Juice Fast, Day 4

Yesterday was hard. Not physically - physically I felt great and even completed a workout! From my research, I didn't expect to start feeling really good until around Day 4 or 5 at the earliest, but by Day 2 I was already feeling better. But mentally this is really tough. In the 6 weeks preceding my juice cleanse, I had worked pretty hard on diet and exercise. I was working out 4+ times a week and had eliminated foods that are really bad for you (fast food, most processed food) and really cut back on foods that are fairly bad for you (organic processed foods, non-organic products, dairy, red meat). I wasn't really missing any of the foods I had cut out or limited, but now that seems to be all I can think about! I had planned to start back into eating with whole foods and a plant-based diet. While I know in my head that is still what I will do, the rest of me is screaming for a cheeseburger, a bowl of spaghetti with garlic bread, or a chicken pot pie.

I've never felt the battle between the flesh and the spirit, as it pertains to food, as strongly I am right now. One side of me is convincing myself that as long as I don't go overboard and continue working out then I can eat some of those things. That part of me is clinging to things like 'focusing on every single ingredient and analyzing every single thing I put in my mouth is stressful and stress is counterproductive' or 'eating and food are meant to be enjoyed and not enjoying them is stressful and stress is counterproductive' or worst of all, 'who cares if I'm a little heavier than I want to be?'

Then the other side of me pipes in and reminds me that I've already lost a total of 15 pounds and 2 dress sizes in the past 6 weeks - 7 pounds and 1 dress size of that being from the last 3 days of this juice cleanse alone. It points out that I can see visible changes in my problem areas. It reminds me that I'm finally fitting into clothes that I've wanted to wear for far too long now (I'm currently wearing a shirt that my hubby bought me for Christmas in 2011 but hasn't fit until today). It reminds me that my health on the inside is just as or more important than my shape on the outside and that I don't want to ruin all of the good progress I've made.

This battle is fierce y'all. Way harder than not eating. Unless I'm seeing food on the TV or smelling what my hubby is cooking, I haven't even noticed that it's been almost 4 days since I've eaten anything. It's surprising how satisfied and fulfilled I feel on the juice alone. This fast has become almost entirely about retraining my thoughts. Right now I know I have to keep going with it until my mind and my body can get on the same page or find a compromise.

Visualization, Affirmation, and Hibernation

In the documentary Hungry for Change, Jon Gabriel and Dr. Christiane Northrup both talk about an aspect of weight loss that is new, or at least new to me. This is a really good film that I think everyone should watch so I won't rehash it all here, but I do want to share the two things that impacted me the most.

First, Dr. Northrup talks about affirmation. She advises her patients to stand in front of the mirror every morning and every evening and say 'I love you. I accept you. Unconditionally. Right now.' After 30 days, you'll have begun to change the way you think. Similar to how you begin to believe a lie if you say it enough, if you affirm yourself enough you'll begin to believe what you're telling yourself. This goes along with the visualization that Jon Gabriel talks about. He too says it's important to accept yourself the way you are now (through affirmation) and then to visualize the changes you'd like to make. He points out that our bodies are built to store fat in response to stress as a defense mechanism. Our bodies think that a crisis is coming when we are stressed and so it stores fat to help us when the crisis hits. Therefore, unless you deal with the underlying stress, no matter what you do you won't be able to experience fat loss. Through affirmation and visualization you can help deal with the stress.

I think there is a lot of merit to the mental side of weight loss. I think our mental health and our physical health are a lot more connected than it seems; for the most part we look at them as two separate things but I think God made them to work together and break together. So I decided to try affirmation and visualization. I'll be honest, I feel pretty silly standing in front of the mirror telling myself that I accept myself and love myself just the way I am and then visualizing the fat molecules breaking down and being used by my body in this time of fast. But even though I feel silly, I feel like it's effective. I've told myself a lie enough to make myself actually believe it before so I know the affirmation will change my subconscious thoughts. And I think visualizing the process of my body actually losing weight is really powerful. Picturing each and every cell in my body squeezing out every unused and unneeded bit of water, picturing each store fat deposit breaking down and being sent to my heart or my legs or wherever needs energy. Picturing it all is really positive and makes it so much more believable for me.

