The other day Diana from My Marble Rye sent me a tweet:

I responded and explained that I’m not comfortable sharing my typical day of eating because I am so limited by my GI illness that I don’t eat in a way that others should emulate. Sometimes I get incredible emails from readers telling me I inspired them to work out, to join Core Fusion, to start running. The last thing I want to do is inspire people to eat the way I do.   I can’t eat fruits or vegetables for the most part, as well as most whole grains.

I eat to try and keep my pain and symptoms at bay. I don’t eat to live the healthiest possible life. I don’t want anyone to choose to eat the way I do. For me, it is not a choice.

I couldn’t agree more. And I am happy to tell anyone and everyone who will listen to me to eat real food!  Lots of vegetables, fruit, sprouted grains/whole grains, nuts. To avoid meat and dairy when possible, but when you do eat it, try your best to make sure the animal was not part of a factory farm, was not given antibiotics and growth hormones, was not treated horribly. If an ingredient list has words on it you can’t understand, don’t eat it. Stick to actual, real food (that your body recognizes as FOOD) and you will have more energy,  feel satisfied longer, have more energy. Then, along with your workouts that include regular strength training, you can get that “toned bod” Diana mentioned.

I do the best I can given the fact that I can’t eat the foods considered healthiest.

And even when I avoid everything I think bothers me, I still don’t always feel well. Right now I am starting another 3-Day Cooler Cleanse because I have spent the last four days in pain and I have no idea why. On Sunday night I strongly considered going to the ER because I was in the worst pain of my life; the only other time I remember hurting so badly was the last time I went to the ER. I didn’t go for a number of reasons, the biggest being that I know the source of the pain — trapped air in one particular spot right in between where the two sides of my ribcage meet. Even if the ER doctors believed me (which is doubtful) there is nothing they could do about this other than give me painkillers, muscle relaxers or anti-spasmodics. I have all those things at home. And considering I couldn’t even sit up or roll over in my own bed, the thought of sitting for who knows how long in a waiting room, filling out forms, was more than I could bear.

I stuck it out and on Monday felt well enough to go to work, although I was still hurting. I don’t do juice fasts often because not eating is hard. I love food and I always wonder, during the cleanse, why I am doing this. But I keep thinking back to that one juice fast in December, 2009. After that I felt great for 10 months. And I think about how much it hurts right now to eat anything; that same spot spasms after each bite. And I think about the fact that if I can’t eat, I’m not getting nutrients. These next three days will provide me with much-needed nourishment.

I haven’t exercised since Saturday, when I tried to run through the pain (bad idea). I canceled Refine on Sunday (not that it was much of a choice, I could barely stand) and after being up nauseous during the night last night, I purposely slept through my run today. Marathon training will still be here next week. I hope. Right now I am focusing on getting better. I don’t know why my stomach decided to do this now. I haven’t been sick like this in a couple of years. I do think that after this Cooler Cleanse, as I clean up my eating as best I can, I will be much better. And if I am not, it might be time to try to find a  doctor again, one who actually understands. A very difficult undertaking.

So if any of you were also curious about what I eat to get a sense of my whole “healthy lifestyle,” I hope you can understand why I am unable to do that. Maybe one day. But not now.

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Check out my latest NBC New York GO Healthy NY posts:

Dori’s Quest: Indoor Cycling at SoulCycle 

Dori’s Quest: TRX Suspension

It makes sense that December is the time for giveaways! Before we get to today’s, I will announce the winner of the Core Fusion Bootcamp DVD. I used the Random Integer Generator and I am very happy to announce that Diana from My Marble Rye is the winner! Diana said: My goal is to run a 10k or a half!!! I hope I can do it!!!

OF COURSE you can do it! Congratulations Diana! Email me your address and I will have that DVD sent right to you.

When I did a Cooler Cleanse review and giveaway over the summer, it went really well. I loved my three-day juice cleanse and so many readers wanted to win a free one! So when my friends at Cooler Cleanse reached out to me and told me about their new program. Healing Cooler, I jumped at the chance to help again. The concept and the motivation behind Healing Cooler is dramatically different from that of other juicing programs.

The main difference — and what I especially like about Healing Cooler — is that it is NOT marketed as a cleanse or a fast. Upon visiting the website, you see a montage of pictures with phrases such as “Send help for a speedier recovery.” And their slogan is “A healing gift from the heart.”

What does this mean? It means that Healing Cooler promotes juicing as a way to get vital nutrients to assist with healing.

