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Ok so friday I did my biceps and abs. The other thing to do was back but I decided to leave this out this week. I am feeling really good and looking forward to continuing next week.

I also hope to get in more running, but as we are moving next friday I am not going to be too upset if I can’t fit in 5 or more runs. 1 or 2 this week would be great. I do get plenty of exercise out with my son so it isn’t too much of a big deal.

I have decided to use this blog to document my work-outs. I still continue to run a lot but this is more for my weight training. I haven’t done any in a long while and would like to start toning up again.

I got some inspiration from Naked Food Cafe to do this. The thread I got inspiration was about starting your new years resolution NOW so that when new year comes around you will already been where you want to be making 2010 the best year ever

For my weights I have been using The Basic Workout from bodybuilding.com plus their Ab Workouts.

So on Monday I did chest, triceps and shoulders. Plus I did the ab workouts. It was a great workout and got me motivated for doing my Legs today. Another tough work out.

I haven’t been able to do every life on the basic workout as I don’t have a bench right now (been using elevated surface) and I also obviously don’t have the leg attachment either so added more by going to their exercise section.

I have been really enjoying it. Hopefully but just documenting it here just that I have been working out I might actually be able to stay accountable

I will go through my plan properly on friday but just wanted to get a few things down tonight!

So I haven’t had time to vamp this blog up unfortunately but I was inspired by someone on www.30bananasaday.com (one of my favourite websites these day – full of people following the 811 diet and who are absolutely fantastic and supportive) to write a quick post now that I have a few moments.

It is sort of a mini update on my diet. Well lately – the past month of so I have for some reason just really upped my greens. I guess I have been craving them a lot lately. When I started the 811 journey I wasn’t too fond of greens but now can sit happily munching on a romaine lettuce no problem and desiring more afterwards. It takes me a very short time to eat my greens these days then it did in the beginning (and I am glad I stopped eating spinach..because I didn’t really like it too much at the time or rather I didn’t desire it).

I seem to be eating 2 romaine lettuces (which are organic and seem to be a LOT larger than the non-organic), a few cucumbers. Sometimes I might eat more. Generally though I really enjoy – it just happened and it is very enjoyable. Before I was eating maybe a head of romaine.

What it has made me realise is how important that it is to eat your greens and a sufficient amount. When I was eating less greens I did not experience the cleansing I seem to get with eating more. I have found that I am much more regular and my body gets a good thorough cleaning. I just feel much better for it.

I feel as though your body will definitely let you know when you are eating enough greens. If you aren’t experiencing anything when consuming them daily then I believe you probably aren’t eating enough. It is almost a sense – I just know that there is something different to me!

I wish I had been consuming as much as I am now in the beginning but don’t think that would be realistic for me. I hope this makes sense

I have decided to give my blog a much needed overhaul and to make it much easier for my to utilise. I am then going to start blogging again. I do miss it and I did say I would be back to write about my henna experience but just haven’t been able to squeeze it in. Watch this space

Oh how I miss my blog

It has been a while since I have been on here but I will be back regularly very soon. I stopped posting because I was waiting patiently for something to happen with my henna pictures for my post and my experience with using henna. My phone camera decided to pack up and leave me and ever since I have been struggling to get a few off there that I REALLY wanted to use in my post about it.

Nevermind, I do have plenty but me wanting the others so much has made a 4 month delay in me posting about it! Shame on me!

I will be writing that article tonight or tomorrow though so stay tuned

Whoop! Mixed my henna up with some lemon juice (200g) ready to do my hair tomorrow. Will be adding some amla and indigo. I am really looking forward to trying it out (although a little hesitant too). I will be putting up some before and after pictures so you can all see. (I have a new haircut too .

On January 1st I decided I wasn’t going to wash my hair with shampoo/conditioner anymore. The date I decided is merely a coincidence – this isn’t a new year resolution! I had been pondering it for some time and decided to take the dive.

For a long while I thought I wasn’t going to be able to do it because I have dyed hair (finding this hard to let go of) but from reading it seems perfectly ok. I am seriously considering growing out my dye now because I want to get rid of all chemicals, but next week am first going to try out some henna. Curiosity more than anything as I haven’t done henna properly and now I know I must try .

Anyway this is how my hair looks after baking soda/vinegar. Its the second time in the past 2 weeks I have used it and haven’t used anything else.

I am really happy with it – it feels lovely, although getting used to no smell is weird. Also the first time I used baking soda and vinegar it felt greasy but didn’t look it. This time it feels fantastic!

