Losing Eight Pounds in 5 Days?!

I found a "cleanse" featuring parsley, lemon and water which claims to reduce belly fat by 8 pounds in 5 days.  I decided that I want to debunk this, just to see what happens! 

Not that I need to.  I mean, I'm pretty dang sexy.  I just want to see what happens.  I'm one of those lucky (lucky?!) women who gains weight in her thighs and rear instead of around her middle.  I always have a gap at the back of my pants at the waist even when the zipper refuses to budge because apparently if women have a sizable derriere, it must mean that we are fat everywhere.  Amirite, ladies?

In order to attempt to be scientific, I am not changing my exercise habits, nor am I changing what I eat.  The instructions didn't say to!

Started: Sunday February 28

Looking good from the front!

Trifle belly! <3

Weight Saturday night: 200.2 pounds

(weight Sunday morning: 196.8 pounds, which just goes to show you how much my weigh can fluctuate just over night)

Waist inches: 32.5

Day 1: Directions aren't very clear.  Says to drink it on an empty stomach, but how long do I have to wait to eat afterwards?  My Vitamix didn't exactly puree the parsley either, and I was left with floating chunks that tasted like... well, like grass.  I gulped it down.  I guess there are worse ways to start your morning!

Day 2: Figured out that my Vitamix can pulverize the parsley if I turn it up to 5 or 6.  Cool!  I had a cup that is pond-water green.  It tasted better than it looked.  Kind of like a citrus grass.  Not unpleasant though; just different.  I don't even need any sugar!  I felt kind of blah today, but I'm thinking it's because I didn't really eat much for breakfast (as usual) and waited until almost 1 to eat.

Day 3:  Feeling pretty great today, despite the fact that I have been going to the bathroom more than normal.  I have a feeling this is all my "water weight" coming off.  I haven't been drinking much water lately though.  Not that I ever really drink a lot of water.  Nausea is kicking in hard though.  I'm not sure if this is because I haven't been eating much for breakfast or not.

Day 4: Intestinal distress.  Ugggh, I feel awful.  I could barely choke down the parsley drink this morning.  I thought I was going to puke it up.  Decided that this morning would be my last.  I didn't want to risk more intestinal distress, and I was sick of feeling nauseated all the time.

Thursday Morning:

A little bit of bloat gone...

Looks the same to me!

Waist inches: 32 

 Weight: 198.6

Technically I gained two pounds from my weight on Saturday.  But I lost a half an inch from my waist.  Perhaps there was a bit of overnight bloat gone, but definitely not eight pounds of belly fat.

So all told, this did not work for me.  Maybe if I had been working out and watching what I eat, I would have had better luck.  I mean, I get pretty good results from just 20 minutes a day of working out for two weeks.  Better than this drink.

Save yourself and your taste buds.  This diuretic just isn't worth it.

Authenticity

As you may or may not know, I am striving to become my most authentic self (I mean, that's why I have this blog!).  To me, this means knowing who I am, the things I stand for, and being myself without fear of judgment from others.

I am slowly coming to know myself through this process, which is crazy because I've lived in my own body, in my own head, for nearly thirty-one years.  You'd think that I would know myself pretty well by now, and in some ways I do.  I know my favorite foods are my favorites mostly because of texture and not flavor (it's why I prefer Rice Chex above all others, or rice krispy treats, or rice crackers).  I know that I don't mind doing dishes.  I know that I love cats.  But those are basic things about me, things that my friends find out relatively easily.

I've had to do a lot of soul-searching since college.  I'm not the kind of person who can learn life lessons from other people.  I usually have to get out there and try something before I see it's not for me.  Like in 8th grade, when I played softball.  I was good at judging when to try to swing for the ball, but I was useless at everything else.  Most of the time I just sat in the outfield, watching the game.  I couldn't throw.  I hated running.  I didn't want to learn the rules.  I just wanted to have fun.  That attitude stayed with me through high school and my early college years.  I liked learning, but I wanted to only learn things I was interested in, which meant my grades suffered terribly.  I couldn't find anything that I was desperate to learn about, which led me to bounce around in different classes in different majors.  If something didn't take my fancy right away, I gave up on potentially switching to that major.  I felt stuck in my spiritual life too; I gave up practicing Catholicism as soon as I could, but never really found anything that I liked better.  I felt lost, in need of a guide.

