always hated this fruit growing up, I wanted to give them a second chance this time and use it for my pumpkin pie recipe. I might cut them and freeze for now though since I'm not planning to do any pie before I complete my 7-Day Water Fast; maybe I'll prepare a good pie to bring for my Christmas dinner invitations, let's see – this year will be a challenge eating Raw Vegan in an Italian dinner family setup!

Raw Vegan Diet - Fats make you fat!

My experience so far, with my Raw Vegan Diet has been good; the only thing I complain to myself is the introduction of nuts and seeds in my everyday food. Nuts especially have a high fat content, and I noticed that as soon as I started to eat them, my weight went up immediately, not to mention the cravings that I started to have, dreaming about my banana ice-cream with insane amount of peanut butter powder! I guess I underestimate myself thinking I could resist to the temptations. I did partially to be fair, but not last night. I believe I ate 20 dates with almond milk, 10 dried figs and 2 chia seeds pudding in cacao powder, not to mention my huge salad with tahini and guacamole dressing! All the food I had caused me a sharp pain on the left side of my abdomen and huge belly that I still have. The Binge Eater that is in me is back in "shape", somebody please save me from the dark side of my inner self!

I felt very depressed after and I went to bed, I was having purging thoughts, thinking to go to the gym at 5:00 AM and then again this afternoon to the Body Attack class, also having second thoughts on when to start my next Water Fast. So I started to put some of my food in the freezer, so I can start my Water Fast sooner and I don't have to throw away anything. This afternoon I planned to chop some vegetables and freeze them too, as well of some of the fruit that is already ripe.

My plan originally was to start my second Fast on December 5^th, but I want to get rid of these cravings as soon as possible, so I might start sooner. I feel sick today, I had way too much food; my body doesn't like it at all. I just had my breakfast, and although I split in two parts the amount of fruits that I was supposed to eat this morning, I also had the last chia seeds pudding that was in the fridge and I brought with me the little macaroons with pecans and dates that I bought yesterday at the supermarket, just so I can share with people here and I won't eat them all without shame.

It's been a couple of days that my bowel movements are not anymore the same as before, I think is because of the fat content that I'm eating, it's true that doesn’t help digestion and makes feel you like crap, I have the proofs really.

If you are looking for a Raw Vegan Diet that will help you maintaining weight and makes you feel good: avoid as hell FATS!! Fats are not your friends in a Raw Vegan Diet – unless you are trying to gain weight. That's why is called: HCLF Diet, High Carbs Low Fat Diet. I cannot believe what a big difference I personally experienced introducing fats, especially nuts really. For things like seeds or avocados, I didn't have much problems, neither cravings really – but nuts became a nightmare. Every time I was going to a store I was repeating to myself not to buy any type of nuts whatsoever, but for some reasons I was leaving the store full of almonds, walnuts and cashews, unbelievable the Binge Eater that plans the binges again, I hate myself sometimes.

One Week after my Water Fast

It's been one week now since I completed my Water Fast and my refeeding process is done too, successfully I would say. I did not experience any issue with my stomach, my BMs are optimal and regular; my weight is being ok so far. Yesterday I noticed that I basically release with my BMs what I ate 3/4 days ago. So some of the weight I gained is due to some water retention and food in my digestive system / colon, which is a normal and expected behaviour.

So far my Raw Vegan Diet is going extremely well, I feel blessed every time I have my huge salad with everything in it, from greens to tons of delicious fruits, I absolutely love it. Today I am supposed to receive my spiralizer so I can start to create more variations for my salads, adding zucchini and cucumbers in a more fun way, enjoying more vegetables to maintain under control my weight as well.

During my lunch break today I went to Winners to buy some Buckwheat but I could not find it, I bought instead Organic Shelled Hemp Seeds; I never had Hemp Seeds in my life I think, and I read online that they are really healthy and with an amazing nutty flavour, so I'm really looking forward on creating my own pesto recipe without using pinenuts, not that I don't like pinenuts or anything – quite the opposite – but I want to try to keep my fat content as low as I can, till my weight is stabilized. I also bought a little bag of Organic Raw Dark Chocolate Nibs and some pitted organic dates (which I already indulged in at lunch having four of them as my dessert).

I watched a lot of YouTube videos of Raw Vegan Vloggers and read few articles about this type of Diet, what I need to do is to create a good 80/10/10 ratio of what I eat, trying to avoid fruits for dinner and having a big salad with anything I want in it, which I'm totally fine and happy to do it anyway. I noticed that most of the people tend to eat mostly fruits in a Raw Vegan Diet, but they also do a lot of exercises or workout activities to consume and earn their own carbs-fruits amount. Sometimes, watching those videos, I really think: WTH!! Is there anyone on YouTube and in the Raw Vegan community that actually has a 9-to-5 job?! Every video that I watch is from a girl that seems having nothing to do during the day that going to the gym or checking Facebook and emails on her computer; nobody that has a regular commute or wake up at 5:00 AM to get ready and go to work? Or unable to come back for lunch and cook for half hour?! WTH!!?! Sorry for my vent but I don't think I am the odd one here, most of the people in the world have a regular daily job, without having always time to spend two hours in the gym and cooking!

