40 Day Detox

I’ve managed to keep my body stats constant today despite the lack of exercise. All my readings stayed identical: Weight: 68.1kg; Body Fat: 17.6%; Body Water: 56.6%; Body Muscle: 42.8%. 

Red quinoa (Inca red quinoa), almond milk, blueberries and agave nectar

A glass of almond milk

I started the day with a hot lemon juice drink. I think I might need to get myself some straws as it feels as though the citric acid in the lemon juice isn’t doing my teeth any good. For breakfast I had red quinoa, with almond milk and blueberries. Almond milk isn’t cheap. It cost me £3.19 for a 1 litre carton from Holland and Barrett, which is cheaper than the £3.35 it would have cost me from my local health store, Health Mantra. Normally I would probably have been put off by the price. But as I am doing this detox, I want to explore alternatives to the many things I have banned from my diet. So I spent almost £10 on Almond Milk, Hazelnut Milk and Quinoa Milk. So far I’ve only tried almond milk. It does taste very nice indeed. However it seems to lose its delicate taste upon heating. At over £3 per litre it’s not something I can consider as a permanent replacement to dairy milk in cereals and tea etc. However it does taste delicious enough for me to treat myself to a glass of this beverage every now and again. I am so glad I went on this detox. At first it may seem restrictive, it can be looked upon negatively as if I can hardly eat or drink anything. On the contrary it has liberated me. I have discovered so many delicious new foods I would never have tried before as they belong to different cultures of eating. This detox has allowed me to get out of my comfort zone and explore the world of food.

Vegetable soup

For lunch I finished the vegetable soup and drank caffeine free teas through the day. 

In the evening I went to my parents’ house. My brother is still in London visiting for a week and my mum and nan just returned from my grandfathers funeral in Pakistan. 

Karela - tastes as bad as it looks (IMO)

At my parents house I ate red lentils, karela with onions and some salad. Karela (or bitter melon) has long been used in India folk medicine and South America  for the treatment of diabetes. 

I discovered today that my dad may have to start injecting himself with insulin. He was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes about eight years ago. Is his pancreas starting to pack in? 

Insulin injections

When you eat something, the carbohydrates (sugar) are absorbed from the intestine into the blood stream. When the body detects this increase in blood sugar level the pancreas responds by excreting insulin. When you eat a fast digesting carbohydrate/simple carb (high GI) a lot of sugar is released quickly into your bloodstream. On the other hand when you eat a slow digesting carbohydrate/complex carb (low GI) it is digested more slowly and released into the bloodstream at a slow steady rate. 

Blood Glucose, Insulin and Fat Cells

Most cells of the body have insulin receptors which bind with the insulin which is circulating in the blood. When insulin binds with a cell, the cell then activates other receptors which then absorb the sugar from the blood stream into the cell. 

Insulin receptors, body cells and glucose

Without insulin you can eat as much as you like but still be in a state of starvation because the body’s cells are unable to access the energy from the sugar circulating in the blood. This is why people who have Type 1 diabetes can become very ill if they do not take a shot of insulin as their pancreas is unable to produce insulin by itself. Without replacing insulin, the body will start to burn up its fat stores and within a few days this will lead to diabetic acidosis, which is life threatening. 

Type 1 diabetes and the cell

Too much insulin however can lead to low levels of blood sugar that can lead to hypoglycaemia (not to be confused with hyperglycaemia – which is the opposite i.e. high levels of blood sugar) . The symptoms of hypoglycaemia are paleness, shaking, shivering, perspiration, rapid heartbeat, hunger, anxiety, blurred vision, a feeling of weakness, agitation, difficulty concentrating, irritability, fatigue, temporary loss of consciousness, confusion, convulsions, and coma. To avoid this, a diabetic should always carry food with sugar with them, preferably a high GI form so that it is digested quickly if the warning signs appear.

