Sunday, March 4, 2012

Day 7: Same Fruit, Different Day

Good evening everyone, and welcome to THE LAST AND FINAL DAY OF OUR DETOX - Day 7: Same Fruit, Different Day (Or, more appropriately, Smoothie Sunday). Today is a very bittersweet day for us (emphasis on the sweet) because we really did enjoy this detox for the most part. 


Today, for our final day, we were supposed to eat only fruits and veggies, and we could (finally) incorporate some fruit and vegetable juice as well. (Thanks to Amanda for pointing out that it was vegetable AND fruit juice!) 


For breakfast, Ande made a smoothie in his bedroom because Caitlin had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs. How considerate. 



The smoothie was frozen peaches, carrots, watermelon, and orange juice... Ande has interesting combinations when Caitlin isn't around to guide him. He says that it was really good though, so we'll just go with that. 

Lunch was pretty light for both of us.


Big ol' glass of orange/carrot juice and a banana. Surprisingly adequate until dinner time. Note: we aren't sure if we're supposed to have bananas or potatoes today, but it didn't say we couldn't, so we did. We ate them both! Lots and lots of both of them! Bahahaha!!

We soon realized that, as our last evening meal was approaching, we were a) out of vegetables and b) really wanting to eat some Toxic food at midnight. Off to Hornbacher's again!!


As you can see, we have some delicious dried apricots, bananas, green peppers, some Bolthouse fruit and vegetable juices, and carrots on top. And on bottom (we separated them by their naughtiness) we have coffee ice cream, potato chips, french bread pizzas, and supplies for Caitlin to make FRENCH TOAST BAKE! Look for our next post about everything we gorged ourselves on at midnight as we retoxify our bodies, because it will exist. And it will be awesome.

Anyway, for dinner we chopped up some vegetables (seems like we do that a lot) and decided to roast them again. Caitlin had a bit of leftover garlic from the cacciatore, so we used that for some nice flavor. 



 


Tasty meal! One of the tastiest we've had all week. We aren't really sure if that's because it's the LAST ONE or because it was just really good. Either way, we would probably eat that everyday. Potatoes, carrots, green peppers, and some zucchini. Mmmm. The green drink you see is a Bolthouse Green Goodness (like Naked's Green Machine). We know that maybe Bolthouse isn't the best drink in the world for you, but it's a good way to get in a lot of fruits and veggies without having to buy tons of ingredients. See: we're lazy.

We'd like to wrap up this week with a few stats and figures... superlatives if you will.

Total money spent for 7 days of meals: $115 (split in two is $57.50 a person for 7 days of food) Pretty damn good.

Total water drank: A lot, we have no idea. But it was a lot. We averaged 7 waterbottles a day.

We also didn't drink any coffee, tea, soda, fruit juice (except for today) or have any caffeine of any kind. Surviving a week without coffee is quite a feat for us, and it definitely saved us some money too. 

Total weight lost: Ande lost 5 pounds and Caitlin lost 12. We think this can mostly be attributed to the lack of grains, sugar, and for Caitlin how easy it was to feel full. We rarely had second helpings of anything, which is quite a change from the norm.

Favorite meals: Caitlin - Chicken cacciatore was just SO good. We aren't sure if the pictures really do it justice, but make that at home, people. Seriously. Get in the kitchen and do it. Also banana ice cream, and the chicken lettuce wraps. We had some tasty food this week.  Ande - His first banana smoothie after not being able to have bananas for the first three days. 

Least favorite meal: Caitlin - Didn't hate anything, but the veggie stir fry thing from Day 2 was kind of soggy and she was REALLY not in the mood for it. Ande - Salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. In case you didn't hear, Ande HATES oil and vinegar as a salad dressing. 

Highest point of the week: Caitlin - Banana ice cream, of course. Ande - When we found out we could have Wonder Soup and not have to eat fruit for dinner. 

Lowest point of the week: Caitlin - When all of her coworkers had chicken bacon ranch subs that were all toasty and cheesy and ranchy, and she had cold fruit. Ande - When there were donuts, cookies, and cupcakes at work and he couldn't eat ANY. Damn office birthdays.

