Preempting Health with What I Ate Wednesday

This upcoming weekend is going to be nutty. Two weekends before St. Patrick’s Day, Hoboken goes crazy. Hoboken St. Paddy’s Day used to start with a parade through the street, but due to the craziness of the event, they nixed the parade this year. Never one to miss a great time, Hoboken found another reason to spend all day drinking, Lepre-Con. Essentially, you dress up as a Leprechaun and go to bars. I am preparing my body for this week by being extra health conscious. I am ramping up my workouts and cleanifying my eats.

I’ve seen What I Ate Wednesday around the blogosphere for a while now and since I used to do a round up of what I ate on Wednesday anyway, why not link it up with other bloggers? You can see all the What I Ate Wednesday round-up over on Peas and Crayons. Here is what I ate one day this week.

I kicked off the day with some loaded oatmeal. I microwaved some quick cooking oats with chia seeds and added agave, a scoop of PB, 1/2 cup of strawberries and blueberries, and a tablespoon of Trader Joes granola.

For lunch I had my usual-Amy’s soups. Black bean veggie style. I also had some unpictured green grapes.

After a butt-kicking workout, I had worked up quite the appetite and couldn’t wait to make the dinner I had dreamed up.

This little baby is an amazing salad. Blood oranges, red onions, gouda on arugula with champagne vinaigrette. Yum!

Dinner part two-tomato, arugula, and mozzarella panini. Also yum.

I also had a green juice in order to up my veggie intake for the day, since this month’s theme of WIAW is “Love Your Veggies” month.

I topped the night off with a glass of Merlot and one of my most favorite things from Trader Joe’s, Dark Chocolate Powerberries. These babies are gold, I tell ya, gold!

(Source)

All in all, it was a nutritious and delicious day. I need to make that salad again, it’s definitely worth giving a try.

I wanted to share a workout that I made up yesterday. It wasn’t a butt kicker like the one I did the day before, but my poor muscles needed just a solid, steady workout. On my 1/2 marathon training plan, I had a 3.5 mile run scheduled, so I came up with this plan to make the run more interesting, which was a success. This workout, coupled with an episode of Dance Moms, went by in a blink.

Well, I’m off! Let me know if you try the workout and what you think if you do try it!

Juice Fast Reflection

I survived! Two days of nothing but juice and it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve experienced.

Throughout the day Saturday, I had 4.5 juices, which is much less than I thought I would need.  I was surprisingly satisfied after each juice and found myself not consumed with the thought of food. The one rough moment I had on Saturday was when I went to Target.  I think a combination of the bright lights and loud noises caused me to feel faint and feverish. I took some deep breaths and powered through the feelings and eventually felt better.

I woke up Sunday and immediately checked the scale, I had lost two pounds! While I was not doing this for weight loss and I know that weight will come back as soon as I started to eat real food again, it was interesting to see what not eating for a day can do! The rest of Sunday was pretty similar to Saturday. I think I only had 3 or 4 juices on Sunday.  After a bit of discussion, I was worried that having our first bite of food on Monday morning would be problematic (read: cause the body to go into shock, making you feel sick and miserable), so we decided to have a big salad for dinner, strictly made of fruits and veggies with no dressing added.  It was wonderful to finally have food after two pretty long days of not eating.  We polished off a fair amount of salad then had some brown rice for substance.

Today was not a great day.  I’m not sure if it’s because of the toxins that have been re-released into my body due to the fasting, but I came down with a head cold today.  This is a pretty common side effect during the fasting, but it didn’t happen to me until this morning.  If I still crappy tomorrow, it’s probably a real cold but if not, it was just the toxic evacuating my body!

All in all, the juice fast was not a miserable experience.  Would I do it again? Probably not for two days in a row. Did I enjoy fasting? I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it but I can say I didn’t hate it. Am I glad I did it? Yes, 100%. It showed that I do have the determination it takes to stick to something like this.  I’m proud that I accomplished a fast!

Tips for a juice fast:

• Enlist a buddy!- Having Dan fasting right along next to me made it much easier.  If he had been eating real food as I was drinking juice, I probably would have not had the will power I had. Misery loves company, right?
• Pick a weekend when you can dedicate your time to the fast.-I am glad I chose a weekend that I didn’t have anything to do.  Not having to be around other people that were eating or even outside stimuli was a blessing.  My trip to Target was too much to handle and I wouldn’t recommend leaving the house besides going for a walk.
• Don’t have too many delicious foods in the cabinets.- You want to eliminate as many temptations as possible.

