Living Clean: Week 1

(Please note:  Week 1 for us was from Jan 17 - Jan 23)

So Craig and I started the 3-week Clean diet, which is an elimination/detox program that strips away processed foods and foods that are potential allergy causers. You eat two liquid meals a day, breakfast and dinner, and one solid meal for lunch.  The liquid meals can be in the form of a smoothie, juice, or a soup.

The author of Clean is a cardiologist who experienced health problems of his own that lead him to really figure out what their root causes were.  "The majority of these common ailments are the direct result of toxic buildup in our systems accumulated through the course of our daily lives.  As the toxicity of modern life increases and disrupts our systems on a daily basis, bombarding us through our standard American diet and chemical-filled environments, our ability to handle the load hasn't accelerated at the same rapid pace.  The toxins are everywhere, but Clean offers a solution."

Our reason for trying it?  Craig.  His allergies were off the charts this winter.  And on top of the usual symptoms, he started experiencing some other weird stuff.  We learned about this book through a friend with an academic background in science.  Her mother suffers from rosacea and her father has an auto immune disorder.  Her mother did the three week plan, and within the first week, she dropped 11 lbs.  After the end of the three weeks, her rosacea was gone.  She was convinced that Craig needed to detox - clean out his system from any potential allergens, reset his system, and then slowly start to integrate back into his diet the things he ate before.  Any drastic reaction would mean it needs to be eliminated on a permanent basis.

Please bear in mind that we are not doing this to replace medical attention.  He'll see a real, honest to goodness doctor, but doing this won't hurt us - it could only do us good.

Week 1

So you're thinking "OK, how is it?  What's it like?"

Really?  It's not that bad! Craig has been great about trying new things, he knows that this is important to his well-being, and has been trying hard to keep an open mind. So yay for positivity! We've both learned that it's totally feasible to get through the day without constantly popping something into our mouths.  When we get hungry, we eat an apple.  Or some dried cherries and cranberries.  But that's it - that apple can get us through the next couple of hours or get me though my workout and over to the next meal.

The book says Week 1, you'll probably experience headaches and irritability.  The diet calls for no caffeine, so it says you'll experience symptoms of withdrawal from sugars and caffeine.  Well...

 

Screw that!  We still have our coffee; we just put almond milk in it instead of half n half and Craig now uses stevia, like I do.  And a little splash of agave nectar, if necessary.  But you know what?  Before this week, if I didn't have my coffee by, say, 8:30 or so, I'd start to feel that headache.  This week...no headache.  It's weird.  Thursday, I forgot to even make my coffee!  No headache!  So really, I don't NEED it, I just drink it cuz it's January and I'm cold.

As for irritability, yes, I noticed I was really irritable about two days into it.  But it seems to have dissipated. 

And Craig used to be plagued by daily headaches, but he hasn't had one all week.  So we're getting the opposite of what the book said. 

Now onto the food.  I decided to document what we ate mostly because the book doesn't have pictures of the recipes and I thought they'd be helpful to whoever might wanna try this.

 Blueberry, Carob and Almond Milk Smoothie

DEEEEElicious!  AND, while drinking it, it turns your lips, teeth, and mouth a lovely shade of dark purple.  Like Veruca Salt did in Willie Wonka.  Oh, wait.  That wasn't Veruca Salt.  You know what I mean - the stupid blueberry girl.  Don't get this stuff on your counter tops (if you have the old timey kind like we do), cuz it'll stain immediately.  If you do get some on there, a Magic Eraser will erase it...magically.

I don't make my own nut milk - I bought the vanilla flavored and sweetened Almond Breeze almond milk. Silk is very good, too.  I did try the HEB brand (our local grocery store) and found it to be a little on the bright side as far as flavor goes. We decided to spend the extra .60 on the name brand stuff and switched back.  Central Market Organic frozen blueberries, Hershey's brand unsweetened cocoa, and agave nectar.

Salmon with Broccoli Rabe and Quinoa

 Hmmm.  Sort of successful.  Because broccoli rabe?  I'd never had it before, didn't know what to expect.  Well.  It's bitter.  And I don't like bitter food.  So I took a few bites and threw the rest out.  Live n learn, I guess.  So if you don't like bitter food, I'd suggest doing steamed broccoli or preparing spinach in the same manner as the recipe called for the rabe.  That's what I'll be doing next time.  The quinoa was a first for both of us, too, and we both loved that.  It's really tasty.  I made it with chicken broth (Central Market Organics, not low sodium) and I didn't need to add anything to it.  Came out tasting just right.

