Mr. Gaunt and I love a documentary. When we originally lost a bunch of weight we watched tons of documentaries. Some faves:
as well as reading books like Skinny Bitch and Eat Your Way to Happiness.
Recently we watched Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead about a man who changes his weight, health and life by juicing! He also helps a severely overweight, sick and unhealthy truck driver do the same for his life. It talks all about the nutrition of juicing vegetables (and some fruits) and just cleansing your body and mind. It was really good.
So we jumped all over that bandwagon. To say I have gained back some weight might be an understatement. I feel like crap, and look like crap. I don’t even eat that bad, but I also don’t eat nearly well enough. I also let food entertain and make me “happy” which is just so so bad. For the last 6 months my back hurts a lot, and I just feel really unattractive, so it’s obviously time to make a change. I’m not necessarily sure what that change is, but I know it’s not about changing what I eat, it’s about changing the way I feel about eating. And sometimes it takes drastic measures to change your own mind.
Why Juicing? Well, because it’s a little extreme, a lot interesting, AND its something Mr. Gaunt wants to do. When you are in a partnership, one of the only ways you will succeed is if your partner succeeds with you. We did weight watchers together, and now we are going to juice together. We also have a number of friends who really love juicing, and one friend who has lost a lot of weight and DEFINITELY changed his health by juicing. We have both done a lot of research and gotten a lot of opinions on the matter. It’s also not too hard (to prepare) and will help us eat more veggies in a somewhat “easy” way, easier than cooking that is. And we are often a little too busy to cook properly.
So we bought a juicer! This juicer to be exact. I know what your thinking, and NO we did not buy a $200 Juicer, well we did, but we only paid $15 for it! Goodwill is the BEES KNEES! Its only slightly used, not gross at all, so we just washed and soaked it really good. It works like a dream, and really isn’t too hard to clean, easier than a blender I would say.It makes smooth pulp free juice. The only thing it struggles with is leafy greens, it kind of pulverizes them, but it does great with all heartier veggies.
Test Run: Raspberries, Sugar Snap Peas, Lemon and Cucumber. Yum!
So starting tomorrow we will be juicing 2 meals a day and eating 1 meal a day. We will be eliminating all snacking, all alcohol and all caffeine. Because you are supposed to drink juice quickly after making it, we are juicing breakfast and dinner and eating real food for lunch at work. Real food consisting of vegetables, lean meats and some Greek yogurt.
Tonight we went to our local discount organic grocer, who does 20% off all produce on Sundays….seriously people, it’s a good deal. We bought a weeks worth (well maybe 4 days worth) of juice ingredients for the 2 of us for $55. ALL ORGANIC (which is kind of important because you can just throw the veggies in with the skins on). This might seem expensive, but it breaks down to about $4 a meal which is really good. Here is what we bought:
-Carrots
-Green Apples
-Braeburn Apples
-Ginger
-Cucumbers
-Green Peppers
-Jalapenos
-Celery
-Beets
-Lemons
-Limes
-Broccoli
-Collard Greens
-Cabbage
-Grapefruit
We probably looked like crazy produce loving freaks, which I suppose we are. When I got home I looked up juice recipes and put together ingredients for juices in freezer bags and wrote the recipes on the bag in sharpie. This way I can reuse the bags and they already have the recipes on them for next time. Plus it just eliminates excess waste and extra work when I actually need juice made. (also note most of the juices are all veggie based, as fruit is full of sugar)
Mr. Gaunt talked to our juice friend about what he does, and he recommended we use hemp protein powder in our juice, so we got some on sale today. It also has fiber, because when you juice you take a lot of fiber out of the produce. There was also talks of Colonics and other things you have to do when you drastically change your diet and cleanse your system, but I’m not going to get into that quite yet.
We also took BEFORE photos in hopes that in 30 days (which will be our first assessment of how we like Juicing) we look and feel lots better.
Bottoms up!
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