Getting Back on Track!

YUM!

Don't these Mangos look amazing? They are so good. Had to do some shopping yesterday and found these at Central Market. I couldn't even wait to unpack the groceries before eating a couple of them. Slurp! :o)

I started juicing and eating a raw food diet (about 80% raw) in February of this year. I have had many health issues over the past several years with lots of pain, fatigue, joint swelling, knots in/near my joints that made moving them excruciating, mental fog and just plain feeling old. I had gained weight due to lack of activity and that just made things worse. I would go to doctors and they would all send me off with a Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue diagnosis and a prescription for some medicine that made me feel worse, not better. I lived on pain meds and ended up with a horrible ulcer (not sure if pain pills contributed but probably didn't help).

I will be 48 next month and can see the big 5 0 racing towards me. I want to be 50 and fabulously healthy, not 50 and old. I want to do the things I love, bicycling, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, gardening and anything else I want to do. And I want to do those things well into my senior years. I want a clear, sharp mind and to look as young as possible for as long as possible. And frankly, for the last few years I have just felt old.

At the end of last year I decided enough was enough and started looking at alternative ways of healing the body. Stress is a big one and that was the first one I decided to eliminate. My job was very high stress and long hours so I decided to make some changes there. I was a real estate agent and had an art business on the side which I loved. So, as of January of this year I left real estate and started doing art full time. I still have stress on occasion but it is more in the normal range and manageable.

I researched everything I could find on living a healthy lifestyle and at the end of January I found the raw food diet (more of a way of life than a diet). I ordered a juicer and started figuring out what works for me and things started changing very fast. Most of my meals were raw vegetarian (about 80% raw). I lost 28 pounds in 3.5 months, my skin looked better than it had in ages, I had energy, very little pain and almost no swelling in my joints, my mind was sharp and clear, I was working outside in the yard and found my heat tolerance was better. I was doing things I hadn't done in a long time and it felt great. So many wonderful changes.

(Me on the left. My partner, Carsen, in the middle and right photos. Taken at White Rock Lake in Dallas, TX)

The pictures above were taken in mid June and we had a blast. This year we learned that we love canoeing and kayaking (mostly kayaking). This is not something I would have been doing last summer. It feels so good to have energy and to be almost pain free! You think I would never go back to my old ways of eating, but...

I did fall back into my old habits - not all of them, but enough to start reversing the progress I had made. For about a month now I have been slowly going back to my old ways of eating and I am feeling it. All the old problems are returning - not all the way but soon I will be back to where I was if I don't make some changes NOW! Big wakeup call. I actually love my new habits and it makes no sense why I would let them go. Maybe subconsciously I wanted to see if my old habits were really responsible for my health issues. Guess I got my answer.

Time to get back on track!

Breville Juice Fountain Compact

The picture above is the juicer I own right now and I have been using it since mid February. I purchased this one because it was the cheapest of the Breville juicers and I didn't know if I would stick with this or not (really figured I would not do this more than a couple of weeks). It is a great juicer if you use it occasionally. My partner and I use this daily and we juice a couple times a day. The waste container fills up way too fast and has to be cleaned out before you can continue juicing. And it has one speed so harder vegetables and fruits need to go through again (messy) in order to get the most out of them (and you want to get the most out of them because organic produce is a bit pricey). Cleaning out the waste container is pretty messy. The juice it makes is great though so no complaints there. Last week I ordered the Breville Juice Fountain Elite and can't wait for it to arrive.

My daily juice is usually pretty green and consists of (all organic) kale, chard, cucumber, zucchini, celery, spinach, 1/2 small lemon and fresh ginger. Today I really wanted something sweet for breakfast so this is what I had:

Red curly kale, carrots, beet, strawberries, celery, chard, green apple, 1/4 lemon, and it made 12 oz. of the best juice. Isn't it a pretty red? I wanted more because it tasted so good - should have made a quart. Perfect juice for such a hot day and it was very satisfying. I drank this hours ago and am still running on the energy boost.

There is always waste after juicing and I hate to throw it in the trash. This will go into my compost bin later today. Sometimes I mix other ingredients and spices with the pulp (depending on what I juice) and put it in my dehydrator to make crackers.

It feels good to get back into healthy eating again. I expect a few detox symptoms but hopefully they won't be too bad. In a week or so I will be feeling better than ever. Just the extra energy I have today is a huge improvement.

I would love to hear your juicing recipes and stories of what you do to keep healthy.