Crazy Sexy Update: Week One

WARNING: This article contains over-sharing. Over sharing about poop, and other things.


Day Two:
Today I felt lame, really lame. Tired, out of sorts, exhausted – this wasn’t helped by the fact that I spent all day craving food that wasn’t what I packed in my to-go lunch and dinner bag since I was working away from home all day til 8. Working hard at work while working hard at detoxing is FREAKIN’ hard work, let me tell you.

Day Three:
Today was fine until I went a little off script for dinner – I was just going to not eat until I got home, but when I got there I was so hungry, and I’d never been to a sushi train before, so I incorrectly thought they might have some brown rice options, but alas they did not. So white rice was eaten, but otherwise I ate crazily and sexily. And I felt fabulous too!

Real Life Experiment: Crazy Sexy... Diet?

On Sunday March 13, 2011, I started Kris Carr’s Crazy Sexy Diet 21-Day Adventure Cleanse.

To everyone I’ve talked to about it, or mentioned it to, I’ve just shortened the title to “The Crazy Diet”, since compared to what I would usually eat, that’s what it seems like – borderline mentally unstable. But allow me to explain myself; if you found a book that taught you how to avoid colds, constipation and cancer, have glowing, clear, beautiful skin and led you down the road to inner peace, I think it’d all be worth a few weeks of crazy, don’t you?

The diet is basically vegan and raw plant based – you can tailor it to your own eating wishes, as long as either 60%, or 80% of your plate is filled with raw, lightly steamed or sautéed veggies, and the rest of your plate is alkaline or easily broken down acidic foods. Processed foods, coffee, black tea and alcohol aren’t Crazy Sexy Friendly; you are on a Cleanse, after all. Breakfast is a green juice or smoothie, with some fruit if needed – aiming to have nothing but liquids before lunchtime if possible. Exercise that makes you sweat happens for 35mins once a day, as does meditation, although the length is up to you (15-20 mins minimum is recommended). *

Let me compare this to me regular diet;

• Breakfast = porridge with honey (made with skim milk), rockmelon.
• Morning tea = carrot sticks, green beans and dip, or low fat Greek yoghurt with raspberries, blueberries and honey.
• Lunch = omelette with salad.
• Afternoon tea = corn chips with salsa, or 1 piece of wholegrain toast with Vegemite and avocado.
• Dinner = Home-made Veggie pizza with lots of cheese.
• … Punctuated with mini Snickers bars, small packets of tiny teddies and more corn chips.

As you can see I like to eat in rather large portion sizes, and most of what I eat meets its doom before midday. Sure, my regular diet isn’t too bad – I can usually meet my daily requirement of vegetable and fruit intake and only ever have small portions of really bad junk food… But there is a pretty big difference between the two, clearly.

The first big difference is the VEGAN part. I’m regularly vegetarian, and find milk, eggs, yoghurt and cheese to be a reliable source of protein and they are also pretty delicious (especially when in things like pancakes, pizzas, froghurt…). I’ve never been one of those people who just drinks milk, although I do have a soft spot for cereal with milk, and this has lead to much of me being soft spots, as I tend to eat cereals in excess and expand in result. Omelettes had me at hello, and cheese, oh, cheese, how I will miss thee. But I’m giving them all up for 21 days, no looking back. Don’t worry, I’ll be getting enough iron and protein and calcium and all those things typically associated with animal products – I solemnly swear to be nutritionally stable – through the devouring of delicious delicacies like beans, lentils, leafy greens and whole grains!

The second big difference is the liquid mornings. First thing I would regularly do of a morning is drink 2 glasses of water, followed by scarfing down a big bowl of porridge and stuffing my face with fruit. Only a few hours would pass after this before I’d be munching and crunching on my morning veggies with dip, regularly a Spring Onion or Pesto with Fetta variety. No solid food before midday? Big difference – but I’m up for the challenge.

The great things about this “diet” are the following; there are no restrictive portion sizes – if it’s Crazy Sexy Friendly, and within your veggie-to-other-stuff-ratio you can eat as much of it as you please, the second is that you know exactly why you’re eating this way. Kris Carr hasn’t given you a mysterious meal plan, restricting you to eating each thing at each meal, exactly as she’s written, with little discernable reasoning behind it; instead she teaches you how to eat, gives you some hearty meal suggestions and recipes, and lets you take it from there. She explains why eating alkaline is important, what exercise does to your body and guides you, every step of the way, through daily prayers, affirmations and suggestions. The book isn’t so much a diet book; as much as it is a complete lifestyle book.