Little did I know that I am the perfect guide for me.

We are all the perfect guides for ourselves.  Only you know what can make you feel good (by good, I don't just mean a temporary endorphin rush, I mean something that makes you feel thrilled to be alive, makes you feel in love with your life, makes you feel like acting more positively).  Only you know what makes you feel alive.  Maybe it's music.  Maybe it's sports.  If you like it, do it.  If you don't like it, don't do it.  To me, that is what being authentic is all about; one is true to oneself.  You are living without fear of judgement (or at least with the idea that others' judgements of your actions are reflections of them, not you).  I think this is the hardest thing for people to do nowadays.  To live authentically is to invite judgement into your life, especially with the internet. 

Slowly I started to find classes and friends that made me feel good.  And not just good in an immediate kind of way.  Good in a long-term, positive influence kind of way.  I found others who accepted me without forcing me to behave in a certain way.  I could finally admit that I really enjoyed listening to Britney Spears without the fear of being rejected.  I could laugh and get really excited without feeling like no one understood.  I discovered classes that I was completely in love with (medieval history, poetry, and language).  Slowly I came to know more about myself.

This emotional and spiritual journey is exactly like peeling back an onion.  I really think that people develop layers in order to hide their true selves from others because they have had their true selves rejected time and time again.  If only we can stop others from seeing our inner layer, maybe we can stop ourselves from getting hurt.  But knives can slice deeply, so we keep building up our defenses.  Eventually there are so many layers that we are lost from who we once were, separated and alone.  We want someone, anyone to understand us, but who better than our very own selves?

You are so capable of loving yourself, of being enough just for you.  I think this is the greatest secret in life, the secret that no one ever talks about because no one ever really knows.  If you love yourself, if you slowly start to peel back the painful layers, you can expose something wonderful, something bright that others had no idea existed.

Rainy Daze

Whew.  I sort of fell of the face of the earth there for a little while.  Did I warn you that would happen?  Winter tends to hit me pretty hard, and my fall was actually pretty busy (playing Mario Kart and Super Mario 3D world on the new Wii... among actual work) this past year.  Ah well.  It's coming to close on February and it's time I dragged my butt out from its squirrely hibernation.  I can feel spring on the way, and it's making me super restless, especially on days like today.

Rainy days feel sleepy and slower than the bright sunny ones, and are perfect for curling up on the couch with a blanket, a book and a bottle (erm, I mean glass) of wine.  Some people like rainy days.  I am not one of those people.

I mean, I sure do like curling up on the couch to read.  If I had a fireplace, I'd like it even more!  But rain means only one thing to me; cloudy skies.  Where is my sunshine?  Rainy days toss me into a torporific depression.  I can usually get myself moving if it's dark outside and if I have strong enough coffee (which, thanks to my tenure at a coffee chain, I know how to make perfectly strong coffee).  When it starts to get lighter out, and all there is is a gray ceiling, I sink into a gray despair the exact color of the clouds, and cannot be roused from it easily.

Yesterday was a glorious day of sunshine and happiness, fifty-degree weather and playing outside with kids.  I had a great day yesterday.

This might seem like a metaphor, and though it is not exactly one, I can still use it as one.  See,  February kind of marks a special time for me.  It has been one year (ish) since I decided to quit my job at said coffee chain.  It has been one year of self-discovery, of learning to listen to my inner voice, and attempting to be truly me.  As you may or may not know, I decided to begin a gratitude journal in January of last year.  Each night, I would write down ten things that I was grateful for, either from the day or exactly in that moment.  Some things were silly and simple, like "piles of warm blankets" and "my cats purring next to me" and "grateful I don't have to wake up at 4am!"  I was trying to rewire my brain.  I had become stuck in a spiral of negativity and self-hate, and I was ready for a change.

