I gotta say.  Today was basically a pretty easy day.  My job was to drink only freshly squeezed orange juice today, and I made it through.  I was up really freaking early, so I juiced the oranges the night before and just kept them in the fridge. But none the less, here I am, at the end of the day, in the face of adversity (read below) still on track.

Day Three

I wake up very early today, as I am scheduled to be on stage at 9:30a, and it takes a couple hours to reach the venue (walk to subway, subway to train station, train to station in the city I’m speaking, catch ride from station to venue).  Problem is, the trains arrive at 6 minutes before the hour.  So I can either arrive at 7:56a, or 8:56a. I had planned to take the earlier training, meaning I need to get up at 6am. So I get up at six.  Shower. Come back to my room and decide I am taking the later train. I text my ride and tell them I’m just going to take a cab. Sweet! An extra 35 mins or so of sleep (I lost a lot of time due to doddling).

Gerry giving me the nod for not eating his sushi

After that my day is pretty much uneventful (when it comes to TMC stuff that is). I spend most of the day in front of the audience. I try my best to spread out the consumption of my OJ. The natural tendency is to just drink, drink, drink.  So this takes a little effort. For lunch I go out with Gerry Robert (bestselling author of The Millionaire Mindset, marketing and mindset guru, and close friend of mine). Gerry orders what I would consider to be the most delicious spread of Japanese food I have ever seen. From tempura to miso soup, to sushi rolls, to single rolls, some other type of delicious looking soup, and mango ice cream!  My goodness, what a test of will!

But I got through it. No problem. Again, my sense of smell is just going crazy when I smell stuff I want. I never really noticed that sushi had a distinct scent before.  But I am here to tell you, it most certainly does.  It smells like delicious.

That night I return to town and my brother had invited me to come over for dinner. I’m leaving town next Saturday for a while so he wants to treat me to a home cooked meal. I tell him that I really shouldn’t, but heck the ease-in process is optional so ok, I’ll come over. But I’m only eating salad. Deal. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the requisite ingredients for salad. So I stop off at the store and pick up some items, including ‘cold pressed olive oil.’ A friend tipped me off that if it’s ‘cold pressed’ it remains raw and unprocessed.  Nice! While I’m there I buy a hand juicer. Mike recommended that I get a hand juicer over using the electric juicer I used for the oranges. Not really sure why, but I don’t ask questions.

This is how I'll get the juice from my lemons

But when I arrive at my bro’s place, I kind of have a change of heart. I decide that I want to stick to the ease-in and not falter.  So he cooks himself the best smelling steak ever cooked. My god! But here’s the thing.  Earlier in the day I was having lunch with a man who is an expert in creating the proper mindset for achieving difficult things. I tell Gerry how I keep smelling these incredible smells and it’s driving me nuts! His advice: go face-to-face with the antagonist! Don’t let your mind play tricks on you like that. Get your nose right in there and just suck up the smell.  And if your brain starts to say, “Hmmmm, I want some” you tell it, “SHUT UP! You do not want some, you just think you do.” Toss that thought out of your head, and don’t let your old paradigms jerk you around.

After completing his greens, Russ finishes of his enticing steak!

So what do I do.  I grab Russ’ plate, put it right in my face and sniff, sniff, sniff away. I keep breathing in the goddam sweet stench of the bbq’d steak and telling my brain that I don’t want it until I don’t want it any more. I WIN!!! Ha-haaa brain! Not so smart now, are you? On my way home I make a quick pit stop off at the Fresh Market near my place and grab nine lemons and some cayenne pepper. Things start to set in that this is for real now.

This doesn't actually look good to people, does it?

Then I come home, watch the second half of The Hangover (what a great film) and hop in the bath. I have been soooo cold for two or three days now.  I don’t know what’s going on! So I start drawing a bath but get impatient. So I stand in the bathwater and switch the output to shower. I was probably in there enjoying the heat for 25 mins.  It felt so good.

Then I hop out, do my quick video, brew myself some Smooth Move laxative tea, pound out this post and head off to bed (I’m just assuming about that last part, it hasn’t actually happened yet).

How do I feel?

My stomach feels empty.  For my entire life this has meant I’m hungry. What a mindgame! I’m getting better at dealing with it though. Aside from that, I am feeling pretty darn good.  For the last two years I’ve become very sleepy after every meal. Because I mostly work from home I often take a 25 min nap after lunch. I haven’t felt that type of sleepiness at all.

I really am quite cold. It’s my hands and feet really.  The rest of my body is ok. That might have more to do with the cold, humid Toronto winter than anything though. Usually I’m a furnace, so I’m not used to this. It pretty much sucks.

Although I went back to bed this morning to get a little extra shut eye, I actually felt quite good when I first woke up. That is somewhat unusual for me. I am not a morning person, I hate getting up early! And I’m usually pretty grumpy for a couple of hours too!

Here's a little graph of my sleep courtesy of the app Sleep Cycle on my iPhone.

Even though I haven’t actually gotten into the tough part yet, I feel quite proud. It feels good to be feeling urges and pangs and being able to overcome them. I love a challenge, and this is certainly a new and difficult one for me.  It just feels good to be staying on the program.

I know this is unrelated to TMC, but I just want to say that I feel really great about the conference this weekend. I am a young, up-and-coming professional speaker and I really felt like I crushed it this weekend. The audience response was phenomenal, and Gerry was kind enough to gather up some great testimonials for me. He’s sending them to me tomorrow morning, so I imagine they will be up by the time you read this. You are welcome to check them out at my personal blog, http://jeffmcleod.ca.

My outlook moving forward?

BRING ON THE PAIN!!!! Tomorrow I have but one job… get through day one. I’ll worry about the rest of the cleanse later.