so it begins.

Running season! It’s here. Well, here enough anyway. I have been twice this week, after a long, cold winter and it feels good! It is like I am starting from scratch, as my legs are sore, and my speed is not speedy! I expected as much after almost 3 months off anyhow. My diet has been pretty good. I have had a few not so great meals, but mostly whole food for me. Juices, salads, potatoes, steamed veggies, beans and nuts. I have had a couple bites here and there of not so great food, but definitely an improvement since my juice fast. An improvement in both over all diet, and in my sugar cravings. I do still want cookies and candy, but it has been much easier to talk myself out of it! I am doing a cake tasting (vegan of course) with my mom, sister and daughter Dehlia on Wednesday, which I am looking forward to 😉 I am a work in progress… I am working on an epic plant based post, but I just wanted  to check in.

Chew on This

oh, food is so good. i’m feeling much better after a few days of combined juice and healthy vegan meals. i have been having a juice for breakfast, a salad, a smoothie, and dinner. so far it has been working for me. i have my energy back, i’m not feeling deprived and i haven’t had any white sugar or bread or pasta yet (or a margarita)! i have had a few snacks like peanut butter and raisins on an organic brown rice cake, but i feel good about that. for examples sake, yesterday i consumed:  a 16 oz spinach, kale, cucumber, pineapple and ginger juice; a large salad with romaine, spinach, tomato, carrot, celery, chickpeas and a small amount of salad dressing; a 16 oz. smoothie with banana, strawberry, blueberry, kale and chia; brown rice cake with peanut butter and raisins; and a little bit of mashed potato and steamed broccoli for dinner. so that is 5 approximately 300-400 calorie meals, which is more than i was consuming with juice only, but still far less than i was consuming in my junk food vegan past. i have gained back 1.5 lbs since ending the fast, but i was expecting that, and i’m not letting it deter me from my journey to health.   

i’m feeling really good about everything actually, and i plan to go for my first run of the season tomorrow morning (providing it isn’t stormy in which case i will do a turbo fire dvd in my bedroom!) i’m really excited about getting running again. it has been 3 whole months since i have run, and at least a month since i have done much of anything in the way of exercise. i am definitely ready to lace up and hit the streets! i am going to start slow and build up, of course. i’ll probably try to get 3 miles done tomorrow and go from there! 

p.s. my breakfast juice today is pretty good. 5 big hand-fulls of baby spinach, 3 stalks of celery, 1 head romaine lettuce, 1 inch piece of ginger and about a third of a pineapple.  we shall call it the clean green!

getting to know you, getting to know all about you.

today i pulled down the breville juice fountain that my almost husband got five years ago for christmas from it’s home on top of the fridge. it has been sitting up there since we moved here, and has never been used. poor, neglected juicer. today will be its and my maiden voyage into juicing. (i’m actually sipping on my first juice as i write this). since i am so new to juice, i am going to try to have one or two a day, leading up to my juice fast which will start officially on friday, march 14. i chose this date because my wedding cake tasting at hippie chick bakery, in NH is scheduled for the 13th, and i can’t bear to skip it, obviously i love sugar. 

ok, so keeping in mind, that i am not a photographer, and that i’m taking photos from my phone, here is my juicer. 

 

 

i scrubbed that baby up, dusted it off, and googled the instructions. it is fairly easy to use, once you understand how to take it apart and put it back together. cleaning and assembling will be the most annoying part of the juicing experience, i am sure. once i cleaned the juicer and set it up on the counter top it was time to select and prep my veggies and fruits. i always buy organic. i believe that no matter the cost of organic versus conventional, it is worth it. chemical pesticides and genetically modified foods are not healthy,  they are dangerous and make me very nervous. organic, gmo free food is always less expensive than disease and the medical care and medicines that illness requires. so for my very first juice i chose; 1 large cucumber, 2 stalks of celery, 1/2 a pkg. of olivias baby kale, and 2 granny smith apples. (i meant to add 1/2 a lemon, but forgot). i plugged the juicer in, washed and cut the veggies and fruit into chunks, and got to work. i started with half the cucumber-tons of juice, then and apple-tons more juice, celery-more juice, a handful of kale-the tiniest bit of really dark green juice, and the rest of each. all in all i think it made just about 20 oz. of juice, more than enough for one, probably enough for two! here is a photo of the ingredients for my first green juice!

 

of course i shared with my beautiful little girl! she was so excited to try the awesome looking green juice, and unfortunately very disappointed. she literally made spitting sounds and wiped her tongue off with her hand after her first (and only) sip! thankfully, although i am not braver than her, my taste buds are ‘more mature’, and i didn’t mind it. i am not saying it was the best thing i’ve ever had, but it was drinkable. all i could taste was the cucumber and the celery, so i don’t think the apples made too much of a difference. i may try to leave them out next time. i couldn’t taste the kale at all, which i was a worried about because one of my girl friends said that it was so gross that she gagged. all in all it took me less than 10 minutes to get everything ready and juiced, so not too time consuming at all, compared to cooking an actual meal. this is a picture of the finished product.

 

very, very green juice. i don’t know what exactly i was expecting. i think i might actually be able to feel the juice going to work on my bod. i feel a little tingly. yum. 

please feel free to comment me your juicing experiences and your favorite juice recipes!