I wasn't going to post about the diet Matt and I are doing, but it's forty days long, and now that we are mostly through day 4 I am realizing how unsatisfying it will be to keep notes for the next month and a half and then try to sum everything up out of the blue. So now it's out there - we are doing a diet.

• NOT as a New Year's resolution, we just conveniently had no groceries on Jan. 1 and decided if we were going to do a big shop we might as well get what we need for this diet.
• NOT to lose weight, although it might happen for Matt. I wanted to do this diet as a cleanse to hopefully address some reoccurring health problems. I would rather get my body right than need to take more medicine every couple weeks or months. Matt agreed to do it in solidarity.

What are we doing? Following The Maker's Diet, which I came across on the internet and only chose because the book was in at the library. To be honest, I have read very little of the book itself other than the diet plan, but it sounds like a very interesting story, how the author recovered from near death due to Crohn's Disease by following a "Biblical" diet.

The diet is broken down into three phases of two weeks each, and each new phase is less restrictive than the last. Phase 1 is extremely low-carb, with no grains, no fruits, and no starchy vegetables. It is dairy-free and also sugar-free: we are permitted to use up to a tablespoon of honey as sweetener per day. Coffee is allowed if you grind it yourself :) Black though, of course.

I am interested to see how cost works out over the course of the diet, but it is way too soon to say. At this point, our groceries for the week were close to double what we normally spend in a shop and we will have eaten everything by the time the week is through. However, part of that is eating much larger portions of meat and vegetables since that's all we get (no rice or pasta or bread to fill up on!), so it may not be so drastic over the course of time. Also, our grocery costs have been pretty low the last few months, so doubling probably just brings us up to normal. I'm being vague to build suspense for the financial-reveal post I can do up when we are done!

How are things so far?
Well, the whole thing got off to a kind of crazy start when Matt and I both had a mild case of food poisoning from dinner Sunday night (away from home). We were both prepared to not feel very well at the start of the diet due to some detoxing (if bad microorganisms are not fed, ex. by certain carbs, they die and release toxins that the body must remove. Headaches, flushed cheeks, and a low-grade fever are not uncommon responses to these toxins). Well, we really didn't feel well, but for the first day or two it was hard to tell what was detox or food poisoning, and it didn't really matter so we just toughed out sick and tired spells, drank lots of water and ate our food.

If you've read this far and are still with me, wow congrats! That is all I'm gonna cover in this post to say that for the first few days we were HUNGRY. But check back to hear how the rest of the week went and to see the meal plan we're working with (so you know I'm really not starving, mom!).