It wasn't always easy.  Growth is one of the hardest and most painful things to do.  There are certain aspects that keep coming back around; I thought I had dealt with that issue (my self-worth), that it was solved and tucked away neatly into the corner of my mind.  I'd be glad and grateful and happy and relaxed.  Everything was perfect, and I knew that I was never going to feel bad ever again.  Then I'd get angry or hurt or feel lacking and all the neatly bundled issues would tumble off their shelves and I'd have to sort them out again.  While this gets tedious and frustrating at times, I have noticed that the more I have to put them back in place, the more I find that my issues are becoming more manageable.

It hasn't been a slow, steady upward momentum from last year either.  I grew in starts and stops (mental, emotional, and spiritual growth is just as exhausting as physical growth)  I am still capable of feeling just as rotten, just as angry.  But I have noticed that those negative periods don't last as long.  I have found ways of dealing with my emotions constructively.  Most of this is only doing things that I feel necessary (ie, showering, working, feeding my cats) or things that I really want to do.  For example, when I left my job today, I decided to come home and write a blog post.  I really, really wanted to do this.  And I feel a whole lot better even now than I did before I started writing.

Back to the rainy day metaphor.  I have a lot of good days (sunny ones) which are punctuated by some negative ones (rainy days).  But, (are you ready for some cheesy pie?) I have come to find out that while the clouds block the sun from me on the rainy days, the sun is still always there, smiling down at me from above the clouds.  All it takes is getting into the proper mindset.

Self Love

Do you love yourself?  Unconditionally?  Even when you're a spaz or when you make a terrible mistake or when you hurt someone's feelings?

How many of us can truthfully answer yes?

This is the journey that I am on right now.  A spiritual teacher suggested it.  She said the best thing that any of us can do is to practice self-love for an entire year.  Constantly ask yourself "what would someone who loves herself do?" when faced with decisions.  I decided to start on the fall equinox, which was almost six months ago.

How's it going? I am still struggling a little to get my intuition working.  Right now it feels like my ego and my inner child are two squabbling children who don't know how to share the flingin, flangin chalk.  It is exhausting trying to re-parent myself, to monitor my internal mood, to try to just do things that make me happy.  My ego has been screaming out for so long that my inner child has just stopped trying.

I think it's working, though.

I have so much more confidence than I did at the beginning of 2015. I'm starting to believe that I am worthwhile, that I actually deserve to be happy.  I know that I have a long way to go still, to becoming the person that I deserve to be, but I honestly cannot believe how far I have already come since January, when I decided to practice positive thinking and gratitude.  I can't even believe how far I have come since 2012, or even 2010.

The best thing I ever did was get out of a toxic relationship.  Not a romantic relationship, although that had its major issues as well, but a friendship.  Something that can be even harder to get out of than a boyfriend/girlfriend situation.

I think part of the healing for me is not pretending that I am some sort of saint or martyr for putting up with bullshit.  It was not fair of her to treat me the way that she did, but I also was not supremely innocent.  The biggest step that I made in my healing was to forgive myself for reacting the way that I did, to realize that I hurt feelings too, to realize that yes, I allowed it to happen. I needed to take ownership of that in order to be free.

I saw her, recently, at a mutual friend's wedding.  I had made such a huge deal about it in my brain, but Miss Toxicity didn't even come over to say hello to me.  She didn't acknowledge my presence. Yes, I was nervous, and yes I was worried, but I wasn't going to make a big deal about it. I got more worried about dressing up to go see my best friend the next day than I did about that wedding, because I realized that I don't care what Miss Toxicity thinks anymore.  And that is the most self loving thing that I could do.

Encouragement

I work with kids.  I have for a really long time.  While I do not have a formal education in early childhood education, I have learned some things through experience, through observation, and through research online.

I had an art program last night; my favorite program out of all that I have ever done. A friend and former co-worker came up with the idea for this program, so I can't take all the credit, but this program is brilliant.  Basically, gather a bunch of art supplies.  Like, anything.  Odds, ends, leftovers, whatever.  Set them out and let the kids have at it.  They can create whatever they want.