Second, Dr. Northrup says that our bodies are biologically built to store up food for later when food might not be as available, similar to how a bear stores up food in preparation for hibernation  But because we live in a country where there is an abundance of food at our fingertips, our bodies are storing up for later but later never comes. In Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, Joe Cross mentions at one point that he's a little hungry but reminds himself he already ate. As he shakes his belly, he says that it's time for later. I don't know about you, but I have enough stored and am ready for later. It's time for me to hibernate and let my body live off its fat deposits for a little while. Juicing allows me to get the nutrients I need while forcing my body to get its energy from where it was stored for later use - my fat cells!

Juice Fast, Day 2

 It's 8pm on Day 2 and so far today has been better than yesterday. I don't have much of a headache at all and my energy level has been about the same as yesterday. My aches are a little more noticeable - my muscles feel tired - but not bad. No nausea yet, but we'll see what happens closer to bedtime. I am a little bit more irritable today so that's not ideal...

I've had a harder time with the juice today. Man, this would be soooo much easier if I liked this juice! Last night, as I was doing more research, I was reading Drew Canole's Alpha Reset which is part of his Juice Up Your Life program. Usually I wouldn't go for a product/service like this because it seems like just another thing to spend your money on that you don't really need. While I kind of think that about this too, Drew Canole is a friend of my sister-in-law's so I decided to give it a try. (NOTE: The Alpha Reset is free.) The Alpha Reset is a 5-day program in which he prescribes only water and juice for days 1-3. The best part for me is that he says not to force yourself to drink the juice. Drink lots of water and when you feel like you need it, drink the juice. That was music to my ears today. I'm still working on my first juice of the day (it made 32 ounces) but I'm feeling ok. When I feel some hunger pains, I drink some more. I started chasing it with lots of water and that helps some. The thing with the juice is that when it hits your tongue it's the wonderful sweetness from the fruit; but as soon as you swallow it leaves an aftertaste of vegetable, especially celery. Since I don't like celery, that sucks. Chasing it with water has helped but removing the pressure of having 4-6 juices a day has helped a lot too. I hope that in the next few days, my taste buds will be reset and the juice will start to taste a lot better. I've read that after the reboot, the simplest fruit or vegetable seems so much more appetizing than it did before the fast so I'm banking on that!

I've battled a lot of mental hunger today. I've really been craving food, and not even bad food! I'm not hungry for Dorito's or Oreos - I just want a banana or some grilled chicken. My hubby was eating a bowl of brown rice and it looked like a feast! He made fajitas with chicken and red pepper, greek yogurt and wheat tortillas for dinner and it looked and smelled divine! I look forward to eating that on the other side! Thankfully I had determined to see this through before I ever started so I'm not tempted to quit, but I am really missing real food. I'm trying to use this time to figure out what kinds of things I'm going to eat when it's over but it's hard to look at delicious recipes that I know are healthy and not feel hungry!

I have a few things helping me get through it though. First, I lost 4 pounds on Day 1!! As of now on Day 2, I haven't lost any more, but if you know me you know I don't put too much stock in the number on the scale. At points in my life I've done away with the scale entirely. Right now I recognize that it's just a number and whether it's up or down, it's motivating for me at the moment. So after almost 48 hours without eating any food, I'm down 4 pounds! Second, I'm determined to show myself that it can be done and inspire other people to give it a try. I truly believe the effects of a juice fast can be so drastic that it convinces other people to get onboard. There are people in my life who want to lose weight, get healthy, get off long-term medicine, etc. and I want to show them all that it's possible. Third, I've been reading Candace Cameron Bure's book Reshaping It All: Motivation for Physical and Spiritual Fitness. This book has been such great motivation for me, especially as I go through this fast. I highly recommend this book for anyone trying to implement a healthy lifestyle. And last, I have dates looming for which I want to look good. I want to be bathing suit ready by our beach trip in early May; I have a gorgeous dress I've never been able to wear (it was given to me) that I'd love to fit into for my anniversary at the end of May; I really want to get a tattoo for my birthday in June but I don't want to do it until the canvas for it is flatter. These are all approaching in less than 3 months so every day is important. I know if I stick with it, I can see a major change. I just have to get past the mental block!