On the What’s Inside Our Juices page, they clearly state the following: Our pressing method means that Healing Cooler juices stay potent for three days when kept chilled. Nowhere on the website do they encourage you to drink all six juices in a day or substitue juices for a day’s worth of food. And while you certainly could (and it is arguably most effective), that is not the main point of this gift. The Healing Cooler is a way to give someone vital nutrients to help them heal, whether it be over the course of one day or three. No matter how you drink your Healing Cooler juices, you will get the amazing benefits of juice!

From their site:

Give a gift of health and happiness to someone you care about. Opening a Healing Cooler, the recipient will find six fresh pressed juices bursting with flavor and nutrition. They’re potent aids for refreshing and reviving the body when it’s down, or boosting its daily defenses.

For centuries, people have used premium fruit and vegetable juices to maintain and build good health. Today’s extremely efficient juicing methods extract the maximum amount of goodness from ripe, organic produce. That makes pressed juice one of nature’s most powerful — and delicious — pick-me-ups.

Whether you send a Healing Cooler to lend your support or just to say “Thank you,” there’s no more thoughtful way to show you care about someone’s well-being than to give a cooler filled with fresh pressed juices.

Designed as a gift, there are four options of juice packages to give:

• Immunity
• Strength
• Recovery
• Create Your Own

The Immunity, Strength and Recovery are each designed with specific juices meant to aid in these functions. On each page you can read more about the juices included and why they were chosen. It is clear that a great deal of thought and research was put into designing these programs. The idea is that you give a gift to someone in your life who needs a boost in one of these areas. For $60, it is a very reasonable gift and also very thoughtful — especially during these cold winter months.

You might be wondering how the juices actually taste. I know the idea of vegetable juice might not sound so appealing, no matter how many times I swear they taste better than you think. Healing Cooler sent me a free pack of six juices to try as part of this promotion. I opted for Create Your Own because I wanted to try juices from Immunity, Strength AND Recovery.

First, let me say this is an awesome gift to receive. It gets delivered in an insulated box that acts like a cooler. I loved the ice pack!

The Healing Cooler also includes an optional handwritten card:

I got my own sweet handwritten card from Healing Cooler! I loved it. And how cute is that box.

My thoughts on the juices I tried:

Green Leaf (Immunity, Strength, Recovery) - DELICIOUS. You might think green juice sounds yucky, but I promise you will find this tasty. If you’ve done Blueprint Cleanse, there is a great chance you think green juice is gross. This tastes NOTHING like their green juice — I SWEAR. You can hold me to this. A delicious, super healthy blend of vegetables, lightly sweetened with pear.

Kale & Co (Immunity, Strength) – LOVED. I was nervous about this one because it contains apple, which I thought might be the reason I didn’t like Blueprint’s green juice. But this is totally different! The apple is so subtle and provides just the right amount of sweetness. The watercress really added to this one. I would drink this every day if I could!

Pineapple Kiwi (Immunity) – Very good, tasted much more of pineapple than kiwi.

Pear Mint (Immunity) - I didn’t love this one the way I expected to, but it was a good juice.

Ten Veggie (Strength) – Lots and lots of vegetables in one! Crazy! I wasn’t sure if I would like this because I tend not to like juices that contain tomato, but I really enjoyed this one. The beet and carrot are strong flavors that bring down the tomato, so it is just a really delicious mix.

Red Veggie (Strength) - At first sip I thought “holy tomato!” I didn’t think I liked it, but I am happy to report that as I continued drinking it I got used to this one and ended up really liking it. I wouldn’t choose it over the others greens or the Ten Veggie, but it was much better than I expected it to be considering it contained tomato juice.

I really enjoyed my juices. I planned to drink them all in one day but ended up splitting it up over three. To each her own! That is the beauty of the Healing Cooler.

Hopefully you all think this is as awesome as I do because I’ve got FIVE of these babies to give away.

Giveaway rules:

You can get up to two entries.

(1) Entry one consists of TWO parts:

• Post on the Healing Cooler Facebook wall to say which cooler you would like in January, and why.
• Leave the same comment here so we can confirm your entry. Half entries will not be counted.

(2) Once you’ve done that, get a second entry by tweeting the following (you all know how much I love the Twitters):

Win a free @healingcooler of 6 healing juices from @dysterious – details here! http://dorishinyblog.com/?p=5096

I will work with the Healing Cooler team to select the best responses. You will be able to select a shipping day after the holiday season is over, since FedEx is a bit overwhelmed with holiday stuffs.

I will announce the FIVE WINNERS on Tuesday, December 28. Good luck!

