Hot Date Night

October, with any luck, will be my Month To Get Healthy.

I realize that I won't magically become glowing and vibrant over the course of one small month, but I wouldn't mind using the next four weeks to start trying. I've been making small gains throughout the summer, and I'm ready to take it up a notch.

My first step was to buy Dr. Joshi's Holistic Detox, a book that I actually scoffed at when I first saw it. Any book that has a love note from Gwyneth Paltrow stapled to some asparagus on the cover deserves to be scoffed at, I figure. Yes, I was interested in doing a detox, but doing a detox-of-the-stars was the last thing I wanted. Hello disappointment!

Then I read it a bit. It turned out to be an alkaline detox, which is exactly the same thing I did at the end of high school when I found out I had mountains of food sensitivities. It turns out, as well as having intolerances, I had a highly acidic system. My doctor at the time told me if I didn't balance out my acidity, I would develop a nervous twitch. Nice.

At any rate, I purged my diet of anything acidic. Meat, certain fruit, sugar, wheat, cow's milk, black tea... All gone. I dropped a fuckload of weight, looked healthy, and you know the rest. So I'm flipping through this book at Singing Pebble, already knowing that the alkaline cleanse works, and I think to myself, "Self, you're going to have to buy the Gwyneth Paltrow book."

Now I have this book, and to be honest, it's kind of cool. I can follow an actual regimen instead of making it all up and becoming dangerously anemic in the process. My Better Half and my good friend Erin are going to do it with me, and we'll see how it goes. Luckily, there's no "fall off the wagon" risk in this cleanse. If you don't follow it exactly, it's no biggie, because you'll still do your body good. There's actually a line in the book somewhere that says "A piece of chocolate a day is better than..." and I stopped reading. A piece of chocolate a day if things go bad? Hello, best cleanse ever!

I knew right away that one one my biggest challenges would be black tea. I have a cup in the morning to get me started, and there have been times where I've had up to four cups a day. It's a comfort thing for me, and it's an easy way to warm me up when I'm too cold (always). So a month or so ago, I swapped my morning black tea with a slice of lemon, some honey, and boiling water. You know what? It's good. I'm starting to love it. And it still warms me up the way my black tea did. Nobody was more surprised than me.

The food part won't be seamless, but I already follow a lot of what the book recommends, just because that's what I like to eat. Fish, goat cheese and veggies. Check.

With the impending cleanse in my mind, I stopped by my new work gym today to have a fitness consultation. The woman took a whole half hour to show me around the gym, teach me how to use the machines, and write me a program to follow. Because my new work is a lot more laid back than my old work, I can actually stop into the gym on my break and have a little workout. I'll try to fit one in sometime this week. It's always intimidating to start at a new gym, but I'll give it a go. The fact that I bumped into a friend of mine on the elliptical machine, a friend who is covered in bright feminist tattoos, was encouraging.

And in unrelated news, I got a nice letter today from the Ontario Arts Council. Ages ago, I applied for the OCFF's Songs From The Heart competition. I already knew I wasn't chosen, and that was no surprise, since so many songwriters submit songs and only one is picked in the main category. Anyway, this letter said that although I wasn't chosen, I was one of the people considered. That's cool with me! I like that they send out a letter. For all I know, everyone who submitted got one... But it was still a nice gesture.

My BH and I are off to have a Hot Date Night, because I can't really remember the last time we did that. Yeah! I love Hot Dates! Bring it on!