Getting back on track

Weekends are hard.  I am often so exhausted on Sundays, I cannot believe I am going into the work week.  But weekends are also tons of fun. This last part, for me at least, comes from having kids.  It is pretty easy as a scholar to work all weekend.  That is the downside of being in academia, you can always work.  There is literally always something to do and that needs doing. All through graduate school, my weekend was devoted to "catching up on work."  But having kids changed that.  I love that our weekend, in addition to pesky household errands, revolves around doing fun things with our little ones.  This weekend's highlight was a bike ride. We take bike rides almost every weekend, with Jeremy pulling a trailer with the two babes. But this weekend was my debut as trailer puller.  Our 40 minute ride through the neighborhoods around our house was fun, and I am pretty sure pulling an additional 50 pounds in children ups the workout value.

Not surprisingly though, I got a little off track with the juicing adventure this weekend.  I managed not to actually break the fast.  I just ended up not keeping up with drinking all the juice on time.  Now I am starting Monday without my 6 bottles waiting for me.  So some regrouping is required.  I am restarting Day 7 today.  I have rearranged my schedule so I can take 1.5 hours this morning to juice for the next two days.  In the meantime, I will enjoy some herbal tea and perhaps a piece of fruit.

I think this set back is pretty typical of how I often get caught up in other things and nourishment gets rushed. Something I need to keep working on, if I am going to live healthily.  More thoughts on that... later today.

An ode to the avacado or thank goodness for fat

On day three of the juice fast, fats are added back in.  In this case, in the form of avocado and cashews.  I enjoyed a handful of cashews on my salad last night and in the afternoon had an avocado smoothie.  It was divine.  I blended avocado into a juice prepared with garlic, broccoli, kale and some other yummy things.  The garlic gives it a serious bite, but I love spicy food.  Putting it in the blender creates this wonderful texture, smooth, creamy and decedent.  It felt rich and fatty and it felt deserved after two days of no fat.

I know it may seem counterintuitive to consume fat when trying to lose weight, but the body needs fat. Now I am not trying to sound all healthy experty here, because I am not.  But there are plenty of people out there, much wiser than myself, who have studied how the low-fat craze can be harmful to your overall nutrition.

 Obviously, there is a big difference between the fat in a Big Mac and eating healthy, naturally occurring fats in nuts, seeds, meat, eggs and yes… avocados. I found, after two days of the juicing fun, that I really am craving fat. But, and I take this as a very good sign, I am not craving a doughnut or ice cream. The avocado really made my day.  I knew avocados were good for you, but this experience made me a bit more curious.  I did a little research...Avocados are high in a zillion vitamins, full of antioxidants and help with weight control.  And I get to drink that yummy juice/soup/smoothie again tomorrow-- fantastic motivation to keep going.

The best salad ever

"An explosion of yumminess"

As I mentioned in my first posting, the name juice fast is sort of misleading.  I drink 3-4 juices a day; each one a little different and I eat a salad for dinner.  The salad has pumpkin seeds and hemp seeds the first couple of days and then on subsequent days also some sort of protein.  Well yesterday, after about 8 hours of just drinking my juice, I prepared and relished my first salad.  I had been looking forward to the salad, but not in any sort of desperation.  It was after all only the first day of the juicing extravaganza; even I can handle a few hours of something.  Nonetheless, I was looking forward to, if nothing else, the ritual of eating.  Since you sip on the juices all day, you don’t really sit down for a meal.

I enjoyed cutting up the vegetables and making the salad pretty.  Jeremy made food for himself and Johannes and this gave me time to really savor putting my little reward salad together. I think even just the few hours of not eating solid food made me remember how much fun it is supposed to be to put a meal together.  Meals stress me out.  Trying to feed myself and feed my family in between the craziness that is mamascholarhood has made food preparation feel overwhelming.  I know this has also contributed to making my already bad relationship with food worse.  It may be an added benefit of this whole adventure that I am able to find a little more balance in how I view food preparation.

