Inspiration and Overview

The blog:

My obvious purpose for starting this blog is to keep track of and talk about.... drum roll please... HEALTH, FITNESS & NUTRITION! I know, I know... I can see all 3 of you, my readers, sighing and rolling your eyes. But seriously, THIS is important. With the super high cost of health care these days and our TERRIBLE insurance coverage, we literally can't afford to get sick. So please bear with me. 

I'm trying to keep the majority of my extreme crazy off of Facebook and Pinterest for everyone I know to see (I even created a secret Pinterest health board for fear of the mocking from my friends and family... haha). They will think I'm C-R-A-Z-Y! However, I want to document my progress, what I'm eating, how I'm feeling, and any health changes for my own future knowledge, and also maybe help or inspire others with my "experiments" and findings. And ta-da: this blog was born! ;)

Inspiration and Education:

So I'll start with what prompted this most recent episode of insanity. I started taking a fitness class with my very sweet friend/cousin, Rachel. I went to my first "boot camp" class with her on Thursday night (I am still walking like a 95 year old woman by the way.. ouch!) and it was awesome. I can't wait to go back! When I got home that night, my husband had started watching this documentary on Netflix called Hungry for Change. He actually started it over when I got there because it was so interesting and what they had to say made SO much sense! 

That program peaked our interest and we watched two more excellent documentaries about nutrition the next night called Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead and Forks Over Knives. I would highly recommend all three of them as they really inspired both of us to make some big changes.


Since then I've been all over the Internet reading whatever I can and since my mom has done a lot of juicing over the years, I asked for her advice and she loaned me a TON of books on juicing and nutrition. Jackpot! Thanks, Mom!

Goals:

Now... let me be clear, I'm not saying that I'm going to become a lifelong vegan or anything. What I am saying that after watching these programs, I'm interested in experimenting for a period of time to see how different approaches make me feel. From what I read and have seen, it sounds like these types of lifestyles would go a long way (if not completely cure) my digestion problems and chronic fatigue, among a multitude of other problems and risks that would be greatly reduced or eliminated. 

Presently, I'm not sure that I could stick with a super strict diet (errr... lifestyle) long term, but I've decided to start with a juice fast and see what happens. I plan to fast for at least 5 days, but ideally I'd like to make it last 7-10 days (the guy from Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead fasted for SIXTY days... wow). After the fast I would like to aim for my diet to be made up of 80-90% vegetables and fruits. Everything else would thereby be limited to a much smaller percentage. I think I could do without meat completely, but the dairy would be quite a challenge in the long term. I think I could fairly easily limit it to a small percentage though. As advised in Hunger for Change, I hope to start by focusing on adding really healthy things in and not think about it as taking away or being deprived of everything delicious.

Status quo and next steps:

Prior to watching these documentaries, I had already been trying to eat really healthy and "detox" from all the holiday junk, but now I'm starting to prepare myself for a juice fast as well. I didn't own a juicer of my own, so we went straight to good ol' Amazon.com and ordered a Breville juicer. It will be here on Tuesday (yay!) and I'm hoping to start my fast on Friday, January 11th.

Until my juicer arrives, I'm trying to eat 70-80% raw vegetables and fruit and wean myself off of coffee. I'm down to drinking only water and about 3/4 a cup of coffee at the moment. We've also been making fresh orange juice in the morning with our blender and my husband has made some amazing salads for lunch (see photo above). Once we get our juicer, I plan to start replacing a meal with vegetable juice each day until the fast begins.

Tomorrow, I'll write more about what we've been doing to change our habits and prep for the fast. Please don't hesitate to share any helpful tips, insight, or recipes you might have. I'll need all the support and encouragement I can get, especially when I'm really craving a piece of pie! ;)