The Lemonade Diet
Some excerpts from my journal to catch this blog up on my progress with this diet, which is really a powerful detox regimen:
Day 1: Okay, spicy, ultra-sweet lemonade. Rather odd flavour combination going on here. The spicy doesn’t bother me; one of my favourite drinks in summer is the juice from my homemade salsa, which, as it has jalapenos and onions in it, is very spicy-hot. But the combination of lemon and maple is … well … bizarre.
I “squoze” enough lemons to make nine 10 oz. drinks. I’m going to drink one an hour from 8 to 7, with water in between. And the funky tea at 8. I’m going to try to go to bed earlier: at 8:30, when the kids do. If I can get to sleep that early, I’ll get my full eight hours before I have to wake up at 4 and drink the salt water.
Day 2: Okay, get this…. I halved the amount of maple syrup, slightly increased the cayenne, and used two parts lemon juice and one part lime juice …. this I can drink for ten days. It’s not so horribly sweet. And, if I read the book right, I may lose more weight because of the reduction in sugar intake. Which can’t be bad.
Today has been fabulous. I wish I had thought yesterday to use my glucose monitor. I felt awful yesterday evening, and I’m sure it’s because my blood sugar was too high.
Day 3: I decided today to give up food for Lent. I’ll break the fast early if I have to, but this is my goal. If I make it and break the fast on Easter Sunday, I will have done 37 days of the lemonade diet.
I realise that I’m only on day three here, but honestly, it’s so freeing to not be thinking about food all the time. I can spend more time on some projects that really need to be done around here, and maybe truly get my life back in order. It hasn’t been in order since 1996. The marriage, the many moves, X’s job losses, the pregnancies, the illness, the surgery, the deaths of five family members in six years, the divorce, my two job losses, the depression, the overweight, the debt …. for almost ten years I’ve been putting important things on hold to take care of urgent things that demanded my attention. I think it’s time to take time to kill the urgent, deal with the important, and address the less-than-crucial things that have been neglected all these years. I’ll need willpower to actually finish the projects that need to be done, rather than doing what I want. But I think I’ve found something in me that I didn’t know was there.
Day 4: Today, I’ve had a headache. It was very faint in the morning — faint enough to almost ignore, but this afternoon it has been increasing in intensity. It’s now really bad — like knives in my brain. 
I’ve only an hour left at work and then I’m going home, taking a hot, hot, HOT bath, and going to bed. The kids can watch a movie.
Day 5: Well, all I can say is, I am glad that headache waited until day 4. Any earlier, and I’d have thrown in the towel, taken twelve aspirin, and said to heck with this. By 6 p.m. it was a full-blown migraine. I was in and out of hot, hot baths and in and out of my bed from 5:30 to 8:30, when I turned out the lights for the night.
The kids, Heaven bless them, were so good. They watched a movie and played quietly in their rooms … my youngest even remembered to close my door and his when he wanted to play his drums. And they ate their supper quickly, took their baths, and got ready for bed without much hassle.
My tongue feels like a piece of Velcro (the non-sticky side) this morning, and I have a metallic taste in my mouth which is very unpleasant. The headache is still there, but it’s less ache and more an odd sort of pressure, with the occasional shooting pain, or a funny sensation like my entire head is “asleep” (pins and needles). And I keep smelling these weird, “impossible” smells. Like burning motor oil. There’s no burning motor oil in my office!
It’ll be gone by evening if I stay quiet and go slowly today. Of course, I won’t get much done at the office, but there are several of us here who suffer from frequent migraines, so there will at least be sympathy.