I Won't Back Down

Sorry for the seemingly combative title, but it works.  The song, of course is by Tom Petty - I Won't Back Down.  The reason that it works for this entry?  Well, I have decided to begin following the master cleanse for the next 10 - 14 days and I am setting my mind to the task.  I have been reading up on the process and the benefits for quite some time, and the timing just seems right to start the fast tomorrow.

Essentially, the master cleanse calls for you to drink a mixture of freshly squeezed lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper.  In addition, it is recommended to drink a cup of senna tea each night for the laxative properties and as much purified water as desired.  I have never been a big fan of tea, so I will be skipping that part.  I will also be modifying the fast by adding my daily dose of VIDACELL, raw honey, and cinnamon in the morning.  I don't really know what sort of impact this will have on the overall benefits of the cleanse, but I am willing to find out.

My plan is to keep a daily log during the next 10 days of the fast and the following four days while I slowly resume my regular diet.  Depending on how things go, I will likely be posting at least one entry per day on this blog.  So, if you are interested in my progress, be sure to check back!

To start off right, I had a simple dinner of plain, whole milk yogurt mixed with some berries and cherries with a glass of water.  As well, I weighed myself to see if there is any weight loss benefit.  As of a few moments ago, I weighed in at 237 pounds.  This is considerably less than the almost 300 pounds that I weighed at the beginning of the year, but still has quite a bit of room for improvement.  Tonight, while I will not be drinking any tea, I will be using a psyllium seed husk drink mix in place of it.  Hopefully it will have a similar effect to the tea.

This past week has been another eventful and exhausting one...  In my last post, Take It To the Limit, I talked about our adventure to the NY Renaissance Faire and about my work on preparing the garden for next year.  Well, this week was almost a carbon copy!  Instead of the NY Ren Faire, we went to the CT Ren Faire on Saturday - much closer to home.  The girls didn't feel like going in costume, but I did.  We got another chance to see one of our favorite performers, Jayna Lee.  She does an amazing aerial acrobatics (how's that for alliteration?) performance.

Yesterday found me in the garden once again.  My intent was to sift some more of the soil back into what will eventually be a raised bed.  While I was out there, my neighbor came out and suggested that I claim the compost bin that was left behind by another neighbor several years ago.  She and I went down the hill into the woods where Jim had installed the bin.  He had it wedged in pretty well and it was about half full of wonderfully composted soil, so it took a bit of effort for us to move it.  We scooped out and distributed the soil to some of the plants we have growing out back as well as into my raised bed.  After that, it was simple to move the bin out of its spot and up into the area that I had already established as my compost pile.
In addition to recovering the compost bin, we also discovered some really nice flagstones that were essentially discarded down the hill.  It took some effort, but we also moved those from their resting place to the spot just outside my door.  I didn't spend too much time nestling them into a nice, level spot, but I plan to revisit that project.  I will probably have to get some gravel to really do the job right, though.