Days 11, 12, & 13 - A Big Blur

Well, we haven't exactly failed at the diet, but we haven't totally succeeded either. Our schedules have been so hectic for the past few days that we haven't had time to cook and have been relying on takeout. We've attempted to be as healthy as possible with it...maple turkey burgers with sweet potato fries instead of bacon cheeseburgers with regular fries, for example. But still. It's probably not what Martha would have wanted.

In terms of the restrictions, we gained dairy back on Thursday, eggs back on Friday, and soy back today so we're almost normal again, foodwise. This diet confirmed my single apparent food allergy (or intolerance, technically it's not an allergy according to my research). Eggs. I'm fine with eggs as ingredients in baked goods, even quiches and other dishes where eggs are the main focus. But give me a poached or boiled egg by itself and I will have a killer stomachache 2-4 hours later. This is not something I've dealt with my whole life, it developed over the past few years. And it sucks, because I love eggs! Over-easy, sunny-side up, scrambled, poached, hard-boiled, soft-boiled, on toast...you name it, if it's an egg I want to eat it. And now I can't. Lame.

But back to the big challenge. The one major thing we're still lacking (aside from processed food, which as Martha says we should probably just keep out of our diets for good) is caffeine. And it's a huge lack. Part of the reason our schedules have been so crazy for the past few days is because we can't rely on caffeine to tame them. Because you know how the experts always say things like, "everyone needs a different amount of sleep; you should find the number of hours that's right for you"? Well it turns out that if there's no caffeine in my life, the right number of hours for me is 9. Nine!

If that doesn't seem crazy to you, here are some quick calculations to show you why it is. Let's assume there are 24 hours in a day.

9 hours of sleep +

9 hours at work +

2 hours getting ready for work/traveling to and from work (we have a 20-minute commute) +

2 hours cooking dinner, eating dinner, doing dishes, sorting the mail, feeding the animals, etc.

= 22 hours

That leaves exactly two hours of free time in which to do fun things just because I like them. Oh, and to do my second job, and clean the house, and do homework (that one's for Matt), and do any other major chores that need doing. This is not ok! I can totally see why most people only sleep 6-7 hours and then drink a ton of coffee. If you can shave two hours off your sleeping time, that doubles the amount of time left for enjoying life! So, much as I've loved getting nine hours of sleep every night for the past week...I think tomorrow we'll be buying some coffee. Hold the sugar and half n' half but give me extra caffeine, please.

Days 9 & 10 - Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut

Today's menu:

• Whole-wheat toast with peanut butter and banana slices
• Sushi (veggie and fish only, no cream cheese or other fun ingredients, and no soy sauce)
• Carrots and hummus
• Thai beef salad

Tuesday we allowed ourselves to have peanuts again, which was not altogether exciting. Neither of us has a peanut allergy, but we also don't eat them as much as we eat, say, wheat or dairy. So it wasn't that big of a deal. We did incorporate peanuts into two meals though, just because we could.

Wednesday we ate almost the exact same thing as Tuesday (substituting leftover pasta from Monday instead of sushi for lunch). We were going to reintroduce eggs on Wednesday, but we were just too tired to cook anything. So we didn't.

However, there is nothing better left over than this Thai beef salad. It was amazing the first night we had it, and equally amazing the second. Plus, as a leftover, it was much faster to prepare! Our only complaint about this dish was how long it took us to make it. The prep work is almost all active: chopping, measuring, mixing, etc. Which means we couldn't just set one thing to cook and prep other things in the meantime. But the effort was totally worth it. This dish was truly fantastic.

Day 8 - Hello, Bread!

Today's menu:

• Whole-grain toast with almond butter and banana slices
• More fresh fruit with applesauce-sweetened tahini
• Carrots and hummus
• Whole-wheat rigatoni with spiced meat sauce and salad

Today we reintroduced wheat into our diet! Cooking is so much easier when you don't have to worry about gluten...bread, pasta, all the wonderfully easy-to-prepare foods are back in our pantry. And toast is just so much better on a freezing winter morning than smoothies.

We tried out this new pasta recipe (also from Martha) but modified it slightly. We used extra-lean ground beef and substituted fresh tomatoes for the tomato paste. It was really good! I'm not usually a huge fan of meat sauces or pasta dishes in general, but I loved this. The cinnamon in particular added a really nice flavor to the sauce. I would definitely make it again.