 Stir-Fried Veggies & Chicken w/Buckwheat Noodles

Another successful dish!  Buckwheat noodles were a first for both of us.  Very interesting food item, I must say.  They have a very distinctive flavor, one that I can't readily describe accurately.  And the word that I have in mind might make you NOT wanna try it.  So I'll just say TRY IT.  I think the thing that drove us to eating it was A) they were noodles and we both LOOOOVE noodles and B) holy crap - it's solid food!  We get to eat solid food! 

 The recipe called for cooked grilled chicken, so I took some liberties and marinated it in the wheat-free tamari along with some crushed garlic and fresh ginger slices.  Then I grilled the chicken in a grill pan on the stove and kept brushing the marinade on them as they cooked.  One lil lesson I learned (cuz I'd never cooked w/tamari before) - don't salt your chicken before cooking.  Came out too salty, but we ate it anyway.  It wasn't inedible; just clearly too salty.  So don't do that.  I cooked the veggies pretty much to the recipe, except I used way less ginger - I only sliced about an inch worth. I don't care for it that much and thought 1/4 of a cup was just a lot of ginger.  But I understand its health benefits, so I added it in small quantity.

The book has legumes on the Acceptable Foods list, so one night, I made a split pea soup (didn't get a pic of that one) and another night, a lentil soup.  I also made a Butternut Squash Bisque that was awesome.

Butternut Squash Bisque (left) Lentil Soup (right) both topped w/raw sunflower nuts

 I realized something I hadn't realized when I looked through the soup recipes initially:  none of the soups were actually cooked.  The recipes consisted of basically throwing all the ingredients into a blender, pureeing them, and eating them either cold or slightly warm.  A very macrobiotic approach to cooking.  Well.  I like my soups cooked, so I cooked the crap outta my ingredients!  But since I had never worked with butternut squash before, I quickly went to Foodtv.com and found an Alton Brown video on how to prep it.  I roasted it in the oven in a 400 degree oven after dousing it with olive, salt and pepper.  I also roasted with it, a yellow summer squash.  Kept it going in the oven for a while and it still wasn't soft enough, so I upped the temp to 425 and that seemed to do the trick.  Alton Brown said to roast for 30-35 mins, but mine took more like an hour, but I think it was just a really big squash.

 I threw the squash into the soup pot after sauteing in olive oil some sweet onion (about 1/4) and two stalks of celery.  Then I added 4 cups of chicken broth and then another two cups of water, along with the rest of the ingredients in the recipe.  After cooking for a while, I blended it all into a smooth, silky bisque.  Fantastic!

Tri-Salad Platter of Hummus, Tabbouleh & Marinated Kale

This is a plate of goodness.  Might even be my favorite recipe(s).  I didn't use the kale specified in the recipe, I just used regular old kale. I stripped the leaves from the stems and just gave them a rough chop.  I didn't use radishes, cuz I don't like 'em.  I made this part of the recipe first, so that the kale had lots of time to get happy with the marinade.  The flavor is bright and clean and fresh.

For the tabbouleh, the only thing I would change is taking the 1 teaspoon of sea salt down to a 1/2 teaspoon.  Start there and add more if you need to.  I made the quinoa in chicken broth that wasn't low sodium, so that might've had something to do with my thinking it was a smidge too salty.  The currants I used were found where all the dried fruits are in my regular grocery store, made by SunMaid (Zante Currants).

The hummus was really thick - way thicker than I'm used to.  I tried to dilute it with more olive oil and a little more lemon juice and then some water, but it just wanted to be thick.  And I think I spaced out when I was adding the garlic and added more than a clove.  It's super garlicky.  But I'm all good with that.  Eating it with a cucumber slice helps to balance that out.  And it's even better on the second day.  I was so excited to have lunch today!

 Black Bean Soup

OK, so this isn't in the Clean book.  But black beans are on the Acceptable Foods list and this recipe came from my Lake Austin Spa & Resort Cookbook.  Spa food is good for you!  Simple ingredients, nothing that wouldn't be in the Clean book, so I ran with it.  And it was tasty, too!

Fresh: Healthy Cooking and Living from Lake Austin Spa Resort

Tropical Smoothie

My breakfast this morning.  My 2nd favorite smoothie recipe.

