How it started, how it’s going, why it’s so hard, and addictions.
So I have been cheating EVERYDAY on the Medical Medium Protocols since my birthday on May 17th, 2022. I’m eating dairy, eggs and gluten in my meals when I cheat. I usually only eat these things for dinner and sometimes lunch when I cheat so my morning routine is still pretty solid.
Medical Medium Protocols are so hard to follow when you don’t have people around you trying to make similar changes. It also doesn’t help that my husband guilt trips me saying, “You’ve changed”!
We used to eat dinner and breakfast together all the time on the weekends and me changing my eating habits has put a wrench into this routine. I’m still working out how to best approach these changes ANd still eat dinner with my husband. He is completely resistant to changing his diet.
Additionally, A lot of people I see who seem to have mastered this lifestyle on social media have been following him for 4+ years! I am just not there yet. I’m still working on getting into a routine of cooking more!
Please continue reading if you’d like to hear about my musings. I’m trying my best to be 100% authentic so please don’t judge. I’m only 2 years into this journey.
My hope is that my struggle can help you in some way! You are not alone! Making positive changes and breaking old habits can be hard. Join me on my journey into trying to break mine!
Why it’s so difficult: How My Spiral Started
I was always planning to cheat on my birthday because last year, in May 2021, I did a 369 cleanse for my birthday and skipped a good cake and regretted it because I LOVE cake! I also asked my steak to be made with no butter, and it just wasn’t as good as a steak usually is!
This year in May 2022, my original plan was to do the mono cleanse up to my birthday, cheat with some good cake and food, and then go back to mono cleansing.
I went out to dinner with the parents at Outback on May 19th, 2022, and had cheese fries and some wings. Then, I had more birthday dinners with Chris going out to eat that weekend and I just continued cheating. I love dessert and cakes and tiramisu as well so I indulged in all of that.
Then, I got sick with a cold so it was really difficult to go back to the mono cleansing.
When I get sick I tend to go to my comfort foods and what I know because that is what I grew up eating. I spent 35 years on this earth eating a certain way. Getting sick is just one of those things that puts me right into survival mode.
I know logically it would make sense to follow MM protocols and not cheat with the stuff that feeds the bugs when you are sick, but I really have a hard time with this because following MM protocols means making all my own food.
When I’m sick, it’s hard to make my own food. It is so much easier getting food delivered or eat something someone else makes. All the people around me make food with butter, cheese and gluten. If I’m not making all my own food from scratch then I am eating the no foods!
When I’m sick it is really hard to veer off the treaded path. This makes me think of the people who are chronically ill and cannot get off their beds and how they jump into MM protocols so fully. I don’t know how they do it.
I think because I’m not chronically ill where my life is impeded, that I have a hard time jumping in full throttle.
Additionally, the smoothies and things like that are less apetizing than the pizza I smell that my husband eats at least 4 times a weel! I am a Taurus and I LOVE food. I love cheese as well so these things are just so hard for me to give up.
I’m trying to find balance in doing the Medical Medium Protocols without stressing that I’m harming my health. The MM community seems so perfect online!
I’m here to say that I am not perfect and will never claim to be.
Mono Cleansing & Getting Sick
I was doing potato mono cleanses through the spring but I was cheating almost every weekend while doing this. I think the extreme of eating mono meals all day and then eating cheese and gluten made me get sick. I could have also picked up a bug as well that made me sick because everyone around me was getting this illness.
Here is an outline of how long the cleanses lasted through the spring.
- 2-21-22 I did 4 days and cheated on going out to eat with Chris on Day 5. I lost 5 lbs. In 4 days.
- 3-21-22 I did another potato mono cleanse. I only lasted 4.5 days for this one again and only lost 2 lbs. However, I weighed myself close on the one day I didn’t cheat and then I cheated going to this Delco Prom party! I think this is really where I started stressing out a lot because I didn’t lose a lot of weight and I keep cheating. I also asked my guides about how long I should do the mono cleanse and they said 2 weeks.
- 3-29-22 two solid days then cheated because my cycle started. I always have a harder time staying fat free on my cycle. I also crave chocolate ALOT on my cycle.
- 4-1-22 I lasted seven days on the cleanse!!! I got down to 189.1lbs. This is the smallest I’ve been since my wedding! I was around 190lbs for my wedding. My goal was to continue after Orthodox Easter.
- 4-24-22 did 3 days then cheated because my cycle started. I always have a harder time staying fat free on my cycle. I also crave chocolate ALOT on my cycle.
- 4-29-22 I lasted 15 days on this cleanse however I had a lot of symptoms.
