Juice Fast Day 3

Most of you said I would never make it through one day, but I did. I am now most of the way through day three and I am feeling fine! Day one was interesting. The juices took a lot of getting used to, especially with my strong gag reflex I have towards vegetables or anything healthy. I had never used a juicer before either so I had to play around with that a little. The clean up kind of stinks, but since I'm juicing for five days straight I just rinsed everything out and left it in the sink for the next time.

I slept like a baby the first night. Day two I woke up feeling more energized than I have in a long time. I skipped my morning coffee and instead had a cup of hot green tea. Not wanting to waste all that extra energy, I headed off to the gym and did some light weights and 35 minutes of light cardio on the elliptical. I kept the level down and only picked up the pace for a few minutes, until my body started telling me to slow it back down. After the gym, the kids and I headed on base and stocked up on more fruits and veggies. Hannah, my 13yr old, wanted to try some smoothies out so she got stuff for those too. Dizziness hit me about halfway through the grocery store and I did feel like I had less energy for the rest of the day.

 Aside from a mild headache, which I'm guessing is from lack of caffeine, I felt pretty darned great. I even made the kids breakfast and took them through the McDonald's drive through AND later that night didn't even bat an eye when my cousin and houseguest plopped a couple pieces of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory into the fridge. Hunger did kick in around dinner time, but I was trying to choke down the beet juice that I still haven't mastered yet, and cook dinner for the kids. I somehow refrained from sticking my face in the bowl of pasta I made for the kids, glared at my beet juice, dumped it down the sink, and cheated and made a smoothie out of juiced fruits and the fruit pulp.

THAT WAS NOT CHEATING! (ahem, Kelly)

According to the fast, if the hunger pangs are persistent I am allowed to have a piece of fruit or a small salad. Instead I juiced fruits which I think is more along the lines of not eating food and only having juice and therefore I am my own personal hero and not a cheater.

Today marks day three and I did have a rough time sleeping last night, so I took a unisom and slept like a baby. I was a little groggy this morning, probably from my sleeping pill, but I got everything together and hit the gym this morning again. I did about 10 minutes of light weights, and then only made it 30 minutes on the elliptical before I started getting dizzy.

Hailey and I took a trip to the natural food store, and I got some actual raw cashews to use in my cashew milk instead of the ones I had from the normal grocery store that had salt in them. I'm hoping this helps the consistency of my cashew milk this evening and the flavor. I'm going to make a big batch to get me through these last couple of days. Hailey got a fresh organic apple and munched on it the whole way home, all the way telling me how yummy it was. Probably much better for her than her typical after gym "fruit snack" that comes in the form of Dora and Boots.

I have every confidence that I will make it through to day five. I even picked up some organic brown rice at the natural food store for my five days after my fast so that I can mix that with my veggies and ease back into real food.

Oh and since I promised...I made a video blog about it too. You can catch that on YouTube by clicking HERE.

The Juice Fast: Why? Well, Why Not?

I have decided to do a five day juice fast. You're all thinking I'm crazy, which is fine, because if you actually know me, you already know that I'm completely insane. So, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise to you. Now, this wasn't something that I randomly woke up and decided to do. No...I thought about it for at least a week first lol. I googled, I watched lots of youtube videos, I even checked out the documentary "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" on Netflix. While I don't believe I know everything about juicing, I do believe I researched enough to be able to make it through five days.

Of course a lot of you are going to be asking me why, actually a lot of you already have. Normally my answer to everything is a big fat "Why Not?". I just do what I want on a whim and I enjoy my whims. But I actually did put a bit of thought into this and here are my beginning answers to why:

1.) I like trying new things. Which should be apparent by my many random new things I try.

2.) I want to see if I can do it. Plain and simple, I like a challenge.

3.) Vegetables are practically non-existent in my diet, and I'd like to change my relationship with them.

4.) I'm hoping to get the kids more interested in vegetables.

What am I hoping to accomplish physically?

1.) I'd like to feel better overall.

2.) Some weight loss would be nice.

3.) Maybe I can beat the sinus cold I feel creeping up on me out of my system before it gets going.

I've never been a healthy eater. I grew up with the metabolism that my now 13 year old daughter has where I could eat absolutely anything in any quantity and not gain weight. Instead I was always accused of starving myself, when in fact I ate a lot, and mostly a lot of junk foods. Once I started popping out kids and getting older my metabolism of course slowed down and I continued to eat like I did before and that simply did not work out for me. Vegetables have never been a huge part of my diet, my husband hates them and believes that potatoes and corn are proper vegetables, the kids refuse to eat anything green ,and I am guilty of only really enjoying salads slathered in ranch dressing. It's time to TRY to switch things up.

