Food Tastes Fantastic and Two Close Calls

Yesterday I ate watermelon, mango, bananas, and small cucumbers every two hours. I just finished my second meal of the third day on a regular schedule: leafy green lettuce, red bell pepper, carrots, cantaloupe, mango and bing cherries. I haven't seen any sign of iceberg lettuce around here. Fuhrman brought all six in a bag and said to divide them up over three meals for the day. I'd already had watermelon and a banana before he arrived.

The lettuce has a slightly bitter taste while the pepper is an interesting combination of bitter sweet. I'm eating those first for the meal and saving the fruits for last with the cherries for dessert. Now that my taste buds aren't anesthetized with condiments and toxins, I've discovered that each food has a unique and distinctive flavor. Fresh fruits and vegetables are good tasting! I've not had a prepared meal with such an interesting variety of both taste and texture. I see now that my prepared foods are much more homogenized with spices covering ALL the natural flavor of the ingredients.

Eating under Fuhrman's guidance, I'm getting a feel for portion size and variety for the plant based diet. One thing for sure - I'll be eating more quantity than I thought. Also I'll have to allow 45 minutes instead of the 20 I have been taking for my soup and greens only salad. No fear of gaining weight because I'll burn off excess calories chewing. Was it Jerry Lee Lewis who sang "There's a whole lot of shakin going on?" Anyway my tune is "There's a whole lot of chewing going on!"

We've had two close calls the last couple of days. The math prof from USF got up in the night to go to the bathroom and woke up some time later lying half under the sink with a bruise on his knee. As mentioned earlier, the single greatest danger in fasting is hurting yourself passing out from getting up too fast. Fortunately he didn't hit his head!

Speaking of lowering blood pressure, another patient is here for that reason but her level has been slower to respond than mine. Hers finally broke down through to 120/80 yesterday - she will start refeeding tomorrow. Before fasting she had an unmedicated pressure as high as 260/210. She says of herself, "I was a walking time bomb waiting to go off!" That will be a thing of the past without medication of any kind if she returns home to a plant based diet.

Our other close call was with the "former" diabetic. Early yesterday afternoon, the math prof was walking down the hall and came upon her getting a pack of crackers out of the snack machine. He asked what she was doing, and she said "I just had to have something to eat because of the pain in my gut." He said the obvious thing "Ask the doctor to break your fast." I don't know what was going on in her head, but she had a hard time seeing that.

At the end of the hall, she threw the crackers in the trash, and they called the doctor. I was there when he called back, and he asked her to break the fast. By this time she was arguing with him that she wanted to stick it out for another three days. The nurse went with her to the room to chat quietly, and she finally agreed to break the fast. Her fast was broken quite differently - with peeled baby cucumbers.

I hope she hasn't been hitting the snack machine before, or she may return home and have to start sticking herself with a needle four times a day. Our cluttered chaotic minds fascinate me more every day. This episode reminds me of the three levels of stress that stand in the way of perfect intuitive knowing. But that's another story for another day.