Hopefully I will not have to use this for very long – but once a week is all I am going to do for now.

I will update this week with the henna experiment

So, for the past year I have kept my glasses off and was hoping to embark on a journey of clearing my eyesight. Unfortunately I have made no progress on that front. The thing is, doing the “exercise” and trying to relax wasn’t working for me. I simply cannot relax no matter how much I try.

I have chronic tension in my back, particularly my shoulders and neck. I know these muscles can mess with your eyesight and I also know that if you want to do the eye exercises efficiently and well it is best to be as relaxed as possible. These muscles never relax – even when I think I am relaxed. So it has been my attempt to find something to relax them.

I started off going to see an osteopath which was a big waste of time. I wish I had taken the chiropractic route. The osteopath didn’t help whatsoever, so after a few sessions I had to give it up. He was just massaging me – I may as well have seen a massuese. Yes I was getting relief but only a tiny bit and only for a very short period of time. Everytime he turned me I noticed how stiff I was even when I tried to relax I remained this way.

Anyway I wish I had since a chiropractor because from my reading I feel it would have been better suited for me. I may attempt this in the new year or/and I am definitely going to try the Alexander Technique. I have be meaning to do this for a while but had decided on the osteopath first, so yeah I have learnt from that mistake!

Currently I am doing some exercises from a book by Craig Williamson called Muscular Retraining. It is a fantastic book that explains the issue of muscular tension exceptionally and in a way that makes sense to me. Like in the Alexander Technique he references to kinesthetic awareness being loss, due to muscles being tense all the time. Just like if you are in a noisy room, after a while you do not notice the sound anymore even though it is still there – he suggests muscle tension is the same. I know with my own tension that it is very hard to distinguish what those muscles are doing when I concentrate them. I have lost or rather have a faulty kinesthetic awareness due to them being tense constantly. The exercises being back awareness.

I have only been doing the exercises a few days and have found some of them impossible for me to do. This is apparently very normal for someone who has suffered from tension for such a long time, but quite annoying. It can feel quite frustrating not being able to something that should actually be really simple! Anyhoo I do feel that my shoulders and back have been loosening a little because I have this sensation of feeling a little uncomfortable emotionally. As though its loosening old tied up emotions from my back. It has made me feel a little anxious of what will be in store for my emotionally in the coming days…weeks…because I am already experiencing emotional release through my diet! So we shall see. I have hopes for these exercises.

I have also started reading a book by Kathleen Porter called Ageless Spine, Lasting Health: The Open Secret to Pain-Free Living and Comfortable Aging. This book is more focused on posture. I have skipped to the end and tried out some of the realigning and it does feel uncomfortable. I guess that is only to be expected when I have had bad posture for such a long time. I hope to put it in practice as well and in fact I am at the moment. I am sitting quite nicely on my sits bones with feet flat on the floor and my laptop screen a little higher up. I am sort of comfortable. I don’t believe I have my upper body properly aligned or my shoulders just yet but hopefully I will sort this issue out in the coming days/weeks. I really look forward to reading this book though.

I also look forward to releasing my tense shoulders for good and hopefully being able to finally deal with my eyesight. Wish me luck!

I have been in Wales all weekend – finally gaining a break from being overly busy with some projects and babying. I love seeing family, and so does my son – he always wanders off and follows my dad everywhere and it means I can get two minutes to have a ponder…

Anywho, the slow down and the rest from my mind going into overdrive with every possible thing I could be doing and do do in the space of a day was something I think I have needed in a long while. Not because I am exhausted – far from it!!! I have more energy than ever currently – but mainly because I wasn’t being as aware of myself and my body as I should (even though I am very aware). I was missing things!

Despite being an 811rv follower these days and everyday being aware of food and how I am feeling, I hadn’t noticed some of the smaller things that had disappeared from my being. And it always amazes me when I notice these things so I wanted to just make a note of them here.

So what small little thing did I notice this weekend? Well, I noticed my nose. Since embarking on the 811rv journey, I have had NO problems with my nose. You see, for years and years it was almost like I had a constant cold – a constant runny nose. In the Winter I would tell people it was a cold and in the Summer I would tell people it was hayfever and although I had suffered from hayfever, half the time it wasn’t that. I just had a runny nose. Every night I had to go to bed with a tissue. It took me ages to get to sleep because I had to keep rolling from one side to the other to unblock my nose. However, now, my nose is ALWAYS clear. I never have a problem with it. Even when I have had a cold (which I have had through some cleansing periods) I have never had to take a tissue to bed or it has never really been runny.

