All Good Things Must Come to an End

Though our fast was going better than expected, we decided that day 4 would be the final day this time around. We both wanted to end on a weekend so that we could enjoy preparing and eating our first meal together and we didn't really want to wait 5 more days for that. But we don't consider this a failure at all. Most first timers only fast for 1-2 days, and we made it 4. I am super proud of that. Plus, I lost 7 lbs, Husband lost 9 lbs, and we both feel great.

I think one of the hardest parts about any of it was that we (especially me) had to continue to prepare 3 meals a day for the kids. Cooking for other people when you can't eat is really quite difficult. Despite that, we will definitely be juice fasting again. We want to do a longer 4-7 day fast about once every six months, but might also do shorter 1-2 day fasts even more frequently. 

Rip's Big Bowl

The important thing is that this is a kick start to a lifestyle of healthy eating and good nutrition. The last night of our fast, we cleaned out all the "junk" in our pantry and went to the grocery store to stock up on more veggies and healthy staples with little-to-no junk in them. Then we spent the remainder of our evening planning all three meals for Sunday. :D We were pretty excited about eating. 

We decided on "Rip's Big Bowl" for breakfast from Rip Esselstyn's documentary (and book) Engine 2 Diet. It was delicious!!! Probably my favorite thing of the whole day and it really sticks with you and keeps you feeling satisfied. You can find the recipe here. We improvised a bit on the types of cereals we used in it, but we did use 4 and they were all Kashi brand. We made a BIG batch of this so that we could have it each morning and all we need to add is the fruit. 

For lunch, we wanted something fairly light, so we made a giant salad with tons of fresh veggies (with enough leftovers for both of our lunches today). Instead of salad dressing, we mixed in fresh avocado, which I actually prefer and is much healthier. We also had some carrot/celery/apple juice. Both were excellent, but I think in the future, I won't make juice to go with our meal. The juice can pretty much stand on it's own and the salad was huge (that is a mixing bowl, not a regular bowl), so it was a little too much for me in one sitting. I think in the future I'll do one for lunch and the other for a snack.

We were most excited about preparing our dinner because we'd been dreaming about it for days. It's another recipe from the Engine 2 Diet documentary we watched. On the menu: Kale Salad with Veggie Panini's. First we made some healthy roasted red pepper hummus that is used as the spread on the panini's. The hummus was excellent and very easy to make. All you do is roast a red pepper and garlic in the oven, and then mix them with chickpea's in the blender. We used a can of organic chickpeas to save on prep time. The recipe is here, and we have plenty left over to use on more sandwiches or as a dip for fresh veggies.

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

Once our hummus was ready, we started in on the rest of dinner. The kale salad was super easy and simply chopped up kale, one avocado, and the juice from one lemon all mixed/mashed together. We thought the lemon was a little overpowering, so this was our least favorite item of the day, but it was still ok. The panini recipe is here and I would highly recommend them. We used a very dark whole wheat bread, which probably wasn't the best, but they were still excellent.

Today I'm very excited to try out some of our alfalfa sprouts (they are growing crazy fast) and also to get back to working out. Happy Monday!