A Fist Full of Bacon

I had a dream last night that I broke my juice fast by grabbing a fist full of bacon from a big pile of bacon I found in the bottom drawer of a fridge.  With only a couple days left of what will be a 65 day juice fast, I think this means I'm ready to start eating again.  Bacon won't be on my menu anytime soon though, unless it's organic and even then only on the rare occasion.

I told a friend about my dream today and she asked me what I'd most like to eat after my fast.  I had to think about it because my old favorites are highly processed and not part of my plan for continuing to loose weight & eat healthier.  My answer did include bacon though.  I'll be heading to the Blue Planet Natural Grill at some point in March to get their California grass-fed beef burger with bacon, avocado and Swiss cheese (with out the bun) and a side of air-baked, sweet potato fries.  Blue Planet was one of my favorite restaurants and I'm sure I'll find a similar place to eat in Santa Fe. In the meantime, I continue to be amazed at the catalyst of change that juicing has provided for me and look forward to the abundance of new and healthy food choices ahead of me.

Live Your Best Life

Well, it's been 1 month since I started my juice fast, which I'm now calling a "Juice Feast" thanks to my friend Beth, who did her own 60 days of juicing last year.  I love her idea of using the word FEAST instead of FAST because that's exactly how it feels.  I haven't felt deprived at all during the last 31 days.  I'm still excited about all of the beautiful organic vegetables and fruit available and continue to try new veggies and juice recipes.  I figured out how to juice large batches (5-6 pints) at a time and I'm even thinking about having a JUICE PARTY to get all of my friends who have also been juicing or are interested in juicing together to share our experience, recipes and juicing tips.  I'm a wild & crazy girl!

My vision for my best life today involves keeping everything simple, from my food choices to my possessions and even my relationships.  I'm beginning to understand that life is only as complicated as I choose to make it and that by simply changing my attitude I am able to recognize the feast of abundance that is available to all of us.  I just never thought that I'd come to that realization as the result of getting rid of most of my personal belongings and juicing.  I guess clarity is another side effect of my recent endeavors. 

What are you doing to live your best life today?

Halfway Through

Today is the 22nd day of my juice fast and that means I'm halfway to my goal of 44 days (I chose 44 days as a symbolic gesture because I'll be 44 in April).  I've lost 30lbs and feel wonderful.  I haven't had a headache since those first couple of days of detox and only needed ibuprofen once last week when my back was acting up - a quick trip to my chiropractor took care of that issue though.  My skin is getting smoother and softer and I'm sleeping better.  I am amazed how easy the last 3 weeks have been and look forward to the next 3 weeks and trying more new fruits and vegetables to put through my juicer.

I have a pretty good idea now how to break my fast with small portions of fruit and salad for the first week or so and will then begin adding blended smoothies for breakfast, soups and beans and other starches for lunch or dinner.  I'll slowly add high quality, organic meat back into my diet, but will limit it to a few times a week and juicing will continue to be part of my daily routine.  

For some, a 44 day juice fast may seem like an extreme measure or even overkill.  When you have as much weight to lose as I do, extreme measures are necessary.  For me this has been a natural progression of starting from a spiritual place about two years ago and working from the inside out before addressing my daily food intake.  Just like my decision to follow a long-time dream to move to Santa Fe and then radically simplify my possessions, juicing seems to have been the next right thing for me and now I have a Radical Vision of the next 44 years of my life that looks something like this:

~ fewer possessions and more experiences
~ whole food instead of junk food
~ learning to love exercising my body
~ helping as many people as possible organize & redesign their lives
~ learning how to be a Mom, Daughter & Sister from a distance
~ making new friends and staying close to old friends
~ traveling around the world
~ many road trips between Santa Fe and Nebraska
~ finding love in all the right places 

Hopefully I'll meet a few of you along the way as I travel my road to happy destiny.

Juicing & Scanning

Red cabbage adds great color to my juice.

Still going strong on my juice fast.  Today is the 11th day and I'm truly amazed at how muchenergy I have and that I've haven't really been hungry.  I was really afraid going into this that my hunger would get the best of me, but so far so it's hardly been an issue.  I still get excited about trying new vegetables and added red cabbage & parsley to some of my mixes this week.  I only spend about 20 minutes a day juicing to make enough to get me through the next day.  

