The Nourisher - Editor’s Blog

Wow, this little experiment has attracted quite a bit of attention.
I suppose it is a little unorthodox in today’s terms. Who would think to do a fast on only milk. Especially the quality of milk most households can access. Carolyn has prompted me to continue so here’s the next installment.

Week 3 was just as intriguing as the first two. I couldn’t handle the boredom for much longer and joined Amanda at RebuildFromDepression.com in a cheat’s fast. All detoxification symptoms had died down and I was feeling on top of the world, just a little bored with smoothie, smoothie, smoothie. Thursday we cut back on the evening smoothie and replaced it with a high fat, high protein meal. I was feeling quite deprived so I reached for my favourites from childhood: Spaghetti Bolognaise and, still deprived of carbohydrate taste, peanut butter on bread. Then I wolfed down some chocolate. I suffered for it in the morning. I awoke with a kind of a hang over. I wasn’t so spritely getting out of bed and my mind took a while to clear. Seems Liver doesn’t like chocolate. I haven’t had any since. And Colon doesn’t like bread. Well I knew that already.

The biggest thing I’ve learned from this food restricting but by no means calorie restricting diet, is my emotional attachment to foods. My feelings of deprivation were by no means physical. After all I was getting everything I needed, except perhaps iron and a variety of tastes. Innuit and Mongolian pre industrial people seemed to do ok without much variety. Fish, fish and rotten fish with a little seal blubber probably tastes much the same every day. So too would sheep, camel and yak yoghurt and cheese every day. What is it that makes me crave different tastes? Any ideas, dear Nourishers why I would feel deprived and even a little stroppy when I don’t get a variety of taste sensations?

Adding a meal has changed my physical experience. Angels have stopped singing when I poo. Sad but true. My energy is still high but digesting doesn’t seem to be quite so enjoyable anymore. Waiting to go isn’t so pleasant as it was and passing seems a little too solid, too dry, too packed. Afterward there’s no so much a glow of satisfaction as before. So much for fibre in whole grains being good for digestion.

This Saturday I started getting a pimple, I hadn’t seen one for ages. It’s a painful ‘blind’ pimple right under my nose. The kind I got when I was detoxifying mercury last winter. Chinese medicine would call this heat in the Colon meridian (crosses from one corner of the mouth to the other side of the nose). Chocolate? Bread?

I’ve been able to motivate myself much more easily to exercise these last two weeks. Yoga has stepped up and we go for a walk in sun every lunch time. I’m recovering from exercise much faster than before, lactic acid disbursing quicker. Motivation is over all much higher than before the fast. Muscles seem to improve in power and size.

Breasts, breasts, glorious breasts. The answer to the million dollar question is yes, my breasts are still their new yummilicious selves. Firmer and of higher volume. Adding the meal at night hasn’t emptied them again. I’m losing weight on my belly again but breasts are staying full. Yay!

Tongues are pink (sign of adequate blood), more toned, less scalloped (sign of improved Qi), no moss, even in the morning. When I studied Chinese medicine I was told cow’s milk is cold and damp forming. So I was worried when in the first week Wes and I grew some of the most hideous tongue moss I’ve ever seen. I thought about our professors telling us to avoid milk if we had a damp condition. Wes was especially disturbed and wasn’t convinced that this milk thing was legitimate, let alone beneficial. As it turns out, the moss cleared in the second week and has not returned. It seems milk is cold and damp forming but the advantage of improved digestion helped clear the moss, which seems, in retrospect, more of a vehicle of cleansing the blood. I should say, however, that I suspect the change from only raw milk to only Kefirred milk had something to do with the reduction of the moss situation. Perhaps since Kefirred milk is predigested, it improved my bodies response to it and reduced the cooling, dampening affect of the raw milk. Pasteurised milk would be more damp forming than raw milk even though heat has been introduced because the raw milk has so many natural digestive aids such as enzymes and lacto-bacteria.

We intend to continue having raw keffirred milk smoothies until dinner time for the rest of Spring, perhaps even in Summer. Smoothies are very convenient and much more attractive than anything else in warmer weather. I like the idea of eating only one type of food and getting most of what you need.

There’s one problem. What to do with the chickens eggs. Since we’re not eating pasture fed bacon and home lain eggs for breakfast anymore they’re piling up. I found the answer this weekend. Custard takes up 3 egg yolks for every cup of cream and milk and to use the whites, Meringues are great for school lunches. Sally’s all raw cheesecake is a great use of eggs but you have to not drink all the milk before it becomes cheese.

Oh BTW Christy asked me to test pH of urine. It was 6.5 at the beginning of the cure and remains 6.5. A little acidic for the acid/alkaline standard but I’ll keep watching and see what happens. I wonder what a native Inuit’s or Mongolian’s urine pH would be? What’s in this acid/alkaline thing? Is it like Cholesterol, the indicator is getting called the bad guy? High Cholesterol does exist in heart disease patients but it doesn’t in some, and some who have high Cholesterol don’t diet of heart disease. Is it the same with acidity of the blood? Do patients with chronic disease happen to have acidic urine? Perhaps acidity is not the cause of illnesses but coincides. I am most certainly not ill. By all standards. And yet my pH remains lower than what is supposed to be ideal. Things that make you go hmmm.

Intro

Week 1

Week 2

About the Author...

Joanne Hay, Editor of Nourished Magazine, Chief Nourisher and Mother of three is very grateful to live in Byron Bay and be able to share all she has learned about Nourishment. She has trained as an Acupuncturist (unfinished), Kinesiologist (finished) and parent (never finished). She serves the Weston A Price Foundation as a chapter leader. She loves sauerkraut, kangaroo tail stew, home made ice cream, her husband Wes and her kids Isaiah, Brynn and Ronin (in no particular order…well maybe ice cream first).