Processed foods and the effects on your body

Last night, I made what I thought was a little mistake, but it turned out to be a huge one! I messed up. You see, we are having a big Labor Day cookout on Monday and I know you should start to prepare your body for other foods beforehand. So last night when I was at a friend's house, there was some chicken salad and crackers available. I was so hungry because I had not had a dinner juice and didn't bring anything with me. So I caved. I thought "what could be the harm?" It wasn't like I was eating cake and ice cream. Just a few tablespoons of chicken salad and some club crackers. Let me tell you. I woke up at 3:00am this morning with abdominal cramps. I ran to the restroom and as I was sitting there, I began to break out in a cold sweat and I was shaky and clammy. I looked in the mirror and I was green! My face was literally a shade of light green and my lips were pale. I seriously thought I was going to pass out. Thankfully it didn't last very long because there wasn't that much to...ahem...pass. 

My body was completely detoxed and I went and put something in it that was probably highly processed. I'm sure it was canned chicken, definitely mayo, and who knows what else. Plus, my body hasn't had any meat or dairy in almost 2 weeks, so I know it was a shock. My body was not able to digest that processed stuff properly. It's really scary to think that my body was used to that before. 

So now the question is how to handle the cookout. I spoke to my good friend, Terry. I also work with him so I tend to see him quite often. He's a RN, so he's typically my "go-to" person when I have any health questions. We spoke about what happened and how my body will deal with the cookout foods. He said when you are coming off a fast, you need to come off very slowly. Our original plan was to start indroducing foods on Sunday, the day before the fast. He said it's a slow process of adding foods back in, and 1 day probably won't be enough time. He looked at me and said sternly "You need to start adding foods back in NOW!" So I guess I need to start the next step in my clean eating journey. Crap! I wasn't prepared for this yet! I know I should add in little by little, so maybe I will make a lunch trip to Whole Foods and take a look around. Then juice for dinner. 

By the way, I do plan on making some clean recipes for the cookout. I just need to decide on what to make. Details and pictures to come later with updates from the cookout. If I don't hop back on here for another post before Monday, have a wonderful Labor Day!

Pushed past the plateau!

As you can probably guess by the title of this post, my weight reached it's first plateau since the juicing. I was stuck at 8 lbs lost for about 3 days. I could feel the discouragement trying to work its way through, but I wouldn't let it! And thank goodness I didn't. I stepped on the scale this morning was was down another 2.2 lbs, making my total 10.2 lbs in 8 days! Now onto the specifics on my juice fast...

For those that would like to know exactly what I'm doing. Basically my diet consists of nothing but fresh/raw fruits and veggies. I can juice them or just eat them straight. I have only had 1 thing cooked since doing this and that was a baked potato I had for lunch today. As I'm typing this, I am enjoying a juice that consists of 1 sweet potato, 1 beet, 2 apples, 1 orange, about a cup of carrots, and 2 stalks of kale. How in the world would I have ever gotten that in my body before? Answer: I wouldn't have!

When I tell people about my juicing, some are intrigued, some are inspired, and some just flat out cringe. Have you ever had a V8 Fusion? If not, it's basically a vegetable and fruit juice combined. What's neat about it though, is that when you add fruit juice to vegetable juice, you pretty much only taste the fruit. Same with juicing. I can make a juice that looks like sewage, but tastes like kiwi or grapes. I will attach a picture at the end of this post. Anyway, back to my typical day. Generally, I will have a juice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I will also snack on fruits inbetween. I usually have 2 bananas a day. I LOVE bananas and you can't really juice a banana, so I just eat them.

Some tips I've learned about juicing, in case you decide to try it on your own:

1. Kale tends to clog up your juicer, however carrot goes through pretty forcefully. Lightbulb moment - wrap a kale leaf around a baby carrot and sent it through. NO CLOGS!!!
2. Best fruits/veggies for producing juice: peaches, apples, pears, cucumbers, any melon (especially watermelon), pineapple, and cherries.
3. Fruit can just about mask any taste except for ginger.
4. I don't particularly care for carrots, but carrot juice is very sweet and adds to any juice.
5. Juices are really good if you freeze them and then drink when they are almost entirely thawed out.
6. A little bit of cucumber goes a long way!

