May 13, 2012

Whatever your heart desires, we wish it for you today.

Happy Mother’s Day!

~BigSis

May 4, 2012

Do you remember Mexican Wedding Cookies? When we were kids we also used to call them Snowballs or Almond Crescents. They were essentially the same recipe: flour, butter, powdered sugar and chopped pecans. We rolled them into small balls or crescent shapes, baked them, and then rolled them around in more powdered sugar.

I’ve always loved these cookies. They’re tender, crumbly, gently nutty, and powdery sugary, but just barely sweet and perfectly bite-size!

When I was thinking about baking something sweet for Cinco de Mayo, I thought of Mexican Wedding Cookies. With a twist. How about a touch of chocolate? And cinnamon. And almonds. And vegan, of course. Done.

Chocolate Mexican Wedding Cookies (Vegan)

adapted from Williams-Sonoma

2 sticks Earth Balance, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar (divided usage)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1 3/4 cups less 1 tblsp all-purpose flour
2 tblsp cocoa (divided usage)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup ground blanched almonds

~BigSis

May 2, 2012

We talk all the time about our love of Mexican food, and we don’t need ANY excuse to indulge. This weekend is Cinco de Mayo though, and I’m inspired to get in the cocina and rattle some pots and pans instead of just heading to the nearest tacqueria and trying to find something without meat, lard or cheese.

One of my favorite everyday go-to quick meals is Super Speedy Mexican Stew. It’s essentially just canned tomatoes, corn, kidney beans and green beans with any spices that strike me. It’s not fancy and I can’t really even call it cooking; it’s just decent food on the table and in my tummy in literally 15 minutes on a weeknight.

My new go-to Mexican veggie stew when I have a touch more time is Terry Hope Romero’s Quick Red Chile Posole from Viva Vegan!: 200 Authentic and Fabulous Recipes for Latin Food Lovers.  This is the first recipe I’ve tried from Terry’s book, but it won’t be the last.

It takes my simple little dish and turbo-charges it with flavor. It has a tomato base and includes a can of pinto beans and a can of white hominy. I just learned that the hominy is what makes it “posole”.

There’s magic though in the combination of onion, garlic, poblano pepper, chile powder, mexican oregano, cumin and lime. I followed the recipe precisely, and was really amazed at how tasty this little stew was after just 25 minutes of simmering.  It’s warm, spicy, creamy, chunky and bright…all at the same time.

Traditionally, you would top the posole with a variety of garnishes: onion, cabbage, tomato, radishes, cilantro, or tortilla chips. I initially thought I would add a pinch of Daiya pepperjack shreds, a dollop of vegan sour cream and some avocado.

After just one bite of the posole I decided that it needed nothing…except to be devoured. Quickly. So I could refill my bowl, and repeat.

I’ll definitely add this dish to my rotation and hope you’ll give it a try for Cinco de Mayo or any old time!

~BigSis

March 25, 2012

I’m not an early adopter so it’s not surprising that I didn’t jump on the Hunger Games bandwagon until 5 days prior to the movie’s release. Thankfully, it’s a quick read so I was finished with the book in under 6 hours and ready to see it come to life on the screen on Friday.

To be sure, people who read a book before the movie comes out are a huge critic of the film. But people who read the book, can’t put it down and LOVE it are the biggest critics of all. That would be me. And bunches of other people.

First, let’s talk about all of the things done right in the Hunger Games movie. There are a lot.

• The movie is extremely faithful to the book; some of the dialogue is verbatim and with very few exceptions, the plot follows the book precisely.

• I found it much easier to sympathize with and understand Haymitch in the film. You get a pretty clear sense that he became an alcoholic and sarcastically nasty because he’s lost every pair of Tributes he’s ever worked with. He’s built up a wall of liquor and surliness to protect himself from getting too attached to these kids. I liked that we got to see his behind the scenes efforts to get sponsors and help for Katniss and Peeta.

• The creativity behind the presentation of the Gamemakers’ control room was incredible. It was a futuristic, sci-fi-NASA hotbed of brilliantly twisted manipulators. It was a little hard to imagine how the Gamemakers worked their evil madness in the book, but it really came to life on the screen.

• The movie kept my attention, and the 2-1/2 hours flew by. The pace was fast, the action was relentless, and the tension was high for much of the film, as it should have been.

• The performances and casting choices were all on target: Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, Effie, President Snow, Seneca and Caesar were all perfect. Rue couldn’t have been more precious and precocious. But I would have liked even more Cinna!

