A hearty congratulations to everyone who participated in the HHA fall detox program 2010. It has been a wonderful ride with all of you and based on most of the reports Alice and I have been receiving it seems like this was a great success for many of you!
Tomorrow is day 21 which is the final day of the detox and I wanted to take this opportunity to reiterate the importance of the re-introduction phase of this program. While we won’t be formally working with you on this phase (this may change in the future), I highly recommend picking 1 or 2 things to reintroduce at a time. This will give you fewer variables if you notice a change in digestion, skin, energy level, etc. Write down which foods you are adding each day and what you notice if anything. Take a full week to re-introduce and feel free to really go for it. Have a bowl of pasta or a hamburger and pay attention. What we all notice is that some foods seem to have little effect while others are clearly not helping our endeavors for better health. It’s important to realize and respond when this becomes clear. Realize what the foods are that have a negative impact on your health and wellness and respond by removing those foods and being creative in how you replace them. Then you can gauge how you are doing next Spring when we start the next detox.
Great Job Everyone!!!
Tomorrow is the last day on 2 shakes team. It’s amazing, I always feel a little sad to go down to 1 shake and then to come off them completely. Especially in the morning with a handful of almonds, a shake always keeps me on my toes until lunch with maybe an apple somewhere in between. I find that even though I can have a shake for breakfast after the detox is over, I just don’t tend to do so that often. That being said, I want everyone to know that having one shake per day does not constitute continuous detox, so you are welcome to continue using Mediclear on a once per day basis if you so desire. Think of it more as a multivitamin/protein shake when you are drinking one per day and not adhering to the food elimination. Sue, who gave the rousing testimonial at our orientation meeting, is an example of someone who has continued to use mediclear in this way and has benefited greatly. This season I think we will keep the blender on the countertop and I encourage you to do so as well!
Lastly, since we are not meeting with everyone individually this week, please continue to communicate with us via blog and email if you have any questions, comments or thoughts. I will be posting a few blogs over the next few days to help clarify and remind everyone about the re-introduction phase. Until then, enjoy your beans!!!
Today marks day 7 without protein and most of you have been rolling along beautifully. There may have been a bit less energy for some, myself included, and increased sleep during this week seemed to help quite a bit. An extra hour per night can make all the difference in the world. In general, Americans have way too much protein in their diets anyway so having a week without is no problem at all. A high protein diet causes blood to become acidic, requiring more alkaline based foods such as fruits and vegetables to balance out the pH of the blood. Normally, people with high protein diets are not hungry enough to eat 9 – 10 servings of fruits and vegetables per day to balance out the blood, thus living in a state that is more acidic and greatly increases the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and osteoporosis. Check out this article posted in the NY Times in 2009 that references a few studies in regards to this (copy and paste into your browser).
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/health/24brod.html?_r=1
Some of the research in this arena is incomplete, specifically the acid/base argument, but there is more and more information coming out about the benefits of having high amounts of fruits, vegetables and nuts in your diet and low amounts of protein.
All that being said, it will be nice to have some beans with my rice tomorrow and maybe a nice salmon filet 
Hi All,
I wanted to welcome everyone to week 2 and check-in to see how things are going so far. For those of you doing the full detox, it would be great to hear how the 3 shakes are going and for eveyone if you have any new recipes for the week 2 diet it would be great to share them with the rest of us!
Today I experienced my first real craving staring at the halloween candy by the front door. We tried to get candy that we don’t really like that much so as not to be tempted, but there was one bag of reeses and man could I taste that peanut butter cup! In the moment when that taste came it felt like there was no choice but to indulge and it was so extreme that I actually felt like I was depriving myself by not unwrapping one of those cups and going for it, but I knew intellectually that was only a short term sensation that would pass if I did not give in to it. This actually took much longer than I thought, but about an hour and a half later I noticed that I was not craving that darn cup anymore and actually felt completely liberated for not falling victim to a craving that would have satisfied a short term desire, but had no long term benefit and even worse, would have sabotaged everything we spoke about in our meeting together and let down all of you. You see nobody would have known that I ate that cup, but there would have been a fake expression in what I was standing for by recommending this detox to everyone and then not taking it seriously myself. It was simply amazing for me to see once again how strong the sensation was even for someone like myself who is dedicated to health and one of the leaders of the detox program itself!
The conclusion I have come to is that the more I participate in things like this the more I realize it does not actually get easier, because there are always cravings and desires and in some ways it gets harder, because I actually feel more responsible to live up to the highest standard. What becomes present is a greater care in not being a victim of the cravings, but actually taking a stand for not giving in to them. So on that note, I hope you all have a happy halloween and will continue to make the small changes that will take everything you do to a higher level, not just for your personal attainment, but for the sake of holding a standard for everyone who knows you are doing this detox and would receive a renewed sense of hope by seeing you succeed.
Hi All,
Moving on to 2 shakes today went well. I had a light dinner of roasted root vegetables, rice cakes with hummus and a few slices of watermelon for dessert. Definitely not as hungry with 2 shakes. Does anyone else notice how long before they get hungry in the morning? I am having a handful of almonds and a shake with some fruit blended in and it is lasting me until lunch!
Make sure you are all drinking enough water throughout the day as it really helps to flush toxins out of your system, supporting phase II detoxification.
Great job making it to the 25% completion mark of the detox!
