After the feast part deaux

So a week after I have stopped juice feasting where am I?

Well I am down another 2 lbs and just shy of 4 inches.  Although that seems like a stall when I was loosing 7 lbs or more a week, I don't feel like it is.  The key for me is to not transition back into the other direction again.  I have to be sure that I have made a change in my life, a true "repentance" in the Greek sense of the word, a change of heart, and mind. There are lots of people who can stay on a diet for a month but then they start adding the lbs back on and end up bigger than they were to begin with, so I am just trying to keep things moving in the right direction.

What have I learned?
Well I thought I would learn that as soon as I added milk or vegetable protein back into my diet that I would be lethargic and sick. I thought that maybe when I added gluten back into my diet I would get sick.  Fortunately that is not what I learned.  On the contrary, I think those things actually were great. My big takeaway is that diets that thrive on large exclusions are inherently flawed. God has put everything on this earth for our good. There are people who have created healthy diets in every corner of the globe based on everything from  grains, to greens, to grubs, and everything in between, even animal blubber. Even refinement is not an evil thing, for example, yogurt, cheese, soy sauce, tempe, are all refinements that took some whole food and modified it in a reasonable way to make it more healthy, or tolerable for human consumption.

In the end I think it is more about the inclusion of foods that we know are beneficial than it is about excluding certain foods.

If I distilled it down to a mission statement, I would say:

Eat foods as close to their whole state as possible. Favor less refined alternatives over highly refined foods when they are reasonable. If you struggle to pronounce the ingredients, then be cautious.   If you can make it at home then you should. Eat as many whole foods, mostly plants, as you can on a daily basis.

Here are some specific choices I am making in my life:

• Home made yogurt is much better than store bought, so take an hour and make a weeks supply, gogurt is not yogurt!
• A vinaigrette can be thrown together in a few min, and is far better than store bought ranch, so is home made ranch!
• Favor unsalted butter over hydrolyzed oil margarine.
• Fresh squeezed juice is better than pasteurized juice that has been trucked across the country.
• Home grown bread is better than hostess, make friends with local producers if you are going to buy instead of bake.
• Grow veggies in your garden. Even if you start small, you've never had better tomatoes!
• If great grandma would have recognized it as food, I can too.

These things all contribute to how we see and consume food.  I am so grateful for the help and inspiration that I have gotten on this recently. It is great to know that so many people, some of whom I have never met, are so supportive of me and my well being.


Great books that I need to write reviews for related to the topic:
In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan
Eat and Run - Scott Jurek
The healthy Green Drink Diet - Jason Manheim

Izkiate how do I love thee.

Juice Feast Day 12
I picked up some chia seeds today (they were really expensive) because I wanted to try out izkiate. It was totally worth it.  I made some watermelon pineapple juice, added a teaspoon of chia seeds and it was fantastic.

The shell of the chia seeds kind of expand into a gell, like half set jello. It thickens the drink to a kind of frog spawn looking potion...not very appetizing.  That being said; It tasted great, and I really liked the consistency. I did experience the unusual energy and clarity about an hour after I drank the izkiate.  It wasn't the hyper feeling of an energy drink but it was definitely a pick me up.  I had another hit in my veggie juice tonight on my run and I clocked 5 k at 10:04 pace rather easily (today's run was a race pace run).  I am thoroughly impressed. I have ordered 1 more lb of chia seeds, and some more elete electrolyte water supplement  to drink it in.

Here's the rub though.  Bobs red mill chia seeds on amazon <$9.00 for 1 lb, chia seeds at good earth, $3.89 per oz.  Would I do it again? Yeah I probably would. If I could not stomach the chia slime, what would I do with the other 15.8 oz of chia seeds? So it was a good investment to try it out.  That being said, I am not buying any more chia seeds at Good Earth!

On a different note, I had someone comment on how much weight I seem to be losing (it was a guy too).  I also had to hitch my belt one loop further today (since last week). So things seem to be going well.  I feel really good. My runs have been pretty easy, no bad bonking.  I feel like if I get a twinge somewhere doing a sprint, I recover super quickly, usually the next morning I am fine.  And I am not experiencing hunger pains.  It seems that things are really good. I am really liking the plant based diet.  I  am sure I will eat meat in the future, but I will be more sparing with it than I was in the past.

Juice Feast Part Deux 28 days.

Weight: 277
Chest: 48
Navel:54
Hips: 42

Groundhogs day - I am going to do it again, and again, for the next 28 days!

Ok so I am doing the juice feast again with a couple of changes:

1. I am not going to weigh myself every day. Weigh-ins will be Saturdays in the morning.
2. I am going to add nut mylk - I really feel like I need the little bit of good fat that comes with the nuts.
3. I am going to do smoothies at least 1 day a week (preferably 2) because a good BM is important.
4. Because I am doing smoothies, if there is an important meal I will eat whole plant based food (not highly refined). however this cannot happen more than 1 meal a week and should happen in conjunction with smoothie day.
5. I will blog about how I feel and what I am consuming as well as some of my exercise activities.

This should be good times. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what this will be like this time around, and I am looking forward to it.  Here we go through March 1st.  I expect I will not lose as fast as last time because of the modifications but I am ok with that. This is about resetting my body's desire for animal products.  I am also much smarter this time around, about what I am consuming and why. 

My Goal is to make this painless enough and still effective enough, that even Emily will try it for a week with me.

After the feast update

Weight: 277.4

For a couple of days I did not see the weight loss as I re introduced solid food, but it has resumed again at a similar rate to the last few days of the feast.  I have remained almost meat and dairy free (I did have a small piece of lasagna Sunday with a bit of meat and cheese). For example last night we had home made spanish rice and home made refried beans with no added fat (they were awesome!) on burritos with fresh guacamole, onions, cilantro and cabbage. There might have been animal products in the tortilla, but we still have a giant stack of them for the kids quesadillas and I wasn't going to make my own just to be anal about it. I juiced the rest of the day. So, I still have a very low carb intake although it is no where near Atkins worthy. I also would not call myself vegan, but I am eating basically a whole foods plant based diet.  All of these things together are working for me. Time will be the biggest factor.

Actually the past few days as I added food again, I feel more sluggish and a little tired, but that may have to do with having a few early mornings in order to deal with a couple of east coast customers and non business hours launches, so it may not be totally related to diet.  If I am not back to 100% by Saturday I will consider juice feasting again starting on Sunday.

That being said I have had almost no cravings. We have had brownies and eclairs (thanks Holly), doughnuts, even ice cream in the house and I have not wanted any (oh wait I did have a couple of 100 calorie fruit sorbets this week...I guess I am not too strict).  I do not generally feel hungry durring the day, but when I do, I have a handfull of nuts or break out another juice.

All in all I feel like the juice feast gave my weight loss some legs and has killed my cravings for things that I should not have.  I would do it again in a heart beat. And I expect that my breakfast for many moons to come will no longer be an egg McMuffin, but a yummy juice or smoothie.

Today's workout is Tabata sprints, I am looking forward to not being able to breathe! Onward and upward (or downward in the case of my pant size).