This is week 2 post my dHerbs detox and although not my final post about my health and wellness journey, this will be my final post about subsequent lifestyle changes I have made because of it.
My post for last week was high jacked by me talking about returning to a vegan lifestyle :-), so I didn’t spend much time talking about the most challenging changes I had to make during the detox process and have tried to maintain. So here you go:
- There is only one other time in my adult life that I haven’t owned and used a microwave – during my time as a Peace Corps volunteer. Therefore, one of the biggest shifts I experienced during the detox was not warming anything I made in the microwave. This was not a huge deal during the detox since I was eating mostly salads and smoothies, but as I’ve continued eating raw I realize that I have to make other adjustments. I now take my lunch out of the refrigerator during breakfast and my dinner out during lunch. It has worked since it’s summer, but we’ll see what happens once the weather cools ;-).
- I have picked up a few bad habits in the last five years: I am close to a compulsive gum chewer – I can chew a pack of gum in about two days, so it was really hard for me not to have chewing gum during the detox. I have also been a daily coffee drinker since 2012 (when I returned to graduate school). If I drank my coffee black, there would be no issues but my coffee is nearly beige by the time I add creamer (soy) and sweetener (Splenda) – neither of which I should be having on a regular basis. Finally, in the last year I picked up a Diet Coke habit – yet another artificial sweetener. I kicked all of these habits during the detox and now only chew 1-2 pieces of chewing gum a day, usually after a meal. I haven’t had Diet Coke or coffee.
- I had several breakouts on my face during the detox – I chalked this up to the cleansing process. Two weeks later and my face is finally clearing. My blemishes are getting lighter and my skin appears a bit more vibrant with great shine and a healthy amount of oil.
- My sleep has been amazing!!! I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but I have been sleeping more deeply with much clearer dreams. I love it ~ to me this means that my body is resting well when it should be.
- I still feel great even though my detox has officially ended and because of this I have continued following a raw food diet – more on this later ;-). One of the many things I have been incredibly pleased with is how much food I can eat. For lunch and dinner I have a FULL PLATE of food, which I love! I enjoy not having to measure one cup of pasta (an incredibly tiny amount), or one cup of rice, or only two tablespoons of salad dressing. I’ve been able to enjoy whole, healthy food in abundance!
- Finally, I watched a video from another woman who transitioned to a vegan diet and experienced a decrease in gas. I’d never thought of this until I attended a holistic health seminar on Thursday night and the speakers discussed that excessive gas can be a sign of other not so pleasant things going on in our bodies. All of this to say that an unrecognized, but welcomed addition to me changing my eating habits is less gas :-O.
Stay tuned for photos of some of the raw food meals I have been preparing. And thank you for reading and please remember to like this post :-).