diary of a detox: the first few days

day 2

another day kicked off with hot water and lemon, followed by a smoothie (banana, apple and mango today) before heading into work.

i had a meeting all morning and, as i hadn’t bought in anything to nibble on (biscuits were provided for everyone else) it was regularly interrupted by my loudly growling stomach. first lesson learnt: carry around a small of bag of dried fruit and nuts or seeds (i particularly like pumpkin and sunflower) to snack on. lunch was leftovers from last night which was nice although the fennel salad didn’t last well.

for most the afternoon i’ve had the shadow of a headache. i hadn’t realised that my two cups of tea a day over the past week (while we were in scotland, i don’t normally drink tea, other than at the weekends) would trigger this level of withdrawal. supper was vegetarian shepherd’s pie.

day 3

i slept like a log last night and work up feeling refreshed. my headache was gone too.

when i got to work i realised that i’d left my lunch sitting in the fridge at home (roasted vegetables with brown rice) so had to try and find something suitable in the shops near my office. luckily prêt a manger came to my rescue with its tuna nicoise salad.

i now have a bag of mixed dried fruit and nuts by my desk for nibbling on throughout the day. this kept hunger pangs away as the afternoon progressed but i need to be careful not to eat too many of them, given the nuts are high in fat and the dried fruit high in sugar.

i’m meeting friends for supper tonight and have booked a table at bam-bou, a lovely vietnamese restaurant (asian restaurants are definitely the most detox friendly places to go) with a wonderfully seductive upstairs bar which serves fantastic cocktails. not that i got to sample them on this visit – tonic water with lime please! a mixture of vegetarian, fish and seafood starters between us provided me with plenty of choice and an easy way to stay on track, although i think the salt content of the meal was probably a bit high.