Some Up to the date David Not David News!

Today I've done much better following my diet. Tomorrow I test tomatoes. That should be fun. I hope I do well with tomatoes as pizza sauce and salsa depend on it!

Tonight I'm going to help my friend Elizabeth "Lizzard" for an art class. She'll be taking pictures of some of us yoga types doing various postures. Hopefully she will capture the majesty and joy of me doing headstand with full lotus legs on film. I sense a future Myspace avatar.

DND

The Diet

Huh - broke the diet today by first deciding to test dairy a day early with a yogurt at an a.m. meeting. God, it made me feel feverish and gassy and drunk all at the same time - yum! Then I later had a veggie egg roll at work (because the rule tends to be if you break one rule once then it's at least twice as easy to break the same rule a second time). This of course also made me feel dizzy and added the joy of phlegm to the mix. So yeah I'm sitting here at the reception desk at the firm right now feeling more drunk than I have in years off not a drop of liquor and wondering why the hell I had to have the yogurt.

Liquid Days

Wow, definitely an intense experience moving through the three day detox cleanse of only broth and protein drinks. Liquid diet is an interesting experiment but it certainly ain't sustainable. Definitely noticed that my energy was lower Sat-Mon (the three liquid days). I'm back on food today and can tell the difference. That said, getting in really deep with eating also helped to get me in pretty deep with some firmly entrenched psychological issues that have been bugging me since I was a wee lad.

Tomorrow I move on to the food testing phase where I can introduce foods that I haven't had since before the first phase of testing and see how they hit me. I'm going to start with soy. According to the blood type deal, soy's supposed to be good for me. I hope it is as it supplies a lot of my protein and also I loves me some soy goodiness.

DND

Ah February

February - it is the shortest month of the year on the calendar but for my dollar it can often feel like the longest experientially. I'm usually a very happy guy but it's about this time of year that I can get down, and it's not just me: worldwide Feb has the highest suicide rate. Now that's an interesting factoid as you'd think this whole "Feb Sucks" thing would be based around the cold weather but many areas of the world are experiencing very different weather than we MNtians are right now.

Last year, however, I took a step to help diminish the affects of this time of year. I enrolled in yoga teacher training. 200 hours in 9 weeks is a lot of time and I was too busy doing things that I loved and was driven to do to have the time to wallow in it. It worked really well and last Feb was absolutely great!

This year I'll be starting Feb with the Nutrition Program cleanse, I'll be learning how to teach yoga sculpt, I'll be teaching a lot of classes (though a couple less than I have been), I'll be going full force into Ka-baalim "volume three" work and I'll be prepping for an Advanced Teacher Training that I'll be doing in Mexico come mid-April. I'd guess that all of this should help a bit. Free time's for summer, Feb's for work!

Wish me luck.

DND

Too Tired

So I'm on the third day of the first phase of the Nutrition Program cleanse. I'm having to map out my schedule for eating every day which is a trip. What I've noticed is that if I don't get a good amount of sleep (let's say 7-8 hours) I really feel it the next day whereas usually I just up my intake of fruit and refined sugar to burn through some of those low energy moments. Today would be a tired day. Very tired day. Oh well, what do you do? I suspect I'll not do much here at the front desk for the next hour and a half and then eat an egg and fruit as a snack so I can power up for yoga teaching tonight.

Tomorrow I'll still eat a little regular food and then Sat-Mon I'll just be on the powder mix and two types of broth. That should be an interesting experience fo sho.

Gotta Say

I'm pretty impressed with myself for sticking with the blog and regularly updating it so often! Hurray! I think a part of me expected that I'd start this up, post 4-5things and then drop out. I think that's what would have happened if I hadn't learned the joy that is uploaded video from Youtube. That's saved me a number of times when I didn't have much to say.

Yesterday I went back and started tagging earlier posts. I think all of Jan is done now and I'm hoping to dig into Dec later on this month. That will make the blog a lot more useful for those of you just interested in following certain lines of thought. I know that what I write is all over the place. That's what makes it fun for me but I realize it might be frustrating to you, dear readers. See how much I care for you! So please keep the comments coming. Comments are what keep me motivated (I'm a simple man really).

In other news, did my first day of the first phase of the cleanse diet yesterday. I missed two snacks near the end of the day and that led to a headache and to me doing what I didn't feel was my best teaching last night (sorry 6:30 people - I'll do better next week!).

Noel helped me prep food last night (basically she did most of it, bless her) so I'm better prepared today. Then by Saturday I go into the second phase where I only eat broth and this Flaxomax style cleansing drink (no, for those who watch Tom Goes into the Mayor's Office, it's not actually Flaxomax but the container is a similar size).

