Day 6 and I'm done

Well, it's official. I have made the decision to come down off of my juice feasting high. I really wish my body could take more as I would love to go for 20-30 days. It was easy for me, after the first few days of course. I didn't suffer any emotional moments that I know of (they may have come out in my sleep?) and the only physical outbreak I had was on the inside of my mouth. I have a few cankers in my mouth, most likely from the acidic fruits I'm using.

I was going to go one more day so that I could say I had 10 days of fasting under my belt (remember the 3 days on green smoothies prior to the juicing), but I was getting a little too concerned about my blood sugar and the fact that I wasn't able to stabilize it as much as I would have liked. However, I can't remember the last time my body hasn't hurt when I've gotten out of bed. The last 4 days, seriously, I am pain free!
This has been a great experience for me, and yes I plan to do it again but I think I will have to limit myself to 3 or 5 day fasts.

I will continue to juice in the mornings because I don't think I've tasted such yummy juice as when it it freshly made, and you can experiment with so many combinations.

If anyone wants to join me in another fast next month, or would like to try your own, I will be happy to share what I have learned from my wonderful juicing community. I am no expert, but knowing all the questions I had as a virgin juicer, I should be able to help out somewhere.

Day 5 is behind me!

I have made it successfully through a weekend! It was not easy, but it's over. Phew. By far the hardest time to be different from anyone else. I passed on Friday night Pizza with Jon, passed on Costco lunch with the family on Saturday, and sat at the table Sunday evening and watched while all the family ate our one big meal of the week.
No regrets, I can always catch up with my eating and cravings at a later date.

Things I've noticed so far - Suddenly my daily aches and pains are gone. Like, completely gone. I used to wake up every morning hurting so much and for years have been blaming it on my mattress. I think the juicing has eliminated all of the toxins in my joints that caused me to ache. Incredible.

This is the end of day five juicing, day 8 with the green smoothie fast. This is the day that I started getting my colon cleanse, if you know what I mean.

For the past couple days I have had dry eyes and usually a few doses of eye drops takes care of the problem for another month or so, but this time they just weren't going away. As I lay in bed tonight, it hit me, I have had no oil in my diet lately. I'm no expert, but I wondered if that had anything to do with the uber dryness I've been having. So tomorrow, I plan to add some flax seed oil to my juice and see if that doesn't solve the problem.

I feel good, but I still think about food. The pull to eat or cheat isn't there but I find myself fantasizing about my first whole meal. I feel like I'm pressuring myself to make it super special or to go somewhere that I really love. Is that normal? I don't know, but it seems to be for me. I just want a date night with my hubby!

Juice Feast Days 3 and 4

Still going strong! Realized that in the area where I live, juicing is a very lonely lifestyle. No juice bars or raw food cafe's close to where I live. Jon says I shouldn't worry because we have a juice bar in our own house. He's right, but it's not the same!

Day 3 went off with no challenges or hitches. Eeeeeeexcellent. However, being the nice wife that I am, I stopped on the way home from work and picked up my hubby his favorite pizza at Papa Murphy's. He's recovering from hernia surgery and I'm afraid I haven't done too well providing him with anything more that liquid food lately. Being the good sport that he is, he doesn't complain and if he gets hungry, he goes and fixes himself something to eat.

Day 4 (Saturday) was going to prove a little more challenging. Mi sister and her family came to stay with us for the weekend as they had a wedding a few hours south of us. Normally, I would say "you are on your own for food!" But this sister has put me and my family up for the last 33 years and has been so accommodating, that I wanted to return the favor, however small. Saturday morning I got up early and made my juice and then I started preparing them a breakfast of pancakes (my weakness), scrambled eggs, and cut up cantaloupe and watermelon. I did not cheat. First challenge: check.
That afternoon, we went with our son and his family to Costco and Smith's to do our weekly shopping, and while they ate lunch at Costco, I sat there at the table with my lemon water and didn't cheat!
Oy. I know I am doing something good for myself, but I do miss the socialization that comes with food.
Tonight, for the first time since this started, I woke up at 12:30 pm hungry. That's never happened in my life. I'm thinking I either didn't drink enough juice during the day, or I was dreaming about eating and it woke me up. Probably the latter.