This post is kind of all over the place because I have so many unrelated topics to discuss. I will try to keep this as clean and organized as possible. Starting . . . now.

Unrelated topic #1:
I plan to review something for you all soon that I am very excited about!  It comes from the same place that sells some pretty cool LED lighting sets, which I hope to buy if I am ever able to move into my own apartment. However, the product I will review is more relevant to my healthy lifestyle. Hint: Rachel loves it and it is small and you put food in it.

Moving on.

Unrelated topic #2:
I was very lucky to have the chance to visit the Boston location of my favorite place in the world: exhale spa. I love visiting familiar things in unfamiliar places — everything is kind of the same, but also different. It is like seeing your 4th grade teacher at the mall.

I got excited just seeing the front door!

I got to take a class there! Core Fusion Cardio fit into my schedule and it was SO weird taking a class I know well in a place I don’t. Liz from @exhaleboston was so great and showed me around and got me all set up. My teacher Andrea was awesome! She was upbeat, motivating and so much fun. I definitely recommend everyone in Boston take her class. And it turns out Andrea recognized me from my Core Fusion Challenge, she just didn’t realize it was me until after and she commented on my blog later to tell me!

I was thinking about where I might one day want to live, and I realized I don’t know if I could move to a place that doesn’t have an exhale spa and Core Fusion classes. That is a little sick, right? Hopefully exhale continues expanding. Some places I would especially like to see them pop up are Seattle and London. Hint, hint, Fred.

Exhale Boston is on two floors there, which is really great for keeping the Core Fusion room separate from the spa and yoga areas. And so I got into the elevator.

Uhh . . . I just wanted to go up.

What does this mean??! Which is up and which is down?? I stared, confused, until someone in the elevator with me who had been there before pressed the right button.

It did give the meaning of each in small letters underneath, but I was in too much shock to register that.

Speaking of Core Fusion, I wanted to hold a little poll.

NYC readers: If you were able to try ONE free class at exhale, would you want to try Core Fusion or Core Fusion Cardio? Both are absolutely amazing and challenging and rewarding. Please comment below, tweet me or email and let me know.

I might have something up my sleeve. Except it is summer and my arms look awesome from Core Fusion, so I am not wearing sleeves.

Unrelated topic #3:

Cooler Cleanse giveaway winner!

Thank you thank you thank you to all of you who commented here and wrote on Cooler Cleanse’s Facebook wall . We took all your votes into consideration, weighing extra heavily those who entered by comment and wall post. It was a very tough decision but in the end we agreed there was one clear winner:

Congratulations Elizabeth KS!

Elizabeth KS said:

Where to start?! I have been really curious about the Cooler Cleanse for some time, after hearing about the company from several friends (and okay, I’ll admit it, reading about it in magazines as a celeb favorite!) I’ve been intrigued, dying for more info… and yes, hoping to try it very soon myself. I’m really excited to see such an in depth, honest and super-validating review! Thank you for all great info and detail – it’s really very helpful to know what I can expect (like, love and not love) before diving in and trying the cleanse. The Cooler Cleanse just sounds like a great option for all folks, both cleanse-veterans and like myself, cleanse-novices (aka it tastes good and is simple to follow – WITHOUT sacrificing the hard core health and nutrition benefits.) Many of the cleanses out there are either intimidating/downright inedible OR on the flip side they are easy to follow & swallow but they don’t provide this same level of cleanse effectiveness and/or nutritional awesomeness. I have personally had a very rough year with my husband losing his job and a host of other issues (sadly as we all know, tough times often lead to bad eating habits and poor health) but I am now looking toward the future and want to kickstart better days with good nutrition and a positive outlook. What better way to re-start my system, body, outlook and life than by Cooler-Cleanse-ing it out for three days!! I would be so sincerely grateful if I were to win this cleanse – I think it might be the (much-deserved) start of a whole new me! PS This late-breaking-news that very soon they will be extending the delivery zone outside of NYC is especially fantastic… we recently relocated to Boston and I can’t tell you excited I am to have a little piece of (healthy, innovative, awesome) New York available here! I was seriously considering making a pal from the old neighborhood drive me the cleanse 3 hours away

We hope you enjoy your cleanse, Elizabeth!

If you didn’t win and you live in NYC, get 10% off your Cooler Cleanse with the discount code ESSENTIALGREEN. This code is valid through July 19 for NYC local delivery only. Read my review of Cooler Cleanse here.

This is probably not the last you will see of Cooler Cleanse on this blog. I hope to give you more chances to try a cleanse because so many of you had such inspiring responses.