Juice Fast, Day 1

This past weekend I went to the local farmers market and Whole Foods and loaded up on fresh, organic, and local (as much as possible) produce. And when I say loaded up, I mean loaded up! I came home with 22 apples, 16 pears, 4 heads of romaine lettuce, 25 carrots, 2 heads of cabbage, 3 extra large containers of spinach, 10 cucumbers, 5 bunches of kale, 2 bunches of chard, 10 lemons, 5 oranges, 2 nectarines, a lime, ginger, a fennel bulb, a thing of celery, a bunch of parsley, a pineapple, an orange pepper, 2 green peppers, beets and grapes. This was not cheap and was only meant to be for the first 5 days! I came home and separated it all into bags so that all I had to do was pull out a bag, wash it, cut it if needed and pop it in the juicer. By Sunday night, I was so excited to get started.

I woke up Monday morning and started on my first juice - a cold pressed juice I brought home from the farmers market. That one was pretty easy because it tasted fairly good. A few hours later, I made my first juice. The process was actually pretty simple and before long I was drinking my first homemade green drink! Yay, right? No. In all my research on it, the people seemed to love juice so I didn't even think about not liking it. Considering that I wouldn't eat 3/4 of the produce I brought home, I'm not sure why I thought I would love the juice that came from it, but I didn't. It wasn't awful - I wasn't forcing it down - but it wasn't tasty either. I got through that one and decided to try a different concoction thinking I just didn't have the right combination. The same thing happened with the second one though. I made it through 2-1/2 homemade juices, so 3-1/2 juices total by the end of the day. I had planned for 4-6 per day, 16oz. each. The good news is my 5-day-supply will last me a lot longer if I go at this rate. The bad news is I'm not getting all the nutrients I'm supposed to be getting.

As for how I felt... by mid afternoon I had a small headache which grew into a major headache by bedtime. I didn't have a ton of energy but I wasn't super sluggish either. I had no problem going about my day as usual, but wasn't really up for a workout. (Some of my research said that light workouts during a juice fast were ok as long as you didn't push yourself too hard; other research indicated that you shouldn't work out at all during the juice fast. I decided to wait until I got past the bad part before I added working out.) I also realized I wasn't physically hungry. My stomach didn't growl once all day. I didn't have any hunger pangs. But by bedtime I was feeling pretty nauseous. It had been a full 24 hours since I had eaten anything and since that had never happened before, I guess my body didn't like it. I finally fell asleep and thankfully I slept like a baby! I fell into a deep sleep and slept wonderfully all night long. I woke up this morning (Day 2) feeling refreshed and ready for the day. This is noticeable because usually I hit the snooze 5 times looking for just a little more sleep. My headache and the nausea were also gone when I woke up.

I did a lot of research before I started my juice fast, so I feel I came into it knowing what to expect. I knew the first few days to week were not going to be fun. It is literally detoxing your body so I expected side effects just as a drug addict would experience side effects after going into rehab. I was expecting the headache and the lack of energy; the nausea was unexpected but with a quick Google search I learned it wasn't atypical. I've also felt a little achy which was also expected.

At the end of the day, I'd call Day 1 a success.

And Then Came Juice...

I mentioned that I was about to start something really big in my last post. Well it all started yesterday and I'm excited to tell you about it. It all comes down to juice.

Over the past year or so I've really started to dislike most things having to due with specific 'nutrients'. Michael Pollan says it well in his book, In Defense of Food. I recommend that you read it and his other books, but to summarize part of it, he explains how we went from talking about food to talking about nutrients. Nutrients, he says, are invisible components of food that have no industry backing them and therefore are the easy scapegoat for what's wrong with our diet. The government can't say 'eat less red meat' because Big Beef won't allow it, but they can say 'eat less saturated fat'. That's a very subtle switch, but so incredibly powerful. What is saturated fat? What does it look like? Where can you find it? How can you avoid it? These questions aren't easily answered and that makes it really easy to turn certain components of food into the bad guy.

First, I think God created our foods so that all of the components work in harmony together, and removing one aspect of the food messes up all the other aspects. But setting that aside, the Nutrition Industry can't seem to make up their mind on which nutrients are good and which are bad. (Michael Pollan, among other people, also points out that it is financially profitable for the Nutrition Industry to change their mind a lot and breed confusion.) For a long time, fat was the enemy. Now we know that fat is an important part of a healthy diet and that the creation of low-fat foods have actually made us fatter and more unhealthy. When the calorie count of sugar became a concern, calorie-free artificial sweeteners became popular; these sweeteners cause a host of problems. Picking on one particular component has only made the problem worse. I started to make this connection when I compared the ingredients list on a tub of regular sour cream with a tub of lite sour cream. I recognized all of the ingredients in the regular version, but I can't say the same about the lite version. I began to realize that Big Food created chemicals in a lab that would make the food taste the same as it should but for less calories, less fat, less sugar, less this, less that. That's when I realized that eating the real thing was better than eating the fake thing which was made to taste like the real thing and the way to make it healthier was to simply eat less of the real thing.