After eating wheat all day, neither of us noticed any changes that would signify a gluten allergy. I actually had more energy today than any day last week, although it's hard to say whether that's due to the wheat or the fact that I got 10 hours of sleep every night over the weekend. In any case, it's nice to know that we can happily continue including wheat and gluten-containing products in our diet in the future!

Day 7 - First Week Recap

No pictures today because all we did was eat leftovers from earlier in the week. It was nice to have a day without cooking, especially since we had to plan and prepare ourselves for week two! This coming week we'll be reintroducing the restricted foods into our diet one at a time. But first, a quick note about week one...

This whole challenge has indeed been a challenge, but a fun one. We've managed to maintain a diet that eliminated the most common food allergens, along with alcohol and caffeine, in order to give our systems a break. The food has been excellent, but what has it done for our health?

Well, it's hard to say. There were times this week when I felt much more energetic than usual, and I didn't have my typical 2pm need for coffee every day. However, given that there was no coffee to get me going in the morning, I found myself requiring a full 8 hours of sleep every night, which meant going to bed at 9:30 on the dot. And frankly I still felt kind of tired, like I would have done better with 9 hours. But there just isn't enough time in each day for me to spend 9 hours of it sleeping!

In other health areas, Matt experienced considerable improvement in his digestive issues (he suffers from bad acid reflux). I, on the other hand, found my IBS-like symptoms to be just as uncomfortable this week as any other. And we both felt hungry a lot. Which of course made it difficult to resist the junk food temptations that seemed to be waiting everywhere we went.

So overall, while I appreciate the value of this week's challenge as an exercise, it's not a diet I would want to be on permanently. Perhaps every so often to rejuvenate my body and remind myself of what healthy eating really means. But in general, I am more in favor of allowing treats in moderation than feeling constantly limited by dietary rules. Good to know...apparently I have a personal eating philosophy!

Day 6 - Weekends Mean More Time for Cooking

Today's menu:

• Ginger smoothies
• Hot water with lemon
• Quinoa salad with toasted almonds
• Guacamole with homemade potato chips
• Orange-and-ginger-glazed pork chops with mustard greens and baked acorn squash

We had friends visiting this weekend, and since they were stuck sharing our restricted diet with us for a day we decided to go all out and try to have the best detox food possible! We started the morning with some zingy smoothies, which were quite good although very gingery. Then we had some excellent, light and tasty quinoa salad for lunch. We substituted yellow squash for the zucchini called for in the recipe and it was quite a good meal.

For dinner, we went a little overboard. It started off with an appetizer of guacamole with homemade potato chips (to get around the no-corn and no-processed-food rules). In fact we had a guacamole-off with two types: Matt's favorite, from this recipe, and my favorite, which is just avocado, garlic, lime juice, and salt. We all agreed that Matt's was more flavorful but mine highlighted the avocado flavor better. Win-win!

Then we had a full meal of pork chops, mustard greens, and acorn squash (leftover from our CSA). None of these were official 28-day challenge recipes, but they all conveniently fit into the first week's restrictions. Well, except for the acorn squash. The recipe called for butter, but we just omitted it with no substitution and all though it was fine without it. Another meal to prove that eating healthy can still mean eating truly delicious food.

Day 5 - Good So Far

Today's menu:

• Half an avocado with salt, pepper, and lime juice
• Carrots and hummus
• Leftover cold soba-noodle salad from day 3
• Lemon-ginger tea
• A handful of grapes
• Honey glazed chicken, salad, and leftover lentils from day 2
• Another cashew cream smoothie

Today it seems like we've finally gotten into the swing of things. While we're still following the week 1 detox diet to the letter, by day 5 we've figured out how to do that and still manage to eat a normal day's worth of food. Hooray!

But for those of you who never clicked through the links to find out what this detox diet is all about, let me just give a quick recap of the foods we've been avoiding this week:

• Added sugar
• Processed foods and beverages
• Alcohol
• Caffeine
• Wheat gluten
• Eggs
• Dairy
• Peanut products
• Fruit juices (because they're usually high in sugar)
• Soy
• Corn
• Farm-raised fish and fish high in mercury

If that seems like a lot of food to cut out of your diet all at once...it is. But we have been successful for 5 straight days now and I feel pretty great. Knowing that an end is in sight helps a lot. Giving up chocolate for a week is doable. Giving it up forever is just not.

I also want to quickly say that our dinner menu tonight did not come from the 28-day Challenge recipes. The chicken recipe was one I found elsewhere (ok, still on the Martha Stewart website. The woman does everything!) that conveniently fit into the dietary restrictions. And it was amazing. Note to self: if you're oven-roasting chicken breasts, always use bone-in. They are so much more tender and juicy than boneless ones!