• The makeup and special effects were well done, the cinematography was beautiful, and the depiction of the Capitol was fascinating. We saw how horrendous life was in the Districts, and how ridiculously extravagant life was in the Capitol.

• The costumes were perfection. The District attire was muted depressed grays and blues, while Capitol garb was over the top in the craziest way imaginable. Effie’s matching makeup, nails and clothing were very creepy Alice-In-Wonderland-ish. And the flaming costumes Peeta and Katniss wore into the Games were stunning.

I do have some criticisms though, and once again, as a book-lover I’m uber-sensitive to things that a non-book-reader would probably not even notice.

• I think they would notice the camera gimmicks though. I found the shaky camera work to be very distracting and it actually made my eyes hurt. I can see that the gimmicks make sense in some scenes, showing the frenzy of the moment, as in the Tracker Jacker attack. But for me they were generally annoying, and detracted from my theater experience overall.

• My biggest complaint is that the edge was taken off the story; I suppose to maintain the PG-13 rating and to allow kids to see the film since it started out as a teen book. In my opinion, anyone younger than 13 or 14 shouldn’t read the book anyway, much less see the movie because of the violent subject matter. An R rating would have been easy to achieve, but I think the raw quality of the story could have been maintained without heading into R territory.

We didn’t get a sense of how truly brutal the Games were, how beaten up the Tributes were, how intense the final cornucopia arena scene was, how tender the cave scenes were, or how heartbreaking the final train scene was. I think the key themes of the book were a little glossed over, and that the director was afraid to “go there”. We didn’t see the main characters starving, freezing cold, burning hot, panic-stricken and near death.

For example, when Katniss suffered a serious knife wound to the head, it barely bled. In the real world, a head cut will bleed profusely, and hers didn’t even dribble into her eyebrow. I once had a cut over my eyebrow, and even my shoes were ruined from the amount of blood that I lost. I think this kind of missed detail just detracted from the realism of the story.

And call me gruesome, but I really wanted to see the haunted human eyes of the Muttations, and a little more detail in the Tracker Jackers.

• The characters weren’t developed deeply enough for me, other than Haymitch. I don’t think we saw just how good Peeta was or how tough and distrustful Katniss was, or how much disdain she had for the angle of the star-crossed lovers. I know we don’t have the benefit of knowing Katniss’ thoughts as we did in first-person print, but I think we could have been shown more of who they were without that and without adding a lot of scenes to the already lengthy running time.

• One personal little nitpick: I imagined that music would be featured as a beautiful, magical and stark contrast to a ruthlessly brutal environment. In the book, music was a continuing theme: with Katniss’ father, with Prim and Katniss, and in Rue’s love of music and how the Mockingjays played into that. I think that highlighting that theme more prominently would have been stunning. Perhaps it will be in one of the future movies?

• And one last minor note, Gale seemed way too clean and fancy among the dirty downtrodden swarm of District folks. Where’d he get that nice haircut?

Overall, I would give the film a score of a “B+”. If the camera hadn’t been so irritating, and if the highs were a bit higher and the lows a touch lower, I would definitely give it an “A”.

In spite of my criticisms, I actually did love the movie, and would see it again. I’m looking forward to reading the next two books and seeing the other movies when they come out. To anyone older than 12, I highly recommend reading these books!

* All photos are the property of LionsGate Films.

~BigSis

March 18, 2012

Have you heard about Visual.ly? According to their web site, I’m a geeky, grinning, skateboard-riding foodie!

I’ll accept that! At least, all of it except for the skateboard-riding. We all know that I’d break a hip, at my advanced age.

I also have a slight question about bacon and bullfighting. Where in the world did those topics come from?  I haven’t tasted bacon in 18+ years and never talk about it.  And bullfighting? Let’s not even go there!

Oh, and while I’m wondering about Visual.ly’s ways, I have to ponder the mention of “adam”. Could the “adam” actually be the Adam Richman, who ripped me on Twitter and asked me to stop watching his show? Thanks for reminding me of that debacle, Visual.ly! I had almost forgotten it. Almost.

What Visual.ly does with this little graphic is look at your twitter account (your info isn’t made public or anything weird like that), and make a funny assessment of who you are. It’s based on your tweets, your followers and who you follow. And from my experience, they toss in a bit of their own randomness, just to keep it lively!

To twitterize yourself, just go to visual.ly/labs/twitter and have fun!

