pages

Thursday, June 10, 2010

And Forgive Me the Chocolate, For I Am Weak and Bend Easily Under Pressure


Olive and Sinclair vegan, gluten-free chocolate bars have been STALKING me. They are sold where I work. They are sold where I buy groceries. They are sold where I find books. They are sold at the mall, where I go to pretend to spend money and really just look and treat the whole place like a museum. They are sold at the little coffee shop where I go to write about my dietary transcendence.

I swear, I tried to be good. Apparently I suck at trying, because I ate three in 48 hours and ended up with a crazy ear infection that made my jaw swell up.

I am an emotional eater. I got stressed, I PMSed, and I turned to the chocolate because I deserve nice things. I deserved that ear infection. Food is currency, and in this case I got what I paid for.

So here I am, trying to root out this ear infection by going on a 72-hour healing cleanse. I did this when I had a really severe sinus infection and it was a phenomenal help. I cleared the infection without turning once to antibiotics, even in the height of allergy season here in the Crud Bowl. So here's what my 72-hour alkalinizing cleanse will look like:

DAY 1:
Daily Personal Goal: DO NOT EAT CRAP

Breakfast: Miso soup with onions, carrots, bok choi, sea vegetables, and fresh daikon from the garden

Snack: Not crap. 11 AM is my morning crap fix. This is the time when I usually eat a half... okay-lie, a whole cup of tofu chocolate pudding, possibly with a friend or two in the form of KIND nut bars. While this sounds fairly harmless, it is a 100% sugar fix and not good if your body is showing signs of being too acidic.

Lunch: Quinoa with beans and chickpeas, and fresh steamed greens from my garden.

Dinner: Sprouted Tofu Burger with tofu cheese and stone ground mustard. Steamed watercress. Some sort of whole grain.

Cleansing Rituals:
AM and PM body scrubs, and a steam if I can snag one.
No makeup or hair spray for the next 72 hours. Eeek.

Macro Rewards that Won't Sink Your Battleship As You Cleanse:
Exfoliating facial:

Steam with lavender and calendula blossoms in hot water to open pores. If you want, add a drop or two of geranium oil to the steam bath. It calms redness that can appear during facials. These blossoms can be obtained for literally $1 at Whole Foods Market. Try not to burn your face. It's unsightly.

Do a green clay mask or some other sort of exfoliation product. Origins claims that their "Modern Friction" scrub is comparable to microdermabrasion. That's a load. Nothing found in a jar is the equivalent of tiny flecks of diamond sanding the top layer of skin off your face, rendering you unable to tolerate the raw glare of the sun for three days. And sure as shooting nothing that can be sold for $16 in a jar. Take it from me. Modern Friction is fine. $800 of microdermabrasion under the hands of an angry Soviet is better.

Moisturize as the redness and swelling in your face subsides. I like to use avocado oil. Usually while I do this, I'll do an olive oil mask in my hair, because really, once you have that kind of oil on your face, you're pretty much going to look like you brushed your hair with a pork chop... don't fight it.

So that's my favorite macro treat when I am making a concerted effort not to eat my pain. peace!!

becky

No comments:

Post a Comment