So why I would I go on such an extreme quest? Well at the moment my health is in a slump – I’m exercising more, eating better, but getting nowhere. (CAUTION: Over-sharing ahead) Since my real-life-horror-story sinus infection last year in Texas (during which I had a fever so high I almost got a ride in an ambulance – this would have been cool if I hadn’t been hallucinating and trying not to throw up at the time) I’ve had excess mucus up to my eyeballs. Thirdly, I’m going to Hawaii in a month and have a little extra junk in my trunk – a lot of which I picked up during my trip to The Lone Star State – that I could do without in my holiday photos, thank you very much. Plus, cancer can’t deal with being in an alkaline environment, such as me when I’m eating this way.

So I’m bringing you along for my Crazy Sexy Cleanse journey… Wish me luck and cheap veggies in abundance!

* This is a very basic guideline, so if you were interested I’d recommend you get your hands on a copy of the book! It really is a fun read and not boring or complex and confusing at all. It’s also hella entertaining; e.g. in your natural state “unicorns want to lick you”. Fact.

Real Life Experiment: Two Months of Dry Brushing

Aim: To test whether dry brushing daily produces any visible changes is health or appearance.

Requirements:

• a brush with natural bristles (intended for skin, a removable long handle is advised)
• or a loofah or loofah mit
• your pretty little self

Method: There are lots of ways to do dry brushing, but this is the basic low down:

1. Start at your feet and work your way up your body
2. Making gentle upward strokes or circular motions (circular on butt and back)
3. Avoiding tender skin such as ya nips!
4. If you want to dry brush your face do so with a special face brush.
5. Repeat before your shower daily!
6. Maintain cleanliness of brush by washing weekly (of fortnightly if you’re busy/me).

Observation: I started out making little circles with the brush when I’d do it, but after a while I changed to stroking (eyebrow waggle) which I found isn’t quite as scratchy. Although there wasn’t much change to my skin in the first month or so, it did make me feel really awake and zingy in general. After a month I started noticing that the bumps on my arms had decreased and the pinkness wasn’t as noticeable.

Discussion: The main purpose of dry brushing is to help the lymphatic system move the lymph around your body, which helps many of the other systems of your body work even better. Many also recommend it as it can give some great results if you have skin issues like if you’re prone to ingrown hairs or skin irritations like reoccurring rashes. Many also claim that it can get rid of cellulite!

So I don’t know whether dry brushing is helping my lymphatic system, and I have no way of gauging it either, so I think I’ll just assume, since it makes me feel great after I do it, that that is the effect of my lymph nodes squealing for joy… Not very scientific I know, but I have a theatre degree and barely passed senior Biology, so that’s as close to scientific as I’m going to get.

As for skin issues like ingrown hairs and irritations – I’m really glad to say that I didn’t see many at all when I was dry brushing. If I didn’t dry brush for a day (or say, three days, when I was stranded away from home during the floods in January) sometimes I’d end up with an ingrown hair here or there.

Cellulite – well, I don’t know if it really helped that much with cellulite, but I won’t say that it doesn’t work. I’m sure that if you combined dry brushing with a healthy plant based diet and regular exercise that you could kiss your cottage cheese thighs goodbye, however I didn’t see too much of a difference. (My thighs are still a little dimply, but I love ‘em anyway.)

Results: Dry Brushing definitely gave me visible change in my skin, particularly the bumpy skin on my upper arms, which had always given my worries in the past. Health benefits? Well I’m sure it’s doing some good, and it sure makes me feel good, and LOADS of sources say it’s great for you. So I suppose that it’s doing some good!

Conclusion: Give it a try! It might work for you, it might not… But I definitely recommend trying it, at least for a month and a half.

Links:

Kris Carr on Dry Brushing

Dry Brushing & Body Detox on Livestrong.com

Real Life Experiment: A Month of Drinking Lemon Water

Cute lemon image courtesy of cuddle_for_peace

Aim: To test whether adding lemon juice to water produces any notable changes in health, appearance or general well being as all the hype suggests it may.

