Day 21, Sunday: In Which Our Heroine Crosses the Finish Line, and Keeps Running

THE FINISH LINE.

Breakfast: Two hardboiled eggs
Lunch: four slices turkey, pesto slathered on them, peppers
Snack 1: Apple with Bernadette's Paleo Fondue
Dinner: At Egan's. Steak with carrots, green beans, and salad
Snack 2: Cheese stick

Breakfast was dull but efficient. I can't recommend the turkey and pesto combo I had for lunch. I was not happy with it. The pesto is better on eggs, and the turkey is better with avocado. Peppers as usual were awesome. Green apple fondue was awesome. I clink an imaginary smoothie glass to Bernadette every time I eat it. Dinner at Egan's was easy and Detox-friendly. Everyone ordered dessert and Chris and I managed to resist. When I got home, I was still hungry, so I had a cheese stick.

On my last day on the Detox, one of my students who I hadn't seen all summer did a double-take and said, "Wow, you look great! Your skin!" I was very surprised and flattered. That's not why I did the Detox, but it's a nice perk! (Generally, the list of stuff I do to look better goes like this: bathe. Apply two-year-old drugstore mascara.) One of the things I notice when I'm eating whatever the hell I want is that I not only gain weight, I get kind of...puffy. I would not be surprised if there is some kind of systemic inflammation from eating sugar.

I finished the day before Labor Day, and I did a lot of thinking about how I felt about the work of this particular Detox, as compared to the one I did in April. In my yoga classes this week, I explored how work can be a degrading chore or uplifting LABOR that enriches our lives and is an expression and enhancement of our innate human dignity. For me, the first Detox was the former and this second one is the latter. The first one felt like a punishment, like something I HAD to do, like I had a serious flaw (inability to function well on the Standard American Diet, or SAD) and I had to compensate for it with strict discipline. This second one feels triumphant and joyful. I've had a blast planning my meals, doing the shopping, cooking, EATING, and writing about the experience for you and for myself. This isn't something that's a chore or a punishment. It's a reward. How lucky am I? In a world of heavily-conflicting dietary advice, I found a way of eating that makes me feel good! In a world of poison (sugar, simple carbohydrates, and advertising for sugar and carbohydrates), I have the discipline and resources to truly nourish myself and my hubby.

Okay, now that I'm done, what am I going to add back in?

Not fruit. It has become clear to me that I really do not do well on fruit. According to Gary Taubes, most modern fruit has been genetically engineered to be much sweeter than the fruit eaten by our early ancestors. I can barely handle the small green apple I eat daily--it tastes really sweet to me and I feel myself teetering on the edge of a crash after I eat it.

Not grains. I don't do well on wheat, corn (witness the corn chip disaster of Day 19), oats, rice, barley, etc. That includes quinoa! Geez, shouldn't quinoa be Detox-friendly? It has a really obscure name, so it must be healthy, right? Not for me.

Not much dairy. I'd like to experiment with raw dairy. I do okay with the occasional dollop of goat yogurt. I seem to be able to handle a small amount of cheese.

The thing I've missed most? Baked potato. My plan is to try a baked potato and see what happens.

But my main plan is to keep eating like this indefinitely. Will I be able to do that? I don't know. However, there are a few factors that make me think that I CAN, in fact, keep eating this way.

1. When I think about eating sugar or grains again, all I can think about is how once I eat them, I'm back on the roller coaster of cravings again. The limits of the Detox have really revealed to me how sick I feel when I eat sugar or grains. Or too much cheese. Or too many cured meats.

2. My husband is really supportive and participates with me. That means that he'll prepare Paleo-type stuff for dinner. And he'll eat Paleo-type stuff when I cook it. This is really important to me because we love to cook, we love to cook TOGETHER, and we try to eat dinner together every night.

3. Over the course of this Detox I've figured out many "hacks" to help me when I'm feeling cravings. Bernadette's fondue is great for sweet cravings. I never even ended up making Paleo Pancakes or Paleo banana bread, but I hear those are fantastic too.