Three words to describe this week: Caitlin - Difficult. Painful. Appreciative. Ande - Deprived. Hungry. Fun! 

Food we're most looking forward to: Caitlin - Sandwiches!! Ande - Chinese buffets!!  (Shocking, we know)

Food/drink we thought we'd miss but didn't: Caitlin - Pop of any kind. Ande - Coffee.

Food we like more now: Caitlin - Craves water more than ever before. Ande - Yellow peppers

Permanent change we might make: Caitlin - Going to seriously cut back on pop and sugary drinks all around. Maybe get rid of them all together. Ande - Going to start eating breakfast everyday.

Advice to the masses: Caitlin - It's super hard to go from eating whatever you want, to cutting out all grains, caffeine, meats, cheese, milk, chips, pizza, etc... So we just tried to look at every day individually instead of the big picture. Rather than thinking, "Wow it's a whole week until I can have a sandwich again," we just thought, "Okay so today we can have vegetables! What can we do with that?" My second piece of advice if you want to do this detox, or any detox/diet type thing, is to do it with a friend. Having Ande around to bounce ideas off of and commiserate with while at the same time having someone else to hold you accountable was really the thing that made me able to finish this detox with as little discomfort as possible. Just merely knowing that there is that someone else who is at work suffering over a bowl of raw veggies while your coworkers get free Applebee's for lunch just makes you feel better. Additionally, it helps if you're a decent cook, or at least willing to spend the hours in the kitchen making semi decent food. If you don't want to eat the Wonder Soup or just plan on eating raw vegetables whenever a vegetable day comes up, it's going to be a really long week for you. We tried to vary our meals enough so that we didn't get bored, and at the same time we wanted to make our meals into something to look forward to, rather than dread. Not every moment was torture. A lot of it was, but a lot of it was fun, and I would personally try this, or another detox, again. 
Ande: Live. Laugh. Love. All-you-can-eat chinese buffet.

If you managed to stumble across our blog in between your Facebooking, Tweeting, Pinteresting, or watching porn and it's your first time reading, or you've stuck with us all week and somehow found time to keep up with our shenanigans, we just want to thank everyone for reading, commenting, texting/sexting :), and even starting your own detoxes. We've been really surprised, impressed, and humbled by how many of you have been following us on our little adventure, and it's really made the experience so much better. Starting this blog was the best choice we made all week, and it was a definite motivator knowing we had you all to report to each day. 

We want to keep writing blogs in the future if you all want to read them. So if you have any ideas for future detoxes, work out programs, diets, whatever, we'd like to hear them! 

Tune in tomorrow (or midnight o'clock) for Day 8: Midnight Snack


Get in the conversation on Twitter! #detoxaholics and follow us @caitertot_ @andewayyoulike

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Day 6: Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road? To Get In Our Crockpot.

Good evening you stellar human beings, and welcome to the penultimate day of our detox: Day 6. (Penultimate means "second to last" in case you don't know, like Ande didn't) Sorry this blog post is a bit late - we just got back from the ballet, and it was glorious. We really missed the gentle pattering of pointe shoes against marley.

Today was a lot like yesterday, in that we were still supposed to eat beef or chicken and tomatoes, but we were also supposed to increase our vegetable intake. So that brings us to breakfast:


Lovely isn't it? If you need help, it's cucumbers, carrots, and cherry tomatoes with pepper. Pretty refreshing and light for the morning. 

Lunch was a repeat of last night's dinner since we had some extra.


We kind of made a little salad out of it with lettuce, the salsa, and some grilled chicken. Once again, quite delicious. 

For dinner, we got a little crazy. Caitlin had a big craving for chicken cacciatore (and we needed to get rid of some vegetables), so that's what she made. It simmered in the crockpot all day and was ready for us when we got home from work today. 





Caitlin's Chicken Cacciatore (as in we don't know if this is how normal people make it):

2 lbs chicken (thighs or breasts)
1 onion
1 red pepper
2 green pepper
2 zucchini
5 tomato
3 garlic cloves
1 jar spaghetti sauce of your choice (we like Newman's Tomato and Basil)
1 can tomato paste
Salt & Pepper
Basil
Oregano
Red pepper flakes

Put the onion and chicken in the bottom of the crock pot and put everything else on top and mix it around a little, season it up, and cook 'er on low for 10 hours or high for 4. Either way, deliciousness will ensue. Only thing that would have made it better would be pasta (and maybe some freshly grated parmesan cheese...and garlic cheese bread...mmmm. Dammit.)