Water Fasting - Refeeding Process updates after 5 days

I'm still in a refeeding-mode I guess but I stopped counting days, I check my weight every morning, not my ketosis though, with all the fruits I'm having it doesn't make any sense. Today I was like 300gr more than yesterday; I had no bm since a couple of days so it really was expected anyway.

I feel ok with whatever I eat so far, I just cannot have much, my stomach is still in the small amount size type of meal, which is ok I guess, I definitely don't need to overeat. This morning I prepared again a smoothie, this time with half scoop of vegan proteins, similar to yesterday I feel the odd taste of the proteins in my mouth now, not a pleasant feeling, I will avoid the proteins altogether tomorrow. I added various fruits today, like strawberries, mangoes, papaya and 2 dates to give sweetness – all with some baby spinach. It was a delicious smoothie, my mistake was that I didn't want to bring it at work so I had 2 big glasses one after the other in just few minutes - since I was a bit late for work. Well my stomach didn't like it really, it started to hurt me a bit, not much but I definitely felt the pain. Lesson learned I guess.

Yesterday before going home I stopped to do some grocery shopping and buy some fruits and vegetables for dinner and today's meal for the office, I found one papaya that was so ripe and soft, it was absolutely delicious, I used for my salad a bit and today's breakfast as well. I also bought a mango, it was already peeled in a box with some blueberries and a piece of papaya; the mango was kind of hard and difficult to cut but it was delicious, I don't recall I ever had such a good mango. My personal preference goes to those mangoes with darker skin, I'm not a mangoes expert at all but I tried both and this hard one with darker skin, it might be cheaper in price for some reason, but I found it way better than the most expensive one.

After my Water Fast it's coming so natural for me enjoying these true flavours of the nature, I'm not missing at all the junk food I used to eat, I'm missing neither the coffee nor any other drink in general. In the morning, while I do my makeup I just sip on my bottle of water. I'm thinking on buying one of those big plastic glasses used for smoothies or mixed energy drinks, but I really want to remove from my morning routines having this smoothie, it's really not necessary if I can have a normal breakfast once in the office, with some fresh fruits. Maybe if I can start a good workout routine I will add something else to my diet, but for now it's just adding up calories for nothing.

Today for my mid-morning break I had, for the first time after so long, a detox tea  –  caffeine free but I hope it will help me with my detox process somehow; yesterday I noticed that drinking just hot water gives me tummy-pain and I don't want to do anything to my body that could generated uncomforted state in any way. I don't like the tea of course, so I might have next time in a month from now, my sweet tooth is not meant to enjoy these types of tea unfortunately.

Today for lunch I prepared a mixed salad, I literally thrown in the container whatever I had in the fridge: mixed greens, blueberries, papaya, watermelon, mango and cherry tomatoes, no dressing and no spices, just fresh fruits & vegetables. I wish I add spinach and some cucumbers but I will get them this afternoon with my grocery delivery, I will to reduce the fruits as much as I can going forward, it doesn't help with the weight management for sure. Too bad my spiralizer is still on its way and not delivered yet, I wouldn't mind preparing my salad with zucchini and cucumber noodles for tomorrow, oh well I will need to endure it.

Water Fasting - My Refeeding Plan

I want to add what I came up with for my re-feeding plan, after my 21+ Days Water Fast Journey. So far is my first draft; I'm not sure I'll modify some of the choices, I'm still debating if I should break my fast on fruits or on vegetables, I'm still investigating online the pros and cons of both choices (from a Binge Eater perspective) - I'll keep you updated!

HCG Diet - VLCD #13 - Non-Fat Cottage Cheese alternative

This morning my scale did not show any change in weight since yesterday, oh well I hope somewhere, on my body, inches are changing though. It's my VLCD #13 today and I'm feeling a bit dizzy, not hungry but I've cravings here and there, I can't tell if I'm just bored and I want something to chew on, or it's my food-deprivation that is talking. Nothing unbearable though, I might just be victim of my own ovulation period. I'm not necessarily craving sugar though, and this is a good thing.

Yesterday, for the first time on my HCG Diet, I had 100gr of Non-Fat Cottage Cheese for my protein serving, to dip with some celery. It was good, I was worried my body would not process the cheese properly, but it didn't so I'm thinking to change sometime and have some cheese, instead of the usual chicken. I believe eliminating all those food categories for so long might hurt my tolerability to it, same thing for carbs, I usually have my grissino or my melba toast during the day. I don't want to give up gluten forever, I might reduce it of course, but I still want to be able to eat pasta or pizza once in a while, never forget I'm Italian at the end.