Would you ever do a juice fast?

How long would you want to do it for?

Are we crazy?

We most definitely are.

Today starts a weekend long juice fast/detox.  Starting for breakfast today and ending with breakfast on Monday, all we will consume is juice made by our beautiful juicer.

Why would we want to do this? I am beginning to wonder that myself. I figured now would be a good time to detox because it is right between the eating holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’ve always wanted to cleanse so this seems like the perfect opportunity.

So wish us luck and be thankful you don’t have to see us this weekend because I’m sure we won’t be happy campers. But I am going into this with an open mind and loads of self control, hoping for success.  Once the fast is over, I will ease my way back to normal foods slowly by eating fruits, veggies, beans and grains for a while. I’m hoping the fast will help me continue on my pursuit of healthiness.

Ta ta!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy (almost) Thanksgiving to my wonderful readers! I hope everyone has fun Thanksgiving plans and perhaps I will be seeing some of your pretty faces tomorrow :)

Every Thanksgiving it is important to reflect on what we have to be thankful for. While I am very thankful for my family and friends,

I wanted to reflect on some other things I am thankful for.

(the people in these pics are not the only people I am thankful for of course:) )

• My health- Thank you to my whole body for staying healthy during the winter and thriving on the endless vitamins, fruits, veggies and general weird health food I feed you.
• My legs-Thank you for carrying me through the miserable, rainy 5k we completed on Halloween. And thank you in advance for carrying me through the hopefully beautiful 5k we will be running on Saturday (surprise!).
• My lungs-Thank you for becoming stronger than I could have ever asked you to be and thanks for getting over the exercised-induced asthma.
• Healthy-living blogs-Thank you for inspiring me to start my blog and giving me meal and workout ideas everyday.
• My juicer (you knew this was coming)-Thanks for adding more fruits and veggies to my life and inspiring me to eat healthier each day.

What are you thankful for this year?

Juicing Fanatics

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! I’m cooking a mini-Thanksgiving feast this afternoon as well as Irish Soda Bread for a work party tomorrow. So much cooking!

If you’ve seen me in the past 2 weeks, you know I bought a juicer. I was probably way too excited for this juicer to come in, but what can I say, I couldn’t wait to get my juice on! It arrived Wednesday night and I immediately started juicing and haven’t stopped since.  I am only using the juicer now to supplement meals and get more nutrients but I definitely want to do a weekend-long juice fast at some point.

The first juice I made, which is my favorite so far was earthy and sweet.

-1 apple

-1 large carrot

-1 cucumber

The juice is so refreshing and it definitely fills you up! I’ve been trying to replace breakfast with juice but it is taking a little while to get used to.

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead

Last night after much persuasion from me, we sat down and finally watched the documentary “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.” 

(Source)

In this film, Joe Cross is overweight, unhealthy and on tons of prescription medicines to treat a chronic skin condition. Fed up with the way he looks and feels, he comes to America for a 60 day juice fast. He spends the first 30 days in New York City and then drives around the US for the remaining 30 days.  His intention is to help his body fix itself from the inside out.  He hopes to get off the prescription medicines and cure his chronic disease.  Along the way, he loses a ton of weight and inspires many people to join him on his quest for health. 

Needless to say, this film only furthered my obsession with juicing.  It’s amazing to see that something as simple as fruits and vegetables can correct the years of damage to your body.  Weight is the cause of so many illnesses, even if they are not directly related to being overweight.  Doctors didn’t think that Joe’s skin condition was related to his weight, but as soon as he started treating his body right, it self-corrected and cured him of the disease. 

This film definitely inspired me to stay on the path to health I have been on.  I plan on doing a juice fast in the future (probably between Thanksgiving and Christmas) to treat my body to the nutrients it craves.

After finishing the film last night, we immediately juiced up the blend Joe calls "Mean Green",” which he drinks every morning. Here is the recipe if you are interested in adding some fruits and veggies to your life.

Ingredients (2 Servings)

• 6 leaves of kale
• 4 stalks of celery
• 1 cucumber
• 2 apples
• 1/2 lemon
• 1/2 in of ginger

We didn’t have a lemon, so we used a lime and it worked just as well. For more information about the film, check out the website.

Food for thought:

• If you want to read something that really upset me, take a look at how Congress ruled pizza is a vegetable. Pizza is a vegetable? Let me know if you have any strong feelings about this either way.

I’m off to go for a run outside! I am loving this weather and want to take advantage of every last ray of sun.

Have you tried juicing? Would you ever try a juice fast of any length?