Hypoglycaemia

My father and I travelling in Iraq

Iraqis travelling by foot from the shrine of Hussain in Karbala to the shrine of Ali in Najaf

I have seen my father experience this before. We were sat in a van in Iraq. I think it may have been the day we saw many historical sites in Iraq, including the shrine of our ancestor, Zaid ibn Ali, from whom we get our surname, Zaidi . Our tour guide was being a bit stingy and refused to feed us lunch even though that had been part of the agreement when we paid him. We were on a long journey and my dad hadn’t eaten for a few hours. It was well past lunch time and the last time we had eaten anything was breakfast. My dad was one minute talking then all of a sudden he said “Ya Ali Maddad!” slumped in his seat while his eyes were still open and went unconcious for a few seconds. At the time I had thought that maybe he had an anxiety attack after seeing some of the millions of Iraqis who were walking from Karbala to Najaf (90km) to commemorate the death of Muhammad and the martyrdom of Hassan son of Ali. But now having informed myself about diabetes, it is obvious to me now that my dad had actually experienced the symptoms of hypoglaecymia. 

The shrine of Zaid grandson of Hussain

People with Type 2 diabetes can produce insulin fine, however their cells do not react well to the insulin that is available in the blood and therefore the cells do not absorb the sugar in the blood well, leading to high blood sugar levels. Early in the disease process oral medications can be used to either increase insulin production or decrease insulin resistance in the cells. In the early years the pancreas will also automatically produce more insulin to compensate for the insulin resistance of the cells. Occasionally, insulin shots may be used in Type 2 diabetes to overcome the resistance of the cells to the insulin. As time passes the pancreas can lose its ability to produce insulin and insulin shots become necessary to manage glucose levels in the blood.

Type 2 diabetes

Sugar in the blood is not all bad. The brain runs purely on glucose and doesn’t have the ability to store it as do the muscles and liver. But before you go and munch on a candy bar to boost your brain’s long term memory, a slower release of glucose to the brain (low GI) has a much better effect compared to a high GI food. Read this brilliant webpage on how Carbohydrates Fuel your Brain. 

It’s not only high GI carbohydrates that trigger the release of insulin from the pancreas in the blood, but so do low GI carbs and proteins. Check the Insulin Index  to see the effect of different foods on actual insulin levels in the blood. 

There is a genetic predisposition to Type 2 diabetes. Considering my dad and my mother’s father have/had Type 2 diabetes, there is even more reason for me, my brother and my sister to fight the flab. Being fat plus being related to someone with diabetes significantly increases the probability of getting Type 2 diabetes. Up to 80% of diabetes can be prevented by eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly however. So Billy and Madz, lets sort it out shall we? Before it’s too late? And mum, I think the whole family including you and nan will benefit if you support dad in his need for a change in lifestyle.

Type 2 diabetes causes

Failure to take one’s diabetes seriously and not making major changes to one’s diet and lifestyle could eventually lead to the following complications: 

Long term complications of diabetes if blood sugar levels are not kept under control

1. Hardening of and damage to the blood vessels
2. Cardiovascular disease
3. Blocked arteries
4. Stroke
5. Heart attack
6. Retinal detachment
7. Diabetic retinopathy
8. Glaucoma
9. Cataracts
10. Skin infections or deformities to the foot
11. Nerve damage (diabetic neuropathy)
12. You may not feel an injury to the foot due to nerve damage
13. Erectile dysfunction
14. Fungal infections of the skin
15. Fungal infections of the female genitalia
16. Fungal infections of the urinary tract
17. Kidney disease 

The nearer your blood sugar levels are to normal the less likely you are to develop the above symptoms. The following guidelines for a healthy lifestyle should be followed to decrease the probability of the above complications from developing: 

1. Do not over eat
2. Exercise everyday (walk 3 miles – about 45 minutes everyday)
3. Drink plenty of water to stay hydrated
4. Get plenty of rest
5. Eat five small, but nutritionally well balanced meals a day, rather than three large ones
6. Focus on keeping your blood glucose, and therefore energy levels balanced throughout the day
7. Eat fresh, healthy food, and avoid fast food that is high in fat and sugar content
8. Limit protein (choose fish rather than poultry or meat)
9. Avoid saturated fat (found in animal products) and trans fatty acids (hard margarine, fast foods)  

Balance of medication, nutrition and exercise

Finally a link for my dad and anybody else who has diabetes. The best blog and perhaps overall online resource I have stumbled upon concerning diabetes is the blog of David Mendosa. Not only has he changed his lifestyle to manage his type 2 diabetes but he freely shares his insightful research on diabetes for the benefit of others.

