mmm peanut butter

I had some organic peanut butter as my first non-juice food, and of course, it was DELICIOUS. I'm going to see if I can stick to that for a few days as I think about what else I want to eat...

Day 10 - w00t!

woohoo! I made it to day 10! I have to say, in the last few days it became harder than the first couple days... I've decided that in the next few days I'm going to introduce solid foods back into my diet. I'm not sure how exactly, I'm kicking around a few ideas, such as fruits, veggies, and almonds, cashews, and peanut butter. I'm going to keep this journal going until day 15, and I'm still going to juice the majority of the days left, even if I do start eating solid foods again. I'll also write about my feelings about the whole diet, and what my plans are moving forward... but for now, goodnight world!

day 10, down 14 pounds since the start

I went next door to the fitness center, and I weighed in at 180 pounds, putting the total weight lost 14 pounds, at day 10 of my juice fast! not too shabby!

drinking in style!

tomorrow's juices

Breakfast -

Purple Power Juice
6 cups Concord grapes
1 Golden Delicious apple
2 (1-inch) pieces of ginger
1/2 cup blackberries

Lunch - 

Chayote/carrot/apple/pear

and

Romaine-Apple-Orange Juice
2 cups romaine hearts
2 green apples
1 orange
2 celery stalks
1/2 cucumber

Day 9

i feel like I'm heading into the home stretch now, i'm more than halfway to my goal, and I'm still fine healthwise. I feel great, i've been waking up with no problem, I've been going strong all day long with little tiredness or any other out-of-the-ordinary feeling. Overall I'm happy with myself and my body, all is good. I can actually see thinning in my face now, which is weird, but also makes me smile thinking about it. I'd say this has been a really positive experience thus far.
However, i'm starting to get hungry again. I'm not sure if it's a physical feeling, or a psychological desire to eat food at this point. It's getting harder to not notice food here and there, when I'm at work and walk into the kitchen, seeing people drinking coffee, or even opening my own fridge. But at this point it's sheer willpower that's getting me through it, somehow...

I had a berry juice for breakfast today, and lunch was a virgin bloody mary recipe that is completely different from the first one i made, and about a thousand times better! Here's what it was...

10 plum (roma) tomatoes
3/4 pineapple
2 stalks of celery (not whole stalks, just the chutes)
1 lemon
1 red bell pepper
hot sauce i had in the fridge - for this I used iguana XXX habenero sauce

This was, no lie, one of the best bloody mary mixes I've ever had. It's not as thick as regular bloody mary mix, but i think it had a better flavor to it that Mrs. T or anything you can buy in the store, it was delicious! I've actually been pretty lucky in the last few days, because I feel like the juice recipes I've been trying have really finally started tasting super good...

i did go grocery shopping today, and i bought enough to last me until Saturday. Here's the list...

2 pineapples
8 green apples
5 pears
1 red pepper
2 bags of carrots
1 bunch kale
2 quarts of strawberries
2 pints blueberries
2 containers blackberries
10 plum tomatoes
1 bag red grapes
1 bag white grapes
3 lemons

Total - $44.07


Current Stats -
weight - 181-182
BP - 136/101

day 8

Ok, here goes a quick post for day 8. Breakfast today was a tasty fruit juice, blackberry-kiwi.



Blackberry-Kiwi Juice
1/4 large pineapple, peeled, cored and cut into cubes
1 cup blackberries
1 kiwifruit
1 pear
30 mint leaves

Followed by another fruity concoction for lunch. 

Apple-Cantaloupe-Honeydew Juice
2 apples
1/2 cantaloupe
1/2 honeydew
6 to 8 kale leaves
6 to 8 Swiss chard leaves

I actually substituted some fresh romaine lettuce instead of chard leaves and kale, mostly because I used my kale up on Saturday and I didn't feel like stopping at the store on my way home from dinner last night. 

Tomorrow I'm going to have to go shopping for a lot of stuff, because I did a good job in the last 2 days of using up a lot of the loose fruits and veggies I had in the fridge. I've decided that I need to increase the veggies again. After last week's beet juice disaster, I really shied away from making the green juice, but I think I have to up the veggies because they have important nutrients I'm not getting... ugh, the green stuff tastes like earth. Luckily green apples help with that!

I'm feeling great, and I got tired for maybe 15 minutes today, but that wasn't as bad as the two days last week. I feel a lot healthier, and I'm happy with the results so far. 

Current Stats

Weight - 183ish

BP - 128/101 (I had some stress in my life today..)

well that sucked.

dinner sucked tonight, but i made it through. The place had bacon-wrapped meatloaf. SERIOUSLY? BACON-WRAPPED MEATLOAF! I was going to get it, bring it home, freeze it, and eat it when I'm doing juicing... but I didn't.
what was weird is that the waitress was fascinated by the juice diet, asked me lots of questions about what it entails, what I can eat, etc. What was even weirder is when the manager came over and asked who was doing the juice fast, and also asked me all sorts of questions. We must have talked for a good 3-5 minutes. It was just really out of the ordinary, but I liked it. I'm hoping people do get interested, maybe even curious enough to give it a try, lose some weight, feel better about your body, yada yada yada.

day 7

so today may very well be the hardest day yet. Why? Because my sister, brother in law, niece & nephew are in town, and we're taking my parents out to dinner. I'm still on my fast, and I'm not going to break it, but I'm still going... so I'll be sitting there drinking my water while everyone else enjoys their meals. Luckily I made a lot of juice today to prepare for this. I have no doubt it will suck a little.