Hypothesis: Drinking lemon juice in my water in the mornings will make me feel approximately ten percent more awesome. Fingers are in the crossed position.

Requirements:

•  Lemons!
• Water!
• Cup or other liquid receptacle
•  Knife
• Plate (if you’re getting fancy)

Method

I like to keep things simple*, so here is the routine I’ve stuck to for the past month:

1. Wake up! It’s morning!

2. Pour a large glass of water. I go for the tap; you might be fancy and head for something filtered. General advice is to keep it room temperature at best, warmish is even better.

3. Pick your lemon. I like to go for the one that looks like it’s ready for its next stage of life. After all, this is not only a big moment for you but also for the lemon; a lemon only gets one chance in life to be made into a delicious beverage or pie, so choose wisely and gratefully.

4. Gently roll lucky lemon around for a minute or two on your bench/table/between palms to help squash out the juices, then cut in two. Squeeze half the lemon’s juice into the water.

5. Drink.

6. Repeat with the second half of the lemon and a fresh glass of water.

7. Feel awesome!

*Okay, so this could be put simpler, but then where would be the fun?

Observations:

Physical: My skin is notably clearer and appears more evenly toned, crazy food allergy rash that I have is calmed and stomach flattens somewhat…(un-bloating?). I cease craving unhealthy foods, especially those high in sugar and grease. I actually even lose a little weight.

Mental: Taking time out before breakfast to sit, drink and usually do some news reading is nicely meditative and I find I am much more organised throughout the remainder of the day. Because I feel like I begin the day taking a step in a healthy direction, I also feel compelled to make ongoing healthy choices throughout the day.

Discussion:

There are many purported advantages to taking lemon juice in one’s water and so I will aim to address a few in seeing whether this practice actually works in the way we’re being told it does.

Firstly there is the big ‘D’. Did I feel like drinking lemon juice in my water every morning helped me to detox? Well, because I’ve never been on any kind of detoxification plan, I don’t know exactly what ‘detoxing’ should feel like. What I’ve noticed, however, is how good my skin looks and how much less irritated (as I said, crazy food allergies ahoy here) my body seems in general. These certainly look like signs of detoxing to me. Also (beware, some details are not for the faint hearted) I noticed on mornings when I have forgone my juice habit for the day or two previously that I wake up quite sinus-ey and congested. Mucus build up is one of the signs that detoxing is needed, and so I’d say that this gives an indication that something good is happening with all the lemon drinking.

Next there is the not as big but getting bigger every day ‘A’. Alkalising my system is actually much more interesting to me and higher on my agenda than the idea of detoxing. There are many reasons why having an alkalised system is important and more and more it’s becoming a frequent topic of chatter in health circles. Not only does alkalisation help with weight loss, fatigue and general well-being, but, and here’s the big one, cancer can’t survive in an alkaline environment. With that knowledge I’m happy to throw all the alkalising stuff at my system that I can get, aren’t you? Funnily enough, it just so happens that lemon juice is alkalising itself, even though most would think it acidic. Now, you can get your PH levels tested to see just how alkaline your body is, but I haven’t. At the moment I’m happy enough to know that I’m working at making a difference for now and one day in the future I might get a bit more technical about it.

Vitamin C, of course, is also one of the reasons why adding lemon juice to water is touted as a fine habit. While I try to eat a fair share of raw vegetables in order to get my needed nutrients, I am quite aware that I probably don’t always get there. Vitamin C has always been an especial concern for me as I’m not a huge fan of eating fruit (please beware of all the shock and horror going around right now) and so I’m again glad to think that I’m doing something to combat this.

Results:

Overall review? I think it’s safe to say that adding lemon juice to my water has made me at least ten percent more awesome than before, if not a little more. Of course, some of the benefits I think I’ve encountered can also be linked to drinking the two glasses of water in the morning or the yoga or meditation I’ve also been trying out this month, but I do believe the lemons have been a help. Most convincing is how I feel on the days when I don’t drink the lemons; sluggish and sleepy, compared to the days when I do; alert, calm, clear.

Conclusion:

It’s a habit I’ll be keeping: Yay to the Lemon!