Now I know that seems like the smallest thing in the world, but that used to be a big annoyance for me. I wasn’t very good at blowing my nose and sniffed constantly – I always felt like I was bothering people when listening to lectures and well my sister used to throw her pillow at me at night because she couldn’t sleep as a result of my sniffing!

But it has gone and I am very happy. But I am only happy now, because I only just noticed it! This isn’t the only time I have had one of those happy moments about something small. About a month ago I noticed I no longer get pains go down my arms and have to click my fingers and wrists to get relief from it. That has gone also. That was quite frustrating too. I did it a lot daily and when it had gone I didn’t notice that at first either, but once I had, again I was very happy .

Ok rambling..I am just happy about all these little small things and I should be! Small things are just as important as the big things.

So what else have I experienced from 811? Well I have massive amounts of energy. I especially have massive amounts of energy since incorporating some green smoothies into my life, as opposed to just having a green salad. I guess I am not very good at chewing my greens sufficiently enough and have found drinking smoothies to help with this issue immensely. I feel like I am getting what I should out of the greens now. I decided upon doing this after reading Green For Life by Victoria Boutenko. I managed to get a copy of this free from a lovely woman called Debbie. It confirmed for me that green smoothies were the way to go. I do intend to work on my chewing ability, but with chasing a little 1 year old monster about, I feel that adding green smoothies in at the moment is important.

On top of the energy, I have a lot more focus. I am actually amazed about the amount of work I have gotten done in the past few months. Focused work. Not wondering off, not procrastinating but focused work. I am very happy about this.

I am also very happy that my skin is becoming smoother and smoother each and everyday. I also am consuming more and more fresh fruits and greens daily and the small cooked meal at the end of my day is well..I am not having it as often now. And I think it will be soon when I will not have it at all. However, I am taking my pace quite slowly as not to put too much pressure on myself and mess things up.

In terms of my emotional self, I think this has been the biggest challenge. I have had many periods of anger, upset and I believe that this is due to many issues surrounding my past, my mother, my mother’s death only a year ago and I think though, I have released quite a bit of repressed emotion. I feel a lot more stable these days. I guess I will have flare ups now and then and I do expect them because I know I haven’t finished offloading but each time I feel like I have progressed a lot.

I never realised how much I used food for emotional comfort. I have turned to it many times in the past few months hoping for that comfort and instant gratification it once gave me. I don’t get the same feelings from it like I used to and I am relying on it less and less, when each time I get disappointed. I am glad it disappoints me because it means I have to cope and feel my emotions, which makes me stronger. My boyfriend is very supportive in this and I guess it would be much harder to get through those times without him.

At one point I felt like I was stuck inbetween cooked food and raw. As though I was lost and not sure what to do. I felt very down for quite a while. Cooked food didn’t give me the emotional numbness I wanted and raw, well I just didn’t eat enough and it was as though I was fearful of eating enough – taking the next step to being where I wanted to be. I think this is why I have taken my time, because becoming so emotionally un-numb and having to deal with it is very daunting. If I ease myself into it I can enjoy the process more and appreciate it more.

So, so far everything is good with me. I love it, quite frankly. I never will turn my back on eating this way. I feel very grateful for stumbling across the 80/10/10 Diet and I think Dr Doug Graham is absolutely fantastic. I hope to have his confidence one day.

I would also like to mention I am very thin by society’s standards. I am about 110lbs. When I wrote my other post, at the end of August, I had about 10% body fat which was bordering on danger land for me being a lady. I think I lost this weight because well I had to cleanse and I have always read you tend to lose a lot first to cleanse and then you put it back on. Well I am up to 14% now, which is in the range Doug Graham recommends for a woman, so I am happy. I still look very skinny and people do comment, but despite that, I KNOW I am healthy. If I wasn’t I know I would feel tired constantly, but I don’t I am racing about all the time, I would probably look ill, which I don’t I look quite glowing really. Even my boyfriend tells me that if I actually looked ill then he would worry, but he sees me everyday and he sees the life in me and knows I am very healthy and happy. People comment on the fact that I am breastfeeding, but my son is a happy bouncy podgy little 1 one year old. He is full of energy and never ill.

This is me in November, just before I went to see the Mighty Boosh

And this is my son on his first birthday 15th November.

