De-toxing and Re-toxing......

Last week I had to work from home as the back problems have worsened recently. It's Sciatica so apparently there's fuck all I can do except fill myself up with painkillers, try and rest it and wait for the physio appointment.

Which is still 5 weeks away. Great.

So, last week GMD, MiddleSis and LittleSis decided to try a week on a detox diet. I was also duly invited as I had indicated a desire to shed around a stone and a half (21 pounds to those from across the water, or around 3.3kg for those metric heads from Europe). Not only that I also felt it might be good to purge myself of the crap ingested over the Christmas period. In a moment of apparent madness I agreed to the trial. So, the only living flesh allowed on the diet is "oily fish" such as Salmon or Tuna. Hmm, thinks I, that sounds OK. However I wasn't prepared for the fact that during the week, this gorging on the flesh of one of our water dwelling resources would only be allowed once.

"What, only once" says I

"Yup...look don't do it if you don't want to" says GMD in her best "your a quitter" tone.

"Fuck it, I'm working from home - how hard can this be?" I say in my best "I'll show you" manner

"Right, then you also have to realise, no squash, beer, wine, diet coke, chocolate, sweets, milk, cereal, bread (unless it wheat free), pasta, unless its wheat free, rice and cheese" comes the "I'm trying to intimidate you" reply from GMD

"No problem" comes the totally unconvincing reply from me.

And so, for 5 whole days, I ate delights such as Tomato and Courgette soup, sunblushed tomato, garlic and chilli pate, stuff aubergines, oat cakes (because they are so much like cakes!) and chickpea salad. I was allowed wheat free bread with the soup. Have you ever tried it? You could tile your bathroom with it its so tough! As a treat, I was allowed to have the odd handful of Pumpkin seeds. You can drink herbal tea, water or fruit juice, and only decaffeinated coffee (which in my view is as useful as alcohol free beer, chocolate teapots, one legged men in arse kicking competitions and left handed screwdrivers). This meant an almost constant level of being hungry...or so I thought. After a couple of days I started to stop feeling tired in the afternoon, slept better at night, and actually found my pumpkin seeds to be ....well..... acceptable. After 3 days, my arse was like a fucking sluice gate as presumably my body had started to flush itself of the poisons. It's just as well I was at home because from this point a trip to the loo (sorry frequent trips) was like a mercy dash, and any old people or children would have been brushed aside as I hobbled, in pain, but almost as fast as Kelly Holmes, to get to the loo. Had I been at work,, its debatable as to whether I would still be employed considering the likely embarassing mess that would have occurred. I'm 43 and have no wish to .....ahem...soil myself publicly. Come Friday and the gods honest truth was I felt fantastic, aside from the Sciatica but that's hardly going to be affected by diet. So much so that I decided to weigh myself because I genuinely though I looked slimmer. I'd lost around 9 pounds! So, at 5'6" I now weigh 13 stone and 4Ilbs I'm fairly stocky because I used to weight train and apparently my ideal weight is between 12 stone 4lbs and 12 stone 8Ibs. So I'm not that far off where I should be.

On Friday we had friends down from London and so we knew we were going to abandon the diet. GMD cooked up one of her lovely Lasagne's, and myself and Big M went to the pub. Within 15 minutes of eating the Lasagne, I was overwhelmed with tiredness, you know the "can hardly keep my eyes open" sort. Plus, despite the fact that it was a chilly night I spent the night in the pub sweating like someone on the verge of a coronary. It was like I was 20 stone and wearing the thickest coat possible. Each pint was a struggle....no....a battle even. When I got in it took another hour for this dreadful malaise to disappear....... eventually allowing me to sup Guiness copiously until 4 in the morning. When I got back from the pub GMD, was in a state as well. Absolutely as red as a beetroot and also struggling. Of course the battle to drink and enjoy ourselves was won in the end, but apparently LittleSis also felt as rough as fuck when returning to normal. She had also lost quite bit during the week and was feeling great until "re-toxing". I was up at 9, after 5 hours alcohol fuelled sleep to play golf. And I felt fucking great. No hangover, no tiredness, no nausea. I assume the diet and the detoxing had lifted the whole metabolism and so my cynicism and scepticism was dismantled. The Detox diet had pissed on my fireworks big time. GMD was right.

So I guess the warning is that re-toxing is far more painful than de-toxing. Which leads to the conclusion that if you don't detox, then you don't have to re-tox.

So why have I decided to go back on it this week, and to do it for another two weeks?

Because I'm 43, getting vainer and I want to at least get back to my fighting weight. Because I must also be a masochist at heart. Because I am that shallow ( a charge I've always pleaded guilty to) about my appearance as the years add up. Because age is catching up on me and things are starting to underperform. Because I want to feel young again.

Is this the start of my "mid-life" crisis? Will I be thinking of cosmetic surgery next to tighten everything up? Oh my God, even mentioning that means I must be!

Pass me another celery stick.

Later, GreenGrocerJack.