~BigSis

February 24, 2012

MAC eye shadows are like frisky little bunnies in my makeup drawer…they multiply! I knew that space in my drawer was getting pretty tight, but I was surprised to count over 50 wee shadow bunnies hiding in there.

I don’t mind having that many, in fact I kind of love having a bunch to be honest. It’s a fun little indulgence that isn’t that expensive, and it’s just good clean fun to add a new shadow to my collection.

The problem is it’s pretty impossible to remember what colors are hiding in the stack. And at 6 AM it takes more time than I have to dig around in the pile looking for that gray I think I have. The time had clearly come to depot my MAC eye shadow collection. To the Google we go for instruction! To the Google!

I found lots and lots of tutorials – both video and text – on depotting eye shadows of all brands, especially MAC. Some folks like to bake the pots in a low oven, some prefer waving a candle or butane lighter underneath the pot, and others use a clothing iron to toast the bottom of the pot. The method I chose was using a hair flat iron because it seemed the simplest and safest.

Before you get started, please heed my very serious warning…BE CAREFUL with this project! You’re using two super dangerous weapons: a sharp knife and a hot iron. I’m a self-confessed klutz, and I just barely managed to avoid burning off a finger or all my hair.

However, I did stab myself lightly a few times and came close to really hurting myself until I figured out how to manage this process more gracefully. It reminds me of using one of those treacherous oyster knives to open an oyster shell, but you aren’t wearing those big thick protective gloves to depot shadows. So please be careful!

All you need for the flat iron method is:

• a flat iron
• a small piece of parchment paper to protect the iron from melty plastic
• a sharp thin knife
• a soft towel to use as a work surface
• 3/4″ labels
• 3/4″ thin magnets
• reading glasses to see what you’re doing if you’re 40-plus like me

The first step is to get the plastic insert that holds the MAC pan out of the plastic case. This is the part where I was the biggest threat to my own life. What you want to do is wedge the tip of the knife in-between the plastic insert and the case, and pop the insert out. It’s easiest to do that near the back hinge where the lid connects to the bottom part of the case.

Once the insert is out, place it face up on the parchment on the flat iron. I had my iron heated to around 370 degrees.

Once you get your rhythm going, you can do two at a time.

These guys are waiting their turn on the iron. That Barbie line was so awesome!

Carefully lift the insert off the iron after 20 seconds or so, and check to see if the bottom of the insert is starting to soften. You’re looking for a little dent in the middle of the insert.

Once you see that, you can poke at the hole with the tip of the knife and try to gently pop out the eye shadow pan onto the towel. If the plastic is still too hard to do that, place it back onto the iron for a few more seconds. Keep checking it until the pan releases.

The pan is going to be really warm now, so again be careful. I snap the melty insert back into the case, and then put it aside. If you left it on the iron until it got warped, you might have a little trouble getting it snapped back into the case.

While the pan is still upside down, I like to place a self-adhesive 3/4″ magnet onto it. The warm glue on the back of the pan will also help it adhere.

Some people clean the back of the pan with q-tips and alcohol or makeup remover before adding a magnet, but I didn’t think it was necessary. If there’s a lot of glue and it seems like a big task to remove it all, you can rub a little baby powder over the cooled glue with your finger to neutralize the stickiness.

Some of the tutorials I read suggested removing the original MAC label from the bottom of the case and attaching it to the pan. I tried that but didn’t love the result.

The only thin magnets I found were 3/4″ and the original label is more like 1″ so there was a little awkward overhang. I also am not a huge fan of the black label because it’s a bit hard to read, and if you’ve had the shadow for a while the label might be faded or worn, making it even harder to read.

What I used was a 3/4″ adhesive label from Avery. I had red so that’s what I used. I think white would get grubby really quickly anyway.

You could hand-print the labels, but I like to laser-print them. They look really nice, but I also love that I have the label stored in my computer so if I ever want to replace a dirty label I print a clean one off in a jiffy. The Word document is also a nice little database of my shadows.  Yes, I am a little OCD, thanks for asking.

I just peeled the laser-printed label off the sheet and attached it to the magnet on the pan.

That’s it.  Rinse and repeat a few dozen times til all the kids are depotted!

Once you have all the pans depotted and labeled, you need a palette to put them in. I bought 3 MAC palettes that were supposed to hold 15 shadows, but I pried the insert out and made room for 10 more shadows. I was a little impatient though, and just used a butter knife on my nice new palettes, and ended up scratching them a little. Oops! You’ll be more careful than I was!