Juice Feast day 2

Day two of juice feast day is behind me. It would have gone great if I hadn't been a little too zealous with my new juicer. For my sweet juice I used spinach (about 5 or 6 cups) and 1 1/2 oranges and about 7 strawberries. It was quite tasty. My throughout the day juice was a disaster. I just pulled stuff out of my fridge and just went crazy. Spinach, kale, celery, carrots, a whole beet with greens, 1/4 of a cucumber, an orange, 1 apple, and a wedge of one lemon.  Here's a tip for you. Don't ever use a whole beet in your juicing. Every time I took a drink I felt like I was drinking dirt. But being the trooper that I am, and because I didn't have anything else for lunch, I endured. About every 30 minutes I went in and drank about 4-5 swallows and followed it with a lemon water chaser. It's the only way I could get it down. 

Thanks to the most wonderful juicing support group I am doing this juice fast with, I got all sorts of great ideas for the next days juices. The best recipe to follow is simplicity. I put too many flavors into one juice and expected goodness. I think it's best to stick with 4-5 ingredients for a good, appetizing outcome.

Since finishing the 3 day smoothie fast and now wrapping up the 2nd day of my juice fast, I am pretty confident that my detox day hit on day 2 of the smoothie fast, because so far, that's the only day I've had to restrain myself from hurting someone. I was very surprised at how fast I would enter the detox zone; I was thinking it would be closer to day 4 or 5, like when you give up soda or sweets. 

The craving for foods has diminished a little more each day, my energy level is good, and my sleeping would be awesome if I could get past having to get up between 3-4am every morning to go potty. Not something I'm used to, but I think multiple trips to the terlet are a side effect of drinking all your calories and all the lemon water each day.

When I was telling Jon one day that I missed chewing (and come on, chewing your smoothie or juice is just NOT the same; admit it!) he suggested that I take some of my extra juice and put it into Popsicle molds. I thought that was a great idea! So last night as we were sitting out on the porch reading, he eating his ice cream drumstick, me eating my fresh juiced frozen treat, it felt great. Did I cheat? I don't know. Someone will have to tell me!

Let the juicing begin!

My new Hurom 100 Slow Juicer is ultra attractive. I ordered it on Thursday and got it on Tuesday from Chef.com. It's a masticating juicer which means you get about 60% more nutrients from your produce than from a centrifugal juicer. All I know is that it works pretty slick and it's moderately quiet, compared to my Blendtec, which, by the way, I LOVE.

I have now completed my first day of juice fasting. The only changes I've noticed so far is my headaches are gone, the craving for foods is becoming less and less. I did suffer a pretty good crash right about 2:00 in the afternoon where I had to go into a dark room and shut down for a few minutes, but that night I slept better even though I had to get up at 3:00 am to use the terlet, but I fell right back into bed and slept like a baby.

My head feels much clearer today. It's almost like each day gets a little bit better! Maybe that's why people do these for 10 days?

I will say one thing though, I really need to simplify my method of juicing so it goes much faster. I spent an hour this morning washing, cutting, peeling, juicing, pouring, and then the rinsing and cleaning up. Wow.It doesn't take that long to fix my lunches for a whole week when I'm eating crap!

So this weekend, I plan to do all my washing, peeling, and cutting of the produce that I can, package it up and have it all ready to go each morning. That way I'm hoping to cut my prep time in half each day. 

After juicing for a day, I'm so glad I decided to start out on a green smoothie fast first as that helped me merge into this so much better. I am committed to follow through on this at least for 9 more days, and then we will see how it goes. 

My weight loss, well, I won't even go there yet. I am not going to reveal that until the end because so far it's been pretty phenomenal.

Smoothie Fast Day Three

I woke up this morning feeling soooooooooo much better! My head only hurt slightly, nothing like the vice grip I had experienced the day before. I was still not looking forward to downing another smoothie, but today I decided to mix things up a bit and boy, was I rewarded!

