10-day juice fast: Day 2

Definitely feeling better today. Only the slightest hint of headache, so I suspect the coffee withdrawl will be done by tomorrow. Weight this morning: 151.0 pounds ...down .6 lb. Too soon to say if that's water weight, fat, or just crapping out weight. We'll see what the weight & body fat percent is at the end of the 10 days.

Toughest thing so far is just keeping enough fruits and veggies on hand - and enough variety - to keep a guess of a balanced intake of nutrients. In no particular order, between yesterday and today I've consumed juice of: carrot, celery, beet, ginger, orange, apple, fennel, parsley, cilantro, pear, radish, spinach, cucumber, zucchini, lemon, lime, tomato ...probably leaving something out of that list, but I'm definitely getting variety!

I was too tired yesterday to workout and ended up taking a nap for about an hour instead. This evening I did a mild workout: a little over a mile on the treadmill, followed by some kettlebell swings and pullups. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be up to full or near full energy.

Three main thoughts at this point:

1. I'm getting my nutrients from a much broader spectrum of plants than I normally do


2. All this juice and water means a lot of peeing (aside from drinking 2-3 quarts of juice each day, I'm downing at least 1/2 gallon of water to keep things flushing)


3. I'm already looking forward to that first cup of coffee after the fast :)

Cheers!

10-day juice fast: Day 1

Today I've started a 10-day juice fast. That means that for 10 days I plan to drink as much as I want of the juices of fruits and vegetables, but I won't eat any solid food. It also means that I will abstain from coffee and alcohol.

Goal: General detox and just to see what happens.

So. This morning I weighed in at 151.6 pounds (I'm a runt of a guy - 5' 4", so while I'm not obese, I could stand to dump about 10 pounds of fat). There's a fair bit of calories in fruit, so hopefully I won't gain weight! I've been vegan (diet of plant-based food only) for a couple of years, so I don't expect that this will be too difficult.

I'd been thinking about some type of cleansing diet for a while, and after we recently watched a DVD of Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead by Joe Cross, I bought a Breville JE98XL juicer, a bunch of fruit and veggies, and got started.

The film mentions the Reboot Your Life website, so I popped there. There's some info there and one can sign up for a daily email while doing one of the programs (I did, but only so I could see more of the site). There's no fee. But all I really cared about was recipes for some of the combinations that Joe Cross or others had tried. I'm really liking the suggestion from several of the recipes to add a piece of ginger root to the mix.

So how's it going now that it's evening on the 1st day?

1. hunger's not been a problem. If hungry, just drink juice. Easy


2. no coffee has been a problem. I'm pretty much a 2-cup-a day guy, and by afternoon was getting a nasty headache. I wussed out when I got home and popped a couple of Advil. In order to still enjoy a dark, hot, brewed beverage, I'm drinking Kaffree Roma, which is definitely not coffee but is still good


3. I didn't work out today. I plan to tomorrow. I've been doing P90X almost daily for almost a year. During this fast I plan to just walk/run on the treadmill, and do pushups / pullups / kettlebell swings / jumpbox jumps. I'll see how the energy feels and adapt as needed

I'll be blogging each day, posting at least a brief blurb about how I'm feeling, current weight, favorite juice combos, etc. And now ...I think a cup of Kaffree Roma. Cheers :)

Repairing leaking toilet tank - not original plans for day

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, so most stores - especially plumbing supply/DIY stores - were closed. Fate has a sense of humor, so we found ourselves yesterday keeping a plastic container under one side of a toilet tank where water had decided to start dripping.

My mission today was simple: pick up a toilet tank seal kit (rubber gasket for between the tank and the toilet, and the bolts / washers / seals (2 bolts - one on either side) that fasten the tank to the toilet, and fix it. Easy right? Wrong.

Turns out the builder cut a few corners as some builders are wont to do. The water valve at the wall did not work to shut off the water. And it was a cheap piece of crap valve with the water hose that goes up to the toilet tank incorporated into the valve. I hate those types of plumbing components! OK ...I popped over to our nearby ACE Hardware, which is a small neighborly store, populated by guys who have been doing plumbing and electrical and everything in construction for forever and know frickin' everything. In short order I had the needed parts and some teflon plumbing paste and was back home. The easy part was done.