Very filling dish and makes enough for leftovers the next day. We might add a little more chicken next time though.

Well, folks, tomorrow is the last day of our detox. (We're actually a little sad about it) Day 7 is back to fruits and vegetables, with the addition of vegetable juice. Bluck. We don't even have a juicer, so it is sure to be an interesting day! Tune in tomorrow for Day 7: Same Fruit Different Day and watch us attempt to tackle a juicing day!

Get in the conversation on Twitter! #detoxaholics and follow us @caitertot_ @andewayyoulike


Friday, March 2, 2012

Day 5: Beef! It's What's For Lunch! (Any Maybe Dinner)

Quote from Ande:
"When I get done with this detox I'm never eating another vegetable again."
Think maybe someone's missing the point!

Good Friday to you all, and welcome to Day 5. Today we had to start reintroducing protein (beef and chicken) and eat 6 tomatoes, and of course the Wonder Soup.

We started out the day with a nice plate of tomatoes with a little salt and pepper. Mmmmm....


We really weren't overly excited about this for breakfast, but we needed a way to get in all 6 tomatoes. 

For lunch, however, we had something pretty exciting. This is a meal that Caitlin used to eat with her Girl Scout troop back in the day...

HOBO DINNERS!!

A Hobo Dinner consists of ground beef, onion, and carrots in some tin foil with salt and pepper, cooked over a fire (or in our case an oven). 






Mmm don't those look good? Put that all shiz in some tin foil for an hour on 400 degrees and you've got yourself a tasty meal fit for a hobo. We both took half of this to work, and Ande demolished it but Caitlin did not. For some reason it REALLY did not agree with her; probably because she hasn't had meat in 5 days. But Ande hasn't either (unless he's cheating at work and eating huge hamburgers). So we really don't know why it made Caitlin feel sick, but that is just something to be cautious of for those of you out there who have decided to do this detox now too (and shockingly, there are some of you).

Dinner was quite the adventure. We knew we definitely wanted chicken (far prefer it to beef), but we didn't know what kind of dish to make with basically just tomatoes, chicken, and a few veggies. But THEN (lightning strikes, lights flicker, and all is quiet), Caitlin had the brilliant idea to make a salsa and have lettuce wraps with chicken. These are the fruits of our labors (pun intended, you know, since tomatoes are a fruit):


Sex.

Snark.

How Pinteresting...


Lettuce spoon!!!
Salsa:
8 tomatoes
2 red peppers
1 onion
cilantro
lime juice
salt & pepper
garlic

Salsa wasn't too fancy, but it was really delicious. A jalapeno would have been nice maybe, but overall a quite yummy homemade salsa. The way the lettuce just cupped the chicken and salsa was delicate yet hearty, and it was a very filling dish.

Speaking of "filling," we should share with you something we've discovered throughout this detox. Basically, Ande is a human garbage disposal. After about half the meal, Caitlin is wayyyy too full to even begin to think about eating any more. Like an uncomfortable amount of fullness... which is what is supposed to happen. We eat less food on this detox than we usually would, but the food we do eat is supposed to make you full very fast. Ande, on the other hand, has reported that he is never satisfied. He eats everything he is allowed too and then craves more. "With every bite I take I am constantly thinking 'bread, cookies, poptarts, sweet and sour chicken, pizza, hot dogs.'" So watch out for that if you decide to do this detox. Everyone is different, and even though we have eaten the exact same things for the last 5 days, we both have totally different appetites and cravings.


A lot of people have asked us if we are sick of bananas after the 8 we had to consume yesterday. To be perfectly honest, we wish we had more and we wish we were allowed to eat them. We could seriously go for some banana ice cream right now (going to be a permanent staple in our diets long after this is over). Ahhhh the limitations of this detox. 

