Day 4

When I look back on today, I see so many huge accomplishments, but for a good part of the day I was mad . . . mad that my doctor suggested such an idea, mad that I actually took his idea, mad that I was STARVING, mad that my upper lip has found a new trick of twitching from the lack of food, mad that my husband had to go to work so low on energy, and mad that I myself still have so little energy. I was so mad this afternoon that if Vernon had not come home when he did, I would have called my doctor and given him a piece of my mind. I mean seriously, how on earth does he expect people to function in the real world on such a stupid diet? I totally believe that all of the food God made is good, but He made the cow too and boy, is it GOOD!!!

Vernon came home and I cried and cried. I told him we could just quit - he wouldn't have to go to work feeling so terrible anymore and I wouldn't have to hunt down my doctor and EAT HIM! I was SO HUNGRY and had already eaten an entire egg plant, about 20 stalks of asparagus, and more grapes than I could count throughout the afternoon and nothing sounded good anymore. My sweet husband just held me, let me cry and even though I'm sure he was tempted to let me quit, he didn't. He didn't tell me that I had to keep going, he just reminded me about the progress that I have made today.

The progress I made today was this - I was able to drink 1/2 of a smoothie with the protein supplement in it for breakfast and 3/4 of the same thing for dinner. For me, that is HUGE!!! My sister asked me yesterday how the shakes were without the supplements and it occurred to me that maybe I should try them with just the protein - that maybe if I acclimated my body to that, then the other supplements wouldn't be so bad once I had to add them in. What a blessing that question was to me! It gave me the courage to try the smoothies again and those smoothies kept me from completely falling out today. After my morning smoothie I was able to go to the grocery store and it was such a blessing to get out of the house. The grocery store pretty much took all of my energy for the day, but it was worth it. Having the smoothies also increased my calorie intake by about 150 calories . . . I think that puts me up somewhere around 650 calories for the day compared to the 400-500 calories I've had every day thus far.

I'm sure that people who have vegetable-friendly taste buds can eat way more than 650 calories in vegetables and fruit, especially when they're hungry, but for me it's really a miracle that I was even getting the 400 calories down my throat. I'm so thankful for the extra calories that I got today and hope that I can continue adding calories until I get to a reasonable amount of calories to eat every day.

Oh, and you may be wondering how I know for sure that I've been eating that few number of calories - I've been tracking it on The Daily Plate. Yesterday, I ate 461 calories to be exact. I haven't figured it out yet for today. And, here's the answer to the question about how I cooked my veggies - I made a single layer of veggies on a cookie sheet, seasoned them with sea salt and fresh ground black pepper, drizzled a little olive oil on top and baked them at 350 until they are sizzling and brown . . . YUMMY! Thanks Martha for that tip! If any of you have any other ideas on great ways to cook veggies, or other veggie only recipes, I would LOVE to have them. Or great ways to make brown rice more delicious . . . it is BLAND!!! I'm running out of ideas and I still have 6 more days of rice, veggies and fruit only.

My prayer through scripture for today was this: Father, This moment I am choosing the way of truth. I want to set my heart on Your laws. (Psalm 119:30) Help me to choose the way of truth the rest of my days. It was a good one for me. I was mad a good bit of the day, but the TRUTH is that He blessed me A LOT today. It's always best to choose the way of truth. Too bad I turned that into such a hard lesson to learn today.