Reboot

On Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, Joe Cross refers to juice fasting as a reboot for your life. I kind of like that mentality.

I can't lie, I was pretty nervous about going into this whole juice fasting thing. At one time, when we were living in Georgia, we got a juicer. From Walmart. Probably about 30 bucks. I remember trying to juice a little (nothing like what I'm doing now), but I had to cut up the fruit pretty small, and then I had to send the pulp through three or four times, because it just came out so wet. Talk about wasting the juice~! It was a freakin' pain in the neck, and that's the truth. I really have no idea what ever happened to that juicer, but it was mostly worthless.

This time I got the Breville Ikon Variable Speed juicer. $200, and I'm in total heaven. It is GREAT. I haven't cut anything yet. The pulp comes out dry. The juicer is a powerhouse, and I mean it. From the time I walk in the kitchen, it takes me about 10 minutes to get the produce out of the fridge, wash it, juice it, drink it, and wash and dry the juicer. Fastest meal and clean up EV.ER. It's actually fun. I love the variable speeds, because if you're juicing softer fruits or tomatoes, it enables it to extract the max amount of juice. The one speed thing isn't so good for softer produce.

At any rate, today I drank 3 different kinds of juice. The first recipe I made actually yielded 32 ounces, which was basically 2 servings. I was so pleasantly surprised, and probably even more relieved, that none of today's juices made me want to gag. I have been worried about having to force myself to gag down a juice that really tasted nasty. I imagine I will encounter some combinations that I won't like, that will not be at all enjoyable to drink. But the only way to know is to try. But for my first day, I feel extremely blessed that 3 out of 3 were just fine. The first two were better than the last, but even the last one was not hard to drink.

I also have not felt hungry at all today. I started out my morning with 4 water bottles (67.6 ounces). I've been doing that for a while, and I don't plan to stop. Starting out my day with water like that is AWESOME. Although I have to not be going anywhere, or I have to wait until I come back. It's no fun to be out on errands and need to use the bathroom every 15 minutes! Luckily when I do have errands I do them in the morning, and try to be home by noon in time for Lydia's nap. So it all works out.

So yeah, I started out my day with the water, and then an hour or so later I had my first juice. I pretty much had a 16 ounce juice every 3 hours...today it was at 10, 1, 4 and 7. Between 4 and 7, I had my other two water bottles.

I believed I wouldn't be hungry, but experiencing not being hungry was just plain awesome!

I almost messed up by letting myself sleep in. Sleeping in on a Monday morning is such a waste, it should be the easiest day of the week to get out of bed and exercise. Especially with the amazing sleep I got the night before, and I slept in until 7:15 on Sunday! (That was a miracle).  But when I got up at 6:45, I knew I was going to feel like crud all day. So I hurried with my shower, and woke up the boys to get ready for school. Then while Adam, my 4 year old, sat playing Lego Indiana Jones on the Wii, I took my laptop into my room, with my toning DVD, and got busy. I love the toning because of the segments. I can do one segment, 5 minutes, and then go check on the kids. Or whatever. So I did three segments, and came out to get the older boys out the door for school. Then I knocked out the last three segments before I got the girls up for breakfast. So they were in their room about 10 minutes longer than usual, and I had exercised rather than checked email or facebook or blogger, but I got that workout done. And then tonight after the three younger kids were in bed, I knocked out the cardio by doing a 40 minute Cathe Friedrich step aerobics. So I slept in, but I salvaged the day in the end. I even did the other 300 crunches, and got my vitamins, so today I get to check everything off my list.

And...I have decided I need to come up with some kind of reward for myself if I can have a perfect record for 2 weeks. That means I have to do my hour of exercise five days a week, and can't give in to doing only four. That may be tough, I do get so tired by Thursday! But I think if I have a reward to look forward to it will make it a bit more fun and motivating.

The awesome thing is that I really think, after today, that I will be able to stick to the juicing for the 14 days. We'll see, but I absolutely want to.

Kind of excited to step on the scale in the morning!

Here are the juices I tried today, all from Jack Lalanne's book Celebrating 90 Plus Years:

The Clean Sweep (it made 14 ounces)--this was my least fave, but still fine.
1/2 lemon (yellow peel cut off, white plinth left on)
1 apple
1/2 beet with greens
1 large celery stalk
1/2 cucumber

Cool & Light (32 ounces)
2 large cucumbers
2 large carrots
1 apple
1/2 lemon (yellow peel cut off, white plinth left on)

Salad In a Glass (16 ounces)
1 tomato
1/2 head of leaf lettuce
2 celery stalks
1 carrot
1/2 red bell pepper