DAY 35: COHERENCE
April 13, 2022 ~ Wednesday
“There is my business, your business, and God’s business.”
Refeeding Update: Day 2 of 14. Juice Day 2.
Phase 1: Juice – 3 days, 4-12 ounce glasses. These alternate between green, orange, and red. I am to swish it in my mouth and drink it slowly throughout the day. If too strong in flavor, I can cut it with water but I am to drink all of the juice.
I woke up today feeling terrible. A bad night’s sleep, tossing and turning. I asked for broth to be added to my 4 glasses of juice which Dr. Streutker was most willing to order. By the end of the day I felt much better. The phases of the refeed are designed to grow the gut biome back to where is can fully function. This takes time and energy to do. The juice wakes the gut up. I have had intestinal grumblings and gas for two days. And had another bowel movement. This was most likely left over matter from before the fast as the gut shut down and stopped moving things. Well, now it is moving again! As the gut biome grows back into place I will gain 5 pounds from that alone. These are the bacteria in the gut and yes they weight about 5 pounds. I was very tired today and so stayed in my suite in the common room or my private room except for a few minutes outside in the courtyard and one other appointment which I will describe below. It was a nice day even though it was on the cool side. Very few people went to sit in it and the Vermonter.
Daily refeeding numbers: Weight-177.9 Weight loss since adopting diet-57.1 BP-110/77 Heart rate-76 Oxygen level-98 Temperature-97.8 Glucose-93 Sleep-4.3 One minute pulse rate-steady73. Muscle pain level-0 (scale 1-10) Energy level-5 (scale 1-10).
Appointment #1: I was to have a facial this morning at 9 am. I felt so bad and did not feel safe walking to the building next door for the facial. I asked if she could come to my room to just consult about my skin which she did. When she got here she took one look at me and said the facial/massage would do me good. She would walk with me and walk back with me. That was enough for me to feel safe enough to walk and do this. It was a lovely restful massage of my face, neck, and shoulder. I asked her about my skin. Would it shrink? And she said I would not believe how much my skin will change if I stick to the diet. It will be amazing. I will give that a go! Then she said, yo-yo dieting damages the skin. You lose the weight gain and lose it again. The skin loses its ability to tighten up. I have not yo-yo’d. I just kept growing slowly over time. Because I will not be repeating this process again and I will not lose the gains I have worked hard to get. And maybe my skin will bounce back. Dr. Streutker says WOW when he sees me. There have been such a change. Danielle and Elisabeth (and Riah) with whom I FaceTime with say they can see a difference. I think I will have to feel better to notice.
Appointment#2: A couple of weeks ago, I had sat in on the lecture for Biofeedback- EM Wave by Dr. Schur. It is a meditation type tool that balances the sympathetic nervous system with the parasympathetic nervous system. When they are in “coherence” or working together there can be tremendous health benefits. Now some will say this is a theory or model of what may happen in the body. I only know what I experienced and felt.
So, I set up an appointment where Dr. Schur comes to your room. Good I did not have to walk anywhere. When I was young with young children, I used to sit at the breakfast table with all of us eating our cereal. I would frequently “zone out” as I put it. Stare off into the field. It was a comfortable feeling. The kids did not like it. As they would always bring me back to reality. Well, as it turns out I was bringing these two parts of the autonomic nervous system into sync or coherence. Dr. Schur has a computer program that can actually show me what happens when I breath at different rates. And wouldn’t you know it the proof was there on the screen that not only do I do this easily but I can also feel the two systems go into coherence. I can change my heart rate. It is a comfortable place. A warm place. Dr. Schur says it is not often a person can do this on the first try but there is was. Yes, we can just say “Retta can meditate” but it was more than meditation which I have also done many times. Now that I have seen how this works on a computer screen, I will work up to 20 minutes twice a day. It is a great way to handle stress the rest of the day. I know how it feels and what I am looking for and will know when I get there. Very out of the ordinary. There are studies that say if you do this you can lower your all cause mortality rate. I won’t live forever but I would like to see my grandkids grow up!
And so ends my second day of juicing.