POM Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice

It looks like my lack of exercise over the last 8 days is finally taking its toll on me. My weight stayed constant at 68.1kg however my Body Fat rose by 0.4% to 17.6%, my Body Water dropped to 56.6% and my Body Muscle dropped 0.3% to 42.8%.  

It was my day off, but as I haven’t been doing any exercise this week and still behind in my posts I resolved to stay focused and get as many posts completed as possible.  

Buckwheat, rice milk, blueberries and agave nectar

I bought a bottle of POM Wonderful’s 100% Pomegranate juice the other day. I want to restrict my high GI fruit juice consumption to when my stores of energy are depleted. In theory this state is either first thing after you’ve woken up, since you’ve slept for eight or so hours without eating anything or straight after an intense workout. As I have not been working out this last week the best time for me to consume a high GI juice was therefore first thing in the morning when I woke up. After my pomegranate juice I then had buckwheat with rice milk, blueberries and agave nectar. I discovered buckwheat tastes better in a savoury dish rather than in a sweet breakfast cereal type dish. Quinoa on the other hand is really versatile as it works well both in sweet and savoury dishes.  

During the day I had red lentil and buckwheat soup, herbal teas, some mixed nuts and seeds. I also snacked on banana chips and Iranian dates.  

In the afternoon, my wife wanted to watch Toy Story 3 at the cinema. I had got quite a bit of writing done by this point and decided we both could do with some chill out time. At the cinema I shared pack of chilli flavoured maize snacks and banana chips with my wife. Toy Story 3 is a really good cartoon. I highly recommend watching it. Maybe I shouldn’t admit this but it nearly had me in tears in certain scenes. It reminded me of my toys as child and the attachment I had to them. I could totally relate to Andy’s attachment to his toys and his reluctance to let them go. If you do go to watch it don’t bother watching it in 3D. It didn’t seem to add anything useful to the experience. If anything it took from the experience as the glasses can be really annoying at times. The only movie that I have watched which I would recommend watching in 3D is Avatar. In fact I think you’ve missed an experience of a lifetime if you didn’t catch Avatar at a cinema in 3D.  

In the evening I bought my wife some fish and chips and she made me a really delicious vegetable soup. 

POM Antioxidant Graph

POM Wonderful make many health claims about their product. It was the image of POM’s bottle on a graph compared to other drinks high in antioxidants on the packaging of the bottle that attracted me to give it a go. Antioxidants fight harmful free radicals. Free radicals have been found to be responsible for aging, while consuming antioxidants has been found to increase lifespan. POM Wonderful’s pomegranate juice claims to have more antioxidants in it than other pomegranate juices because they juice the inedible part of the pomegranate as well as the arils. This process will account for the juice’s tart taste.  

Those are the pros of POM Wonderful’s 100% Pomegranate juice. However as with anything there are also cons. It is high in sugar. A 240ml serving contains 34g of sugar. A serving of 240ml of Coca Cola in comparison contains 39g of sugar. Though Coca Cola doesn’t have the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that POM’s 100% Pomegranate juice does. Another negative about POM Wonderful to be aware of is that they have in the past received a warning letter from The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) saying that they should not make claims about their product as if it were a drug without first being approved by the FDA.

I stayed around my parent’s house last night so I couldn’t weigh myself first thing in the morning. For breakfast I had a Pakistani Chaunsa mango. It was a poor specimen of a Chaunsa mango. It didn’t look too bad from the outside. It was the firmest in my dad’s fridge, but once sliced open it was a pale colour on the inside, as if it had been picked too early. It lacked a distinct flavour, and wasn’t juicy. Not a great Pakistani Chaunsa mango experience.  