I did enjoy the documentary "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" however, I am not fat. I am technically overweight, but not by very much thanks to some attempts at dieting and fitness this year. I'm not sick, although some of you may question my mental status from time to time, although I have been struggling with some depression, anxiety, and overall feelings of "I hate my life" this year. And while I am not nearly dead, I do realize that if I continue to have this type of relationship with food and alcohol that I will end up dead faster than I would like, and I'll go to my grave not looking quite as sexy as I'd like to.

So this is a bit of a drastic jolt to my system. I have heard that juice fasts can help to reduce your hunger going forward, and kind of reset your system and help you get into a good mindset to move forward and be more successful with your health and fitness goals. I may not make it the five days, especially after tasting my first juice this morning. But I'd like to, and if you want to cheer me on or offer me a prize if I make it...well that would be kind of nice.

(You can stop reading here, but I plan to go on for a while on this first initial blog)

What I plan to do for my five days:

I am going to use the recipes I found on WellPicked.com  for their five day juice fast. I ignored all the crap about weaning myself off of carbs, caffeine, sugar, etc five days prior to the fast. Mostly because I wanted to get started this weekend while the kids were on a long break from school.


My first juice, looks great in my Shrek cup. (yes that is one of the recalled toxic cups)

I'm going to try and stick to it for at least the first day, and adjust as needed. I've only had the first drink so far today, the Green Juice. I made half the recipe, omitting the parsley because I forgot to buy parsley, and the first sip was like...ok...this isn't too bad. I made it through 3/4 of the glass before I decided that I'd had enough. I made the mistake of taking my Women's One A Day vitamin which always makes me nauseous after I had my first juice so I'm not sure if it was the juice that made me want to barf, or the vitamin which always makes me want to barf...but I'm not feeling very great right now.

Exercise is typically not advised during a juice fast as it tends to drain your energy. I plan to just listen to my body and do whatever I can. This morning my son and I did try the demo for the Nike + Kinect on Xbox 360 and I think that ten minutes of activity was enough for right now.

Maybe I will video blog about it. I will try and do one at lunch time, mostly because I just like making videos and my teenage daughter (who is in a production class at school) thinks it will be fun. Let me know what kind of videos you might like to see and I'll try and do one for you. I should have done one this morning of me trying to make my first juice and not realizing the glass I chose was too tall, therefore blocking the juice flow and causing it to ooze out of the juicer in places I'm sure it wasn't supposed to be coming out of. I still created enough foul veggie juice for my first "meal" though.

Preparation:

I bought a juicer, I went with a fairly mid priced model. I'm not ready to dish out $300-400 on this, but I figured $90ish wasn't too bad. I went with Jack LaLanne's Power Juicer which I was able to get at Kohl's and use my bonus cash I had. It was the mid priced one there and while it did take a bit of rinsing to clean it out this morning, I found it very simple to use and clean.

We went to the Riverside Market yesterday and grabbed whatever fresh veggies and fruit we could find from the vendors there. It was really fun to take the kids out and sample some fresh produce, cheese, honey, jerkey, etc and just get out of the house and walk around. If juicing remains a part of our lives this may lead to many fun family trips. I got the rest of what I needed at the local grocery store, and may make a trip on base later this week to get stuff at better prices...if I stick to this :)

I did research. I didn't just wake up and decide on a whim I was going to do this. I am fully prepared (hopefully) for whatever may come from this, and I have been to the doctor recently and she said I am completely healthy and that this not only would be ok to try, but that she has done a few herself and that they really do make you feel better, also I'm ready for the physical discomforts which I've heard are not so much fun. Bring it on!

The physical discomfort concerns:

1.) You're not going to have any energy: Guess what? I barely have any energy as it is, and I've heard that after a few days you actually get more energy so we shall see. Thankfully I do not work at this time, aside from chasing three kids all day, and the gym is closed for the next two days so I won't be tempted to go anyway. I'm not sleeping well at night as it is, so something has to change.

2.) Enjoy your new relationship with the toilet: Do you know what doing nothing but eating crappy food and drinking too much alcohol does for your system? Yeah, I'm kind of used to having my stomach hate me. I've actually already been hanging out in the bathroom this morning a little more and it's more of a cleansing visit, than the typical crampy omg I want to die type I'm used to. Sorry if that was TMI, but I'm probably going to be talking about that a lot more.

I guess this is enough for now. I may blog more today, and definitely will have one video up in the next couple of hours. Feel free to leave suggestions, comments, cheers, jeers, or any other random stuff you can think of. Include your guess on how long I will make it and what you'll give me if I beat it...I'd love to prove you wrong.

The Mommy Gamers 11: You Down With O.P.P.?

