Days 3 & 4

Day 3:

The third day was definitely the hardest for me. It probably had a whole lot to do with a not-so-restful night of sleep; misbehaving, whiny children; muddy dogs on the carpet; a child's bathroom incident that I never want to speak of, and a really messy house. And with all that stress, I just wanted to EAT something. I was feeling a little tired (but not enough so that I could fall asleep), and incredibly grumpy.

The day did take a turn for the better at the end when my mother-in-law called and offered to watch the kids so we could go out for a movie or something. We rarely get a date night, so we jumped at the chance. We didn't make it to the movies in time to see anything good, and it was a major bummer to go on a date where you can't eat anything, so we ran some errands and did some kid-free shopping instead. After the day I'd had, it was totally what I needed. We weren't even gone for 2 hours, but just getting away for a bit and having a break made me feel a ton better.

Aside from our date night, the other bright spot in my day was the at I lost another 2 lbs, bringing my total up to 5 lbs since I started the fast. Yay!

I continued to juice 5 times a day yesterday, and I also started growing my alfalfa sprouts. I soaked the seeds in a mason jar overnight the night before, and put cheesecloth over the top to drain the water out yesterday morning (see photo to the left). Then I rinsed the seeds with fresh water and spread them in a thin layer in my seed sprouter. The instructions say to rinse the seeds twice a day with fresh water and they should be ready in 5-6 days.


Day 4:

Throughout this whole experience, I've been holding on to day 4 as a magical milestone because I've read that this is when you actually start to feel good, and thank goodness, it is certainly the case for me. I actually got out of bed before the kids this morning because I was wide awake (if you know me, you know this is very out of the ordinary, especially on a Saturday). I feel really pretty great today. I have more energy than previously and am less hungry. From what I've read, it only gets better from here, so thank goodness for that! Oh, day 4, I love you!

I also lost an additional 1.5 lbs today, which brings my weight back down to my lowest weight since having children. I hit this number in the fall after I'd been really focused on exercising and eating healthy for quite some time, but then I had to take 6 weeks off of working out for medical reasons. After I couldn't work out for a while and the holidays hit, I quickly gained 6.5 lbs and on my frame, it was really quite noticeable. I'm ecstatic that I'm back down to my weight before my medical/holiday hiatus.

Husband is also feeling pretty great and basking in the glory that is day 4. He's lost 7 lbs so far. He also has more energy and feels more awake in the morning. One of the most noticeable things for him is that he has a much more sensitive sense of smell. I've noticed this too, but I think his is a little more pronounced than mine. We refer to it as his "new super-human senses". Not only can we smell ALL kinds of food, including the magical bread aisle at Kroger that we never noticed before, and the rain outside, but we can suddenly smell the ashes in the fireplace, even from other rooms in the house. We've never noticed this smell before unless we were sitting right next to the fireplace and we'd very recently burned in it, but we haven't used it in weeks and can smell it all the time. It's very strange.


Lastly, I was excited to look at my alfalfa sprouts this morning and see that they'd started to sprout already. :D I'm so proud, and the kids are completely fascinated as well. I'm looking forward to being able to enjoy them, but the growing process is really quite fun too.