The force is weak with you, old man

I came back home in the morning as I knew I would struggle to find food in my dad’s kitchen to eat that would fit my detox requirements, let alone be of liquid form. Though it seems the last few days I have unintentionally come off the liquid diet as I have increasingly been breaking the rules. Also I don’t feel so good. It seems an unhealthy approach to this detox diet. I went onto it as a kneejerk reaction to putting on body fat, undoing a week’s worth of effort in just one day. As the days went on I noticed waking up with a tingling feeling in my fingers. I was increasingly feeling weaker, as if the life force was being sucked out of me. I felt more vulnerable. When I walked around in the town to do shopping I felt wobbly and hazy in the head. My skin seems to have started to breakout in rashes and spots, and I think my immune system may have withered and feel as though I’m about to come down with something. Overall I have felt first hand how important a healthy diet is to feeling optimum, which I have increasingly been feeling prior to going onto a liquid only diet during the day. I think I could have improved on my liquid intake by having fruit and vegetable juices. However for most of the week I didn’t have anything in the flat to juice. In future if I decided to go down the liquid only route again I would plan for it and make sure I am taking in the nutrition (vitamins, minerals, protein, fat etc) that my body requires for optimum performance. There was at least one good thing that has come out of this experience: an increased intake of water which I think I need to do more of even when I do return to my previous detox diet. 

When I got home I weighed myself. I was dreading weighing myself as I snacked on a bit too many Haldiram’s Chana Dal. I must have consumed half a pack all by myself while watching Four Lions with my family. So I stood on the scales. My weight rose 0.4kg to 68.1kg… oh oh. This sounded real bad. Then I had to wait for the scales to work out my body fat readings… it was 17.2%. Phew! That was an increase of only 0.1%. Not as bad damage as I had thought! My body water and body muscle stayed constant at 56.0% and 43.1%. No decrease in muscle mass yet. This is quite surprising as it’s been a week since I’ve done a workout. When I first joined a gym about 12 years ago I remember I was skinny and wanted to get big. My fitness trainer advised me that it was only necessary to work a particular muscle once a week. The irony is, after I joined the gym, the workouts got me really hungry and as I didn’t know so much about food and nutrition I ended up putting on fat around my belly, and ever since then I’ve been trying to lose the belly fat! Crazy! 

Exercise can make you fat if you eat poorly after a workout

I hadn’t slept well at my dad’s place and felt like a zombie. I ate a couple of dates and went to bed. I still couldn’t sleep. Eventually I got up to make some quinoa with rice milk and blueberries. The quinoa pack was towards its last grains, so I drank mostly rice milk with a few grains of quinoa inside. Around the same time my wife made a vegetable fry up (tomatoes, onion, garlic and mushrooms) with wholemeal coucous. It looked and smelled too good to miss so I had some before going back to bed and finally managed to get some sleep. When I woke up a few hours later I had some apple and carrot soup my wife had made earlier. I picked a couple more dates too! It’s a real bad habit! I then had my first ever dandelion tea. It tasted meh. It tasted like someone had cut the grass in my dad’s back garden, stuffed the excess blades of grass in a tea bag and brewed it. It hardly had any flavour. Maybe it’s an acquired taste. But apparently it’s really good for you so worth giving it a go.  

Later in the evening my wife made a vegetable fry up again and some lentil soup. I put some buckwheat in the soup to get proteins from a more varied source. I made organic rice, spinach and tomato pasta to eat with the fry up. Later in the evening I snacked on a handful of nuts and seeds and some Iranian dates. I drank some caffeine free teas and finished off the apple and carrot soup. 

Orgainc wheat free pasta with vegetable fry-up

Waking up feeling not so good

Over the last few days I’ve noticed that I’ve been waking up with a tingly feeling in my fingers. I feel weak and just don’t feel as energetic or as healthy as I have done during the earlier part of this detox when I wasn’t restricting my diet to just liquids during the day. I don’t think what I’m doing right now is healthy – even though I haven’t stuck to it that strictly. I’ve also been struggling to write. Even though I haven’t been exercising so that I can focus on catching up with these blog posts, it seems my brain is finding it hard to concentrate and I feel very tired. Actually I feel malnourished. 

All my readings this morning stayed constant: Weight: 67.7kg; Body Fat: 17.1%; Body Water: 56.9%; Body Muscle: 43.1%. 

Rice milk, quinoa, blueberries and agave nectar

I had a hot lemon juice first thing in the morning followed by a mug of decaf coffee (I didn’t know at this point in time that decaf coffee contained caffeine). I then ate quinoa and blueberries with calcium fortified rice milk. Like other alternatives to cows milk, rice milk also tastes quite nice. It tastes a lot better than soya milk and slightly different to oat milk. I do prefer the taste of oat milk and coconut milk though. Rice milk mixes well with a hot beverage like decaf coffee. Soy milk, oat milk and coconut milk however all start to curdle when put in a hot drink. 