So getting back to how I found juice. I stopped considering diets that focused on invisible components (low calorie, low fat, high fiber, etc.) and started looking at things that talk about food. But there are still so many different options! Paleo, vegan, dairy-free, vegetarian, low grain, high carb, etc. And looking into each of them, they all have their advocates which swear by it because of the weight they lost and how good they feel, even when the diets are in complete contradiction to one another. Someone on a no carb diet can claim the same thing as someone on a high carb diet. I'm starting to realize that it is highly subjective and what works for one person won't work for everyone. This makes sense because everyone's body is unique, so everyone's healthy eating plan should also be unique.

So I guess I'm building my own healthy eating plan based on what works best for my body. But where to begin? I realized that I do not know of a single plan out there that doesn't allow fruits or vegetables. Quite the opposite, more fruits and vegetables are strongly encouraged. So I decided to start there. Vegans and vegetarians have proven that you can get all the nutrients you need without consuming animal products (watch the Forks Over Knives documentary for some science behind that) and low-carb diets everywhere have proven that you don't need grain so I knew I'd be getting all the nutrition my body needed from just fruits and vegetables.

In the course of planning a switch to vegetables and fruits (veggies first because they're more important), I stumbled upon JuiceLand here in Austin which led me to the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead which led me to the world of juice fasting. I decided that a juice fast would be the best way to reboot my system, to use Joe Cross's term, and start over. Once I've gone through the detoxification process and have my body cleaned out, I'll be ready to see how dairy, grain and meat each effect me. I will also have reset my taste buds and hunger triggers, enabling me to implement healthier eating practices.

Yesterday was the first day of my fast. I'll write more about that and juicing in general later. For now, this is long enough!

I'm Back!!

Hello all, it's been a while since I've seen you! Last February I learned I was pregnant and it wasn't long before queasiness, fatigue, and cravings pushed my nutritional good intentions to the back burner. I know that is the worst possible time to let health and nutrition slip - when I'm completely in charge of another person's physical well-being - but as any woman who has ever been pregnant will tell you, sometimes you just can't help yourself. I did not let my research go by the wayside though and now I'm ready to pick back up!

To fill you in on what's been happening with me:

• In November I gave birth to an adorable little boy! :)
• In January I was accepted to a graduate nursing program where I will be studying maternity nursing. The program starts in June so don't expect frequent posts after that time!
• A few of my Goals for the New Year (I prefer this to saying 'New Year's Resolutions') included:
• No fast food, including Subway and ordering pizza, for 2013 - the more I learn about fast food, the easier this one is to keep. It's been almost 4 months since I've had any fast food of any kind and I don't miss it at all. 
• No buying new clothes for 2013 - this has been rather easy to keep. I hope to be 2-3 sizes smaller by the end of the year so I don't see much point in buying new clothes. Plus I have a stash of 'for when I lose weight' clothes hidden in the back of the closet that are slowly beginning to reemerge so that's kind of like shopping. 
• Start practicing yoga - this one was tough at first. I've never been a huge fan of yoga because it's always seemed too slow-paced. Through a friend I discovered www.blackswanyoga.tv. Black Swan Yoga is a yoga studio from right here in Austin but they have their instructors upload videos to the website so you can do them from home. This is ideal for me because 1) I don't have time or a babysitter to go to the studio, and 2) I feel self conscious when I do any kind of workout but especially when I do yoga so I prefer to workout alone. For $8 a month I subscribed to one instructor's channel and slowly began practicing yoga. While it's still not my favorite form of workout, I am beginning to appreciate its slower pace. I look forward to increased flexibility and core strength and decreased back pain (among other things) that should result from regular practice.  
• Run a half marathon - After not running for most of my pregnancy, I had to start over with my Couch to 5K app. I'm now 6 weeks through the 8 week program and am almost able to run a 5K without stopping. My first 5K adventure race, the Diva Dash, is in April. My plan is to work my way up and run a half marathon sometime this fall. 

