Raw Milk Fast, Days 5 & 6

Day 5

This morning, I took my kids to Dunkin Donuts - which is right around the corner from me - so they could get a donut and a little egg and cheese wrap. I had promised this to them earlier in the week. To my wonderful surprise, I had no compulsion to eat a donut, or even smell a donut.

Later, I watched my nephew for about five hours and mostly he was a sweet, wonderful angel. But there was about an hour where he was crying for his parents, inconsolable. During that hour, I thought more about food than I had almost all week. Had I not been on this diet, I would have just gotten some food (probably chips or other starchy carbs)and not thought twice about it. But not being able to eat focused my mind on why I wanted to eat so badly. I am a stress eater.

Today I started thinking a lot about what it will be like to start eating again. I'm used to carrying around a glass of milk. I'm used to not eating anything solid. But today is my last milk-only day. Tomorrow is a day of slowly going back to regular foods. So I found myself contemplating throughout the day what that meant for me physically, mentally, and even spiritually. It may seem silly that being on a milk-only diet for 5 days can be significant in so many ways. But for someone like me who is food-addicted, and especially sugar-addicted, it really has been a huge thing.


Overall, the day went by smoothly. Although I did make my family Belgium waffles for dinner, which filled the house with a heavenly smell that was hard to resist.

My plan for tomorrow is to have a small cup of decaf. coffee in the morning, milk throughout the day, then break my solid-food fast with dinner at Chipotle. Originally I was really wanting to have pizza, but my sister Kate reminded me that coming off a detox, I shouldn't go straight into such junky food as pizza. Chipotle was next on my list and is pretty simple food. I have mixed feelings about tomorrow, but excitement wins!


Day 6 - Coming off

I woke up this morning and thought about milk. Yesterday I was sure that I would wake up thinking about coffee or the food I was going to eat for dinner. My daughter suggested we have a kefir smoothie, which sounded like a great idea! So I made smoothies with home-made kefir, banana, peaches, and fresh mango. I decided to eat some of the mango and oh.my.goodness. it was sweet! Likewise, even with the tang of the kefir, the smoothie was almost overwhelming. This heightened awareness of sweetness is normal when a person has not eaten anything sweet for awhile.

A couple hours later, I brewed my cup of coffee. I put 1 tsp of sugar in (I normally put 2) and some milk. It burned my throat and I only ended up drinking about half. I had two cups of milk for lunch and felt good until around 4:30 when I started to get really hungry, even though I had had the same number of calories by this point in the day as I have any other day this week.

It was 6pm before we set out to Chipotle. In the meantime I had attempted to eat an organic blue corn chip. Umm... no. I couldn't even swallow it, I kept gagging. then I got concerned that I wouldn't be able to eat tonight after all. Perhaps it was the hardness of the chip? So I had the rest of the mango from this morning. No problems. My dinner consisted of cilantro-lime rice, black beans, chicken, salsa, cheese and guacamole, all of which I didn't have problems actually swallowing. But after about half of what they gave me, I started to feel full. Weird sensation to have food sitting in my belly again. I'm not sure I like it.

I'm sitting here drinking a cup of black tea and contemplating all the positives of my experience. But I'm tired so I'll be writing about that later. Thanks to all of you who cheered me on the last 6 days. These things are so much easier to do when people support me.