I searched for Flaxamax on youtube and came up blank, so here's another Tom clip in its stead:

4am

3:49a.m.
Woke up at 3:00 and cannot get back to sleep. I've started the nutrition program at Corepower. They set you up with a chart of foods that may be good for your blood type. I made a dinner (a very rare thing for me) last night and adjusted a menu (from Weight Watchers) for Morroccan Barley and Vegetable Pilaf and Tempeh so as to include more of the foods that are my "super energy" foods. So this is my recipe (more or less bearing in mind that I spice to taste and sight measure my vegetables too):

1/4 tsp Cumin
1/8 tsp Cinnamon
1 1/4 tsp Table Salt
2 tsp Olive Oil
2 Tbsp Dried Blueberries
1 Large Red Onion (cut into large sections)
2 Cups of Carrots (sliced into 1/4 inch chunks)
2 Cups of Turnips (peeled and cut into thick chunks)
6 Tbsp of Walnuts (hand crushed)
1 Cup of Uncooked Barley
1/4 Tsp Turmeric
1 package of Tempeh

1. Bring 6 cups of water and 1 teaspoon of salt to a boil in a large saucepan. Add barley, cover and simmer until tender, about 35 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 450°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and coat foil with cooking spray.
3. Place carrots, turnips and onion on prepared baking sheet. Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with remaining salt and turmeric; toss to coat. Roast 25 to 35 minutes, tossing vegetables once or twice, until lightly charred and tender.
4. Drain barley and return to pot. Stir in blueberries, cumin, turmeric, and roasted vegetables.
5. Spray Tempeh with cooking oil and broil for several minutes. Cut Tempeh into pieces and toss with walnuts into barley pilaf just before serving. Yields about 1 cup per serving. (Note: Store for up to 3 days in the fridge.)


It was very yummy but I wonder if it gave me so much energy that sleep became a little difficult. If you're a blood-type A and want a filling yummy energy boosting meal, I recommend this one! The differences are substituting carrots for squash, dried blueberries for currants, walnuts for sliced almonds and Turmeric for Cayenne Pepper. I also used a bigger onion.

Good morning!
DND
4:11am

To All the Foods I've Known Before (pt. 3)

Holy Moly, Geez Louis here it is the third and final part of my thrilling Nutrition Program food listing. I wouldn't want to keep you, my adoring fans, from this vital and important information any longer than need be so without further ado I bring you:

1/23/2008
1 Large bag of popcorn
1 Naked Juice Berry Blast (eaten together - the excessive salt made my tummy a little sour)
1 home made dessert bar (big burst of immediate energy then it made me hungrier)
3 fun-sized Milky Way bars (a little jittery)
1 Lean cuisine vegetable egg roll
1 Lean cuisine four cheese cannelloni (eaten together, made me feel pleasantly full)

And that's that all I've got. God only knows if I'll ever stoop so low to list the exact foods I eat over the course of a day so if you enjoy the ball's in your court, it'll make a great blog. Just be sure to eat a little Taco Bell now and again to keep it interesting.

Food I have Known (part two in a thrilling series)

Here's how I finished off yesterday:

1/22/07
Sub Sandwich (wheat bread, avocado, lettuce, tomato, pickled peppers, hummus) - Filled me up, didn't notice much affect other than that.

And that's that. More later today, I know you can hardly wait.

DND

Food I have Eaten

Hey, I used to joke that blogs existed solely as a way of the writers to inform their readers how many times they ate at Taco Bell. Well, as part of the upcoming Nutrition Program I need to log my eating for three days and tell them how it makes me feel. I figured since I'm writing it down anyways, I might as well share. Unless you're interested in details regarding my eating please feel free to skip this one today and tomorrow.

1/21/2007 Food Log
1 Naked Strawberry Banana C (felt good, energized but not shakey)
1 Naked Green Machine
Saurkraut
2 Tofu Dogs
2 slices of wheat bread (ate the last four listings as one meal - felt full and yet not overfull. Energized. Pretty good. A couple of hours later my tummy felt a little acidic)
2 Mints (made me a little jittery and didn't help the slight headache I was already nursing)
1 Cheese Sandwich with whole wheat bread, low fat cheese, tomatos
1 Cheese pita sandwich
Stir fried yellow peppers with tofu
1 Frozen fudge on a stick bar (Ate these last items as dinner. Had been hungry but felt much better after. Filled up.)

1/22/07 Food log
1 Naked Orange Mango energy drink
1 Kashi peanut butter bar (ate first two together. Felt good though not as full as when I drink a full smoothy Naked drink)
1 banana (immediate burst of energy no later lull)
1 Veggie burger from The Local
1 plate of fries and malt vinegar (ate second two entries together - I felt bloated and my tummy has been queasy all afternoon)
3 Fun-sized Snickers bars (immediate burst of energy, then jittery).

I'll finish off today's food and give you tomorrow's this time tomorrow. Can you take the suspense?!

DND

Food and Holiday Weight

Hey hey aren't holiday weight gains fun? I think I weigh a good 10-15 pounds up on last March, yikes! Back on Weightwatchers (online works well) and I'm going to be doing the Corepower nutrition program as well. Should be sitting pretty in a month or two after which point I'm toying with the idea of going completely raw (i.e. no cooked food). I did that for a few weeks last year and I felt great. I'm hoping that a year or so on the program might help move me to another level mentally and emotionally. I love the idea of eating sunshine/becoming light which the raw foods deal taps into very strongly. I usually need some form of ideological excitement to get me into big new things and that one does it for me. Finally I debating whether or not to do another marathon this year, all the training seems kind of fun (and hellish, and fun).

That's all I've got. Very best!

DND