Here's a pic of the yummy sewage:

More juice please!

I've lost 7 lbs in 4 days. Wanna know how? JUICING!


It all started when I was sitting on the couch flipping through documentaries on Netflix (we get the live streming through our Wii). I saw this documentary titled "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead". The picture was of a guy that was obviously unhealthy waiting to go into the juicer along with fruits and veggies and standing outside the juicer was a much thinner, healthier looking version of that guy, who I learned later was Joe Cross. I thought the documentary looked interesting. Little did I know, it was about to change my eating habits. I can't do the documentary justice by talking about it. If you haven't already, you MUST see it for yourself. Joe is hilarious in it, so it makes for an easy watch. As I was watching, I was glued. By the time it was over, I wanted everyone to see it! A couple nights later, I sat down and watched it again with Jon, my husband. It was about a week before my 30th birthday and at that point, I knew what I wanted Jon to get me...a juicer! So Jon did some research and got the right juicer for us and we started right away with experimenting. Here's the cover of the documentary:

Shortly after we decided that we were going to start a "juicing journey", I spoke to my sister-in-law, Robin, and told her about this new-found love. She was immediately interested and watched the same documentary with her husband, Rich. Guess what? They decided to join us! So they bought a juicer and we all visited a farmer's market and voted August 22nd to be our official start date! Jon and I are juicing for 14 days. Today is the start of Day 5 and I feel great. More details to come in the next post, so stay tuned...

What this blog is about...

Since turning 30, I am bound and determined to take better care of my health. I am at the highest weight I’ve ever been (not including what I weighed during pregnancy – thank God because I carried triplets!). My overall cholesterol is too high, my LDL is too high, my HDL is too low, my triglycerides are too high, I’m considered “obese” according to my BMI. My knees hurt, my back hurts, my feet hurt. And I’m only 30! Having triplets and working full-time doesn’t leave me with much time for anything else. By the time I pick up the girls and get home, it’s 6:00pm. I am supposed to fit in fixing dinner, eating dinner, cleaning up dinner, and getting 3 little girls ready for bed (which in itself is no quick and easy task), and do all of this in enough time to get the girls in bed at a decent time. Phew! Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a wonderful husband who is a devoted father daddy that helps with the bedtime routine, so I don’t do this all alone. He also helps in cleaning up the kitchen too! The point I’m getting at, however, is that due to time constraints, we tend to lean more toward convenience foods, which unfortunately means heavily processed foods. I could probably count on one hand the number of FRESH fruits and vegetables I’ve had in a week. And if I were missing a few fingers, that wouldn’t make a difference.

Since turning 30, I decided to make a real change. I’ve always thought about it, but never did it. I guess part of me didn’t want to. When you’re used to eating unhealthy, you become used to it and have the mindset of healthy=tastes bad. I could even turn healthy recipes into non-healthy recipes real quick. I didn’t even give the healthy recipe a shot! I just assumed it would need extra cheese, or salt, or sugar, etc. I decided to head to my doctor, get my blood drawn so I could be faced with the ugly numbers, and then make that change. I need to do this for my girls. They need a healthy role model to show them how to eat healthy. I need to do this for my husband. I want to be a “hot wife” that he can be proud to call his. I need to do this for myself. I have put my health on the back burner for so long.

I wanted to start this blog for 3 major reasons:

1.     I hope that it will be encouraging for others that want to make a health change. Believe me when I say: If I can do it, anyone can! I mean that.

2.     I want this blog to hold me accountable. If I am updating everyone on what I am doing with my health, I definitely want to write something I am proud of.

3.     I want this blog to be a reference. I plan on documenting my juices and what I eat and how I feel and weight loss, and eventually better blood work results!

I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I enjoy sharing this information. If I can inspire just 1 person, this will all be worth it.