4. I give myself permission to fall off the wagon for any reason I choose, from there not being anything else I can eat at a social engagement, to feeling like I really want a Brown Bonnet from Carvel. The looser I am, the easier it is for me to be disciplined.

Over the course of the Detox, dear Reader, I have tried to share what I was doing without being scoldy or preachy about what anybody else is eating. I do not respond well to scoldy preachiness myself. I can't stand those FaceBook memes with sanctimonious advice for living superimposed over a picture of a 20-year-old dancer in a bikini putting her leg behind her head. Particularly about diet, there is SO. MUCH. scoldy preachiness out there. This scoldiness doesn't help anybody!

Besides, as Hemingway says, "We are all apprentices in a craft where no-one ever becomes a master." He's referring to the Master Craft: Living. And what he's saying is that nobody knows shit. It doesn't matter if you meditate every day, or graduate from Harvard, or look really wise, or live in a big house, or live on the streets. Insert your own "it doesn't matter if...". It is terrifying and marvelous--nobody knows anything!

So look: I don't know anything. But I am pretty sure about the following:

1. The ONLY way to know whether or how much you would benefit from cutting sugar is to do it.

2. If you really want to do it, you can.

Thank you Diane Sanfilippo for creating the Detox and the excellent materials that make it easy to follow. And thank you, Gentle Reader, for reading and supporting me on my Detox. Mwah!

Day 18, Thursday: In Which I Offer an Assortment of Recipes

It's Recipe Day! Let's get the business out of the way.

Brunch: Drumroll please...hardboiled eggs with pesto!!! The best.
Snack 4:15: Bernadette's Nutella and an apple
Dinner 8:45: Fajita-less fajitas

(Picture at left is from my pre-Sugar Detox days. So ignore the melon and prosciuto.)

Here's a few little secrets nobody tells you about pesto.
1. It is insanely easy to make.
2. YOU MUST toast the pine nuts.
3. YOU DON'T NEED THE CHEESE. Most pesto recipes call for a lot of grated parmesan cheese. What's cheese for, anyway? It adds fat, salt, and a yummy "umami" flavor. (What's umami? It's one of the five flavors of your tastebuds. It's a Japanese word, and it basically means "salty fatty protein-y goodness". I find it completely unnecessary in pesto. There's a ton of fat and flavor in the other ingredients and you can add as much salt as you like.

Here's what you do to make it:
1. Put a fourthish cup of pine nuts into a frying pan on medium heat. DO NOT LEAVE THE KITCHEN. They will be done in probably 1.5 to 3 minutes, and if you are FIVE SECONDS late to take them out of the frying pan, they are black and that's 3 dollars down the drain.
2. Get out the food processor. Wash an entire package of Trader Joe's basil. Separate the leaves from the stems and put the leaves in the food processor.
3. Add your pine nuts. Turn on the food processor and stream in about a quarter cup of olive oil. You can add more if you like it oilier. Add salt to taste. You're done!

Cook up two or three hardboiled eggs, peel 'em, cut 'em half, arrange them nicely on a plate. Then put great hunks of pesto on them. Such yumminess! It's incredibly rich and decadent.

Bernadette's Nutella is a name I've given to an incredible concoction devised by my pal Bernadette. I sometimes also think of it as "Paleo Fondue". It involves nut butter, coconut oil, and cocoa powder. It is INSANELY rich. I'd be curious to hear what non-Sugar Detoxers think of the recipe. To me, it is way sweet with the apple, but maybe that's because of my sugar-free taste buds. Here's the link: http://bernadettebirney.com/2013/08/choco-almond-butter-apples.html. If you think you can't do a Sugar Detox, get your hands on a green apple, make this stuff, and try it out. This will carry you through many a craving!

Finally today, on our recipe hit parade: the cashew cheese.

Get a bunch of cashews. Put them in a bowl and cover them with water. Let them sit all day or overnight. Drain them, put them in a food processor. Add just enough water to make the texture "ricotta-y". This makes a very bland ricotta-like substance that you can doctor in whatever way you want. If you were to add tahini, you'd have Paleo hummus. If you add garlic, you have something that goes well rolled in cooked eggplant with prosciutto, covered with tomato sauce, and baked: Paleo eggplant rollatini, like I made. (Remember: I later found out that cashews are not on the Sugar Detox. But they are paleo-friendly!)