I since found out about another option called the Z Palette, which I might try next. The appeal of the Z Palette for me is that the lid is clear so you can easily see the colors inside. The downside is that some reviewers mentioned that the construction of the palette could be more sturdy.

After a little bit of time, my space-consuming collection was transformed into this neat compact stack that makes me very happy:

 This palette has all warm colors.

This one has all cool colors. 

This one has grays, duplicate backups of favorite limited edition colors, and some random brights with room to add more.

I had these guys leftover after the project:

It might look like a pile of junk on its way to the recycling bin, but no! This pile is headed to the Back to Mac program. For every 6 empties you turn into a MAC counter or online, you get a free lipstick. If you return them to a MAC store though, you can choose an eye shadow or a lipstick. These empties will allow me to bring home 9 more new shadows for free! Wheee!!

Now I’m on a roll with a mission to depot all of my shadows. Next project: depot the few LaFemme and Stila shadows I have, and liberate all the other random pans whose packaging is taking up way too much room!

~BigSis

February 19, 2012

I’d never even tasted kale until a couple of years ago, and when I finally did try it, I was convinced that avoiding it all those years had been a wise plan.

My first experience was a raw kale salad from a local natural food store’s prepared food bar. It was bitter with very little flavor otherwise, but the worst part was the texture…kind of like shredded up brillo pad. It was nearly impossible to chew, and I certainly didn’t want to swallow it.

I decided I didn’t like kale. No worries; there are plenty of other nutritious things for a vegan girl to eat, right?

Fast forward to the first time I ever tried kale chips. What? They’re delicious? How can that be? I don’t like kale. Aha, that’s where I was wrong.

Turns out I love kale, in fact, I can’t get enough of it, and I seldom eat it in baked chip form. Right now I’m going through two bunches a week…red kale, curly kale, lacinato kale. Got kale? I’ll eat it.

Since I finished the Clean Program 21-Day Cleanse about a month ago, I’ve stuck with the program pretty closely. Ok, ok, I did have that one major fall off the wagon with the vegan queso and blue corn chips episode a couple of weeks ago. But other than that…I’m eating pretty clean. It’s what my body demands now. And I’m happy to comply.

I have two or three go-to kale recipes in regular rotation, and after today I have a new one to add. This Sunday Supper recipe for Hearty Dal Soup is from Forks Over Knives: The Plant-Based Way to Health, and was contributed by Mary McDougall of the McDougall program fame.

Please do yourself a favor and go to their web site and check out the McDougall recipes. I just found the Hearty Dal Soup recipe there, and can’t believe I’ve never known about this treasure trove of wonderful sounding and easy recipes before.

Besides being easy, this recipe is endlessly customizable to what you have on hand. Since I have this little love affair with kale going on right now, I used a whole bunch of curly kale in place of the 2 cups of chard (I needed a little extra water because of that). I was out of cumin, so I substituted a bit of Penzeys Southwest Seasoning which contains some cumin.

I – of course – used 4 or 5 cloves of garlic instead of 2, and added kidney beans since all of my garbanzos made their way into hummus last week. I left out the potatoes altogether since my body screams out “CANDY!” in glee when it sees a potato coming my way, and you know that’s going to mean excess poundage on my derriere. I was out of onion, so I added chopped chives at the end.

See what I mean? Use what you have. One last note. The instructions say to cook for 50 minutes or until the lentils are soft. When I checked on mine about halfway through, they were already falling apart. That actually turned out to be a good thing though, since most of the lentils turned into a wonderful creamy sauce for the kale, tomatoes and kidney beans to swim around in.

I highly recommend this recipe, for Sunday Supper or any time. The flavor was out of this world! I sprinkled on some Frank’s Red Hot and a bit of Daiya PepperJack, and it was perfection. Just what I needed to wrap up a nice weekend and prepare for another week. And I have lunch for a few days too!

Have a wonderful week everyone!

~BigSis

January 29, 2012

My 21-day Clean Program cleanse is complete, and I’m happy to report that it went great!  I lost 6.5 pounds, and over 3 inches from my waist, hips and thighs. I continued to do cardio 5 or 6 days a week, but this wasn’t the time to ramp up the exercise so the weight loss wasn’t due to more workouts. Weight loss was not the main goal, although it’s nice to be rid of that post-holiday puffy bloaty feeling that most of us end up with in January.