As far as our weight loss goes, I think Craig is down about 5 lbs and I'm still down around 2 lbs.  I'll be weighing again tonight when we go to the gym.  He swears that I look smaller, that my hips looks smaller (and he sees me every day), but I haven't seen a huge change on the scale yet.  I only worked out three times last week (usually it's more like 5), so maybe with the increased workouts this week, I'll see more change on the scale.  More to come next week....

Keepin' it Clean

Here's the backstory:

I married a guy from West Texas.  He was born in Slaton, TX, just outside of Lubbock.  He lived there with his parents, also born and raised in the area.  He also spent a lot of his life in Amarillo, TX.  His dad was a cowboy on a ranch, so it was ranch food they ate:  chicken fried steak, chicken and dumplings, biscuits and gravy, mashed potatoes, you get the idea...stick-to-yer-ribs southern home cookin'.

Then he met me.

I was raised by Europeans.  My mother is from France.  My father is a New Yorker, born and bred, to parents from Greece and Spain. 

I will eat anything, as long as it has nothing to do with bleu cheese or hazel nuts.

Craig?  Well.  Huh.  Let's just say being married to him has brought along its challenges as they relate to food.  The man is allergic to everything on the planet except for dogs.  And after reading that statement, you'd think we had dogs, but we don't.  We have five cats.  To which he's allergic.  

So when you take his allergies and couple them with his perception of most vegetables, you get frustrated. I mean I get frustrated. What do you do when you're trying to cook a healthy meal and your husband declares that broccoli smells and tastes like butthole?  What do you DO with that?!?  I have no idea what happened in his life that would allow him to make such a reference, and I'm not sure I WANT to know, but there it is nonetheless.

We've been married for going on 7 years, together for a total of 14 years.  This is what I've been dealing with in that time.  I don't cook with mushrooms (butthole), I don't cook with broccoli (butthole), I don't cook with a lot of things...but I love him, I'll do what I need to do to make sure the man eats.  It's the least I can do.

Recently, though, his allergies had taken on a whole new dimension.  We live in the beautiful town of Austin, TX, which also happens to be the Allergy Capital of the World (we like to tout things like that:  Live Music Capital of the World, Allergy Capital of the World. We're just so awesome).  Every winter, we get to suffer through Cedar Fever season.  And it's no fun.  The majority of the city's population is sick with allergies.  But this winter, it wasn't just Cedar Fever for Craig.  It was Alopecia Areata, also referred to as spot baldness.  The most common type of alopecia areata involves hair loss in one or more round spots on the scalp, and that's exactly what Craig had.  A round patch of hair was just.....gone.  


From Wiki - "The condition is thought to be an autoimmune disorder in which the body attacks its own hair follicles and suppresses or stops hair growth."  

Add to this Craig's family history of gastrointestinal disorders like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.  He had been having some major bouts...MAJOR bouts.  He just wasn't well.

And then a friend of ours told us about the book Clean by Alejandro Junger.  She told us we needed to do this program immediately.  So I bought the book.  Immediately.


A lot of what I read wasn't news to me.  We're subjected to all kinds of toxins every day, in our food, in the air, in the things we use to store our food, in our paper towels, in our cleaning products, in the soap and shampoos we use, in our water.  It's incredible.  And incredibly scary.

None of this could possibly be good for us.  None of it.  Its evidence is everywhere:  cancer, allergies, gastrointestinal disorders, depression, obesity.  You or someone you know has had or has at least one of these things.

In Craig's case, he's got two of them.  In my case, I could stand to lose a few pounds.  And I've been trying really, really hard for the last year.  Ask anyone - they'll tell you - I've been trying.  And I've managed to lose 15 lbs from my heaviest weight, which I hit shortly after having my daughter.  But I've hit a wall.  I've done The Metabolism Miracle, I went to a registered dietitian, I do cardio kickboxing at least four times a week and strength training at least once a week.  I've lost 20.5 inches total, so that's awesome. But I've been stuck there since November.  I can't lose weight to save my life, but apparently I might just die trying.  What the hell?

But my reasons for doing this aren't as important as Craig's reasons.  We really needed to get to the bottom of what was causing his body to go haywire.  The crux of this program is to eliminate any potential allergens from the diet for at least a three week period.  To rid the body of all the crap, to reset it, to give it a rest so that it can get back to working the way it was designed to work. Then we'll slowly re-introduce those things that he used to eat all the time. If he has a negative reaction, we know what to cut out of the diet for good.  

Sounds logical. Sounds easy enough, right?  Ha! You fool! Did you forget who I married?!?  The man who would not eat broccoli...