Getting near the finish line now. I have one more dietary indiscretion up my sleeve before I end!

Day 5, Friday: In Which I Cook Cow Black and Blue

Breakfast: Two hardboiled eggs. Are you as tired of reading that breakfast as I am of eating it? Here's the thing about hard-boiled eggs. They are not quick (takes about ten minutes), but they are easy. Pot of water on the stove, put in the eggs, you go jump in the shower while they cook. I actually really love hardboiled eggs, but I eat them a bit too much (in my experience, eating the same stuff all the time creates a sensitivity to it), plus I don't doll them up. Yes, this is again in violation of my own precepts about eating CUISINE, not food. Know what makes a hardboiled egg cuisine? This is the best, the best way to eat a hardboiled egg--PUT PESTO ON IT. Homemade pesto. More on that later. I'm sure the pesto hardboiled eggs will make it onto my detox before the end. They're epic. Really.

Lunch: Turkey burger with kale. I find myself feeling a little embarrassed to tell you guys about my turkey burger lunch. I am afraid you will find it...sad. Regardless, that's what I wanted to eat, so that's what I ate! And it was AWESOME. When I make TB with rainbow chard I can just put it into the pan and the TB and the chard get done at about the same time. The kale takes longer, so I take the turkey burger out and just wait for the kale to cook a little more. I'd rather have a lukewarm TB than al dente kale. I also had a half an avocado prepared in my favorite way: sliced, tons of lemon juice, liberal salt. Avocados are fabulously fatty. I remember reading somewhere several years ago that our bodies digest vegetables better when they are eaten with fat. No wonder so many cultures around the world combine fat with vegetables! So the great thing about eating an avocado with lemon is that the oil and vegetable are all in one--add lemon and viola! insta-salad.

Dinner: hoo-boy, this was a doozy. My husband is away this weekend (at summer camp. Really.) so just to spite him I had a steak (his favorite), and entire bag of baby spinach sauteed (which, as you might expect, cooked down to about a cup), and a yellow bell pepper. Sorry for the lurid quality of this photo. It's a shame--it makes that steak look crappy when it was FANTASTIC. Here's how I like my steak cooked: black and blue. Have you heard of that designation? It means charred on the outside and rare on the inside. Even though everyone in the restaurant business knows what it means, it can be hard to find a restaurant that actually cooks it that way. So really, the best steak I've ever had is at my house.

This brings me to another one of my personal dietary precepts: I like my plate to be one-third protein, one-third cooked vegetable, one-third raw vegetable. Chinese Medicine takes the premise that too much raw food puts a burden on your metabolism. According to this perspective, if you already have a weak metabolism, a raw diet is really not so good. Many of my yoga colleagues urge their students to eat raw. I think this is a lousy idea, a. because of what I just mentioned, and b. because I believe that if you're not a nutritionist you should avoid giving advice about nutrition. Just like if you're not a surgeon you should avoid performing surgery.

Late-night Indiscretion: I didn't fall off the wagon, but I ate this final item later than I wanted to. Probably not a good idea to have a milkshake before bed. And that's pretty much what I had. But it was a SUGAR DETOX milkshake! Wanna know what was in it? A frozen green-tipped banana. Probably 3 tablespoons of unsweetned cocoa powder. Handful of icecubes. Slug of coconut water. Tablespoonish of almond butter. SALT. Salt is THE. KEY. to a good smoothie, in my opinion. Just think about how many processed foods have oodles of salt in them! What makes a Snickers bar so freaking good is not just the sugar. It's the salt! So I salt my smoothies. With very fancy, high end Himalayan salt my dad brought me back from Europe. Mmmmm! Note: would I think this was good if I hadn't been sugar detoxing for the last few days? Probably not. So if you try it at home, don't think I'm crazy if it tastes like crapola to you. Just remind yourself that I'm not a nutritionist. Or a chef.