I'm hoping to make it to 30 days before breaking my fast and even had a thought yesterday about making it to 43 days (1 day for each year of my life).  I'll just keep taking it a day at a time though and trust my body to tell me when I'm ready to head back into the land of eating.  I have started researching the best way to break my fast and will be thinking about a fun way to do it.  I love that Joe Cross went up in a hot air balloon and ate an apple to break his 60 day fast.  It will be too cold here for a balloon ride, but I'll think of something to commemorate the occasion. 

It's been too cold here to get out and walk and I've been ignoring my treadmill, but I have had some fun scanning a bunch of my son's artwork from when he was a little boy (he's 21 now!).  I will keep a few of his actual drawings, but most of them will be stored in my computer now, which is great because I actually look at them more often than when they were stored away in a box.  Here's one of my favorites.  I think I'm supposed to be the one with the long hair.

Extra Energy

Today was a good day.  It was the second day of my juice reboot and I'm really surprised by how much energy I have today.  I even got outside and walked my dog for about 15 minutes.  I drank my last juice of the day (kale, watermelon & blueberries) about an hour ago and still feel energized. 

I read something this afternoon by Joe Cross that caused a slight paradigm shift for me in

how I look at the excess fat on my body.  "Try not to focus on weight loss...that will happen if your body needs to use up the extra energy you might be saving.  Try to stay focused on the health benefits of flooding your system with little packets of sunlight."

 

Despite all of my efforts to change my body and my thinking about my body over the years, I've always felt like food & the fat it created was the enemy.   But, energy is such a positive word and something just clicked in me.  It's not like this is a new concept for me, but with most my life lessons it often takes hearing something I've heard a thousand times before in just the right way at just the right moment.   I finally feel like the fat I've been storing "for a rainy day" is finally working in my favor and supplying me with lots of energy today.   

 

It seems so simple now, but it took me a lifetime to get to this moment and I am excited to see what new insights and clarity comes from this little juicing experiment of mine.  I know letting go of this excess weight is an integral part of this journey to radically simplify my life and hope I feel as energetic tomorrow and in the coming days.  Today it certainly felt like I was walking in the sunlight of the spirit.

Juice. It's what's for dinner.

It's been a long week.  I missed all of the Christmas festivities because I came down with the flu on Monday.  To make things even more interesting Aunt Flo came to town yesterday and boy is she in a foul mood this month.  Nothing like being alone and sick during the holidays and a hormonal mess on top of it.  After some one-on-one time with my heating pad this morning, I started to feel human again and decided to go ahead with my plan to start my juice reboot today.  Since I'd already been detoxing for the last few days because of the flu, I thought there's no time like the present to radically simplify my diet - it also helped that it was sunny and 45 degrees outside today.

So, I made my way to The Natural Grocer & Trader Joe's and stocked up on what I'll need for the next 4-5 days.  It still seems strange to get excited about vegetables.  Today I bought what I thought was a beautiful bunch of kale.  The leaves were huge and I was excited to try this pretty new veg in a new recipe. The first sip nearly killed me.  The after shock of peppery harshness took my breath away.  I've made some less than tasty juices during the last few months but this one was in a class all by itself.  I thought maybe a dash of stevia powder would make the medicine go down but it didn't make any difference.  It's the first batch of juice I had to throw out and I went to check the tag from the bunch of "kale" to make sure I didn't buy that type again and discovered that I'd just juiced 8 gigantic leaves of MUSTARD GREENS!!!  All I could think was, "Col. Mustard, in the Kitchen, with the juicer."

Not to be dissuaded, I rinsed out the juicer and made a new batch of juice with my trusted fennel, baby spinach, carrots, apples & cucumbers (with lemon & ginger too!).   I'm having my last juice of the day and really haven't felt hungry much at all today.  I'll still keep trying new veggies and recipes but this was a good reminder to keep things simple (and read labels more carefully).

My food for the next 4-5 days.

The Long Weigh Down

It turns out that Little Debbie is a little bitch.  She first introduced herself to me in the kitchen of our house on East 152nd Street.  She seemed so sweet at first, but she had a nasty little secret.  A secret that was devastating for a little girl who had to go to school with little boys.  They pointed out her handy work by giving me the nickname "tub of lard".  I might have outgrown the effects of spending too many afternoons in her company, but I loved books instead of sports, so I spent much of my childhood as the fat kid in class.

