September Challenge: The Wrap-Up.

It's over! Well, it's been over for five days, and I'm just writing about it now. The truth is, it no longer felt like a detox by the end of it. It felt like normal life. Don't get me wrong, we've been thrilled to add tomatoes back into our menus (and mushrooms, and wine, and olives, and zucchini...)--it's just that it didn't feel difficult in any way by the end. I guess it really does take 30 days to change a habit (I just hope it takes more than 30 to change them back again...).


There were definitely parts of the 'wellness' challenge that I didn't feel were successful. I'm going to re-post my list from the first entry here.


September Challenge:


- Follow the Dr. Joshi Holistic Detox (no red meat, no coffee, no booze, no wheat, no fruit except bananas and lemons, no fungii, no nightshades, etc) A+
- Meditate daily C-
- Do yoga 1-2x per week C-
- Reach out (check in with friends and family, and try to remember if there is anything special or stressful going on in their lives) B
- Don't say no to family and friends if they try to make plans B-
- Take detox baths C+
- Walk my dog more often B-
- Develop a morning routine (get up earlier in order to write my Morning Pages, meditate, and do a bit of light stretching or yoga before work) C
- Develop an evening routine (wash off make-up A, floss and brush teeth A, do not watch TV in bed D)
- Pick creativity over lazy entertainment (ie. less TV, more sketching, painting, writing, etc.) D
- Organize and edit (get rid of unnecessary clutter, organize and file basket of mail, get rid of clothes I no longer wear, etc.) B-


So I definitely still have some stuff to work on. The first week or two were definitely more successful--I was more into the meditation and yoga, especially. But for the last two weeks of the month, I mostly went back to normal life other than the detox. I like to watch TV in bed before going to sleep--we always cuddle during that time, and I always fall asleep with my head on her shoulder until she's ready to turn off the television, and rolls me over to my own side. I yell impatiently when she's taking too long in the bathroom because I want "in." It's just one of our little things. 


I started belly dancing on Monday nights halfway through the month and started going to the gym again, so I was running more and kind of abandoned yoga. But I really, really enjoy yoga and I always notice a huge difference in my flexbility and inner tranquility when I'm practicing regularly; I do still want to get back into it. 


I still watch too much TV, I get up with just enough time in the morning to get ready for work and eat a bowl of cereal, and meditation just wouldn't stick. I will probably keep trying to make small improvements with these things, but I don't think they're going to change drastically.  


Here are some photos of our final detox meals. On Friday, September 23rd, we had an RMT come over to our apartment for at-home massages. Marielle got a regular deep tissue massage, and I opted for a detoxifying lymphatic drainage massage. It was very relaxing; much more gentle than a normal massage (and I normally prefer them to be quite aggressive, even a little painful). She warned me that I might have some symptoms of detoxing afterwards, which I always get (I refer to it as the 'massage flu'). I was fine for most of the evening, but I fell asleep on the couch around 10pm, and when Marielle woke me close to midnight to go to bed, I felt drugged. I was weaving, I couldn't open my eyes--it was pretty intense! I felt great the next morning. I will definitely try to remember to get a LDM twice yearly, at least.


We wanted to make something simple that night since our massages wouldn't be over until 8pm, so we picked up some extra lean ground chicken from the butcher and made a brown rice pasta dish with arugula, leeks, olive oil, garlic, fresh basil, and goat cheese. Kind of... Joshi-style Hamburger Helper, I guess!

This next meal was a FAIL. It looks delicious, but it just didn't turn out. We should've looked at recipes. We wanted to make a walnut-crusted fish, and we wanted to try a new kind of white fish (we only ever buy tilapia. Tilapia and salmon, salmon and tilapia--the end). We ended up going with cod--one of the cheaper white fish, but since we were crusting it, it didn't seem to matter. The fish itself wasn't bad, but the walnut crust was soggy and way too thick--we overdid it on the walnuts for sure. We ended up scraping most of the crust off and just eating the fish and asparagus.

Here is another 'Hamburger Helper' type dish, but the salad was so good! We've been making it again and again. It was just lettuce, arugula, red cabbage, grated carrot, feta, and toasted sunflower seeds and almonds. So delicious.

This image is not very appealing to the eye, but mmmm, this was good. One of our specialties is taco salad, and normally we make it vegetarian, but we still had some extra-lean ground chicken to finish up, so we added it. This is just lettuce, onion, carrot, celery, feta, and red cabbage, and we sautéed ground chicken with black beans, cumin, chili powder, and chipotle flakes. That's a dollop of plain yogurt on top, which we started doing rather than sour cream quite a few months ago (mostly because we always have plain yogurt, and never sour cream).

Aaand... that appears to be it! We don't even seem to have a photo of our Last Meal, but it wasn't really very exciting, although it was very delicious. We had grilled salmon (marinated in honey, Braggs, garlic, ginger, and fresh herbs) with a huge salad on the side. We couldn't even finish the salad, but we ended up watching a movie and when we got peckish later on, we had the rest.

I think that's probably my favourite thing about the detox--it took us from being snackers to just... not. We have snacks at work always (morning and afternoon), but we seem to have lost our late-night munchies, and we don't snack at all on the weekends between meals anymore (in fact, we often go too long between eating on the weekend).

I have a few photos of meals we've enjoyed post-detox, but I will save that for another entry since this is supposed to be the wrap-up for the September Challenge.

Oh! And I'm down 8lbs, I almost forgot that part. Marielle is down 6lbs. We both feel the difference for sure, and our clothes are fitting much better (or worse--as in, some are falling right off). That's the amount I was hoping to lose over the month--more would have been great, but I'm very happy with that number. I'm hoping to be down another 10lbs by January 1st--I'm giving myself a few months only because between now and New Year's, I have:

- Thanksgiving

- Marielle's birthday celebrations (so far, there are five)

- Our 5-yr anniversary

- A possible family trip to Mont Tremblant

- Marielle's dad's birthday

- My dad's birthday

- Christmas and all of the parties that go along with that (friends, family, work, etc)

- My mom's birthday

- New Year's Eve

So. I think that if I lose 10lbs, it'll won't be a small feat! But I'm pretty confident that I can do it. And I'll be sure to keep writing about it, too!