Hi everyone,
Hope you all had a productive and cooking filled weekend leading into today. Great info from Teri attached as a comment to the last post that should give us some “food for thought.” Samantha and I are dining out with my parents tonight so I just thought reiterating the idea about grilled fish and vegetables without looking at the menu is a good way to go for this detox. Sam prepped roasted root vegetables, mushroom/apricot rice, salad and lentil soup for the first few days of the week.
Detox away!
Just want to say best wishes to all on Day one of your De-tox!!!;;
I want to echo what Ryan mentioned about the power of this kind of process. There is always some kind of long term benefit that occurs in committing to doing a process like this..I believe the universe honors us for honoring the true needs of our bodies and selves. For myself personally, I am hoping to really limit caffeine consumption and have made a very good start by today.
Yesterday per Sam’s suggestion (thanks Sam!!) I went to the Lebherz Olive Oil and Vinegar Emporium near Volt and got three different flavored Oil Olives (the olive oil sampler is on sale) One really interesting one I decided to try is called “Butter” even though it’s 100% Olive oil. I put a Tablespoon of that in about 3 cups of Organic potatoes with Rice Dream and some Sea Salt, mashed it up and it was delicious!! I may never make mashed potatoes with an animal product again! Even my son Tim (whose 17) thought they were very good.
Anyway, best wishes to all and remember if you have questions, ask us here or bounce Ryan or myself an e-mail,
Alice
Just wanted to wish everyone an exciting first weekend of detox. Sam and I went out for Indian food tonight and the naan bread was the last we will see for a few weeks, but I am looking forward to a squeaky clean diet for the next 3 weeks.
Remember to shop for lots of groceries this weekend including fruits, vegetables (especially root vegetables), sweet potatoes and lots of whole grains. Let us know how your morning shakes go and if you like the recipe you tried. Remember to take it easy this weekend and let your body ease into the detox. Looking forward to hearing from all of you soon.
p.s. Comments are now allowed so please let us know how the weekend goes! I had the wrong setting in, but you should be able to post now.
Hello All!
It was great to be with you last night for the HHA Fall Detox 2010. As you heard during the orientation, we are so excited to enter our 3rd group of the year through this detox and personally participate again with you all as well! There is always something powerful that occurs when we all partake in this together and move forward in our health and wellness goals. No matter how many of these I have done, it seems that I always carry something new into my daily nutrition program when I participate in a detox.
This is an opening post for everyone to comment on and then we can see where it goes from there. Participating on the blog will GREATLY enhance your progress on this program. Questions, comments, recipes and experiences are all fair game and the more you post the more deeply you will be considering aspects of the process.
Moving forward, we want to remember a few basics as they relate to the current phase of the program, which is as we like to call it – Pretox:
1) Focus – Take the detox seriously right from the start and begin to reduce caffeine, sugar, flour, soy, dairy and red meat by at least half. This will have amazing benefits come next week as we cut those items out of our diets completely. Withdrawal symptoms such as headaches and fatigue are common so the more you reduce now the better off you will be.
2) Flush – Increase your water intake to half your body weight in ounces per day. Water is very cleansing and will help flush out toxins during the first phase of the detox, so the more you can drink the better.
3) Fascination – Think curiously and with interest every step of the way with this program. The more interested you are in what you can learn and what new things you can try, the more smoothly the program will go and the precedent will be set for making big or subtle changes in your overall nutrition program going forward.
Good luck to all and we look forward to seeing you this week!
All the Best,
Ryan
I have been thinking a lot about meditation recently. Yesterday in our meditation group I asked the participants what they thought about meditation before we began the group. The people who attended have been meditating once a month in our group for 9 months and each have daily home practices. “Before this group started, I thought meditation was just about relaxing from my crazy life, but now I know it is much more than that.”
There is something very mysterious and paradoxical about meditation in that on one hand the relaxation, calm, clarity that we believe will occur with meditation does happen, but usually it is not for quite a while. One may also experience these positive aspects during meditation and then lose any sense of the significance of it once they come out of the meditation. More often in the beginning this practice seems like a waste of time, is frustrating or may even be excruciating to the part of ourselves that could always, “find something better to do.” So why bother doing it? Well, the other part of ourselves wonders, ‘what could be more important to do than to gain freedom from the mind?’
I can relate to meditating only when I want to, as much as the next person having been a “convenience meditator,” since I learned the practice at 14 years old. If I was stressed I would meditate to take away the stress, if I was frustrated I would meditate to calm down. I was not serious about meditation at all until 2006 when a mentor and teacher of mine mentioned that if I was serious about what I was doing then I would be able to meditate for at least 30 minutes every day. That was the beginning of a new world opening up. It has been through his direction that I have discovered so many aspects of meditation that I was completely ignorant about and had a false perception of. At this point after 4 solid years of meditating daily, I can say that I am just beginning to glimpse the potential of this practice. For most people who meditate the profound paradox is that on one hand it is obviously positive, good for us on many levels and good for those around us and on the other hand, it can be so frustrating, time consuming and difficult!
All we have to do is put our attention on the part of ourselves that knows it is positive and if the meditation seems difficult, know that is most likely not going to be the last time, so have no relationship to it whatsoever. The small glimpses of the mystery beyond the mind are reminders that there is more to do. Hope to see you next month at our group in HHA!
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November 11, 2010 11:01 pm | 
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