Jon had a hernia surgery scheduled for today and we had to be at the hospital by 6 am. I didn't know if I would have time to come home and "eat," so I hurried and made my breakfast. 

Today's smoothie was:

water

5 cups of spinach

1 cup of kale

1 cup of carrots

1 tbsp flax seed oil

1 slice lemon with peel

1/2" ginger

2 cups mixed berries

This revived my appetite to go on and make it another day!

Today was great. I had energy, mental clarity, and the draw of outside food was waning quite a bit.

My new Hurom 100 Slow Juicer arrived today and I cannot wait to try it out. I'm crossing my fingers that I won't have to experience another detox day, so time will tell!

Oh, and Jon is doing great! And he seems to like this new smoothie better that the others I was making. Bonus.

Day Two of Smoothie Fast

Wow. Waking up today was not pretty. My head was pounding from a major headache. I felt like I hadn't slept at all the night before. My body moved so slow and my mind even slower. Every movement I made the entire day was difficult. However, from reading experiences other people had on juice fasts, I expected my body to go through a detox phase, I just didn't expect it so soon or for it to slam me so hard.
I pushed through it. All day I reminded myself of why I was doing this.
Even though I was claiming that I was living a vegan lifestyle, I wasn't eating 100% raw; I was probably at 60% to 70% with the remaining being made up of carbs and sugar. I had gotten so addicted to sweets again that I found myself coming into work early, raiding the sin bin (chocolate drawer), grabbing up a bunch of mini-candy bars and throwing them in my desk drawer. Instead of allowing myself a treat once or twice a day, I would sit there and eat all of them like a robot; not even thinking about it. It's amazing how fast bad habits can form and it takes 3 times longer to form good ones! Today that drawer was literally screaming my name all freakin' day long. My will held out and looking back I have no idea how I resisted. I was so ready to give up because it's in my nature not to follow through with things that are hard.
I, Kris Thorne, am a closet cheater when it comes to food. But this time I really want to succeed, so I am coming clean. I am being completely honest with myself and not rationalizing that "just eating this one handful of chips will be OK," or "no one will know if I go to Pizza Hut and get a personal pan pizza for lunch and then to Sonic for a Route 44 Diet Coke." I made the decision that I would know. I had to be honest with myself. I didn't care what anybody else thought, heck Jon would be perfectly happy if I let junk food back in my life, cause then he would have someone to eat it with and I wouldn't be shoving green smoothies down his throat!
I made it through the day. It was not the easiest of my life and I buckled and took some Tylenol that night before bed just to have a peaceful sleep. But I have to be honest, the thought of drinking smoothies for another day was not sitting to well. I just keep telling myself  "One more day."

Day One Smoothie Fast

I have just completed day one of my smoothie fast. I started the day with a veggie and fruit packed smoothie and drank until I could drink no more. I was surprised at how I didn't feel hungry and tired. I felt quite normal, actually. However, when I decided to start my smoothie/juice fast, I forgot that I had also planned a neighborhood dessert night in our front yard for the night of day one. I am happy to say that I suffered no temptation. Not one bit of food passed my lips yesterday. I still cooked dinner for my family as Sunday dinner is really the only sit-down, home-cooked meal we do any more. The plan is to cook a nice, big meal, then have enough left over for lunches the rest of the week.  So naturally, it's not the best time to try out new recipes.I made potato salad for the first time yesterday and I couldn't taste it to see if it was OK or if it needed anything. I judged by smell, and then when the family came over I had Jessica taste test for me. And wow, I guess there was too much vinegar in it! I started making a German potato salad and when it all got put together, it didn't look so great, so I found a traditional recipe and tried to blend the two together. Apparently, DON'T EVER DO THAT. The results were not favorable. My family though, as nice as they are, ate some anyway, but we have a bunch left over! Maybe I can figure out a way to put it in a smoothie.

While I suffered no hunger pangs yesterday, by the time we went to bed I had the beginnings of a pretty good headache. Since I am trying to do this journey naturally, I decided not to indulge in any chemical interference. I did deep breaths and held them and then let the air out slowly. 

