Day 8: Never eat "fat free" dressing

Yesterday was my last day of using the intestine scouring SP Cleanse supplement.  Hooray!  I promised my friend Ali that I wouldn't talk about the end products of digestion, but I think it is OK if I share how excited I am to get back to a "regular schedule."

Actually, things have been getting better in that department for a while.  Perhaps I am not consuming "half total vegetable amount raw," as recommended.  Or maybe I've figured out how to survive the cleanse by adding enough oil to my raw food to slow down its transit time.  Yes, fat slows down, and enhances, the digestion of raw vegetables, especially leafy greens like lettuce and spinach.

The longer a food is in the stomach and small intestines, the more time the digestive enzymes have to digest it and extract nutrients from the mess of fibers in which they are entangled.  Eating fat with raw vegetables also aids in the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins such as D, E, and beta-carotene (the precursor to vitamin A).  It is not what you eat, but what you absorb!  So all you people who like to eat your healthy salad with "fat free" dressing, think twice!

Lunch: mix spring greens, topped with kale & chia seeds.
Dressing: balsamic vinegar olive oil (no added sugar)

I am still struggling to get enough calories because I get full so quickly on this diet.  To compensate, I find myself eating every 1-2 hours.  Yesterday I ate at 8am, 9:30am, 10am, 11:30am, 12:30pm, 3:30pm, 5pm, 7pm, 8pm, and 9pm.  That is ten separate meals!  I feel like a whale, eating tiny amounts of calories, continuously throughout the day.

Science Lesson: Did you know that blue whales (80 ft long) can eat up to 8000 pounds of krill (2.4 inches) per day.  That is 4% of their body weight!  The whales swim along, hunting for areas with high concentration of krill.  When they find such an area, they open their mouth and ingest the krill, along with copious amounts of seawater.  Then, whale spits out the water, but the unfortunate krill remain, stuck in the whale's baleen plates, and are subsequently swallowed.

Yep, I have become a baleen whale.  I spend my whole day hunting low-calorie fruits and vegetables and drinking copious amounts of water.  Except that, unlike the whale, I do not spit out my water.