The Final Challenge

I was at breaking point, ready to throw in the towel and give up on everything when I decided to take on one final challenge. In my mind it was try this and/or accept that nothing else would work at making me feel better and I may as well go back to eating all that food that makes me terrible.

I gave myself 12 weeks – because I know things don’t happen overnight. 12 weeks to at least have the trend of feeling better be more than the trend of feeling crap. But this was going to take fairly drastic measures. So here they are.

The De-tox
What I really wanted was to take all of my digestive organs and either replace them or wash them so thoroughly to get rid of all the toxins building up in my system from the last 12 months. So it seemed logical to me to do a de-tox. I started a 15 day de-tox by Quick Cleanse.

The main components of this de-tox are: take their pills as scheduled, no processed foods and sugars, no alcohol and no animal products. Lots of raw fruits and vegetables, and lots of water.

The Personal Trainer
My last post mentioned that I had started to feel the squeeze in a big way, and that was compounded by the fact that I had lost the motivation and energy to exercise. Not that I did anything athletic before, but I certainly did a lot more yoga, pilates and walking. So obviously going from low to no level of activity wasn’t helping. Now anyone who knows me knows that I hate the gym, a lot, a real big lot. But something had to be done and clearly I wasn’t doing very well on my own. So I decided to join a gym and get a personal trainer for the 12 weeks.

I was very specific about the type of personal trainer I wanted and their qualifications. I needed someone who would be able to take all my dietary constraints and symptoms, and get me to a point where my physical state was starting to improve. I explained some of my symptoms and was clear that I wasn’t expecting to lose the 7 kilos I had gained in 12 weeks, but I was expecting a downward trend. I was even ok with the fact that the scales may not change at all, as long as my body composition had something to show for it – that I fit my old clothes again. My theory was that if I had less body fat to bloat, then bloating wouldn’t be so bad, right?

The Nazi
While my diet is already quite restrictive, my eating patterns are not. In fact I am quite lazy. When I find something I like, then I will just eat the same time over and over and over again. But part of my condition is that I have to rotate food to avoid a build up for particular chemicals in my system.

So not only am I looking at what I can and can’t eat, I’m also looking at when or how often I can eat it. This also means being more prudent at meal planning. So instead of cooking one big bucket of something and eating it all week, I now have to plan each meal of each day for the week.


So there you have it – the final challenge to myself. I am currently 10 weeks into the 12 weeks, and it is working for me. It’s not perfect obviously, but I can say with certainty that I do feel better, I am starting to fit my clothes again, and I have had much less craziness. The trend on the feeling better is definitely on the up.