Day 6

On the first day of this fast Kyle and I both thought we would never be able to do something like this for a long period of time. After 5 days we have seriously changed our minds. The routine is easy, we have become accustomed to the tastes of some of the nastier tasting juices and we honestly can resist food. Kyle's work actually ordered in pizza yesterday and he stood strong! Only thing is, this fast wasn't planned quite as well as we would have liked. We didn't realize that we should have been preparing before we started and it made the start very rocky. The guidelines suggest preparing for 15 days with a diet of plant foods and a juice once or twice a day. This eases your body into the liquid veggie juice diet. We feel like because we didn't prepare, it will take our bodies longer to really benefit from the fast and that 10 days just won't be enough. That being said, Kyle and I are breaking our fast today. We talked about it for a while and we'd rather stop this early, re-acclimate our bodies to eating protein again and then do the proper preparations to start the fast for a longer period of time. So we decided to keep up our habits of eating mostly plant food with only have meat and starch up to 3 times a week... total! Not 3 days, 3 times. You get a lot of protein from veggies, nuts and beans so we are reducing the amount of animal protein and fat that we consume. This will keep our bodies in the right shape to take on a long fast in September/October and prolong the benefits of this fast.

This morning we still had juice but for lunch I'm making an avocado salad with tomatoes and cucumbers and for dinner probably soup and salad. My mouth has been watering over all the vegetarian dishes I've been brainstorming!

Now some of you may be wondering if this was a spiritual fast. No it wasn't. We did this fast to reset our bodies and try to treat them the way God intended, filling it with good fuel so we can be about His business. We were and are in prayer and in our Word still just as we always are, but this was not intended to be a biblical fast. Sometimes we just get into bad habits and we need to break them. I had many and this fast was an attempt to break most of them. I feel like we made a huge leap and got a nice jump start to really getting healthy. We both lost about 10 lbs, our skin is healthier looking (mine has cleared up quite a bit) and we are more alert and have energy. We feel so much better and really want to commit to this and I think we will :)

All in all, I don't want to say we failed a 10 day juice fast but father succeeded at a 5 day juice fast lol. The next month will be tough but after doing this I feel like I can do anything!

I will be updating about once a week till we start a fast again with some yummy recipes and hopefully success stories. Thanks for reading!

Morning Day 5

It's kind of hard to make time to write over the weekend, especially with my computer on the fritz. We're still going strong, well, going anyway. I would have to say Saturday has definitely been the hardest day so far. We had the most cravings and the irritability set in. When I talked to my dad on Sunday on the way to church he compared fasting to quitting smoking. You are breaking a habit, a habit that calms you down, makes you comfortable, so the side effects are going to be similar. You're going to be cranky along with lots of other emotions because you don't have that comfortable norm of food. Not to mention you are just frustrated because you can't eat. It's the weekend, you want to go out to dinner, go to the movies and get candy or a hot dog. Everything we do for entertainment usually revolves around food. In fact that's part of what has been motivating me to keep going. I see how often I think about food and am like wow, THAT'S how often I eat! It's way too much! Plus I have never really lived an active lifestyle where my daily activities get me moving around. We enjoy things like board and video games, those doing get you moving much or outside in the sun for that matter. But that's why we're doing this, to beak bad eating habits and encourage a more active life.

Friday was a hard day. I had a terrible headache again so I actually took some Advil, lowering the dosage of what I normally take and It helped immensely. We had our first taste of beet juice for lunch which wasn't totally bad but pretty much tasted like dirt. Note: peel your beets, it makes your hands purple but you save yourself a lot of nasty flavor. For dinner we went to Robeks and got a carrot ginger juice (I added spinach to mine) and it was pretty yummy. There was an accident on the trip home though and one of the cup holders in the truck broke and got carrot juice EVERYWHERE! Kyle tried to clean it out but gave up and just took the truck to get the interior detailed the next day. The truck was in need of some good cleaning inside anyway so it worked out and now the truck feels like new! Overall, Friday wasn't terrible and we got used to the not eating part a little more and enjoyed the juice much more than day 1.

