THE ANTI-YEAST DIET DAY 25

The two week mark came and went, and I am still on this diet. I have quite a few motives for staying on, one of which is to support the The Poet, who is on a diet that excludes everything mine does and quite a bit more. On the days when I wanted to quit, the thought of bringing and apple into the apartment made me feel so guilty I couldn't do it.

But an even bigger motive are the results. I am still sleeping nine or ten hours a day, still have better concentration, and at about the two week mark I noticed my lymph felt better.

Poor lymph drainage has plagued me since I've been on the antibiotics for Lyme, and I often felt as if it were getting worse than ever. If I hadn't exercised enough, and in the right way, to drain my lymph, I couldn't sleep, and even then eight horizontal hours were difficult. I took to sleeping a chair for part of the night, or I would wake up with my head and armpits so congested (yes, my armpits can get congested) that I couldn't get back to sleep if I didn't get up and flap my arms around like a chicken.

The Poet once woke up in the middle of the night and saw me doing this and said "Heaven save me!" But I digress....

Funny how there are some things you don't miss when they're gone, don't even notice that they're gone when they're gone. My lymph problems were one of them. It took me more than a few days to realize I didn't need to do my arm weights for twenty minutes in the afternoon in order to sleep at night, that I was waking up in the early hours, taking my pills and going right back to sleep without even thinking about my lymph.

I still feel my sinuses draining from time to time, but not constantly and at an alarming rate the way it was three weeks ago. I'd alway attributed this to the pressure on my lymph system from the Lyme die-off, but now it's clear the yeast was a big part of it. I thought I had no yeast problems. I did.

I had a few days that were rough, right around the two-week mark-- headaches, difficulty sleeping, and I was tired and cranky after I exercised. I went to Nesreen and she put me on a B-12 supplement (Perque B-12) and that did the trick. I'm sleeping again, I'm running for miles and feeling good afterwards. I'm happy again.

So for now, I'm staying on this crazy diet. I've even gotten used to it. Sure, I'd like an apple, but I'm no longer pining away for one, or thinking endlessly about blueberries and mangoes. Yogurt and purple cabbage and sweet potatoes are interesting enough. It helps that Nesreen gave me permission to have dark chocolate again-- not the one I used to eat, but the 91% cacao bar made by Theo (the chocolate factory in my neighborhood!). It tastes sweet, and about one square centimeter every other day is all I can handle. That's how food virtuous I've become.

But mostly around here, we're not thinking too much about our tandem diets. We've been watching and reading and talking non-stop about what's going on in Egypt. The Poet is Egyptian, and he has been bursting with wonder, pride, excitement, impatience and joy this past week. Leave, Mubarak, leave!