Tune in tomorrow for Day 6: Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road? To Get In Our Crock Pot

Get in the conversation on Twitter! #detoxaholics and follow us @caitertot_ @andewayyoulike

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Day 4: Going Bananas for Bananas. And Also Milk.

Happy March, ladies and gentledudes. Today is Day 4, bananas and milk. 


We both had to work at 9 this morning, so we made banana smoothies for breakfast!



These smoothies are really simple. They're just 2 bananas and about a cup of milk, so we got both bananas and milk at the same time! Two birds stoned at once.

Today we had to eat 8 bananas and drink 3 cups of milk, plus we could eat Wonder Soup. The smoothies took care of 6 bananas each, and then we brought two bananas to work to eat as snacks today. It was a lot of bananas, so good thing we looooooooove bananas (getting sick of typing the word 'bananas'). Bananas. Wonder Soup for lunch and dinner along with a banana, and it was a pretty average day, food-wise. This detox is lucky that we are obsessed with bananas, or we would've been pretty pissed off today, and SOMEONE woulda heard about it (detox inventor perhaps?)

Caitlin here. Let's take a break for a moment to talk about Ande's state of mind. He's gone slightly... insane. Off the deep end. Bat shit crazy. Now, if you know Ande, you know he's a bit eccentric to begin with. I've known him for almost 10 years, and we've been best friends for almost that time, so I've really seen every side of his sanity (and insanity) and I have to say that he has been weirder today than I can ever remember him being. He has no control over his motor functions, keeps saying weird things, and keeps doing even weirder things. Today, he came home from work, barely said anything (super weird), and started cleaning the stovetop?


Look how hard he's getting into it. Didn't say anything. Just went to town on that burner. I think the bananas might be affecting him.

Later, I was talking about my fingernails (I do that a lot) and I said "I ripped my acrylics off today," and he replied with "I want some booze! To drink!" and then continued on doing what he was doing.

Let me give you a little insight into how these blogs usually work. Typically, Ande and myself sit down at the table and write them together, talking about our days and how we felt at different points. It's all very cute and feeling-y. Well you know what Ande is doing while I'm writing this blog?


He's organizing a cabinet that we literally haven't touched since we moved in (11 months ago). 

Can someone go crazy from bananas? Does anyone know?

Anywho, did you know that you can make banana ice cream with only one ingredient?! FROZEN BANANAS!!

Caitlin's beautiful '70s blender is courtesy of her mom. Thanks, mom!


You might not believe us, but it's true. When it's done, it has this awesome, creamy texture. Frozen bananas in the blender! A delicious and healthy treat! Dee dee dee deeeeee! The More You Know! When we aren't on this detox, we usually add a little chocolate syrup or peanut butter (or nuts!) for something extra crazy. 

So tomorrow we need to eat 6 tomatoes, and some beef and chicken. It will be our first taste of meat since Sunday, and we're a little more than excited. 


Tune in tomorrow for Day 5: Beef! It's What's For Lunch! (And Maybe Dinner!)


Get in the conversation on Twitter! #detoxaholics and follow us @caitertot_ @andewayyoulike

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Day 3: The Best of Both Worlds

Hello everyone and welcome to Day 3. Today is a very somber day for the Detoxaholics, as one of our comrades in healthy-living has passed on. He had barely begun this big journey we call "life," and unfortunately his story will never be able to be told.


His name was Eggplant, and he was a good friend of ours. 



Eggplant's life was ended too quickly, as we did not know that eggplants spoiled so fast, and we kind of forgot him in the back of the fridge. This is the last known image taken of Eggplant, but he will forever live on in our Profile Pictures. RIP sweet Eggplant, we barely knew ye. 

But Eggplant's death will not be in vain!! For we have learned! YOU have learned! Buying vegetables 3+ days ahead of time is not always the best idea, especially if you have delicate cargo like our friend, Eggplant. On that note, we realized we were getting pretty low on veggies and soup, so we went to the store today to get supplies for the next two days of the cleanse. 

Day 4 consists of Bananas and Milk to reintroduce calcium and potassium back into our diets. We are allowed to eat our first bananas of the detox (up to 8 bananas) and the first milk (it will be our first drink besides water in 4 days) up to 3 glasses. Additionally, we can have the Wonder Soup in unlimited quantities. 