Here is my new juicer. I am so excited to use it, and I couldn't wait to show you!

I kid.But this is new, and it is technically a juicer. I got it to squeeze my lemons. Every morning I squeeze a whole lemon and put it into a giant glass of water and drink it. I have come to crave it. It's an excellent way to detox your body. So during my smoothie/juice fast, the only other beverage I will be drinking is lemon water. Lots of it. Very tasty.

I have a feeling the next few days are going to be rough but I am trying to be optimistic! I am doing a great thing for my digestive system and my mind. Eventually. Once I get over the hurdle. Those Frito Lay Scoops on the top of the fridge are looking pretty good.

Juice Feasting and other nonsense

I have done a lot of weird dietary changes in the last couple of years in the name of good health. So far, there has only been one that Jon was happy about; my over-indulging on protein phase. Grocery bill shot up, but that was because we were buying all sorts of mouth-watering meats! He was in heaven, albeit short lived. I can do meat on short term, and then I just stop. Can't do it anymore. I haven't eaten a hamburger in 30+ years, and I have problems with chicken and turkey. It's all emotional, I know, but sometimes the mental blocks are the hardest to overcome.


These last two years have been in inner struggle between me and the numbers on my lab reports. I've tried cutting out sugar, dropping all simple carbs, increasing my protein intake, training sessions, and maximum cardio blasts. 


Then one day, I looked down, and my right foot was all swollen. Since I have neuropathy in my feet, I take the health of my feet very seriously. That same day I called my endo doc and he told me to get to Urgent Care immediately to make sure my kidneys were not malfunctioning. I went. They xrayed me, took my blood, and since they couldn't find anything, they do what they do best; they wrote me a script for an antibiotic. This was on a Wednesday.  Now, mind you, there was no redness or hotness on my foot to indicate an infection, but I continued with the antibiotic. The following Monday, my foot was swollen and I couldn't fit into any of my shoes, so I called my foot doc. He took another xray of my foot, only he had me stand on my foot, where Urgent Care had me lying down. A few moments later he came in with the xray and asks me, do you feel any pain? And I said no, not really. I had felt what I thought was muscle pain on the top of my foot after a run one morning, but it went away until the next time I ran outside (which was a few weeks later). I had experienced some harsh shooting pain in my big toe on occasion, but that comes with living with neuropathy, so I didn't think twice about it.


He puts up the xray and asks, do you see anything here? And I said, yes, my big toe looks funny. He says, you have a broken toe and two fractures in the top of your foot, which are causing your foot to swell. No amount of antibiotic will fix this. In the next few moments, we made the decision to surgically fix my toe (as there were multiple bone spurs) and to repair/remove the bunion that has been causing me years of pain and blisters every year that took eons to heal because of the neuropathy. Easy, simple recovery. Back to work after 4 days, back to normal in 2 weeks or so. WRONG. In the surgery process, they inserted a very long absorbing screw to keep my bones together until they healed and my body decided to reject it. What should have been a two week recovery is now going on 3 months. 4 days before my stitches were to be removed, my skin decided to give out and ripped through the stitches. Because of the lack of integrity in my skin, they couldn't restitch, so we steri-stripped and butterflied the part of the incision that tore open. Within about 4 days, the good part of my foot started to blister and bubble and the incision was looking worse than ever. My foot doc sent me to a wound specialist and we determined that my skin was having an allergic reaction to the adhesive on the strips. We decided to let the wound heal from the bottom up. Couldn't even put a band-aid on without a blister making an appearance.


Where am I going with this? Over the last two years I have worked very hard to get healthy, to have perfect lab work, and good energy and muscle tone. 
I was there. I had lost 32 pounds and was looking pretttttty pretttttty good, if I may say so. Still had about 25 pounds to go, but I was excited about the journey. After this setback with my foot, and having to keep it up and icing it every day to keep the swelling down (from the rejection) I find that I have put back on 12 pounds that I worked so hard to lose. Frustration and desperation have been hanging over me as of late because I don't want to go back there. Ever. 