We moved to Nebraska when I was 10 years old and I don't remember being bullied about my weight by my new classmates and made plenty of friends in my new school.  When I was 13 I became determined to catch the eye of a boy I liked and made the decision to leave Debbie in the dust.  I spent the summer between 7th and 8th grade without eating any candy, chips or any butter or mayonnaise on my sandwiches.  I lost 45 lbs that summer because of those changes, not to mention the hundreds of leg lifts I did with Richard Simmons on my Grandma's living room floor. 

So, from an early age I knew that eating less and exercising more was the answer, but I underestimated the deadly trifecta of "sugar, fat & salt" and have spent the rest of my life on yo-yo diet roller coaster.  I turned to Weight Watchers in the late 80s, Phen Phen in the 90s and in 2001 I was researching gastric bypass surgery when a friend introduced me to a food plan that finally taught me that sugar, flour & wheat were feeding my food addiction.  I also learned how to weigh & measure my food instead of my body.  My body loved the plan and I lost over 100lbs over the next 2 years with very little exercise.  After losing most of the weight, I started walking everyday and managed to follow the food plan & keep that weight off for another 4 years.  But, focusing on the food I ate and the miles I walked wasn't enough for me.  I ignored the underlying mental and emotional reasons for my eating and when another man (yes, I see the pattern here) broke my heart I started messing around with my gateway drugs like nuts & chips (lots of fat & salt!).  Eventually, I stopped walking every day and started spending too much time with two new frienemies named Ben & Jerry.  Whoever decided that there are FOUR serving in ONE pint of their ice cream is a sadistic bastard.

The result of discarding my food plan and stopping my daily walks was regaining all that weight I'd lost (and then some).  I decided to include this part of my story here because this excess weight is now feeding all of my fears about starting my new life in Santa Fe.  I do understand that this is simply another layer of my journey.  It's not the food's fault, even though the food industry knows that "Sugar Sells" and it's been more than 20 years since I had any direct contact with Little Debbie.   I just wish it was as easy for me to let go of this extra weight as it is for me to let go of my personal belongings. 

A couple of years ago I decided to try a different approach to this issue.  I started working on my insides first and have been praying, meditating and doing other footwork to resolve my mental obsession with food.  Even though I still weigh more than I ever have in my life, I now have an open heart and quiet mind (most of the time) and feel more comfortable with myself (most of the time) than at any other time in my life.  And now it feels like it's time for the physical work really begin again.

Back in January of this year my Dad got sick and was hospitalized.  When he came home I helped my Mom take care of him and I saw first hand how his obesity made it impossible for him to take care of himself and made his condition worse.  Witnessing his suffering motivated me to get back on my food plan and I lost 30lbs in less than 2 months.  My Dad lost his battle and passed away on April 12th.  Since then I haven't been able to follow that food plan as diligently as I would like. I am making progress though.  I started adding freshly juiced vegetables and fruit to my daily routine a few months ago and have added a few other healthy habits that seem to be making processed and highly refined foods less palatable.  Some of the foods I eat (and drink) today still seem pretty radical to others, but they feel right to me and I am continually reminded to bring GOD (Good Orderly Direction) into all of my actions and meals. 

One of the unexpected benefits of juicing is that I'm actually excited about vegetables.  Juicing them has motivated me to try new things like bok choy, fennel and ginger.  I even discovered that you can juice beets!  I have a few Meatless Mondays under my belt, but I'm still an omnivore who's just trying to limit my grass fed beef and organic chicken to a couple days a week and make the bulk of my diet fresh vegetables, whole grains (except wheat) and rely more on seeds and nuts for my protein. Naturally, my juicer is going with me to Santa Fe.

I really enjoy juicing and plan to make it a part of my daily routine for the rest of my life.  I love trying new combinations of fruits and veggies and decided to watch the documentary Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead again a couple weeks ago.  Today I feel like I'm being led to do a 30 day (or longer) Reboot With Joe.  I've been wheat & flour free since the day after Thanksgiving and working on getting all of the processed sugar out of my system again before starting the reboot in a couple weeks.  I always talk to my clients about Jump Starting their organizing goals and feel like this type of reboot will jump start my weight loss and help me redefine my relationship with food once and for all.