Day 5 is protein and tomatoes. We purchased some chicken breasts and ground beef for our protein, and we are required to eat 6 tomatoes each that day, plus Wonder Soup. 

Off we went back to Hornbacher's!



We think it's interesting to note how quickly we went through everything we bought on Sunday. Our three days of food that cost us $70 did really last us three days. Today we spent another $30 at Hornbacher's for a total of $100 over 5 days ($10/day per person), which we think is a pretty good number. 

In our cart we have 16 bananas, milk, 8 tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, carrots, 5 onions, 1 lb. hamburger, 6 green peppers, 1 head cabbage, 2 cans corn, 2 boxes Lipton soup mix. 

Today was a snow day for us in Fargo! Caitlin still went to work, but Ande didn't, so we ate different things today. 

Caitlin's breakfast at the flower shop:

Grapes, pineapple, blueberries
Ande's lunch was a little dish he called "Fire Salad":

Tomatoes, red pepper, carrots
Caitlin's lunch was leftover stir fry. For dinner, we decided to roast the remainder of our veggies that we weren't using for the Wonder Soup. 




Our roasted veggies included 4 green peppers, 1 orange pepper, 1 red pepper, and all our leftover carrots and zucchini. We mixed them up in the bowl with a little salt, pepper, oregano, and thyme and some vegetable oil and roasted them at 400 degrees for about an hour. Pretty damn delicious.


For dessert we used up the last of our fruit, which happened to be watermelon (extremely out of season, but tasty none-the-less):



He's happy to see us!
Overall, this day was a good day food-wise because it was nice to be able to eat both fruits and veggies all day. We both agree, however, that this was BY FAR our lowest energy day. Caitlin even took a nap after work, which she pretty much never does. 

Ande's Feelings on Day 3:
  • Very low energy
  • Muscles feel weak
  • Not enough energy for going to the gym
  • Craved snack food and Chinese food (after he saw our Toxic roommate, Shaun, eating it)
  • Craves vodka
  • Craves wine
  • Craves gin
  • Craves tequila
  • But most especially a nice, cold beer (ughhh sounds so good right now)
  • Doesn't miss coffee as much as he thought he would, but misses everything else more than he thought he would
Caitlin's Feelings on Day 3:
  • Also very low energy day
  • Pretty pissed off all day, not sure if it was related to the detox, but it happened
  • Craved Chicken Bacon Ranch sub from Subway because her Toxic coworker had one, almost had a breakdown about it
  • Doesn't miss coffee, pop, or Gatorade (Fierce Grape!) as much as she thought she would. Okay, she kind of misses Gatorade, but only if she thinks about it a lot
  • Extra tired today. Took a nap -- a rare occurrence
This whole detox isn't exactly as hard as we thought it would be. It definitely has tough moments, but we thought that eating only fruits, vegetables, and drinking water all day for 3 days would be much more boring and bland, but we have actually enjoyed the variety of each day and look forward to each next day as kind of a treat. We are SUPER excited for bananas tomorrow (Caitlin's favorite fruit). 

It's a nice change to plan out meals and really think about what we're putting into our bodies. If that's all we take away from this detox, it will be pretty successful in our opinion. 

Tune in tomorrow for Day 4: Going Bananas For Bananas! And Also Milk.

Get in the conversation on Twitter! #detoxaholics and follow us @caitertot_ @andewayyoulike

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Day 2: Food Porn

Happy Tuesday, all! Here is the next installment of Caitlin and Ande's epic adventure in detoxing! Thank you for joining us.


Today, Day 2, was Vegetable Day! We were super excited for this day, and it was definitely better than the fruit day. 


We started out the day with a large baked potato to get some complex carbohydrates up in this bitch. 



We were allowed to put a little pad of butter and some pepper on top, so of course we did.
Ande's potato was slightly undercooked, but he ate it in the car anyway like the trooper he is (complete with a plate and fork from the kitchen...is that worse than texting and driving? we aren't sure). 

The potato was good. There's not much more to say about it. We're pretty sure that the potato was where we got our energy from, so that was much appreciated. Thank you, Potato!