I haven't been posting my new podcast here on my own personal blog and I'm not sure why. Shame on me, laziness I guess. I'll try from now on to post it here as well as everywhere else we're posting it and maybe lure a few of you lurkers into becoming listeners. Getting this podcast going has been a bit of a struggle. Our original crew fell apart rather quickly, but in the last couple months the show has gotten stronger and better than I'd ever anticipated. With each new show and each amazing weekly guest host we are learning and improving the content we put out. Anyone who has produced a podcast or even listened to one as it has started out knows that they grow over time and we hope to continue to put this show out and make it bigger and better each week.


 Marcia aka PandaJax and Desirai are joined this week by Nori Fox, a mother and grandmother, Microsoft MVP, Xbox Ambassador, part of the good game network, and gaming for others charity...is there anything she doesn't do?

 October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the ladies kick off the show with a prevention tip. The new Xbox Gamerscore Rewards Program is discussed, as well as Kinect TV, Mists of Pandaria (yes again), and Marcia brags about her new set of WOW Mega Blocks. TV & Movie chat this week includes some disappointment over the Once Upon a Time season premier and the new show Revolution, Breaking Dawn II tickets are already on sale (what's up with that?), and Desirai took one for the team and saw the movie Pitch Perfect.

 Alligator pool parties and diaper shortages kick off the news and hot topics section of the show. Health and Fitness topics include an update on Desirai's PCOS, and Marcia's vain attempts to lighten her Melasma marks that linger after having three children. Finally they wrap up the show with an "awful" contest where you could win a lovely set of the "nipple" buttons in the feature picture of Episode 10 on the new Mommy Gamers website!

 Remember that you can subscribe to The Mommy Gamers podcast for FREE on iTunes. Remember to follow them on Twitter, and Facebook too!


 

Florida Fall Begins! Kind of...

Floridians are funny creatures when it comes to the changing "seasons" and I use quotation marks with that because let's face it...we don't really have seasons here. It's either hot, insanely hot, or cool enough to warrant wearing pants and long sleeved shirts with our flip-flops. Still, when the temperatures dip below 70 degrees for the first time after summer we all go digging in our closets for our winter clothes.

I'm going to take a moment to brag on my awesome Mom skills. I just went to the closet and pulled out some bags of clothes I bought from Old Navy for the kids when they were clearancing out last years winter items. I got a bunch of shirts and pants for $1-$2 each in the next size up. They are now all hung up in the kids closets and I'm so glad I did that. Hopefully Hannah actually likes hers, but if not...too bad! I'm glad I didn't buy many tops for myself though, because I'm excited to announce that NONE OF THEM FIT! Luckily they're comfy tops, so they will make great sleep shirts. Totally great feeling though, pulling out those shirts and realizing I'm not an XL anymore.

Mild morning chill aside, I'm still not quite ready to give up on the kiddie pools and summer stuff. I figure we have at least a few more good pool weekends left, and maybe now that it's not a million degrees outside, a beach weekend finally. I'm definitely happy to see the cooler weather creeping in, and there's something about it that is motivational for me. Maybe Hailey and I can start taking walks again!

Anyhow, just as I predicted I totally cheated all weekend on my plans to eat properly. So now I only have myself to blame if I never get my hands on a copy of Mists of Pandaria, but let's be honest here...it's not like I actually have time to play it anyway. Not really much of a loss right now, but I do intend to go to the gym today if they will let me put Hailey in the gym day care. She is sounding a bit stuffed up and sniffly, but her nose isn't quite running yet. I think if I get out of the house this morning and get in there I should be ok. Although now that I stop and think of it, I feel like I might be starting to get sniffly too. I am so not in the mood for a change of weather sinus cold right now.

Ok, I got my daily blog in there. Now it's time to get to work, knock out my school stuff and get to finding awesome podcast topics for tonight's recording of The Mommy Gamers!

I'm a Cheater, So What?

You'd think I could have made it through at least a day, but nope. At this rate I may never get my hands on Mists of Pandaria. Friday started out great, I was motivated, I ate great for breakfast and lunch, even went to the gym and worked out for almost an hour. My fatal flaw was forgetting that I had a Thirty-One party that night.  Well, I remembered the party, I just didn't remember to not pig out on the amazing flatbread pizzas the hostess made and might have over indulged in the pinot grigio and martinis. For the record, wine and martinis combined make for an awful headache the next day. Never mix them!

Saturday I woke up with that all too familiar pounding head and wanted to retreat back into my bed and stay there for the rest of my life. Not really an option with a herd of children, so I begged my father to bring doughnuts when he came to visit for the day. I was proud of myself when I ignored the doughnuts and made some sausage and eggs. I mowed the front and back yard, so I figured that burnt like...a million calories?

