garden salad

thank you all sooooo much for your wonderful supportive comments since my last post. what an amazing bunch of people you are. i have and will continue to praise you all to everyone who stands still long enough to listen. i'm so very grateful to have found such a lovely, warm, non-discrimating community. but enough with the schmaltz ;)

we've spent lots of time in the allotment, weeding, planting, sowing, watering, tidying and having lovely picnics, with homemade salads and a few shop bought bits to go with them. it's been fabulous. we have three potato plants now peeking out of the sandy, dry soil, the onions are sprouting and i'm now waiting for the carrots to show themselves. we've got five tomato plants in the soil and about a dozen still growing at home. the peppers are nearly ready to plant out. there are peas, beans, corn, lettuce and wild flowers sown straight into the earth, then cucumbers, cauliflowers, dozens of herbs and a few flowers all in little pots, waiting to germinate. over the next two weeks we have another huge bunch of stuff to grow/sow/plant. it's been scorching hot and working outside for 6 hours a day means, despite copious high-factor suncream, we're both suffering a little from over-exposure. YummyHubby just goes from his lovely milky coffee colour straight to a fetching shade of guinness while i'm sporting a golden glow, and some bright pink bits on my shoulders. tomorrow we're only having a half day in the allotment as we need to get on with some other chores, so that should give our skin time to recover.

so, food. cos that's what it's all about.

i really don't want juice. well, i'd love a pint of orange juice, and made some for breakfast this past weekend, but i think i'm a bit juiced out. i know i should have some, but i just can't face it right now. i have got green smoothies on the dinner list, though, so at least if i have a couple of those a week i know i'm getting some nutrient-dense food into me. if i leave it a while i'm sure the urge to juice will return.

i've made a few things in the dehydrator - some worked, others didn't - and i'm trying to keep it varied, with different styles of food, and remembering to occasionally make light dinners to leave room for dessert. some of the things we've eaten this week: 'sushi' and vietnamese rice paper rolls; pizza with salad one day/ different topping and jicama 'fries' another day; banana ice-cream with raspberry-cacao sauce; creamy curried coleslaw; almond-cacao milk; sugarloaf pineapple and indian mango salad; 'falafel'... on the upcoming list are kale-avo salad (yes!); zucchini hummus; grawnola; apple cookies; soups; green smoothies. see, that should keep us going for a while.

things i've noticed. i'm starting to see how if i don't get enough greens i get hungry quickly and if i eat anything cooked no matter how much salad i have with it, it just doesn't satisfy my hunger.  how odd. i don't have much of a sweet tooth at the moment. fruit for breakfast is fine, but even then sometimes i'm wanting savoury for breakfast. it's kind of tricky to work out what i could do about that. i'm trying to keep my oil intake down but i do know i'm having a bit too much right now; it's so easy to slosh the oil on the salad... flax crackers rock. i'd forgotten how tasty they are, easy to make and they keep so well. 

i've got lots of energy. on cooked food, after dinner i don't usually move much - if at all - but now i'm back up and in the kitchen, tidying, preparing stuff for the next day. or pottering around the house tidying, sorting, doing light chores. this is great news :) i can reclaim an hour or so of my day back this way :)

YummyHubby is mostly joining in with my food at the moment and having the odd meaty thing, usually as a snack or appetiser (tonight he had some smoked venison - of all things. he picked it up at whole foods) so that makes it easier in some ways, but it does also mean i have to think about what i'm preparing in advance. i'd quite happily just eat salad five nights a week :) but perhaps this is one way to keep things varied, knowing that i'm prepping food for him, too. except he's not keen on cauliflower and i love it. so he can buy fish and chips for his dinner the night i do cauliflower cous cous ;)

belated stats

i said i'd post my pre and post juicefeast stats, so here you have them.

weight: BEFORE 169 pounds AFTER 141 pounds
height: 5' 6"
fasting blood glucose: BEFORE average 4.9 AFTER 4.3
cholesterol: 3.9

urine ph: 7-7.25 AFTER 7 (? still not terribly convincing result)

i also measured myself at strategic points. here's how much i've lost from each measuring point.

bust: 3.5"

spare tyre: 3"

waist: 3.5"

belly: 3.5"

hips: 3"

thigh: 2"

arm: 1"

(spare tyre = the bit between your bust and waist; belly = between waist and hips)

i'm really happy with those results. just to prove it, i ordered some clothes last week. they arrived today and are too big. i'm sure it's just the retailer chooses a generous cut... but if i go by their sizing, i've gone down 2-and-a-bit dress sizes. yeehaa! 

now to get back into my exercise routine and firm up all this soft, squishy flab that needs shifting.

i'm moving back to my other blog. like many before me, i'll keep this online as a testimony to juicefeasting. and you never know, i might do it again next year. (never say never, right?) but i miss my lovely theme over at princessloulou.net and i'm going to blog more about my lifestyle, food choices and the learning process that YummyHubby and i are going through as we strive to be as sustainable as is feasible without packing up our current jobs and buying a farm... 

thanks for being with me so far. come and join me over at princessloulou.net soon.

love to you all xxx

photo credit: thanks to 'wrestlingentropy' for this pic, see the original here.

meta

i've seen so many juicefeasters trying to present the facts & figures together in a structured way in their daily blog posts and i kind of want to do that. i know it would be useful for anyone reading this and undoubtedly for me to check my progress, see what works and what doesn't. but really... i don't have that kind of discipline. so i'll mention my juice combos, note the superfoods i actually remembered to take, and anything i did as part of the program. otherwise, i'm sorry, but you're just getting my evening brain dump of the day. 