In the time I've spent off my feet I have been doing a lot of research and reading. (never a good thing!) And I've come to the conclusion that it's time to make another change to the diet. For the last 5 weeks I have been eating 95% vegan (I have lost it a few times on cheese). No ethical statement here, just strictly for health reasons. About 70% of my diet has been raw. My goal is to go 100% raw vegan, and I plan to make that switch next week. 


I've been a supporter of green smoothies for a while now and starting Sunday, I will be doing a green smoothie fast for 3 days followed up by a 10 day juice fast. I have ordered my juicer; I have my doc appt on Tuesday to get the go-ahead to do this under supervision, and then the ultimate goal coming out of this is to go 100% raw. This is a numbers game to me. It doesn't matter how I look on the outside, if my blood results tell a different story, that's what I have to listen to. I will do what it takes to get the "A" on my test, and this is the last road yet traveled for me. If going raw-vegan doesn't do it, then the only thing left is, I don't know what. 


All I ask for is support and encouragement. I want to get this foot 100% healed so I can finally don my workout shoes once again and hit the road. 


Sorry Jon, for all the vegetables in the house and obvious lack of meat, but you really need to stop offering me ice cream sandwiches.

My year-long journey

On January 3, 2011 I started my journey to better health. I weighed in at a whopping $%# pounds, the most I've ever weighed, but that wasn't the biggest reason for joining a gym.

Joining a gym on January 3rd. So cliche', right? YES! I was almost embarrassed to go gym shopping, but I happened to have the day off, so I used it. I knew that it had to be convenient and easy access or I wouldn't use it.

As former residents of Nampa, we were so spoiled having the wonderful Nampa Recreation Center. If there is one thing that local government can do for it's citizens, it's to provide them with a gathering place such as this for better health and keeping families active together.

Upon moving to Utah county, one of the first things we did was go to the American Fork Rec Center and purchase a family membership. While it was a nice rec center, it had nothing on the Nampa rec center. Being an avid walker, I had to walk 14-15 times around the track to reach a mile. Well, you aren't going to do that very many times if you get dizzy, and that's what was happening! In the one year that Jon and I were members at the AF rec center, I went 5 times and Jon went 0 times. I'm just glad that Connor used it and eventually got a job there as a life guard. And, the lazy person that I am, I felt that this rec center was too far out of my way and so I didn't go very often.

Next step was the major purchase of my beloved treadmill. Living up on the mountain like we do, sometimes winter's can be pretty harsh. Even my poor dog doesn't get walked if there is snow on the ground. So for the next two years I used my treadmill quite a bit in the winter.

Then comes the annual check up. I go in, get my blood work done, I get weighed, they test my heart rate, and I fail everything. My A1C and triglycerides are way too high and I get sent home with a blood sugar test kit. The doc gives me 6 months to bring everything down on my own before he reports it to the insurance company. The last thing I want to be right now is high risk, especially in an area that I should be able to have control of. So, I go home, I somewhat change my diet, and I kick up the exercise. 6 months later, I am down 9 pounds (not very much), but my numbers were down enough that he said I was out of the woods and to keep continuing what I was doing. I didn't. I took that as permission to cheat; daily. Finally, in October of 2010, the doc said he was going to put me on medication if I didn't change my lifestyle. Hence, January 3rd, I am gym shopping. Why did I wait that long to get proactive? I was busy blubbering and feeling sorry for myself; oh, and we were in Europe for 2 weeks. However, during this time I was doing yoga 3-4 times a week in my home and daily walks with the dog, which really wasn't enough.

Side note here: while I totally believe in doctors and all the good they can do for us, I am a firm believer in getting a diagnosis and then taking action into my own hands - most of the time. Whenever a doc implies medication is in my future, I do everything in my power to keep from having to take it, without risk to my health. That's why my primary doc is a naturopath first, a medical doc second.

