The Bitch Stopped Feeling Fat and Tired - Part Three

The third day of my cleanse went quite well. I had the whole day off so I was able to spend more time preparing my food than I had the two days prior. I said to hell with the eggs and had the apple, the prescribed midmorning snack, for breakfast. Considering I slept until 11, I felt that this was an appropriate choice. Now I am going to talk about cinnamon for a hot second. I had absolutely NO IDEA the havok it can wreak on your mouth. The cleanse calls for a teaspoon of cinnamon on a sliced granny smith apple. Totally seems doable, right? It's not!! It's horrible! On the first day I did exactly that and I was scraping cinnamon off my apple slices with the ziplock bag it was in. I was plugging my nose just to get the slices down. I was sweating. My eyes were watering. It took me an hour to eat the apple. Needless to say, I put an end to such torture on the second day and only put in a half teaspoon of cinnamon with my apple. The other half I mixed in with a glass of lemon water. The apple experience was only slightly improved and the water only brought back flashbacks of Granny Smith and her masochism the day before. Third time's the charm. I realized that I didn't go to college fer nuthin and poured myself a shot of lemon juice mixed with a teaspoon of cinnamon. Down the hatch. No chaser. Problem solved. Now let's do green tea keg stands.

Lunch was delicious. I made salmon again but instead of having it over raw spinach I sauteed the spinach with the pecans in some peach balsamic from Gustare. a-m-a-zing. I am always fascinated by the shrinking power of spinach when you cook it and I think I probably ate about a pound of it. It smelled and looked so good that Dan wanted some. Jumping at the opportunity for him to be the earthy-crunchy-big-mac-refusing organivore that I have always dreamed of, I made him a plate too. Minus the pecans; I didn't have time for anaphylactic shock. He loved it! Amazing!

Having bought four artichokes before starting this whole cleanse hoopla, I really didn't want to waste them, despite my Artichoke Comprehension Disorder. So I looked at ten more youtube videos about how to prepare and eat a goddamn artichoke and I found something that appealed to me. Roast it! Maybe THEN the heart will appear and save me, antioxidants pumping through its ventricles. No such luck with the heart, but the 'choke itself was pretty delicious. I sacrificed some of my olive oil from dinner and drizzled it over the artichoke and topped it with some ground black pepper and a dash of cayenne before roasting it. The olive oil made my fingers messy and I almost thought that I was eating something with butter on it. Almost.

The roasting of the artichoke, along with the oven that was still on, inspired me to roast more. So I threw in some cupcakes. Just kidding. I threw in all the vegetables that my dinner salad calls for, tossed them with a touch more olive oil and black pepper, and charred 'em up nice and good. While they were cooking I George Foremaned (sorry mom, I know verbing weirds words) some chicken with lots of seasoning on it. When the veggies were done I chopped up the chicken and tossed it in. On the side I made a salad with romaine and tomatoes and pomegranate vinegar. It was a little different than I had prepared this dinner in the past three days, and it was SO delicious.

Annnnnd the best part of my day, the blueberries. They are JUST SO GOOD. Can't get enough of them.

I was so excited for my cardio today because I was planning to take a free Zumba class at Healthworks in Cambridge. The class was at 5:30. I left my house at 4:45. It's a 15 minute drive. I got there at 5:40. SO disappointing. So then I was too stubborn to leave Porter Square without having done a thing. I popped into Cambridge Naturals to look at all the delicious foods I couldn't eat. They are so nice in there and I really wanted to support them after bringing all my negative moping energy, so I bought some green tea and some face mask. I even signed up for their email list. I'm supposed to get a free tote bag for that one. The face mask is so nice! It's Burt's Bees Pore Refining Mask. It was really fun to do. It is just a powder and you mix it with water, green tea, tomato juice, or carrot juice, depending on your skin type. I just squeezed out one of my tea bags into the powder. I couldn't decide whether my skin was more mature or troubled. So you mix in your liquid of choice and then put it all over your freshly cleaned face. I put it on with a spoon. It was like painting. It was so much fun. It has some peppermint in it so it felt really cold on my face. I filled up a basin and soaked my feet in that luxurious soap my mom makes and sat there with the face mask on, trying to enjoy pampering. The mask was so interesting. I felt it drying while it was on my face and I completely expected that when I looked in the mirror my face would look like Benjamin Button. In his early days. It didn't. When I took it off I can't say I felt any explosions of cleanliness or pore refinedness, but it certainly was nice.

When I was done I realized that bumming around Porter Square still didn't count as cardio, no matter what my intentions had been. So I sat on the couch and watched a couple workout videos, well aware that that also did not count. I finally found one that wasn't too annoying, too intense, or called Cardioke. I did the whole 30 minute video and then I did situps for as long as it took Not Siobhan Magnus #1 to sing Come to My Window on American Idol and the judges to, well, judge it. As soon as Not Siobhan Magnus #2 piped up I decided to call it quits, and that 35 minutes or so was just enough exercise for me.

Oh, yeah, also. Coffee. Two cups today. Not even considering abstaining. At least I'm having it black. Unsweetened. With cinnamon, of course.

One more day!