Apple and carrot soup (tastes nothing like apple and carrot juice)

Through the day I snacked on apple and carrot soup and mugs of various caffeine free hot drinks. 

In the evening I went to my parent’s house as my brother is visiting from Dublin. There I snacked on a handful of almonds, a can of sweet corn and an apple from my parents’ garden. They have three apple trees and one plum tree. The plums are really small. I tried one and it was super sweet. I and my wife picked some cooking apples from the garden. When she made the apple and carrot soup earlier this week, you couldn’t taste the apple much. I think if she has another go with these cooking apples she will get much better results. I’ve just done a Google image search and I believe we have picked Bramley apples.

Bramley Apples

Baingan ka Bharta

My dad cooked lamb mince meat with peas and a vegetarian dish called Baingan Ka Bharta. It involves flame grilling a whole aubergine directly on a flame, so that the resulting dish has a delicious smoky flavour and aroma to it. My dad did good. It came out really delicious. I ate it with some salad. Eating food cooked by my dad with my immediate family was a very enjoyable experience. 

Previously when I experimented with vegetarianism, I partly did it for moral reasons and partly experimental spiritual reasons. At the time I perceived the world through a pantheistic perspective and didn’t like the idea of murdering a fellow conscious being and eating its flesh. While I was experimenting with vegetarianism I happened to see animals killed for their meat whilst travelling in the Middle East. These acts of dehumanising brutality re-enforced my disgust for eating the carcass of creatures. After a while however, it’s easy to desensitise yourself when eating meat. It’s easy to see a chicken leg as a delicious piece of food rather than what it is i.e. the butchered leg of a helpless chicken.

Bon Appétit!

When I started this detox, I did not give up meat for moral reasons. I did it for selfish reasons. I reminisced about how good I felt after day 10 of my previous detox. I literally felt fantastic. I was full of energy and felt like skipping down the street rather than just sluggishly walk. I felt psychological and emotional joy at just being. I strongly believe that amazing feeling was partly due to me giving up meat. I was seeking that feeling again. I am well past day ten and passed half way through this forty day detox, and I am afraid I have not regained that amazing feeling. I was hoping to get it again and share the experience with you on this blog. Unfortunately it hasn’t happened. Not yet anyway. But for the first time during this detox when I saw the mince of lamb my family were consuming, I didn’t look upon it with an eye of envy or temptation. I looked at it as what it really was: the mangled flesh of a dead lamb. I imagined it in its raw form rather than the wonderful colour it had with peas and Indian spices. For the first time during this particular detox I felt disgusted at the idea of eating a murdered animal. I am starting to feel as though eating meat would some how make me unclean. 

Dirty meat

I’ll be honest, and confirm that my thoughts about eating meat again after the detox are mixed. If I had regained that amazing feeling I would more than likely stay a vegetarian. However I have not. I also know from previous experience that I have lost fat in the past by eating just vegetables with lean forms of meat like fish while eliminating starchy carbohydrate foods like rice, bread, pasta and potatoes. Though because I am detoxing and not eating meat, in order to get complete proteins from vegan sources I feel like I give myself a better chance by eating rice, buckwheat and quinoa along with legumes and nuts. After the detox I may come back to eating lean meats so that I can get my complete proteins in a lean form and avoid starchy foods altogether and thus accelerate muscle gain and fat loss.

Salmon with salad

I can see the subject of eating meat from many perspectives. Part of me wonders what if vegetarianism and veganism is a more evolved way of looking at the world. Another part of me realises that as humans we have survived all these millions of years and got to where we are because we have a versatile digestive system that is capable of extracting its nutrients from both plant based foods and animal based foods i.e. by being omnivorous. I wonder, if we evolved to just eating foods from plant based foods: could we increase the risk of becoming extinct by decreasing the adaptable abilities of our digestive system? Could developing kindness to animals be a step back in evolution rather than a step forward? Is the ability to be brutal a necessary component of a species that is fittest to survive? I’m not sure, and my mind is not made up. I’m not even sure if looking at things from a competitive evolutionary perspective is the right way of looking at things anyway. Whatever your perspective on this subject I am sure you will be amazed, shocked and perhaps delighted at what is captured in the following video:

After dinner I drank some detox tea (luckily my sister had a few tea bags left) and I snacked on Haldiram’s Spicy Chana Dal. I checked the ingredients and it didn’t seem to break any of my detox rules. All ingredients seemed natural. I also figured the Chana dal would provide me with a source of protein, which I believe my diet was lacking today. I overdid it though. These Haldiram snacks are really addictive once you start. I think I ate half a bag all by myself. I was enjoying the moment, but dreading the impact on my fat content the following morning at the same time. Ah well…

Haldiram's Chana Dal

My weight stayed a constant 67.7kg. My body fat dropped 0.1% to 17.1%. My body water and body muscle stayed constant at 56.9% and 43.1% respectively. Both days where I consumed lentil and rice soup during the day my weight, body water and body muscle stayed consistent while body fat only dropped by 0.1%. Whereas when I spent the day consuming mostly vegetable soup my weight and body fat dropped considerably while body muscle and body water also went up significantly. Hmm… interesting. I shall consume mostly vegetable soup again after I’ve finished the lentil soup and see what happens. 

Gluten free pasta with vegatables in tomato sauce

Organic gluten free pasta made from rice, spinach and tomato

In the evening I made wheat and gluten free organic pasta made from rice, spinach and tomato. I had the pasta with a tomato and vegetable sauce like concoction I invented as I went along. It had onion, garlic (a special Italian, one bulb, one clove garlic – tastes incredible!), cherry tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, sweet corn, green peas, carrot, green chillies and the world’s hottest chilli called the Naga Jolokia pepper. 

In 2007 the Guinness Book of Records certified the Naga Jolokia as the world’s hottest chilli. It’s 400 times hotter than Tabasco Sauce. I have to confess I did not know this at the time of consumption. I’m still not sure if I entirely believe it! I knew it was hot, but didn’t know it was that hot.

It smells like it means business. It’s got a very aggressive smell - I don’t know how to explain it. It smells like a bully that’s going to knock the crap out of you. It’s like the difference between the impression a wannabe gangster gives and the first impression a genuine murdering evil bad man gives. Some people just look like pure unadulterated evil. They have this dark presence about them and you dare not look them in the eyes. Sometimes you might walk around staring out wannabe bad boys feeling very comfortable that they will be intimidated because their badness is fake. But then there are some people who just have this look of, well they’ve probably killed people before and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again, and you wouldn’t dare look at them. Well that’s what this Naga Jolokia chilli smells like. It smells like it’s the real deal. Its smells like its going to do real damage if you dare to play with its flames.

Would you have a staring match with these guys? I wouldn't.

I took a bite. It tasted serious. Certainly not a pleasant taste. It’s so strong it tastes horrible. It tasted like it should’ve really been hurting me at that moment. It didn’t seem as bad as I thought. It tasted like it was supposed to be hotter and hence more painful. It smelled and tasted hotter than it actually felt. Perhaps it was so hot that it went beyond what my mouth could sense? Maybe it burnt my taste buds out of action so that my mouth became numb to how hot it really was? While thinking: “Ah it’s not so bad” I noticed that I started to sweat profusely. Maybe it was hotter than I could detect after all? I ate it all with the rest of my meal and took a photo of myself afterwards. Straight after my meal I reached for the rice milk and ended up eating grapes and blueberries to try and soothe my scorched mouth. 

My face sweating after eating a Naga Jolokia chilli pepper

There are many entertaining videos of people eating this chilli raw online. I ate mine bit by bit with a meal and after it was half cooked. I might well do my own video later in the week of eating one raw, just for the crack! I may as well as I have another 25 or so to consume as I bought a £1’s worth. For the rest of the evening I kept belching the horrible aftertaste of this criminally insane pepper. 

My evening food consumption didn’t end there. I had soaked some buckwheat earlier with the intention of finishing the moong daal chilka we had left before I decided I was in the mood for pasta. I didn’t want to waste the buckwheat so I ate that with the daal after I ate the pasta. Then my wife came up with this idea to make apple and carrot soup. She made it and there was no way I was going to give that a miss so I consumed a bowls worth. Will I have to pay for this over consumption, by not burning any fat as a result, or perhaps worse, an increase in fat content? We shall see…