So begins my journey to getting control of my health. January 3, 2011, the day i join a gym. For the first several months I was so consistent in coming, that the gym management even commented that for a New Years resolution membership, I was only one of 3 people that were still consistently coming to work out. I was constantly getting encouragement from management and other members for my hard work. It was a big part in what kept me going, even through the summer and warm weather. Then in April, I signed on with a trainer named John, who really pushed me to my limits and way outside of my comfort zone. I worked with him twice a week for 2 months and in that time I lost 6 pounds, which to me was very discouraging. But he kept telling me that I wasn't eating enough protein. "You've gotta eat more protein!"

I'm not a huge meat eater, but not a vegetarian. I don't like chicken, turkey or hamburger. But I DO love steak, roast, salmon and halibut. I instantly became a high maintenance foodie, and in this area, Jon didn't complain! So, from May to July I lost another 20 pounds by adding more protein and eating more vegetables for a total of 26 pounds lost.

And then, my Dad passed away.

For 4.5 months I had been living a pretty sugar free lifestyle with very few simple carbs. I come from a big family. We are a family of comfort food eaters. Going home to be with my family during this time, and all the wonderful meals that were prepared for us by some amazing people, I threw caution to the wind and no longer cared about my own dietary needs. Immediately following my Dad's funeral we left for my family reunion, which dietary-wise, was no better. Instead of going armed with my own foods, I ate what everyone prepared. If you've never had my brother's dutch oven German chocolate cake, it's enough to stop a war long enough to eat it. I chose not to get up and have a piece, because I new if I sat long enough it would be gone, and then my decision would be made for me. But then some idiot, (said lovingly) put the lid down on the table I was sitting at, with all this yummy frosting and cake remnants stuck to the lid, and low and behold, I had a fork. I sat there and scraped at that lid until it was clean.

Despite the fail on my eating habits during that time, upon my return home from a funeral and a reunion, I was amazingly still down 26 pounds, and the blood work I had done would show that I was doing everything right. At my next appointment, my doc told me I was officially off the type 2 watch list and to keep up the good work. This time I went home and kicked everything into high gear.

A few months earlier we had purchased a Blendtec blender which has completely changed my eating habits. Because of this one purchase, I have increased my vegetable and protein intake by about 3 times. All good things. I learned the importance of drinking protein shakes after working out, and then a few times a week I make myself a green smoothie for breakfast.

My workout level has increased. I do a HIIT training about 2 times a week; started training for a run, (went from being able to run for only 1.5 minutes to now 20 minutes, and still climbing)circuit training 2-3 times a week. And last month I completed a barre class that I really think was harder than any of my training sessions.

There are only two areas that I can think of, that I could improve upon in my dietary corner: eat more protein and cut out soda.

So, yesterday, I had my follow up appointment with my doc; new blood work results to be discussed. I was so excited for this appointment because I had made so many improvements I was sure they would show through my blood. Wrong.

While my blood pressure and cholesterol are good, my A1C and triglycerides had shot up quite a bit. All the things that are controlled by lifestyle. I thought I had made some pretty significant changes to my lifestyle that have now become habits. How could this happen?

My hope going into this appointment was that I would be taken off of medication, and instead, he is upping the dosage of one and adding another. I was so upset getting this news that I cried on the drive home while having my own little pity party. I didn't know what else I could do. Here I was, hoping that I had worked hard enough to get off pills, to find out that I was just put on more.

After the storm settled, I decided to hit the gym, burned 300 calories doing some intervals, spent some time in the weight room and went home and fixed myself a protein packed green smoothie.

This morning I went and had a metabolic test, found out that in order to lose a pound a week, I need to consume a maximum of 1500 calories. I also learned that I'm not eating ENOUGH carbs. Go figure.

My proactive decision? I rejoined SparkPeople to help me with my eating, and I will continue to work out as I have been doing while mixing things up here and there.

To my female friends and family members, if you are under forty and out of shape or in less than good health do something about it now. Don't wait until you are my age as achievements come so much harder after 50. So much harder.

Take a lesson from me. Take care of yourself when you are young. And if you feel guilty for taking the time away from your family while you go exercise, you are doing yourself and your children a HUGE disservice. They need to see that your health is important to you. Your children learn their healthy habits from you. And on the plus side, unless you get run over by a deer while out on your morning run, you will be around to enjoy your family for a much longer time.