- A painful pimple developed on right elbow on day 2 of the mono cleanse.
- On Day 8 my ear started getting popped and I was really anxious in general and pimples popped up.
- On Days 9-11 I changed my mono diet from mono steamed potatoes to mono bananas.
- On Days 5-11 day I had a lot of snot and didn’t feel well at school toward 8th period. I took off 2.5 days Thurs, Fri, and ½ of Monday as a result.
- On Day 15 I started transitioning off the cleanse on Friday the 13th.
- I lost a total of 12 lbs.
So after all of this, I started cheating and the popped ear/dizziness turned into a pretty bad ear infection. I should have taken the antibiotics from 5-18-22 when I called for it because I’m still dealing with a bit of a popped ear on 7-29-22.
I got ear drops for the ear in June, but they didn’t fix the problem and my ears are still popped as of 7-29-22 when I started writing this post.
I was really disheartened that I got so sick doing the cleansing and spiraled into cheating and continued cheating with cheese and chocolate and all the things that I’m constantly craving/love to eat!
Backtracking in the timeline here a bit, In May when I got off the cleanse, I was freakin out because I didn’t want to take off too much work. I ended up eating cheese and gluten that day I came home for a ½ day from work because I wanted to slow down my cleansing and get better. I know this is counter intuitive and probably made things worse.
I put something on Facebook for help, but everyone seems so perfect on there like they don’t eat meat or even cheat. At least that’s the impression I get from the MM community. People did give me some advice, but one person was like, “Why would you eat gluten and dairy?!”
UGH. Because I’m freaking out AND I got sick that’s why. When I get sick I always go back to my comfort food. I also freak out because I have it in my head that MM is going to fix everything so when I go backwards I freak out!
That’s WHY!
Before Cheating on MM Protocols & Natural Flavors AKA MSG
Before this cheating streak since my birthday this year, I would stay away from dairy, gluten, and eggs completely. I would eat a lot of dairy-free products and fake butter as a replacement.
Then I found out that natural flavors are terrible for your brain. There are a lot of natural flavors and things of that nature inthe fake cheeses and butters; so I was a little disheartened because I thought I was making a good choice here, but then I don’t think I was.
Additionally , natural flavors is an ingredient a little further down the no foods list so I wonder if it would be better to do the fake butter or not.
As soon as I feel like I’m finding a flow with substitutes for things I love, I find out that they have things in them that aren’t great. I’m struggling with this whole idea here so if you have any advice feel free to share in the comments below! What is better; Processed foods or just eating some cheese or gluten in a homemade meal?
Natural Flavors and MSG
On MM’s blog titled, “Troublemakers That Make Us Sick – Food Chemicals”, he lists MSG as one of those foods. In this section he explains that MSG can build up in the brain going deep into the tissue. It causes inflammation, swelling and kill brain cells. It “disrupts electrical impulses, weaken neurotransmitters, burns out neurons, and makes you feel confused and anxious.” It can even lead to micro-strokes and weaken/injure your central nervous system.
Here is a list of all the things that are MSG in food ingredients. What is not listed is natural flavors. This is also MSG.
“glutamate, hydrolyzed, autolyzed, protease, carrageenan, maltodextrin, sodium caseinate, balsamic vinegar, barley malt, malt extract, yeast extract, brewer’s yeast, corn starch, wheat starch, modified food starch, gelatin, textured protein, whey protein, soy protein, soy sauce, broth, bouillon, stock, and seasoning.” https://www.medicalmedium.com/blog/troublemakers-that-make-us-sick-food-chemicals
I also recently listened to Alyssa Delgato’s story on the MM podcast on Apple Podcasts and she described how she would eat the dairy free things too at first to stay away from dairy. Then, after she found out that natural flavors were terrible for healing, she stayed away from those foods.
She mentioned that this was a perfect pacing for her because she was able to ween off of things gradually. She also had to ween off her medications gradually as well. I highly recommend you listen to her story on the MM podcast because it brought me to tears several times! It is so inspiring.
How eating No Foods makes me feel
The biggest thing I’ve learned doing MM protocols. I’ve learned what foods just make me feel good and give me energy and which ones zap all my energy and make me feel lethargic.
Every time I cheat I gain all my weight back that I lost. That is always hard to see and it makes me feel even more guilty for enjoying a regular dinner with my husband or family. It takes a lot of effort to follow a cleanse and this lifestyle, so just a little cheat meal just doesn’t work for me.
As of September 2022 I gained all the weight I lost back from all the cleansing I did the past year and a half. I need to get back on track to start losing all this weight again!