Saturday we slept in till 10:45, getting about 12 hours of sleep. Obviously our body was going through some healing that night. We gave ourselves a treat and blended a banana in to our juice that morning (against the rules but we didn't care.) When we took the truck in we made a trip to Palmdale to the Coffee Bean for some herbal tea. This was a tough trip. Not only did the whole place smell deliciously of coffee but we stood there right in front of the pastry display with that everything bagel just staring me in the face. We survived and got two delicious "African Sunrise" herbal iced teas which were amazing because they tasted like banana nut muffins. To stave off boredom we called Jessica and Avery and played games all afternoon. This is when the irritability was the most obvious. Kyle was being extra ornery and was making me extra ticked off. We kept thinking about all the food we wanted and thought several times about just saying "screw it, let's go to taco bell!" but we stayed strong and made it one more day. I actually made another batch of mean green in my new juicer and it wasn't as bad. I used more of the lemon and we refrigerated it for a couple hours before having it so it was ice cold. I got it down just fine but Kyle still has to hold his nose, but we are now able to get it down once a day, big improvement. We have also decided to make the broth a daily thing. It has really helped stave off cravings and settle our stomachs when the juice isn't so great tasting. I actually made a batch of fresh veggie broth so we're cutting back on all that sodium from the bullion. Another rule broken but we're still sticking close to the plan.

Sunday was a little better. Church was a little rough because emotions were on high and I couldn't seem to keep my self from crying. Pastor announced our last day at CLA and we had lots of people asking us questions and giving us hugs, it was hard to keep to together, for me at least. We went to the Whole Wheatery for our lunch juice which was alright, very beety. We saw Captain America that afternoon and drooled over hot dogs and popcorn but made it though. Alex G. made a comment when he saw us both standing in line he said "You guys are standing taller." I thought this was funny cause I didn't even notice but we had been standing for about 20 minutes and I didn't feel the need to sit down, we weren't even leaning on the wall. Alex even said that normally he sees us like that and we're slouching and leaning of stuff but we were just standing up tall and straight. I'm glad he pointed it out because I wouldn't have noticed and that motivated me even more. The rest of the day was actually pretty easy, craving wise, just a couple weak moments. I created a great juice recipe with kale, spinach, carrot, apple and lemon which tasted like a fresh squeezed glass of lemonade! Very refreshing :) We even went on a short walk that night that totally wiped us out. It's a little harder to exercise when your body has no other fuel besides your fat! Our legs were burning before we even got around the block. We both woke up a little achy from it but it's a good hurt, a cleansing hurt.

Speaking of cleansing, both of us have yet to experience that magical bathroom trip that apparently makes you feel so great. So I feel like the detox is still quite incomplete. As of right now I'm really tired because I couldn't get to sleep as fast as Kyle did and he woke me up to make the juice this morning. I have plans to do some house work today so hopefully I can feel up to it. So far the "Day 5" prediction is not coming true, but maybe if I got a tad more sleep I'd be good, or maybe just after I start moving. We plan to break the fast Friday so, not the full 10 days. We just want to be ready for Kyle's b-day bbq on Sunday so we can actually eat some of the food I make.

So far as of this morning Kyle and I are both down 10 lbs. As soon as I feel that wonderful clean feeling I think it'll feel more worth it. Off to drink some water and mop my floors! Happy Monday!

Morning, day 2

I wanted to post an update yesterday but my head was throbbing so much I couldn't think, let alone sit at a computer and stare at a screen. Yesterday was awful. The caffeine withdrawals were intense. My headache came on right about noon and just continued to get worse before turning in to a migraine. I was fighting mild nausea all day which turned severe when we had our last serving of juice and I just couldn't keep it down. I know, I am just making this whole fasting think sound so appealing, right? Well, good news is most reports say that the first 4 days are the worst and then somewhere between the morning of day 4 and day 5 you feel AMAZING. I'm looking forward to that part.

So in the morning we started of with apple-carrot-pineapple juice, pretty yummy. I thought it looked cool before I stirred it so I posted that pic. Look how perfectly my little $3.99 to-go cups from Bed Bath and Beyond fit under the spout :D Even still I don't like this juicer. It doesn't pulverize the food like it should and leaves huge chunks plus the pulp is still really wet so I know I'm missing out on some good juice there. Not to mention the feed tube is TINY. I had to cut up my apples even more than it shows in the pic and don't get me started on leafy greens. that was horrendous. Speaking of horrendous, our lunch drink was revolting. I used the ReebootYourLife website's recipe for "Gazpacho Juice" yeah it tastes like drinking salsa and not in a good way. We had to add all kinds of stuff to it to make it even palatable and even then it wasn't very good. I actually didn't mind it after adding hot sauce, garlic powder and pepper but poor Kyle make yucky faces every time he took a sip. I gave us a break with our 3rd juice of the day with some berry-cherry juice. But then came "dinner" time and I made one of the staple juice recipes of this fast: Mean Green juice. I know why they call it that now, cause this stuff is mean. It is mean to my mouth and mean to my stomach. They say you get used to the taste eventually but *shudder* my stomach is turning just thinking about it.