I'm at my parents house right now, and I'm going to hop on the scale in a little bit to get a weigh in. My scale at home isn't digital, so I'm not sure of it's accuracy, but I was 183 pounds this morning. I'm really happy with the results so far, but I keep on expecting a slowdown - I mean, I've got to be out of water weight by now... my mood is good, and my energy levels are high. I feel pretty focused overall, but I don't feel like I've gained any mental acuity from detoxing my body at this point. 

One thing that's throwing me for a loop is my sister's reaction to me. The last time she saw me was only 3 weeks ago at Christmas, but she can't get over the fact that I've lost so much weight, my complexion looks great, and I'm "glowing". In fact, it's getting a little weird. My mom pointed out that my hands aren't shaking as much, which is a normal thing for me - I don't have steady hands at all. 

Here are today's juices...

Carrot Pineapple Orange Juice

1 small orange, including rind, seeded and cut into pieces
1/8 small, ripe pineapple, peeled, cored and cut into pieces
2 carrots, scrubbed clean and cut into pieces
Juice of 1/2 lemon (stirred in at end)

*Adapted from Williams-Sonoma Cookware Series, Juicer Cookbook, by Carol Gelles.

Apple-Cantaloupe-Honeydew Juice

2 apples
1/2 cantaloupe
1/2 honeydew
6 to 8 kale leaves
6 to 8 Swiss chard leaves

*Adapted from Reboot Your Life.™

Spicy Tomato (High Antioxidant Juice)

2 large tomatoes 
1 stalk of celery
1 cucumber
1/2 red bell pepper
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
3-5 grinds of fresh ground black pepper
1-3 shakes of cayenne pepper

down another 3 pounds

Day 6

I got home late last night, and didn't feel like blogging about my day, so here it goes... I've been feeling good overall, I got a little tired yesterday, but I'm not nearly as tired as I was over the last couple months. I notice that I do have more energy, but I also increased my fruits intake because I made 2 really horrible vegetable juices, so now I'm working on finding a recipe that I can make a few times a week. After this blog I'll be searching for some tomato-based juices, because I do like tomato juice, and if I can find something really tasty (the drink yesterday with carrots/celery/chayote was great), I think I'll be able to introduce more vegetables to a tomato juice.
I noticed my complexion is better than usual - not sure if it's because of the juice or not, but there is a lot of info out there that points to juice being great to improve complexion.
Today I made fresh juice, and it was gooooood! Usually I've been prepping my juice for the next day, and the time spent usually wears me out and I end up not bothering to drink anything fresh, and also it's warm at that point. I could add ice cubes, but I haven't. I'm going to make a fresh juice for dinner, so we'll see how fresh green juice is - I'm not holding my breath for the Second Coming or anything....
That's it for now, I'll write again later.

Current Stats -
Weight - 184 lbs
BP - 118/96

QUESTIONS!

if there are any questions anyone has, or would like to know anything else about anything I'm blogging about... please please please comment! I'll respond as best as I can! Thanks

a quick word on cleaning

so the one thing that I'm not doing is making juice fresh. The reason for that is because it's a time-consuming process to make juice. I'm juicing once a day, because it's taking me a good 1 1/2 hours, sometimes longer when you factor in cleaning and cutting up fruits and veggies. Then there's the cleaning. I have it down to a process now, and it doesn't take too long, but the whole thing can be messy. I'm constantly running the faucet to clean food, strain berries, and clean up what's all over the counter. Also, depending on the size of your juicer, you may have to prop the juicer up on books, or containers up on books to make everything work out in the right way. There's also the trash, which sits next to me the whole time for stems, seeds, and whatever else has to be removed. It's not the cleanest or easiest thing to do...
These are things to keep in mind when doing a juice diet, juice fast, or even owning a juicer. But so far the results are far outweighing the negatives!

Day 5

So far, so good. I started marking a calendar at work, crossing out days towards my goal... I know, I lead a very exciting life! don't be jealous...
I didn't sleep well, but I think that's not because of the juice. I finished my breakfast juice, and I'm almost done with one of my lunch juices, and both were really good. I think part of my problem before was that everything was recommending to use green apples to sweeten the juice, and I was using granny smiths. I switched to golden delicious, and I think it's really making a difference.
Maybe it's nothing, but I don't trust farts today.
The more I'm progressing with this, the more I can't help but to think about nutrition (and even motivation) in a different light. I think it's also helping my mood, because in addition to losing weight and knowing that I'm getting closer towards a goal, I don't have the crappy feeling of eating heavy foods; food that makes you feel full, tired, or even gross. In general, I've had great energy levels all week, and besides the taste of some of the juices, everything is going well. I don't feel like I get many wins at work, so it's nice to have this to offset that.