Oh...the weekend

Weekends are typically my favorite part of the week. Filled with eating out, relaxing, watching movies, reading, shopping Sunday morning church and time with friends. This weekend has been filled with all of the above mentioned things, with the exception of eating out, and i'm 2 degrees away from completely miserable.

The juice/blended green smoothie diet has been very difficult on our free flowing no schedule weekends. We helped a friend move on Saturday so at the end of the 3 hours of lifting heavy boxes and sweating in the Tennessee heat, both Josh and I were completely drained of every ounce of energy that we had. All either of us could think about on the the way home was eating a HUGE meal - didn't matter if it was pizza, mexican, burgers, or some other ridiculously bad for you greasy meal - we just wanted solid food that filled us up in our bellies!

Alas, we got home and forced ourselves to drink the leftovers we had of tomato, parsley, garlic, puree. It wasn't good, but it sustained us.  Later that night we went over to my sisters house to play games and they had artichoke dip and crackers...I let my self smell the dip...it was heavenly.

This weekend has been a true test of our emotional and physical beings. I'm realizing that some of the eating habits I have - like automatically wanting horrible food after working out or socially snacking - are deep rooted attachments that are going to take serious will power to resist after coming off this diet.

Below are our sad little videos from day 4 and 5. Here's to hoping that day 6, 7, 8 are easier!

Day 4

Day 5

Day One of the Blended Juice "Fast"

I put quotes around the word "fast" in the title up there because so far it doesn't really feel like your typical fast. For breakfast I woke up and fired up the blender with 4 bananas, 1.5 cups of grapes, a 3 drops of stevia and about 5-8 cups of spinach (I didn't measure - i just filled up my strainer so i could rinse the greens) and ice. This made enough for josh and I both to have one 14-16 oz drink for breakfast and then me to take 32 oz with me for lunch/snacks throughout the day. The stevia was completely unnecessary because the grapes made the smoothie sooooo sweet! It truly was delicious. I was skeptical because the color came out bright green, but really all you could taste was the bananas and grapes. yummers!

For dinner i blended about 8 carrots, 1 large vine ripe tomato, about 3.5 cups of yellow grape tomatoes (from Real Food Farms!), one white onion, 1/2 a bushel of cilantro, 1 lemon, a VERY small amount of salt, and about a 1/2 cup of water. We ate this one like a soup rather than a drink. At first it was OK, but after a while it became hard to get down because there was so much onion! Whoops! Lesson learned - I will try green onion in the future.

Later that evening we were needing a little snack so we blended some pink lady apples with cinnamon and nutmeg and about 3 oz of water to make an apple saucy thing. It was pretty sour...i think next time I will buy Red Delicious apples so we can get that natural sweetness.

Overall, I didn't feel too hungry throughout the day and if i did i would just sip a bit of my breakfast/lunch drink and that would tide me over. I feel pretty satisfied and content at 11:39 pm. Looking forward to day 2!

It's August 16th

And I'm thinking about coming off of my Blause.

Now that summer is practically over and all my crazy travels have subsided I feel the deep chambers of my spirit yearning to pluck away at these blogging keys once more.

We spent the summer with family and friends - but mostly with family - eating dinners around our table with a hodgepodge of broken chairs. Filled with laugher, wine, hookah smoke and summer veggies from Real Food Farms, but most of all - filled with moments that my thirsty soul tried to absorb for all eternity. To allow the moments to soak in without need for documentation (I even let my iPhone rest most of the time).

To let friendships with my sisters and brothers-in-law grow in the natural and accelerated way that happens when you live in community together and to watch as most of us enter seasons of complete newness. Engagements, college, graduations, babies. Morphing and stretching our idea of family.

Moving out of Summer into Autumn it's time for new things. Josh, Rebecca and I are starting a 10 day juice/green smoothie fast tomorrow to hopefully pull ourselves out of the summer junk-food eating habits and begin the fall on the right foot. I plan to break my blause but documenting some of that fast here...hopefully it isn't too awkward coming out of a 4 month silence with some semi-fluffy content! Eventually I will and dive back into my regular daily life musing-posts.

Here is a picture of all the veggies and fruit we got at whole foods.

Day Zero Video

Have any of you tried a juice fast or green smoothies? What did you think?