The main goal was to detox; to get rid of all the nasty free radicals roaming around, along with the mucus (sorry, gross) that is formed by the body to try to isolate the toxins. I feel great, as Dr. Junger promised. My achy knees are happier, I’m sleeping much better, I have better energy and mental clarity, and I feel calmer. I can’t explain it all, but it’s all documented in Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body’s Natural Ability to Heal Itself, and everything that Dr. Junger said would happen, did happen.

The only problem is, I want to stay on this program forever! I love it. One of the things I love most about it is the Raw Green Soup I had for dinner almost every night, and am now totally addicted to. I’m still making it a couple of times a week even though the cleanse has been officially over for a week. SisMama said she would upchuck if she had to eat this, but I promise it’s delicious. It does take a slightly adventurous palate to try it for the first time, but after the first taste I think you’ll agree. It’s yummy and addictive.

I based my soup on a recipe from Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life by Brendan Brazier, but I tweaked the flavors quite a bit since I like a little zippety-do-dah in my food. It’s essentially spinach blended with water, avocado, lemon, protein powder and some seasonings. I know, I know, I know! It’s sounds like it would be horrible. I can’t explain it, just trust me. Here’s my version.

Raw Green Soup

1/2 large avocado (or 1 whole small one)
2 cups baby spinach, very tightly packed
3 cups water
2 tblsp hemp protein powder
1 tblsp hemp oil
2 tblsp raw unsalted pumpkin seeds
1 raw garlic clove
1/8 to 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (or to taste; I use a lot)
2 tblsp fresh chives
Frank’s Red Hot Sauce to taste
Dash sea salt
Dash black pepper

Pile all ingredients into a blender and whirl around until it looks creamy and you don’t see any dark green spinach bits spinning by.

This recipe makes 2 servings. Store leftovers in a glass jar in the fridge and use the next day if possible. It doesn’t darken, but the avocado will start to take on that old guacamole taste.

Note: I use my KitchenAid blender to make this and it works like a champ.You don’t need an expensive Vitamix to pull this off. A good blender or food processor should be fine.

~BigSis

January 22, 2012

I’ve been noodling around a tiny brainstorm for the last 2 days, so this is how a chunk of my Sunday was spent.  A weird little mess, you say?  Maybe.  I’d rather call it the evolution of an idea. 🙂

I’ll give you the scoop on what I’m up to bit later, but here’s a hint…a very beautiful, dangerous and mesmerizing hint.

~BigSis

January 8, 2012

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope your year has gotten off to a fabulous start! Did you resolve to do anything differently this year? I don’t call myself a resolution maker, but I do like to take a quick look back to see what worked the previous year, and what I’d like to do better. For example, I didn’t lose as much weight as I’d have liked to last year, so this year I’m really going to try. There are so many elements to weight loss that I’m yet to overcome, such as food cravings. Although, a friend did suggest that certain supplements suppress food cravings, and many of them have regular deals on (such as nucific deals). So that’s one of the first steps I’m going to take this year. Maybe that’s the definition of making resolutions, and I’m just kidding myself that I don’t go there?

Anyway, the main bugaboo in my life for the last few weeks has been devouring things I don’t usually eat, in addition to getting less rest, and succumbing to a lot of holiday stress. You know what that all adds up to…time to detox!

I personally love a good cleanse, and have done several over the years. The detox of choice this year is the Clean Program. It’s a 21-day nutritional cleanse based on the best-selling book Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body’s Natural Ability to Heal Itself by Dr. Alejandro Junger.

You might have heard Gwyneth Paltrow talk about this book, like I did. I’ve had the book for a while but just pulled it out on New Years Eve as I was deciding on which cleanse route to take. I know; I’m quite the party animal, right?

I’m not gonna lie; the Clean Program is not for the faint of heart. I’m wrapping up my first week, and it’s going surprisingly well, but you have to get your mojo on before you start. I absolutely believe that this program is at least 50% mental, if not more!

Here is my amateur paraphrasing of the rules:

• Eat none of this bad stuff: dairy, eggs, soy, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, gluten, evening nightshade family (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers), strawberries, oranges, grapefruit, bananas, grapes, peanuts, pistachios, macadamia nuts, pork, beef, veal, processed oils, etc, etc, etc. The list is long and a little daunting!

• Have liquid meals for breakfast and dinner: soup (preferably raw to maintain the healthy enzymes), fresh juices (from allowed fruits and veggies), or smoothies.

• Enjoy one solid meal each day at lunch. That’s right; I said ONE.

• There must be a twelve-hour fast between dinner and breakfast.