But people will always go with the weight issue because my diet isn’t “normal” by their standard. And that is ok, because the proof is in me and I know what this diet does for me and my family. It is fantastic. Yes, it takes time to learn how to eat enough fruits and greens and it takes time to acknowledge and resist cravings, but the results and the improvements and the way you feel will encourage and let you know you are on the right path.

In the end though, this diet really isn’t just about diet. I think you can gather that from my experiences.

I am very happy. And this is fantastic. I look forward to progressing further

So the Wai diet didn’t quite work out for me in the end. Having the little treats seemed to push me off the diet in the end – my cravings got out of control. Yes, the diet did give me a lot of energy and it has definitely pathed my way into the raw food lifestyle, but I felt like something was missing in it. I don’t know what it was and I found it hard to pinpoint (not to mention I started to find having the avocado salad everyday very boring. The variety in the Wai diet to me seemed hard to come by).

Anyway, I did a lot of research in raw food. There are so many ‘gurus’ that in my opinion came across fake. Promoting cacao and super foods, yet in my mind I was looking for simplicity – something natural – and super foods didn’t come under my category of what I thought was natural. And with the promotion of chocolate under these so-called raw foods ‘gurus’ I really didn’t see myself following their advice. I have had a chocolate addiction – eating in high quantities and knowing it could not at all be good for me if it was an addiction – even in the raw form. Of course at first I was happy to think that I could potentially eat chocolate on this diet, but when looking into it I decided that my instincts were right.

With all these ‘gurus’ about that I didn’t trust I finally came across the 80/10/10 diet by Dr Doug Graham. It immediately made sense – no supplements or super foods, just a diet rich in fruits and greens. The simplicity of the diet also was attractive to me. I just needed to eat a lot of fruit and some greens. No preparation needed, apart from waiting until the fruit was ripe maybe! So for the past two months I have been transitioning. I decided not to dive head first into this one but take it step by step. I eat mainly 811rv but in the evening after fruit and a big pile of spinach/celery or whatever, I will have a small cooked meal. I intend to, starting this week add a day in every 2 weeks or maybe every month which is completely raw and 811rv. Despite still having a small cooked meal my body has been cleansing – I have had a week of a strong cough that is clearing out my lungs it seems! I have a lot of phlegm, and it is affecting my asthma currently. I felt very tired and ill last week too, but I know it was my body cleansing itself. I do feel my skin has become more vibrant (I have always been told I look yellow or sickly in some respects especially when I am tired) but I know I have a long way to go.

Also despite having the cooked meal, my cravings for cooked food or chocolate are zero. I have had a few incidents where I have wanted to have cooked food for the numbing effect it has on my emotion, but the actual craving for the food has gone. I have been quite emotional the past few weeks too, but I guess the cooked food had suppressed this in me for so long. I have come to realise the Wai diet had too much fat in it, so maybe this is why I did not experience these sorts of things on that diet. My cravings having gone means I can go shopping without buying anything that is rubbish for my body.

I have also noted that for the first time in my life I am eating consistently without effort. Food ha become a function to me, which is a positive thing. I don’t want to be emotionally attached to my food. I like to just eat because I am hungry. I eat a lot in a day, and I eat everyday this way. It is quite easy. I am working on stretching out my stomach so I can eat in two sittings as opposed to four. Despite eating more than ever, I have become skinnier – probably because I have cut out a lot of fat that may have been in the diet before, although I struggled to eat consistently and a lot anyway.

This was me in June on the left and me now:

And this is me in April on the left and me now:

I was around 120lbs (5ft7) in the first pics and I now weight 105lbs.

Some people have commented that I look ill and too thin, but I don’t think I look ill – my boyfriend even thinks my face is glowing, and if it was not he would then be worried about my weight. I do think that my weight has gone down a lot because I have been training for a marathon (but after last weeks cleansing and the knee injury I had in the beginning I think I am going to ease off my body and just do a half marathon until I have gone through more cleansing) and because of cleansing. I think I may put some on once my body has finished its job!

I feel good. I feel stable. I feel like I am going in the right direction. The tension I suffer from in my shoulders has also eased off (I know that I do need to work on posture to help this further and maybe see a physio too). I know I have a long way to go, but I honestly believe I am on the right path now. I could have never got to this point without the support of my boyfriend either – he is fab for putting up with me through my emotional upsets. Generally though I feel a lot more at rest. I look forward to posting in a few more months time and to see my progress then.

For anyone considering raw food I suggest you get yourself a copy of the 80/10/10 Diet at http://www.foodnsport.com. It is worth the time to read – it will give you a new perspective on the raw food diet and well hopefully I can show you the results every few months ?