Summer Cheating & Routine
The summer is always a time of no routines! I love it and at the same time it does give me anxiety because I don’t always know what to do with myself.
I always have all these large goals in the summer to do certain things like paint the house, do some Marie Kondo cleaning, or work on curriculum for school. I don’t get to these large goals right away so when there is only a month left in the summer I try to pack everything into that month which is anxiety inducing.
The summer always leaves more time to catch up with friends and family as well. I love being able to do whatever I want, but I ALWAYS gain weight in the summer when I eat out a lot catching up with people and drinking more.
Social drinking is always something I’ve enjoyed when hanging out with family and friends. I cannot drink the same way anymore after following Medical Medium Protocols and liver cleanses.
If I do drink I need to eat how I used to for a couple of days so I don’t feel so bad the next day after drinking. If I drink the next day after completing a 3,6,9 cleanse; I feel like I’m dying the next day/week! All of this also depeds on how much I drink. When I’m socializing I don’t always count my drinks which is another problem. If I drink more I have a worse hangover, but that is just common sense, right?
I’m trying to find a balance in my MM routine and how I can make it work with my lifestyl, but I’m still figuring that part out!
Note on addictions:
I cannot wait until the new Medical Medium Books come out that talk about Brain Savers. In the books MM says he discusses addiction.
I did find a lot of information about addiction by looking up MM info and FoodBabe info. MM talks a lot about MSG, Natural Flavors, and Mental Health. Before I dive into the top of this information I want to talk more about my addictions and why this is so hard for me.
My Addictions
Despite all these challenges, I always stayed pretty good for my morning routine, but once things came into the evening, I would cheat with gluten, dairy and eggs.
Eggs are hard for me mostly because of desserts and cakes. I have been staying away from eggs as breakfast food.
As a side note, the Kookaburra wings at Outback have powdered cheese as their ingredients! UGH; no wonder they were so good! I was eating those wings trying to follow the Medium Medical Lifestyle.
At first I thought they complied with MM protocols because it was just meat. I would stay away from the blue cheese when I would order them. Eventually, I looked up the ingredients because things I think are so good usually have something that I’m not supposed to have in it. Turns out, they use powdered cheese in the seasoning.
It is hard to find that balance of enjoying going out and following medical medium.
OUTSIDE HELP!
I meet with a nutritionist and dietitian every 2 months or so. I look forward to working with Joy because she can get me back on track to eating better. We talk for about an hour about what is going on in my life and how I’ve been eating. Then, she always sends me 3-5 goals to work on until our next meeting. I find this very helpful!
On July 9th we met and these are the goals:
- Get back to greens/smoothies
- Get a plan for dinner (This is also part of my 4 goals from our most recent meeting on 9-10-22.)
- Write down dinner to see on the fridge to stick to it. Pick 3 days to make bigger meals to make in bulk.
- Keep up with movement and exercise.
- Make plain bulk meat for Chris to reheat so we can have stuff through the week.
After this meeting, I went to an energy healer and she said that I needed to calm down with the cleanses and take it easy. It was more about the mindset. I was really stressing about sticking with the cleanses while cheating and she picked up on that!
The whole try to do fewer cleanses advice was also really stressing me out at the same time because I was planning on doing another one soon. She said that it’s OK to want to lose weight, but that I was stressing about it too much about it and to just take a break and do them less often.
I definitely was stressing about not doing the cleanses too much. I kept thinking I was missing opportunities because I wasn’t high vibrational enough, and that MM would fix all my problems. I’m coming to a more steady understanding that we need to implement things one step at a time.
It is extremely difficult to change and entire lifetime of habits in a couple of years! I tell everyone that the only reason I still stick to MM protocols after a few years of still not getting pregnant is because these protocols make me feel so much better.
That is also why I stress because I know how good I feel eating a certain way, but again its so hard to do when I’m busy.
Changing habits surrounding cooking:
I never got into a good habit of making food each night so that is also a blessing a a curse. It is a blessing because now it can be easier to make new habits with cooking different things; but it is also a curse because the alternative is eating out!
I am also just so tired at the end of the school day and never feel like cooking. It is sooo much easier to eat out. My husband has been cooking food more recently, but when he cooks it is always the bad stuff!
My biggest challenge right now is trying to find a routine around eating that works for my husband and I. He tells me that he hates making food for just himself, but every time we eat together, its the food that I know isn’t good for me. It always had gluten and cheese in it usually in some Italian form.
My goal this school year is to cook more MM meals for dinner and find ones that both my husband and I can enjoy. Follow me on this journey as I figure things out!