In keeping with the green theme, my salad was essentially green.  But it was so far from bland.  Parsley, romaine lettuce, green apple, cucumber, zucchini and just a hint of color with a few slices of red pepper that had to be eaten.  Pumpkin seeds, lemon juice, flax oil and Himalayan sea salt finished it off.  It was a tiny explosion of yumminess in my mouth. I can literally still feel the food’s taste in my mouth. I cannot remember the last time I could really recollect the food I consumed 12 hours previously. It may be a bit hyperbolic,  but I swear my taste buds were appreciating flavor and texture in a new way.  I could single out particular flavors, the sour of the lemon, the nuttiness of the pumpkin seeds, the sharp bite of the garlic, followed by fresh parsley and a sweet tart bite of green apple.  Even the flax seed oil, a little earthy and buttery, had its place.

So here I am writing about my juicing fast and I have just spent 3 paragraphs carefully describing the only non-juice I am eating.  But I am pretty sure that this salad made such an impression because of the juicing. I am looking forward to my salad tonight even more than yesterday. Until then another sip of juice…. a new one to try, Swiss Chard-Maca.  Now that promises a flavor explosion too!

Juicing adventure-Day 1

Eight little bottles of health: the adventure begins!

Today's menu: Celery Orange, Carrot Kale, Broccoli Kale and Apple Flush.  Four quite different juices, although both the celery and carrot have chrorella, a very green dried algae,  in them and the broccoli kale is not surprisingly already green--so the color green is a common denominator.

It took me and Jeremy about 1.5 hours to get my 8 bottles of juice ready.  I am juicing for two days at a time.  A lot of juicing experts hold that you can only store the juice for 24 hours at a time, others actually say you must consume the juice right after you make it.  I am quite sure all of these people are independently wealthy, perhaps due to their bestselling juicing books.  But it is beyond my ability to fathom how anyone would have time to juice fresh for every meal and still manage to do anything else like have a job or raise children.  I am sure some of the nutrients are lost from my 48 hour juicing, but I am pretty confident that they will still do my body good.

 My eight bottles of health are in the fridge waiting for me. I feel a little like I did when I was a little girl on the night before school would start.  My sister and I would usually sleep in her room and we would talk and giggle.  There was always great anticipation mixed with a healthy bit of nervousness.  I feel like I am on the cusp of something remarkable.

A new adventure...my ten day juicing fast

The very first juice: celery orange

First of all let me say that the word fast is a bit deceiving.  I know there has  been a lot of hype around the idea of juicing, fasting and detoxing owing, as of late, to Gweneth Paltrow's promotion of a certain detox regiment. I actually think hers sounds yummy, but it is more of a detox diet than a juicing fast.

There is a lot of evidence that juicing (meaning using a juicer to make fresh juices from a wide-variety of fruits and vegetables) can be a very excellent way to increase your vitamin intake and detoxify your body.  The idea behind juicing is to allow your body to absorb nutrients in their most simple and potent form, while not adding processed food to your body. It helps get all the ick out of your body that processed and refined food puts in.

My juicing fast will be 10 days and I am doing this under the direction of a nutritional counselor and Renaissance woman extraordinarie, Lisa Piper at Natural Living. There are a few others joining us in this experience because as with so many things community can make all the difference to success.  I will be posting a separate entry detailing the overall plan, but this is a juice fast that includes fat and protein in addition to a lot of superfoods--foods that are very high in phytonutrients.

But really for me all of these benefits are just gravy, pun sort of intended…  I am doing this because I need to take a stand.  Food controls me.  It is my Achilles heal and the one area in my life that beats me down. I am severely overweight and intelligent enough to know that if I don't do something to change my eating and exercise patterns I will not be here to be either a mama or a scholar. I am doing this juicing fast because I need to conquer something having to do with my diet.  I need a clean break and a way to walk away on the other side feeling victory and power instead of the desperation and depression I usually feel when I have had another bad food day.

I will be posting about the experience each day... and I appreciate the support of my virtual community as I undertake this step towards health.