day 22

i’m still quite happily waking up before my alarm and i’ve found that my energy levels in the evenings are also much higher. despite this, and the fact that my skin is clear, i’ve lost a few kilos in weight and my body feels like it’s running as it should, i’m struggling.

i’m missing having a relaxing glass of wine in the evening. i’m also obsessing about food i can’t eat – beef stew with dumplings… crab linguine… beautiful fresh bread with butter and marmite… chorizo and salamis… chocolate cake smothered with rich icing… the list goes on!

instead, today i have my usual smoothie for breakfast (today was banana, apple and frozen berries), cashew nuts to nibble on, pumpernickel with wigmore cheese (a brie-like, nutty ewe’s milk cheese) for lunch and leftover tapas plus a chicory, blue cheese and walnut salad.  

day 26

today is the last day of my detox – i normally do a full 4 weeks but tomorrow we’re at a wedding and the thought of toasting steve and laura (congratulations you two!) with a glass of water just isn’t acceptable.

my final detox lunch has been roasted tomato soup. supper is a seafood curry with brown rice.

so, what next... i’ve just taken some sillfield farm dry cured smoked back bacon out of the freezer for sandwiches tomorrow, before we start our journey to wales!

day 21

we have friends staying and i spend most of the day in the kitchen cooking various tapas dishes from the moro cookbooks. inevitably there were some dishes that i couldn’t eat but most of it was detox friendly.

Click to read more ...

day 15

i woke up before my alarm today, with lots of energy. payback, at last for all the hard work i’ve been putting in! i’m also feeling better - healthier somehow, it’s hard to explain, but other people are noticing too and commenting that i “look well”. there is also the very nice bonus that some clothes that were a little on the small side are no longer tight.

tonight we had friends round for supper and we indulged with an oven-baked mushroom risotto which was a real disappointment (for me, everyone else seemed happy enough). the rice was overcooked (this was exaggerated when we reheated some the next day, creating a stodgy mushroom mush) and the flavours just weren’t as good as a properly-made risotto. pudding on the other hand was great, a flourless lemon and raspberry roll.

day 20

it’s going to be a busy day today and although my inclination is to stay in bed flicking through cookery books while i drink my hot water with lemon, i drag myself out to show a friend around borough market. my purchases are limited to pumpernickel and various types of ewe’s milk cheese from neal’s yard dairy.

after some shopping in the west end, and weak with hunger, i drag david into busaba eathai, a favourite restaurant of mine which is very detox friendly.

day 6

the past few days have been tough. although i’m sleeping really well i’ve been feeling sluggish and almost constantly had a headache. this isn’t surprising as my body is responding to the changes in what i eat. having felt sorry for myself all day, after supper (smoked mackerel with roasted vegetables and brown rice) i allowed myself a treat. green & black’s dark chocolate is vegan so, although it contains a small amount of caffeine, i allowed myself a few squares. the perfect bedtime pick-me-up and not too naughty.

day 8

i’m still getting occasional headaches but generally am feeling good. my energy levels are definitely higher, although i’m not quite bouncing out of bed yet (which is perhaps not surprising given my alarm goes off around 6am).

lunch today was a fabulous brown rice salad. the rice was made more interesting by the fact that all the water boiled away (oops!) so i was left with a crispy crust on the bottom of the pan. this tasted great which is actually not surprising as this is an intended cooking method for persian rice:

chelow : rice is carefully prepared through soaking and parboiling, at which point the water is drained and the rice is steamed. this method results in an exceptionally fluffy rice with the grains separated, and not sticky, and also results in a golden rice crust at the bottom of the pot called tah-digh (literally "bottom of the pot"), which is exceptionally popular with iranian children. )

i added chopped red pepper, spring onions, feta, mint and parsley and dressed it with lemon juice and olive oil.

supper was mackerel fishcakes with a green bean, beetroot and rocket salad. tonight i had my first real craving for a glass of wine.

day 2

another day kicked off with hot water and lemon, followed by a smoothie (banana, apple and mango today) before heading into work.

i had a meeting all morning and, as i hadn’t bought in anything to nibble on (biscuits were provided for everyone else) it was regularly interrupted by my loudly growling stomach. first lesson learnt: carry around a small of bag of dried fruit and nuts or seeds (i particularly like pumpkin and sunflower) to snack on. lunch was leftovers from last night which was nice although the fennel salad didn’t last well.

for most the afternoon i’ve had the shadow of a headache. i hadn’t realised that my two cups of tea a day over the past week (while we were in scotland, i don’t normally drink tea, other than at the weekends) would trigger this level of withdrawal. supper was vegetarian shepherd’s pie.

day 3

i slept like a log last night and work up feeling refreshed. my headache was gone too.

when i got to work i realised that i’d left my lunch sitting in the fridge at home (roasted vegetables with brown rice) so had to try and find something suitable in the shops near my office. luckily prêt a manger came to my rescue with its tuna nicoise salad.

i now have a bag of mixed dried fruit and nuts by my desk for nibbling on throughout the day. this kept hunger pangs away as the afternoon progressed but i need to be careful not to eat too many of them, given the nuts are high in fat and the dried fruit high in sugar.

i’m meeting friends for supper tonight and have booked a table at bam-bou, a lovely vietnamese restaurant (asian restaurants are definitely the most detox friendly places to go) with a wonderfully seductive upstairs bar which serves fantastic cocktails. not that i got to sample them on this visit – tonic water with lime please! a mixture of vegetarian, fish and seafood starters between us provided me with plenty of choice and an easy way to stay on track, although i think the salt content of the meal was probably a bit high.