Day 4 - Pot on Fire!

Today's menu:

• Blueberry-Almond Butter Smoothie
• Leftover cold soba-noodle salad from yesterday
• A tangerine
• Pot-Au-Feu

So tonight's dinner dish was this lovely soup called Pot-Au-Feu, which translates to pot-on-fire. Not sure why, exactly, but I like the name. And the soup. Matt and I agreed that if we were to make it again, we'd change the recipe in the following ways:

1. Season the beef. A little salt and pepper can make a big difference.
2. Saute the beef and add it to the soup at the very end. It's not cooking long enough to really get a lot of the beef flavor in there, anyway.
3. Possibly add some greens. Spinach would be a nice touch.

However, even without those changes the soup was great. I've never had a beef-stew-like-dish that included parsnips and rutabaga. They are so much more flavorful root vegetables than potatoes! Will definitely be using them more in the future.

Regarding this smoothie, which we also ate on Day 2, I just want to say that it may be my new favorite smoothie recipe. The almond butter makes it so good and filling. Plus I love blueberry anything. If only we had picked and frozen our own blueberries last summer...this would even have been really cheap! Have to remember that this year.

Day 3 - Lots of Cold Foods

Today's menu:

• Cold Soba-Noodle Salad with Chicken, Peppers, and Cucumber
• Carrots with hummus
• Leftover salmon and lentils from yesterday
• Leftover fruit with tahini dressing from yesterday
• Cashew Cream Smoothie

Three's a charm. This was the easiest day yet, except that I felt super hungry all day. It seemed like all I did was eat (small servings, but still). Matt also found that he had a lot more energy today than usual. Maybe there's something to this detox diet after all!

The highlight of today's dishes was the cashew cream smoothie. It is basically just cashews (ok, plus a little vanilla, ice, and agave nectar) but to our dairy-starved taste buds it was almost like eating ice cream! It helped that we poured them into cute glasses and ate/drank them while watching our restricted 30 minutes of TV....oh yes, a "media fast" is part of this 28-day challenge too.

In any case, I'm thrilled to have this new healthy, vegan ice cream substitute recipe for future use.

Day 2 - Fruit and Fish

Today's menu:

• Wild Salmon with Lentils and Arugula
• Carrots and hummus
• Fresh Fruit with Applesauce-Sweetened Tahini
• Blueberry-Almond Butter Smoothie

Day 2 was harder than day one. For sure. I was very, very tired and there was no coffee to help me through the afternoon. But the food we ate today was amazing. I never realized that wild salmon tastes so much better than farm-raised! It was a tasty and satisfying dinner, and quick to boot.

The fruit salad was also excellent, although we just used apples, tangelos, and grapes...mango is expensive and bland up here. I would never have thought to mix tahini with sweet foods, it always seemed like a savory item to me. It worked really well though, and made a light but filling dressing for the fruit.

And the smoothie was a perfect start to the day. I have to say that doing this whole "detox diet" thing is much easier when there are weekly menus planned out with simple recipes to follow. We just went through the master recipe list and picked out a handful that looked especially good. I would have been super stressed out trying to come up with appropriate detox food on my own. Thank you, Martha!

New Year, New Adventure

Today's menu:

• Almond Chicken Soup with Sweet Potatoes, Collards, and Garlic
• Carrots with hummus
• Fresh fruit
• Lots of ginger-lemon tea

Matt and I are trying out something totally different this year...the Martha Stewart Whole Living Action Plan: 28-Day Challenge. Yes, it is quite a mouthful and yes, I feel a little silly admitting that we are doing it. But somehow it just came together.

We were both feeling a little unhealthy after our holiday break indulgences and this seemed like a great opportunity to try and make some changes in our lives. Of course we always eat well, but that doesn't always translate to eating healthy foods.

This was our menu for Day 1 of the plan and I must say, it was pretty great. I thought I would feel hungry (no junk food), tired (no caffeine), and grumpy (no chocolate). Instead I felt fabulous all day. And this soup was pretty freaking amazing! We tripled the amount of garlic called for in the recipe and used mustard greens instead of collards because they were cheaper. This photo doesn't do it justice, except to show that it was so good I got halfway through the bowl before remembering to take a picture.

I'll keep posting on our progress, and more importantly, on all the delicious, healthy food we'll be eating over the next month. A perfect way to kick off 2011!