I also think that bringing some sort of variation in the everyday diet is always good, so the body doesn't become too comfortable with the same food and decide not to lose anymore. I do have to admit though that I'm loving my baby spinach chicken salad, and for now I'll keep it as a staple on my Diet, till I get bored of it, then I'll change with something else.

Today I did my injection on my belly again, I felt I was doing so well in the first few days and wanted to change back to see if my body will keep on behaving for my weight loss.

Since it's Wednesday I'll have my Detox Bath tonight before bed, it's relaxing, I put baking soda in it too and I enjoy the warm water for about 20 minutes or so, my cat comes always around curios on what I'm doing, I can tell that he would like to come inside the bath tub…if there was no water in it!

Right now I'm sitting at my desk in my office, and I'm freezing, I hope it's the Ketosis, this morning I was a +2 Small Traces of Ketosis, yesterday I had 2 fruits and my grissino. Too much carbs and also the Cheese has milk, which contains sugar so, it might be for that, but I also noticed that I cannot have 2 fruits per day, I've to try with the strawberries but 2 of Apple / Orange doesn't work for my body. So I might need to stick to 1 fruit per day. I'm pretty sure if I don't eat any fruit in a day, my Ketosis will sky-rock to +12 in few hours! At the end I'm eating only 500 Calories per day.

One great thing of the HCG Diet is that – contrary to the Dr. Bernstein Diet – does not put you in starvation mode. The body "think" that I'm pregnant (which I'm not), so it gets all the abnormal stored fat to release the missing amount of daily calories and save the "baby" from starving basically. Doing a Diet that puts you in starvation mode is not healthy at all, I've my personal experience, weight gain is back in no time and developing an Eating Disorder is very common in this situation.

HCG diet - VLCD #11 a former weight to deal with

I'm officially into the double digits VLCD days; today's my very low calories day #11 and – although my scale did not show any change this morning – I'm happy of the overall Diet.

So far this has been for me the best experience I could ever imagine while losing weight; I know it might take some time for me to reach my goal, but I'm good with that, I cannot expect to become thin overnight so I'll be patient and enjoy the journey. Actually sometime I even think that I'll be afraid of getting off of HCG, it gives me so much boost in terms of mood and energy. I am EVERY SINGLE day amazed on how good I feel, no weak, no dizzy as with the Dr. Bernstein Diet.

My weight today's the same as yesterday, but I knew it would happen since I'm in the 62Kg, which is one of my former weights I had for long in the past, it's common to hit a plateau when reaching a former weight. I did again my measurements this past weekend, after a week on HCG and overall I lost 1cm here and there, some places none, but what is most rewarding for me is that I lost 8cm just on my belly -which is the spot where I usually gain more weight, in general middle section let's say.

In many blogs, videos I learned that usually when you are not seeing any change on the scale, it might be in inches on your body. To be honest, I'm not here every day to take measurements of my body's changes, but I can tell when I won't see much changing the day after on the scale. Since the food is so little there are no regular daily bowl movements in this Diet – as well as with any Low Calories Diet, I had same issues while on Dr. Bernstein; this might be another reason why the scale doesn't show a weight loss. Maybe that's why Dr. Simeons defined a real plateau only after 4/5 days of no weight change, not less than that.

I noticed that if I have 2 fruit servings in a day or twice chicken then I'd feel big and most likely my weight is not going to change the day after. This was happening even during my Dr. Bernstein strict Diet.

For my body white fish or strawberries are things that will make me lose lots of weight, but I had so much in the past that now I can't stand it anymore! Like the Jell-O…

This morning I also change my injection spot, till today I had my shots on my abdomen, but I switched on my buttocks, since my belly is full of bruises right now, nothing painful or anything but I just wanted to try a different spot, thinking that maybe the HCG will be absorbed better close to such a big muscle. Who knows…it might be just a crazy theory!

Weight = 62.2Kg

BF = 25.7%
BMI = 22.6

Notes on my Diet

Based on my personal experience, I want to list what had an impact - positive and negative - on my Diet:

• Tomatoes hold my weight loss during the Strict Diet
• Asparagus helped me to lose weight and the fibers in it to go regularly
• Apart from water,  ANY type of drink consumed in large quantities made me constipated and bloated (including herbal teas) – as well as taking me out of ketosis
• Cabbage, although delicious, made me extremely bloated, constipated and hold my weight loss
• 2 Apples a day hold on my weight loss – do not eat more than one a day when possible
• Eating dinner late at night take me out of ketosis
• Fish is extremely good protein to lose weight
• Chicken made me gain weight and gassy (as well as turkey)
• Berries/Cantaloupe is the best fruit to lose weight during the Strict Diet – I'd suggest instead of any other fruit
• Goldfish crackers are better bread substitute than anything else
• Broccoli are heavy during the strict Diet – ideally the quantity of it should be very limited
• Yogurt is a perfect protein serving when on Strict Diet
• Not sleeping enough take you out of ketosis