also in the meta category. i'm so disappointed with blogger. i love my blog over at princessloulou.net, which runs on movable type, for the ease with which i can do whatever it is i need. it's a bit more techie in that most stuff is best to just edit it directly in the html. blogger is supposed to be for people who don't understand html and i thought it would be easier to use because of that. but no. it doesn't know what to do with the flickr code. it crashes frequently. it doesn't use paragraph tags but instead inserts div

tags when you hit carriage return. crazy. thank god it's free or i really would be moaning.

so pleased i bought my camera. it's come in so handy for snapping pics of juices and fruitiness. i'm determined to embellish this blog with my own (or YummyHubby's) pics, rather than borrowing off the web. this is such a great project and as it's all about internal growth as well as physical transformation then i think throwing some creativity into the mix is a good thing. 

stats

i've weighed myself, measured myself and done a bunch of tests. here's where i'm at:

weight: 169 pounds (about 10 more than i'd expected. oops.)

height: 5' 6"

fasting blood glucose: average 4.9

cholesterol: <3.9

urine ph: 7-7.25

where do i want to be? two inches taller would be nice... my blood glucose is fine. i'll only test that again if i'm concerned about my blood sugar levels. cholesterol is good, and i'll test again on day 92. ph reading i think is a false positive, so i'll retest weekly. it would be nice, as that's fairly alkaline, but somehow i just don't believe it. as for weight and size. well, i've stated i'd like to lose 30 pounds. but given i weigh more than i thought i did, i would be delighted to lose 40 pounds over the 92 days. i know i'll put on a few pounds as soon as i start to eat again, so that'll level out at a respectable 133 pounds or so. and if, as i hope, my cooked food cravings have been well and truly zapped once i'm out the other side of the 92 days, then i'll lose the rest of the weight easily on a raw diet. 

i did take measurements of bust, waist, hips, thighs, the lot. but i'll keep them to myself, along with the photo YummyHubby took of me in my undies in traditional before-after fashion. if i'm feeling reeeeeally brave post-fast then i'll post the full body shots for you to cringe(before)/lust(after) over.

on the non-physical level i have a few goals, too. but it's hard to quantify where i'm at now and where i want to be. 

i'd like to strengthen myself in many ways and i'm hoping to introduce more yoga and meditation into my life, as a stress-buster, cos i'm good at stress ;) i want to find more self-confidence, self-esteem and willpower. i'd like to be an all round stronger person and learn more about what makes me tick. i've already started using self-empowerment tactics, law-of-attraction style, to focus myself on my goals and visualise them into being. i hope to learn more and use that more over the next 3 months.

i don't anticipate a spiritual revolution as i'm not a particularly spiritual person, and i sort of feel selfish to only want change for me, to make me a better person and to improve my daily life. but i also know from reading everyone else's blogs that as you become a better person you influence your surroundings and bring good things into the lives of those with whom you cross paths. so that's ok then.

twemes

sounds a little odd, i know, but i'm pushing for us - the juicefeast community - to use this as i think it could be really useful.

twemes (twitter+memes) collates twitters, del.icio.us links and flickr posts tagged into one place. so if you add a hash and a tag to your twitter post it will go and join all other identically tagged items. the same tags used in del.icio.us and on flickr appear in the sidebar. 

so, go to http://twemes.com/juicefeast to find - at present very few - twitter posts, a few delicious links, some of which are mine and a photo thumbnail of katrina rainoshek wielding a bag of oranges!

it could become a great one-stop resource for those on the fast and i encourage you all to use it. so just add "juicefeast" as a tag when you save a link over at del.icio.us or put a juicy photo on flickr.

go on. you know you want to.

a blogger's tale

(of woe)

i've only written one post and already blogger thinks i'm a spammer. great.

apparently their wise spam detecting robots sussed out that this here new blog of mine is a spam blog so they've put a captcha test on, so every time i want to create a draft or save an edit to my post i've got to jump through a hoop. pretty tiresome, i can tell you.

what intrigues me, though, is what they saw in my first blog post to make them think it was a spam blog. there was one link and a quote but otherwise it was just my thoughts.

come on, blogger. show us your spam algorithms ;)

by way of introduction

so, i've decided to join in the global juice feast. you're most likely here 'cos you know what i'm talking about already, but for those innocent web wanderers who stumble across these pages, here's the lowdown.

the global juice feast starts on march 1st 2008 and is being co-ordinated by David and Katrina Rainoshek over at www.juicefeasting.com 

they're encouraging the world to join in by starting at the same time and staying on for the ride as long as they can commit to. a month is a good attempt, or two, or three. they suggest lots of supplements, some of which i am going to take but most of which i personally feel are excessive or i just can't get hold of them in the UK. they also recommend a number of practices which i'm, er, also considering leaving by the wayside. they do say they want this to be doable by all, and acknowledge that most people have jobs and family to co-ordinate, but the time commitment is still exceptionally high. they say: 

A way must be provided that is accessible to all - considering financial, time, family, karmic, and work realities - in which all persons can, at home taking care of their daily responsibilities, transform their health challenges completely, pushing the reset button on their physiology and training their whole being at the cellular, emotional, and spiritual levels to ask for the best foods possible. - The Juice Feasting Imperative

but on a daily basis they are asking you to do yoga, meditation, skin brushing and, uh, enemas, alongside all the time spent washing, chopping and juicing fruit and veg. plus there are daily charts to fill in and the majority of those who've already started the program ahead of the global date are blogging daily about their experiences. and i, of course, will have to do that bit too.

i'm going to try and complete the 92-day programme which is a challenge and has already started raising eyebrows... why so long? i mean, come on! well, the theory goes that 92 days is long enough to "reset your physiology" in other words, it sweeps away all the physical and psychological habits garnered over the years, and you come out the other end pure, clean and ready for a fresh start, which is what i really want! i've been yo-yoing with raw food and been healthy/unhealthy in rapid cycles and i've had enough. it's time.