 However, the day quickly downward spiraled from there. I vaguely recall tortilla chips and black bean salsa, some of the most beautiful t-bone steaks I've ever seen, loaded baked potato, and to finish the night off some spaghetti with sausage crumbles, onions, and mushrooms...and garlic bread.

I wish I'd never discovered these sausage crumbles.

I went to bed when the kids did, feeling like a bloated pig and forgetting to blog the entire day. So there goes that goal too. So, I'm a cheater...what is it about starting to want to eat well that makes you eat worse?

Today is Sunday and I've already cheated, chowing down on a breakfast pastry instead of grabbing one of the many healthy options in the house. We've got some family coming over for the day so I grabbed lunchmeats, chips, some awesome fresh baked sliced italian bread, and I'm about to toss some chili in the crock pot. Oh well, tomorrow is another day right?

Also, since we're gearing up for Halloween, if you want to be a Blood Elf this year you've still got time to pick up your ears lol.

No More Fat Panda

I don't think I was bold enough to post my starting weight for 2012. I will say that I was creeping uncomfortably close to the 190's and at 5'8 which is not in the "healthy weight range" at all. I got off to a pretty good start, hitting the gym, eating better, getting random exercise like Dance Central 2 and mowing the lawn instead of paying someone to do it, but I've definitely slacked off. My excuses of "oh the kids are here for the summer and they hate the gym" (you'll remember that from Episode 9 of my podcast) and "I'll wait until school starts and we get into a routine", or "I'm too depressed to go" are all lame excuses and it's time to get back on track.

So, how do I get motivated to go to get back in gear? First of all I'm trying to be pretty positive. I've lost TWENTY pounds this year which is fantastic! Sure, I wanted to have lost way more than that by now, but with what I've been juggling this year I'm just happy I can still say I lost anything. I used to use a system of goals and rewards, and that worked out pretty good. My rewards were things like new gym clothes, a heart rate monitor (which I never even use), etc. Those just won't fly anymore so I had to go more hard core.

I'm not letting myself buy the new Mists of Pandaria expansion for WOW until I get back on track.

Now, I know some of you are wondering why this is blog worthy. Well, I figure if I put it out there into the magical interwebs, at least a few of you that read this play WOW with me and will know if I cheated. So this is my strange way of holding myself accountable.

What is on track? I actually sat down with my weight loss journal and calculated how much I would have to lose to get to my goal by the end of the year, then I tacked on an extra five pounds of weight loss just because I was feeling bad ass that day. I'm kind of regretting that now, because had I not written that down, I wouldn't be so far off, but it's there in INK and there it shall remain. Basically I only needed to drop one pound a week from the time I started calculating. So right now, I'm only behind by 2 pounds...but Mists of Pandaria comes out in 4 days.

And just to push myself a little bit further, if I can actually post to this blog every day while I'm trying to reach this goal, I'm going to reward myself with the collector's edition!

Here's to hoping this works, and pushes me to reach my goals, if not I guess I'll be a sad panda...just not in the World of Warcraft.

Free Doughnuts for Pirates

Want to be the most amazing person in your office today? Stop by Krispy Kreme on your way into work in full pirate attire and land yourself the best booty of them all (no not my booty) an entire DOZEN warm sugary doughnuts for FREE*. You don't have to wave your sword around, mostly because weapons are not allowed in the stores (party poopers). Not brave enough to dress like a pirate? Well if you can muster up a pirate accent and belt out a couple "shiver me timbers" or "ARGs" you will get one delicious treat for your efforts.

Another fun activity today is the Pirate Generator at StupidStuff.org that not only gives you a great pirate name, but a story to go along with it. Stories range from lame to perverse and are all amusing. I almost hesitated to post mine on my facebook page, and if you're not following me on there I'll also share it here, keep in mind all of the good "cannonball" jokes have already been made:

Your Pirate name is Screaming Samantha - Arrrr, you were born to sail the high seas and fly the Jolly Roger. Unfortunately you don't have a ship, crew, cannons, or even a parrot, so you sit in the bathtub and wash your boobies over and over whilst screaming "Surrender or die, surrender or die!"

Enjoy pirate day in any way you see fit, but make sure to participate in some way!

For more pirate fun, make sure to visit the official Talk Like a Pirate Day Site.

*Fine Print: Offer good for one free doughnut per customer who wears an eye patch or talks like a pirate to a Krispy Kreme team member at a participating shop. One free dozen Original Glazed doughnuts per customer who wears a full pirate costume into a participating Krispy Kreme location. Redeemable on September 19, 2012 only at participating Krispy Kreme US locations.