Mean green Juice
6 kale leaves
2 green apples
4 celery stalks
1 cucumber
1in piece of ginger
1/2 a lemon
serves 2

Kyle was a champion and chugged the whole thing, having to hold his nose and chase every drink with water. I, on the other hand, was not a champion. I got about 3/4 of the way through and it came right back up. [Don't worry, this is the most graphic I will get with you during this blog. I'm aware stories of detox can become quite unsavory] To settle both of our stomachs we cheated a little and each had a mug of vegetable broth which at that point was the most glorious thing in the world. We watched Serenity and then crashed. We both went to bed around 9:45 exhausted with headaches and still smelling that freaking kale.

Before falling asleep I prayed as hard as I could, thanking God for motivating us to do this and asking for his help. I also earnestly asked for some relief and to shorten this detox time so we can feel the benefits and not hate our life so much. I woke up feeling relief, finally, after about a 20 hour headache. I felt energized and hopeful that it will get better. He answers prayer!

Great news! As I was writing this I checked the status of our juicer and it said "delivered" so I ran to the front door and there it was!!! YAY I'm so excited to use this thing after messing with that cheapo piece of junk!

So we did it, we made it through one of the hardest days of the fast! I hear day 3 is a bummer too, oh well, it's all about the results right? Did I mention I lost 5 lbs? Not too shabby.

Night before Day 1

Tomorrow morning Kyle and I will be starting our 10 day juice fast. After watching the film "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" the juice fasting strategy really seemed like a feasible way for us to change the way we treat food. The goal of this 10 day fast is to ease into a 60 day fast which we plan to embark on in September. After this first fast we plan on taking August to rearrange our eating habits and incorporate more fruits and veggies and eat less meat. The month of August also includes both of our birthdays and a 3 day Disneyland trip with our friends so we wanted to postpone our major fast until after that and before the holidays! (nice planning, huh?) The great thing about juicing is that it retrains your taste buds to WANT more of the good foods our bodies need to stay healthy and fight disease. On top of that, it also squelches the cravings for all the crap that we LOVE to eat. It gives our digestive system a break and allows it to fully digest everything since it doesn't have food being shoveled in to it every few hours. I actually really recommend the video to everyone, it explains things better than I can and with adorable cartoons to boot.

I'm nervous but super excited. Kyle and I have both been struggling with our weight since we met and even more since we've been married. We have tried different diets and failed at them all (even the ones that claim not to fail, that means you Weight Watchers!) We know that both fasts are going to be tough but we are hoping that the result will motivate us to keep going.

Some things we are hoping to see change in the long term: Both of us react badly to carbohydrates. We get sluggish, bloat and it generally fogs our thinking all day so the energy boost will be fantastic as well as the mental clarity. I have actually been told by a Dr. that I have a glucose intolerance and am pre-diabetic so I'm hoping to stop that in it's tracks as well. We both suffer from neck and back pain, we feel like, due to stress and toxins. I suffer from terrible headaches (mostly from the neck pain) that I am constantly taking ibuprofen for, I'm hoping the fast will make my headaches subside. Last but not least I have been diagnosed with PCOS which means I will have a very hard time conceiving a child (practically impossible.) I have had one Dr. tell me to diet and lose weight but he told me to do this by being vegan which, sorry, I won't do. The other Dr. just put me on Clomid which should in a way "override" my symptoms but I decided before I screw up my body with more medication I'll try to get the weight off and get my blood sugar in check and see if that helps. So there is the major goal of this fast: a baby! More over, a healthy body to conceive and carry a baby and for Kyle a healthy body to keep up with and um... MAKE that baby! That's right, I said it. What up!/hi5

Some feelings before we start: I'm hopeful. I am not looking forward to giving up coffee, I freaking love coffee, it is my favorite and I will miss it so. I am excited about not scrubbing pots or pans for 10 whole days... and forks... we go through so many dang forks! I am encouraged, My husband and I are taking this on together and we will get through it together, with God's guidance every step of the way.

So tonight we weighed in
Kyle 253.5
Theresa 249.5

That's right, internet, I just posted my weight for all the world to see. Girls, you know how hard that was for me to do.

Yeah we have both gained a few lbs even since the last time we dieted, but here's where that stops. I'm thanking Jesus that I never had to see that number pop over 250 because I plan on it only going lower from this point on! As we take on this new journey we also have many life journeys ahead so we are in prayer, in our word, and asking for God's help as we "reboot" our temples. Tonight's request from Kyle for our first morning juice: apple, carrot and pineapple. Let the losing begin!