• Additional goodies: eat a raw garlic clove each day, take two tablespoons of olive oil before bed, brush your skin each day (exfoliation helps the toxins exit), drink a TON of water, and exercise moderately every day if you can (walking’s great). The benefits that olive oil can provide the body cannot be overstated – check out these gundry md olive oil reviews to see the ways that taking it can help maintain a healthy heart. You also have to make sure you do a #2 every day (make SURE you do, even if you need some “help” with it. You know what I mean.). If the released toxins linger in your system, you could re-absorb them, and you definitely don’t want to do that!

• If you haven’t purchased the official Clean kit ($425), you’ll need to purchase some supplements to help your body with the detox. I already had a lot of this stuff so I didn’t buy it. I’m using ground flaxseed, rice and pea protein powders, Maca, Chlorella, a powerful probiotic, Milk Thistle, PGX and Oil of Oregano. I know many people like to detox using a liposomal vitamin which also supports their immune system – this may work for you too.

What’s the POINT of all that and what CAN you actually eat? Good questions!

The point is to take as much stress as you can off your body, including the work of processing a bunch of stuff that gets in the way of effective digestion and elimination. You want your body to spend that energy getting rid of the toxic garbage that causes a host of problems like fatigue, joint pain, constipation, and food cravings.

The supplements help your body to release the toxins and get them out of your system as efficiently and completely as possible. Did you know that a water or juice fast can help release toxins, but the nasty little buggers are best whisked out of your system when they can bind to (take a ride on) protein? I didn’t.

Another bit of news to me is that the olive oil helps your liver release bile, which is really helpful since your poor stressed liver is going to be working overtime to process all these toxins that are hopefully taking the fast track out of your bod.

So what can you actually EAT, you ask, for cryin’ out loud?

• Gluten-free grains (sometimes called pseudo grains), like amaranth, teff, millet, quinoa and brown rice
• Fruits with exceptions noted above
• Vegetables with the exception of corn and nightshade family
• Dairy substitutes like almond milk
• Vegetable proteins: split peas, lentils, beans, spirulina, blue-green algae
• Water, water, water!

As I said, the Clean Program isn’t a walk in the park. It’s serious about doing some seriously important work for your health. You’re eating pretty darn CLEAN for three weeks, and you have to be extremely motivated for better health, otherwise you’re going to be resentful and feel deprived. I was hoping to get a jump-start on losing some holiday poundage that crept up on my backside. More than that though, I wanted to get away from the sugar and salt cravings I’d given in to during the holidays, as well as getting back to only one cup of coffee a day rather than two or three. A little extra energy would be nice too.

To be fair, eating this way isn’t as hard for me as it might be for some folks since I’ve been vegetarian for over seventeen years and vegan for two years. I already do a morning smoothie and make fresh juices, and I try to eat intentionally. But even so, I still have LOTS of room for improvement. I eat too much processed stuff, too much soy, too much faux meat, too many crackers, too much caffeine, and during the holidays/bake sale time I consume too much sugar. And I can always improve on the amount of fresh veggies and fruits in my diet. Plus I’m exposed to toxins like everyone else from pesticides, exhaust fumes, smog, chemicals, stress; you name it. This has had an adverse effect on my skin, making me look older than I am! A few of my friends have suggested supplements like bhmd dermal repair complex, which could help me rebuild the collagen in my body and make me look the age that I am!

So how’s the cleanse going, you ask? The first three days I had a pretty bad headache, but surprisingly I haven’t been hungry at all, even at night when I tend to snack on crackers and nuts and whatever else I can get my tired hands on after work and a workout. I’ve definitely experienced some detox symptoms like tiredness, a mouth sore, and an inflamed/coated tongue and roof of mouth.

Some signs are good though! I’m starting to feel clearer and strangely calm. My scale needs a new battery so I can’t quantify it, but I absolutely feel like I’ve lost some weight; probably a lot of bloaty water and maybe a pound of fat. I hope, I hope! I don’t have any cravings, even though I haven’t had a cracker or a single piece of bread in a week. Cool, huh? I feel very in control of what I eat right now, and not at the mercy of every bon bon or chip I walk by. That’s a huge improvement!

I still have fifteen more days to go, and I’m excited to see how it shakes out! So far, I’m feeling pretty good about it and feel like I can go the distance. I’ll report back on the events of the next two weeks!

Note from BigSis added on 1-10-12: At the end of week one, I lost 4 pounds! Yippee! Hopefully more to come…

~BigSis