So that's where I've been the past year. When you last heard from me I had taken a more educational approach to the blog. This time around I hope to take a more journalistic approach. I'm going to be trying a few different things, starting with something pretty big, and will be sharing about my experiences here. I hope you'll stick around!

The Pantry

The more I read, the more I think. The more I think, the less I know. The less I know, the more I read. This has been the cycle. Read, think, ponder, question, read.... Slowly, out of the background, a thought has been forming, peeking through the questions and the research, until it finally came to a head and just kind of hit me today.

Yet another friend of mine posted something on facebook about a new low-calorie treat and how excited she was about it, but it's filled with naughty ingredients. I realized how focused our society is on calories. I know I've alluded to this many times, especially in my most noted Weight Watchers article (see this also), but today it just really struck me - when did it become all about calories? I'm using calories here, but for the point of the argument I also mean carbs, fat, protein, fiber, etc. The term calorie was first defined in 1824 by Nicolas Clement, so for 5,800+ years, people got along just fine without worrying about how many calories they were consuming. The obesity epidemic didn't start to become a big issue until the mid 20th century, so clearly the lack of importance on caloric intake didn't cause problems with being overweight. Shouldn't we follow history's lead here?

Our society today spends so much time focusing on how many calories were consuming, how many grams of fat and which kinds of fat, how many grams of protein, how many grams of fiber vs. how many carbohydrates, and the list goes on and on, and yet we're the most obese culture in the world (and I might go so far as to say here: we're the most obese culture in the history of the world). Is this system really working for us? If we do manage to figure out the magic formula for all the right proportions, how much of our time will be spent looking at the side of the box, adding and subtracting, tallying up our totals for this and that? To be honest, that sounds time consuming, mind-numbingly boring, and rather stressful.

The main thing our society overlooks is ingredients. There has been some push toward this mindset recently, which has led to an increase in organic and all-natural products on the shelves. But for the most part, our society still completely misses the point. We have completely over-complicated something I believe was originally intended to be quite simple.

The Creator of the Universe was extremely intentional in every last detail that went in to His Creation. With that in mind, it is clear that He had a specific plan for nutrition. That is why He filled the earth with healthy foods for His people to eat. God has stocked our pantry full of the foods that He knows are best for our bodies. And if anyone knows what's best for our bodies, it's the One who created them and understands their anatomy and physiology better than anyone.

What then did He put in The Pantry? He supplied us with fruits and veggies, grains, nuts and seeds, and animals which supply both meat and dairy. Foods that have been created in a laboratory or genetically modified are not supplied by God, they are man's attempt to do something better then God. That idea will never work. We cannot be better than God. It's no wonder that the foods man created have made man fat and unhealthy.

I've worked through a lot of questions I've had about how this concept works. For instance, marijuana comes from a plant. Is that part of The Pantry? Honestly, I think that might be part of The Medicine Cabinet. Or how about how much processing did God intend for us to do to His supply? To this, I've looked to history. I'm not sure what the diet was like thousands of years ago, but I do know that they didn't go to the supermarket to buy their food. And the first establishment that resembles our modern day restaurant didn't show up until the 11th century, so for 5,000+ years, people got along without supermarkets or restaurants. This tells me if it's something that you can conceivably garner from The Pantry and process yourself, then it's probably ok. For example, butter is simply milk that has been churned for quite a while. I have made butter before. I could conceivably go milk a cow or a goat, churn the milk, and eventually get butter. Obviously, we don't live in a society where we can spend all day making butter, but if I'm going to look at the store for it, I'm going to find the one that's only ingredient is milk. Any other ingredients in butter (save for salt which isn't necessary and salted butter should be avoided) are man-made and not from The Pantry.

So that's it, that's my philosophy that has been burgeoning for quite some time now. Whole, fresh foods from The Pantry God stocked for us, buying processed only when necessary and only for something in which you could conceivably make yourself if you had the time. No need to worry about the biochemistry of the foods found in The Pantry - the calories, fat, protein, etc. - because the Creator supplied foods that are good for our bodies (I will not say they are foods that will automatically make us skinny, because no where in the Bible do I find a call to be skinny, only a call to take care of our bodies as they are a temple for the Lord). And He gave us a body that, when we get in tune with it, tells us when to eat and when to stop. I have completely stopped looking at the Nutritional Information table and only look at the ingredient list. That tells me all I need to know.