Oh, to sink my teeth into some real food!

Today I am beset with cravings!

And hunger.

Anthony said it would happen. He said cravings for all the foods you liked and that weren’t good for you would come up.

OK, I get that.

But I’m having cravings for foods I didn’t even like!

Here’s what I mean…

My husband came home with a local magazine featuring the top 20 sandwiches in town. This was a yearly special issue called, The Sandwich Issue. It talked about mouth-watering sandwiches I’ve never heard of before!

Let me make something perfectly clear — I’ve never liked sandwiches. In fact, I hated them in my lunch box in grade school. Just couldn’t stand them!

Gummy white bread… processed bologna… bland mayonnaise. Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!

And the occasional gunky peanut butter and jelly that stuck to my teeth (and my entire mouth), made even stickier and gunkier with that awful white bread! It was like eating suction paste!

But that’s all my mother packed for me, so there was nothing else to eat for lunch. And my mother did not tolerate complaints or preferences.

Its strange, because my mother did not exactly embrace American food. Sandwiches were probably the only American food she adopted in those years, probably because of the convenience factor. She knew exactly how much bread and how much sandwich meat she needed each week and cranked them out in an assembly line for the whole family every night.

These sandwiches, however, bore no resemblance to the plain, soggy, grade-school variety I knew.

These were intriguing combinations of ethnic flavors and spices — like the Vietnamese Banh Mi (spicy pork with cucumbers and dikon radish), the Greek Hybrid with barbecued lamb, red onion, kasseri cheese and Sriracha mayo, the torta with chipotle sauce, and the vegetarian Cruzer with meaty Portobello mushrooms layered with tomatoes, spinach, pesto, and mayo (Yum! that sounds wonderful).

There were barbecue tri-tip sandwiches, meatball sandwiches with marinara, aioli and provolone, tangy chicken boti wraps, smoked trout sandwiches, meaty Reuben sandwiches and more.

And they all looked fabulous!

My eyes got bigger and my heart pounded harder as I stared longer…

I snapped myself out of it and put that magazine right down… at least as soon as I could tear my eyes away!

Fate, however, was not on my side today…

We were out of leafy greens, and as Costco is nearby, we decided to run over there for organic romaine. If you have a Costco near you, you know that they put out tables that serve food samples on weekends. At our Costco, Fridays have the best samples.

Today is Friday, and they had the most delicious looking samples. The main feature was, you guessed it — sandwiches!

Wouldn’t you know it, when I was already weakened by The Sandwich Issue, tempting sandwiches like this would appear in front of my eyes, like smoked turkey, Havarti cheese and pesto on sourdough rolls. And hot pastrami on rye.

These were not the processed meat kind. They were the all-natural, straight-out-of-the-oven real beef kind.

But wait! What is happening to me? I don’t like sandwiches!

Why am I walking over and staring at them with my tongue hanging out like a puppy begging for table scraps?

For the first 10 days or so of this detox, I had no interest in any other foods. I was tired of my struggle to digest food. I was tired of preparing my usual meals and chewing through them — tired of chewing even chicken. And really tired of dealing with indigestion and all the complications of the EBV.

I was ready for a change and wanted to be free of indigestion and EBV. I would do whatever it took to be free of it. Eating only raw fruits and vegetables was not a problem.

…Especially since Anthony had said that at the end of this cleanse, your soul, spirit, and body will be operating on a new frequency — that you’ll be assimilating the living vibration and higher frequency of each piece of fruit and vegetable you eat.

I was holding that goal in my heart — to be a better, higher, more evolved version of me.

But today at Costco — forget the higher frequency, forget the more evolved version of me.

Just give me that *%#@! sandwich!

What is happening to me?

I can’t give in to such base cravings.

NO!

I have to stand for more than that!

I have to hold on, be brave, be strong…

…and walk past the pastrami sandwich booth.

(Deep breath. Focus. Walk on.)

Walking on when the scent of pastrami on fresh baked bread was in my nostrils and the sandwich was within arm’s reach was really hard.

I felt deprived.

And defeated… especially to have to admit to craving sandwiches when I never even liked them in the first place.

And worse, I couldn’t stop thinking about it all the way home. I normally don’t even like pastrami and never eat it. Its too salty, full of nitrites, and has always been completely indigestible to me.

But watching the cheerful woman with the red-trimmed apron run her knife so deftly through the meat producing such perfect, scintillating slices… seeing the juices… seeing people elbow their way to the booth to get a sample… watching them nod their heads approvingly while saying, “Mmmm, its good,” …and seeing that pastrami looking so tender, so juicy, and so succulent — my taste buds got activated and I desperately wanted some.

But I kept walking.

Once home, I made my salad. After eating it, I felt better. At least not hungry anymore.

I decided that maybe a week or two after we’ve completed the cleanse, we can go back and have a small sample or two. At least when I feel I can digest over-spiced meat again.

» CONTINUE: Day 20 on the Medical Medium Protocol — The Thing About Thyme Oil