Making my liver happy, day 1

Australian Orange
Originally uploaded by challiyan

Today is the first day of my 11-day liver detox program. I have to say, I did not have high hopes after what happened yesterday. What happened yesterday was that I didn't have any coffee. I knew this was one of the "rules" of the detox program, and so I decided to start a day early to make the weaning process a little easier.

Well, by 7 pm the headache I'd had all day long was turning into a migraine, and so I gave in and brewed myself a huge cup of coffee. The headache was gone in about 20 minutes.

At first, I took this as a sign that maybe I shouldn't bother with this whole program. I mean, who wants to feel that crappy? But then I reasoned that this should give me even more incentive to forge ahead since I clearly have some bad eating/drinking habits I need to get rid of.

So today is a new day, and so far it's going along swimmingly. Aside from hopefully detoxifying my liver, I am finding some extra benefits to this 11-day experiment. For one, it's forcing me to eat nutritious foods I actually like, but am usually too lazy to prepare...like an orange. I know it's pathetic, but the main reason I never eat oranges is that I don't like the hassle of peeling them. Why get your fingers all sticky and wet peeling an orange when there are so many fruits you can just bite right into?

But since an orange was on the list of foods to eat, I took the plunge. 10 seconds later, I was finally able to take a bite...and I realized that oranges are actually quite delicious.

My other achievement of the day was concocting a liver-loving chicken salad, which contained three of the "must eat" foods (lean protein, onions, and celery) and none of the bad stuff. Here's what I used:

Chopped, cooked chicken
Brown rice
Mayonnaise (the natural, full-fat kind)
Diced celery
Diced onion
Slivered almonds
A dab of mustard
Salt & pepper

Mix equal parts of chicken & rice, and add enough mayo to coat everything without making it too mayonnaise-y. Then add as much of the other stuff as you want.

I admit, the taste of brown rice takes a little getting used to. I still can't quite manage to eat it on its own, but it works quite nicely in this chicken salad. You could also include some dried cranberries in this salad if you want...I eliminated them this time because I could only find sweetened ones at the store, and sugar is a no-no in the liver detox plan.

Tonight I'm planning on making something delicious out of an artichoke and some kale...we'll see what happens.