Wednesday, October 31, 2012

If you write it they will read: Day Three, But who's Counting?

If you write it they will read: Day Three, But who's Counting?: I have to admit, yesterday was hard.  I was out with appointments and it seemed that food is everywhere in this country.  Every corner, ever...

Day Three, But who's Counting?

I have to admit, yesterday was hard.  I was out with appointments and it seemed that food is everywhere in this country.  Every corner, every meeting, everywhere.  I felt like one of those cartoons where you have the devil you on one shoulder and the angel you on the other both fighting to get me to do what they want me to do.  One voice saying, just one bite won't hurt, no one has to know, it will just be our secret.  Then the other voice saying, but people are following your blog, what will you tell them?  It's only 10 days, you can do anything for 10 days.  And so on and so on.   But at the end of the day, I listen to the "angel" side and stay true to the juice fast.   So this morning I am happy to say that I am down another 2 pounds.  That makes it five pounds since I started the fast. 
I hope that me doing this juice fast will motivate, inspire you or someone to maybe look at their own lives and maybe make a change to their current eating habits. 
Feeling Strong!!!! Feeling Motivated!!!! Feeling Healthy!!!!

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

If you write it they will read: Day 2

If you write it they will read: Day 2: So finished the first day of the juice fast.  It wasn't as hard as I had thought, although I did get hungry in the afternoon before dinner. ...

Day 2

So finished the first day of the juice fast.  It wasn't as hard as I had thought, although I did get hungry in the afternoon before dinner.  Woke up yesterday and exercised, then had my juice for breakfast.
I was going to be out at lunch time, so I made a juice in the morning, put it in a to go container and put it in the freezer until I was ready to leave.  I sipped on that and drank water while I was out, I had two meetings, and was able to drink my juice during the meetings. 
It was until about 3 or 4 yesterday afternoon that I was beginning to feel hungry, I was also tired yesterday afternoon and took about a half an hour nap.   After my dinner juice, I was fine for the rest of the night.
This morning, I noticed that during my exercise time, I was a little tired and didn't feel like I worked out to the level that I am used to.  But I believe that is just my body adjusting.
I like the juices and experiment with different tastes.
I am happy to say that I was three pounds lighter this morning, so that is exciting.
Feel good today, getting ready to go make my lunchtime juice.  Also drinking lots of water to help with the hunger.
I am being supervised by a doctor and did a urine test this morning to see how my levels were.  It will be interesting to see not only the changes in my body as I lose the weight, but to see the difference in my blood and urine tests.
Thanks for following me on my journey.  More to come tomorrow.

Monday, October 29, 2012

10 days of Change

Today I started on a 10 day juice fast, yes that's right 10 days of nothing but juicing.  Now why would someone want to go on a 10 day juice fast, you might ask.  Well there are a couple of reasons that I chose to start this fast.  The first was watching the movie "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead", if you have not watched that movie, I highly recommend the movie.  In the movie Joe Cross goes on a 60 days juice fast, to not only lose weight but because he had a chronic illness and was on several medications that were making him sicker. 

Now, fortunately, I am not taking any medications and although I am fairly healthy I know that I need to lose weight and if I was to continue on the path that I was on, it was very likely that I would need to be on medications at some point in the near future.

So what did I do, where did I start?  I started by making slow changes to my diet and lifestyle.  Now I used to be a big or should I say BIG diet soda drinker.  I would stop every morning on the way to work to get the extra large soda at the nearest fast food restaurant I could find, and of course since I was using my Debit card anyways, I might as well get me one of the breakfast sandwiches and hash browns, I mean who wants to use there debit card for just a dollar soda?  Now you would think that would be my only soda a day, but no, come lunch time I was ready for another diet soda to go with my lunch.  So the first thing I did was to cut diet sodas out of my diet.  That was a big first step for me.

The next thing I did after watching the movie "Forks over Knives" I cut meat out of my life.  No red meat, no chicken, no fish.  This was actually not too difficult for me, I learn to eat more beans and drank a protein shake every morning to give me the protein that I needed.  Now at this point I only cut out meat, I was not by any shape of the imagination a "vegetarian"  which I presume to mean that I filled up on vegetables.  No, I just cut the meat, my diet was more breads, chips, beans, some fruit in my protein shake, cheese and dairy products.   Not healthy but part of my journey.

Now after more movies stressing the importance of vegetables, I started grilling the vegetables and found that I really liked vegetables in this form and I got rid of the dairy products.  No more milk, cheese, sour cream etc.  Now I'm was eating more veggies, and learning to actually like them.
Then I bought a juicer, which sat on the kitchen counter for weeks because I was too afraid to use it.  I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of juicing and how you could possibly get juice out of spinach for example.  I was also afraid of messing up and making something that I hated and then wasting all of those vegetables.  But eventually I got up the nerve to go for it, and to my surprise the juice tasted good.  So now I can actually call myself not only a vegetarian but I vegan.

So here we are today and start of my 10 day juice fast, so why?  Because although I have lost weight, I have found myself at a plateau so I am going on this 10 day juice fast to get over the plateau and to take my body through new changes.

So I hope you will follow my journey as I share the adventures on this 10 day juice fast.