Turned off the water at the street, cut the plastic water pipe that had the old valve (fortunately there was over an inch of extra pipe sticking out of the wall, so that made it easy), and put the new valve in place. Hey, even with the house water turned back on, this higher quality new valve worked. Go figure.

OK, the real PITA was that one of the holes in the tank was not quite large enough for the bolt. On one side, the bolt popped through the hole nice and easy, I slapped some teflon paste above and below the fiber washer, and snugged things up just fine. But I swear it took an hour on the PITA side to twist the bolt back and forth and coerce it through the hole (a smarter man would probably have reamed out the hole a little, but I was afraid I'd crack the porcelain or do other damage).

Finally, the blasted 2nd bolt was in place, I smothered the fiber washer with teflon goo and slapped some between the metal washer and the porcelain on the underside (there were some small chips of porcelain gone - I suspect from the original installation - so I wanted the extra insurance of the teflon paste), and the assembly was tightened down.

More teflon paste on the inside of the large center gasket, flip the tank over, carefully snug up the wingnuts on either side of the tank bolts, attach the new water line, adjust the float, and about 3 hours after starting, the job that should have taken 30 minutes was done. The good news is that it all works and there are no leaks ...for a total outlay of a few dollars.

These three very short videos (1, 2, 3) by an experienced plumber were a great help.

Pics of the PITA stage ...and back to a working crapper :) ...

   

Election system change we need: Ranked Choice. In use in Oakland

Oakland, California is one of the few (maybe only) large US cities to use Ranked Choice voting, and it just helped an underfunded - but perhaps better consensus candidate - win the mayoral election (story). My wife and I have been fans of this voting system (we usually refer to it as Instant Runoff Voting) for years.

The idea is that each voter indicates their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices for each office. If there is no clear majority winner, then the 3rd place (and below) candidates are dropped, and ballots that had listed the dropped candidates as the 1st choice are now examined to see who was listed as 2nd choice. This system led to Jean Quan being elected mayor of Oakland California, even though she was outspent (by a large margin) and had fewer "1st choice" votes than the expected winner, Don Perata.

I like this. A lot. We have seen more and more races with candidates trying (sometimes successfully) to buy their office (e.g., Michael Bloomberg, Rick Scott, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina). It's fine for folks to spend their money on any legal pursuit they choose, but it's not fine when election laws allow ads with flat-out lies, and unfettered spending by corporations to support the candidates that might be most amenable to the desires of big business - at the expense of what I believe is often the greater good.

Here's to the spread of Instant Runoff / Ranked Choice voting!

Vegan weekend in Jacksonville...

Last weekend Shirley and I popped up to Jacksonville to take in the VegFest,see some friends who were working up there for a while, catch a pre-release screening of Forks Over Knives (opening in March 2011), and spend a little time spacing out looking at the ocean.

We've been vegan for about a year and a half, so were eager to check out the VegFest on Saturday. It was apparently about half the size of Tampa's VegFest, but considering it was the first year for the event, it was still rather nice (Shirley had gone to the Tampa event, but I'd been working that Saturday). There were several booths serving free samples of vegan food (all gone when we showed up), booths selling vegan snacks and meals, various demonstrations of vegan cooking, info about animal rescue, vegan cosmetics (not made from animals, nor tested on animals), and various other displays. I got to meet Robert Cheeke (vegan bodybuilder, author, and all-round nice guy), which was quite nice.

Saturday evening, we attended a screening of Forks Over Knives. This is an extremely well-done film documenting some of the work of Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who met only after each had arrived at the same conclusion after decades of research (Campbell) and clinical work (Esselstyn): that a plant-based diet is the only logical choice for optimal health.

The other thing we did (aside from enjoying being by the ocean) was to work on the website for Shirley's new business VerteJust. The site is quite basic at the moment, but it is to a state that will allow chiropractors to purchase the anterior adjustment aid that Shirley has started making. I was not surprised to note that it is much more pleasant working on the computer when the sound and scent of the ocean is just out the open door, and I can look at the waves from time to time for the tranquil feeling that only the ocean can bring.

And finally, on way back home on Sunday, we stopped in Orlando to enjoy a fantastic vegan brunch at Ethos (completely vegan restaurant with amazing ambiance to go with the delicious vegan food).