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.

Half-way there!

Willpower is helped by this yummy creation! 

This is just a brief post to celebrate the completion of the half-way mark in my initial 10-day juicing adventure.  I am actually about 40 minutes and 5 sips early, but I think I will call it good.  You all will have to trust me that I finish the last five sips before midnight CST.

I feel good. I can celebrate a few pretty big accomplishments, or at least as far as accomplishments go when we are talking about juicing and not world peace. One, I managed to stick with this even through a few pretty crazy days here.  Johannes had to have minor surgery, which I knew about before planning to undertake juicing.  But as usual, I underestimated how intense it would be to manage anything out of the ordinary in our routine. This was a classic stress situation for me.  We had to be there early, there was a lot of coordination of people, cars and care... all recipes for me to suggest take-out.  But I managed... I did end up about 1/3 of a juice behind, but that has not seemed to be too big a deal.  I think it some ways just having a virtual community made it easier for me to power through this experience.  Also, the fact that the juicing makes me plan ahead meant I had my juice with me and I had it when I came home.  Now if I can just translate this to making sure I have a lunch with me---in the post-juice world--then I will really have accomplished something.

My other big achievement of the week...I discovered I have willpower.  I seriously did not know I had this ability and I will frankly tell you it has never reared its head before.  I don't think I have ever turned down good food in my life.  But today, I accompanied my two year old to a Texas bbque because it is even-more-than-usual Texas pride week or month or something like that.  In any case, his preschool hosted a bbque and yours truly actually went, mingled, helped my little one eat and did not endulge.  There was yummy brisket that smelled divine and several kinds of chocolate goodness and I politely declined.  It was amazing. It was of course also a little sad, because although their love of their state is sometimes a bit over the top, Texans know how to bbque.

In closing though, I must also admit a couple of cheats.  Tonight, I quite enjoyed an extra handful (or two) of cashews on my salad...they were yummy! And my husband has rightfully pointed out that my nightly salad seems to be getting a bit bigger every evening.

Still I am going into the second-half feeling fine and excited to find out what turnip juice tastes like.

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.