Day 9: I think I've come down with something

I think that the stomach thing from the other day may have been viral. I feel a bit better than I did yesterday afternoon, but my throat is still sore. I am going to keep a focus on fruits, vegetables and lots of water today and see if that does anything.


Also, I am re-reading Fast Food Nation before I start the companion book to Food, Inc. The Food, Inc movie is coming to a city not far from me in July and I'd love to see it. When I was at the bookstore yesterday I also bought Vegan With a Vengeance and Diet for a Dead Planet. I can't wait to get into those too. There's nothing better than some good, old-fashioned muck-raking journalism!

Also on my eventual reading list are: In Defense of Food, Stolen Harvest, the Hijacking of Our Food Supply, and Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatments inside the US Meat Industry.

My reading wish-list includes several more books by Shiva Vandana and Peter Singer's writings on ethics. There's also a book on raising vegan kids that I'd like to get my hands on: That's Why We Don't eat Animals.

I've started up my subscription to Vegetarian Times and Yoga Journal. I used to get both of them a few years ago, but dropped them. I think it's time to start them up again. I'm breaking out one of my yoga tapes too.


Breakfast:

1 banana
1 cup of coffee with soy milk and stevia

Morning Snack:

Green Smoothie:

• 1 banana
• 2 rings of pineapple
• 1 oz baby spinach
• 1/4 cup of pineapple juice
• 1 cup water
• 1 scoop of Michael's Super Defense Food

Lunch:

2 flatbreads with crunchy peanut butter and sunflower seeds

Snack:

1 fresh apricot

Dinner:

1 garlic portobello veggie burger
1 tomato, 1/3 English cucumber
sprouts
gucamaole
1 glass of water

Notes:

• I really have to get back to drinking more water.

Day 8: 3 lbs lost in week 1

3 lbs gone in a week, not bad. It's not as fast as when I was on the South Beach Diet a few years ago, but this works for me too. I'm betting that it's healthier.

I was thinking some more about why I got sick yesterday, and remembered that I found an old baggie of nutritional yeast and tasted a bit to see if it was still good. I honestly couldn't tell if it had gone bad - can nutritional yeast even go bad?- but it was the only thing I'd done differently, if my stomach problem was a food poisoning issue. I remember hearing a doctor say once that the vast majority of sudden-onset stomach problems are because of some sort of food poisoning. This was nothing close to the times I had serious food poisoning when I was overseas, but it made for an unpleasant half hour last night.

Breakfast:

1 flat bread with peanut butter
1 glass of water
1 cup coffee with soy milk and stevia

Morning Snack:

Green Smoothie
2 bananas
3 rings of pineapple
2 oz baby spinach leaves
1/2 cup pineapple juice
3/4 cup water
2 T flaxseed meal

Lunch:

popcorn and water <--I went to the movies again, this time by myself :)

Afternoon Snack:

1 flatbread with guacamole, sprouts and sunflower seeds
2 glasses of water

Dinner:

2 flatbreads with peanut butter
3 glasses of water

Notes:

• I noticed when I came out of the movie theater that my throat was sore. At first I thogt it might just be from the air conditioning. A few hours later at home I realized that the glands in the roof of my mouth and my throat were all swollen hard. I began wondering if maybe the stomach upset from the previous day wasn't a viral thing that was now making its way through my system. I went to bed early.