For some children, this can be daunting.  They are so used to being given instructions on how to do something that when I tell them they can make whatever they like, they look at me like, "What am I going to do?"  I give suggestions, sometimes, but a lot of the time, after the initial shock, they get right down to it.

Kids are super creative, be they two or ten.  They can use their imaginations like a pro, turn an old dowel rod into a wand, or a stirring spoon, or even a fishing pole (or a thousand other, more creative things).  The kids who come to this art mix program love it.  They always have a good time and head home with tons of smiles.  I love watching them try to work out the process of how they're going to achieve building that construction paper house, or make that foam Christmas tree stand up.  Sometimes they get frustrated, but there's nothing like the look on their faces when they finally figure out how to do something, when something works perfectly.

I get frustrated as an educator when children are in the process of learning, fail to do something, get upset, and then the parents rush in to make whatever the child wants, perfectly.  Granted, this normally happens with very young children (toddlers, preschoolers) rather than with school-age kids, but there are signs that this happens in these kids' everyday lives (they ask me constantly to help them glue something, or wrap presents, or say, "I'm not good at this").  I understand why parents do help; no one wants to see their child get upset, frustrated, throw a tantrum, etc.  But sometimes that blocks the learning process.  Sometimes we have to fail in order to see how not to do something.

A lot of the time I like to take a step back, especially with the older kids (6 years and up) and just watch.  If they ask me directly for help, I will talk them through, but in general I like to give minimal assistance.  They learn so much more than they would if I were there doing it for them.  Example; last night, a little girl built a house out of construction paper.  Another little girl came up and asked me if I could show her how to do it.  I told her the first little girl was a better teacher than I, because she was the one who actually made it!  One little boy wanted help wrapping up his creation (like a present) and said I had to help because he "wasn't good enough."  I told him I'd help hold the paper, but he had to figure out how to wrap, because how else was he going to get better than to practice?

I encouraged them along the way; there were so many creative pieces made from foam cutouts, construction paper, yarn, pine cones, boxes and beads.  Every time I saw a creative use of materials, I would say, "I see you being creative!"  Even if the final product wasn't perfect, or anything like I could make, why should I point out the flaws?  I would rather encourage these kids to keep going.  Demanding adult-standard perfection can be extremely daunting to a seven-year old (I definitely have experience with this... from the seven-year-old's point of view).

Now, I'm not saying that one should just leave children to flounder, by any means.  If they are really struggling, help is obviously needed, but don't go and fold the paper for them.  Try to talk them through the process, or show them an example of how it's done.  And always encourage.

Failure?

It has been far too long since I wrote a blog post.  I took September off because I kept thinking, "I'll write a post later," but later never really came.

To be honest, I have been lost in self-pity.  I can't exactly contribute it to the weather, since the last few weeks were incredibly gorgeous; sunny and warm.  I should have been outside, basking in the last of summer and the very beginning of fall.  Instead, I stayed inside.  The good news is that I have almost 100% completed Super Mario World 3D (World Crown is just dang hard!).  So accomplished.

I have been looking for other part time jobs right now, but all the ones I have found are after school, and that is my prime programming hours for my current job, and I am not leaving unless I find a full-time job with benefits and really good pay.  In the meantime, at least I am gaining experience where I am.

I'm afraid that my sunny disposition is suffering the ill effects of dwindling sunlight and excess clouds.  Thankful as I am for clouds because they help the leaves turn brighter colors, I hate being separated from the sun.  I am a sunflower, plain and simple.  It makes me sad, and then I am upset because I am sad.  Then I start thinking about all the ways that I have failed, instead of all the successes that I have had.

I have a mixed relationship with failure.  Part of me follows the idealism of Peter Lafleur (the main character from the movie, Dodgeball); "I found that if you have a goal, you might not reach it. But if you don't have one, then you are never disappointed."  Good point, Peter, except that I am constantly disappointed in myself anyway, for not really doing anything but skating by.  The other part of me follows JK Rowling;  "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.”  I have felt as though I am failing by default.