For lunch, we made salads and veggie snacks. The salads had romaine hearts, spinach, carrots, english cucumbers, tomatoes, and yellow peppers. Yum!



You may be wondering why those UV shooters are there. Well you see, we needed very small containers of dressing for Ande to take to work with him, and we thought UV shooters would be a nice way to frisk up the workplace. They are filled with extra virgin olive oil  and balsamic vinegar. Which we found out later that Ande does not enjoy. 

You may also be wondering who drank these shooters for us, as we are not able to drink alcohol while on this detox. So we enlisted one of the Toxics who most commonly lurks around our apartment. 

Katy with two Lemonade UVs. She looks optimistic.

Look at her go. What a champion.

Washing it down with some Mtn. Dew. She looks less excited now.

She's really doing us a service. Obama should give her a medal.

She's wasted.
This was Caitlin's salad she enjoyed while Skyping with her friend/toxic, Amanda, who was rocking her Brady Bunch theme song impression. 

Hi Amanda!
Caitlin ate her salad around 2 pm, and wasn't really that hungry for it. It tasted good, but when it was gone she felt VERY full and regretted eating all of it. 

Later on in the evening, it was time for dinner. We were both in the mood for something hotter and sassier than a salad, so we decided to make a stir fry!

Ooooh, artsy.

Very full skillet.



Stir Fry:
2 red peppers
1 yellow pepper
1 orange pepper
2 zucchini
1 yellow onion
Corn
Carrots


We put everything into a 12" skillet with about 2 tbsp of vegetable oil, and added some pepper, a pinch of salt, and 2 tbsp of low sodium soy sauce. It was cooked on medium/medium-high heat for about 45 minutes. Seems like a long time, but there were a LOT of vegetables in there. And we like it cooked until it's good and browned. Overall, a quite delicious and filling meal. We both only had a bowl and were extremely full after that for the rest of the night.


For the remainder of this post, we would like to give a little back to our followers with this Q and A and answer some of your most burning questions. Let's begin.


Q: How much water did you drink today?
A: Ande had about 7 waterbottles, and Caitlin had 6. But Ande's waterbottle is 8 oz smaller (sucka!) That totals 112 oz for Ande and 144 oz for Caitlin, give or take a bit.


Q: What foods do you miss the most?
A: Caitlin most misses chicken, bread, bananas, and cheese. She would kill a small child for a sandwich. Ande, on the other hand, misses cheese pizza, poptarts, ranch dressing, and cake. His list is considerably more eccentric than Caitlin's, and she is convinced that he just saw those foods today and wanted them.


Q: How do you feel overall?
A: Caitlin didn't feel very hungry at all today, and when she ate it would usually result in a stomach ache. Ande had a big problem focusing today, and was pretty dissatisfied with his salad at lunch. The veggies just weren't doing it for him. 


Q: What differences have you noticed?
A: We both are definitely getting fuller MUCH faster. Normally we could eat multiple bowls of stir fry, but today we could both only handle 1 each. 


Q: What was the best thing about today? Worst?
A: For Ande the best was the yellow peppers in his snack bag. We don't usually get yellow peppers so they pleasantly surprised him. For Caitlin, the best was probably her salad. It was very filling and tasted good. 
The worst for Ande would definitely have to be his salad dressing. We now know that he does not like olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Caitlin's worst moment today would probably have to be the stir fry. It was awesome tasting but left her feeling way too full and she should have stopped eating before she did.


Q: Bowel movements. Go.
A: Ande is back to pooping like his regular self!! He had a nice mini poop this morning (probably left over from the one he missed yesterday), and a healthy poop when he got home from work. Caitlin's poop was also very regular. We both were pissed off because it smelled really bad (cabbage soup the night before = nastiness).


In addition, we would like to note that we haven't drank any sugary drinks, tea, coffee, or any caffeine since we began the detox. Strictly water, and it's been a nice change for both of us. Coffee was hard to break away from, but apparently it is possible even for hyped up coffee monsters like ourselves.


Tune in tomorrow for Day 3: The Best of Both Worlds


Get in the conversation on Twitter! #detoxaholics and follow us @caitertot_ @andewayyoulike