Addictions

This past week I received an invite to pinterest. I'm officially addicted.

From my browsing and play time on pinterest i stumbled upon polyvore and developed another addiction. Here are some of my creations/inspiration.

I'm hoping these shiny outfits will distract you from the fact that i never gave a final update on the juice fast.

Did it work?

No.? ok...

Well, here's the update. We made it to day 6. I was emotionally dying inside (which is horrible that food had such a strong emotional connection to me - i think this post is appropriately titled.) Josh decided we needed to spend some quality time together and allow ourselves to be light hearted for the evening so we went out to dinner.

I don't regret breaking the fast early. I lost 15 lbs (and so far have kept off 8!) and truly felt like a "cleanse" took place. I obviously realized some unhealthy eating patterns (like my ridiculous mood swings, and constant eating when i'm not hungry + a carb heavy diet). Which I've tried to learn from and implement post-fast.

I think a more realistic plan moving forward would be green smoothie at breakfast (starting off the day right with tons of nutrients). A low sodium V8 at lunch + almonds as a snack throughout the day. and whatever I want for dinner (within reason).

This type of plan is much more feasible and would be a healthy structure/boundaries with lots of nutrients while still giving myself some wiggle room at dinner. I might actually give this a try sometime later this year for 20 or 30 days to see how it goes.

ANYWAY...onward to other things!

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 2 - Blended/Juice Fast

Just popping in to give you a quick post on how day 2 of the fast went. 

It was harder to drink my lunch and dinner today and I think i've discovered that I prefer my "smoothies" with more water so they are thinner and easier to drink quickly. Today I found myself feeling funny over the textures in my Berry/Banana/Spinach drink for breakfast and lunch. So for dinner I mixed up avocado  cucumber, spinach, lime, ginger, and garlic with LOADs of water. It actually helped a lot. I would even say I enjoyed the strong flavors of ginger and avocado...for about the first 8 oz, at least. The only thing that got me through the last bit was thinking about how I was doing something good for my body. I'm hoping it will get better as the fast goes on. 

We made some yummy orange juice today as well! It was so rich when we first strained out all the pulp so I added some water to tame it down a bit and now we have something other to drink besides water! Yippie!

Below is our reflection video! Enjoy!

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!