But I don't think that's entirely true.  Sure, I may have settled for some things that I'm not proud of (like my 10 year "career" in food service, or a few relationships that turned out to be bad for me), but at least I learned something every time.  I think that's really the point when thinking about failure; did you learn anything?  Will you make a different decision next time?  Oh, that last one.  That's the hardest one to do.  At least when you're stuck in a failure rut, you know what to expect.  Potential success can be really scary.  It means work, dedication, sweat, or at least giving up the video games and zoning out.  It means doing things that make you discomfortable, things that make you think hard, and brings up a thousand problems that you have to face and come out on top of.


It's a hard decision to make, and a lot of people are not lucky enough like me to be able to chase their passions on a whim.  I am so incredibly blessed.  But I deserve to get my ass in gear and learn to apply myself.  I just have to figure out how.

One WEIRD TRICK to Help You WAKE UP in the Morning

We've all been there.  The alarm goes off at an ungodly early hour.  We slap the snooze button and try to catch a few extra z's.  But then... oh no!  It's been thirty minutes and now we have to rush to get ready.  Wouldn't it be nice to just roll out of bed and take your time getting ready?  (If the answer is no, why are you even reading this?!)

Well, I have some amazing advice for you.  Much akin to the "One Tip for a Tiny Belly" and "Why Dermatologists Hate Her", this weird trick is ridiculously easy to follow.

But first, let me give you some science.

Did you know that your cells respire?  Yes, every cell in your body has little tiny lungs inside of it that makes cellular respiration possible.  These tiny lungs carry oxygen around in your body and help to get rid of carbon dioxide.  Don't believe me?  Just look up cellular respiration and you will be amazed at the things you can learn.

Your cells never stop breathing (well, they do, but we call this "death"), even when you go to sleep!  Your body carries on carting oxygen and carbon dioxide, as well as waste around in your body.

Do you see where I am going with this?  No?  Well read on!

The waste that your body carries around comes in two forms; poop and urine.  When you finally wake up in the morning, your metabolism gets a jump-start and that's why, two bites into your oatmeal, you get the urge to go to the bathroom.

The best thing that you can do the night before is to prepare yourself for the next morning.  How do you do that?  With this one weird trick, of course!

Instead of just going to bed with your phone, have a set bedtime.  I cannot stress this enough.  Bedtimes are important for everyone, not just four-year-olds.  Once you are comfortable in bed, curl up with a good book and read for a while.  This will help you relax into your happy, warm, sleepy times.  Maybe turn on a fan for some background noise.

Then comes time for the one weird trick.  Are you ready?  Drink between 4 to 8 ounces of water, depending on your body.  No more than twelve.  Why should you do this?

Your body dehydrates overnight because you aren't drinking water, so this is not only healthy, but it helps to flush out excess toxins.  Can it be tea?  Certainly, as long as there is no sweetener.  Can it be soda?  No.  Diet soda?  No.  Juice?  No.  Drink water, dammit.

Again, depending on your body and the amount of water you drink, it should take between six to eight hours to process through.  And you know what that means.

Your bladder will fill up.  The urge to pee should be just enough that your body lets you know but not enough to haunt your dreams.  This is guaranteed to wake you up in the morning.  It should be enough that you have to pee, but not so much that you have to sprint to the bathroom like the hoover dam is bursting inside of your body.

Then, because it's light outside, it should be impossible to go back to sleep.  Now you have plenty of time to cook a decent breakfast, plan your work outfit, and make coffee so you don't have to stop by Starbucks even though you're already late and get pissed off in the drive through because how does it take twenty damn minutes for you to get your frigging cup of coffee and the boss is going to be breathing down your neck all damn day because of this and it's all the fault those slacker English and History majors who work at Starbucks why couldn't they get a degree in science oh because they're lazy!

Doesn't waking up to pee sound so much more relaxing than that?

I recommend a few nights of practice.  Start off with 4 oz of water and increase it by two until you reach optimum morning pee level.

Do this literally right before you turn of your light to go to sleep, otherwise your body will metabolize too quickly and you will wake up in the middle of the night, which doesn't help anyone.

Yes, this one weird trick can save you up to a thousand hours of rushing around every month.  Water you waiting for?  Get to it!