the struggles of staying healthy.

Its been another week after the end of my 2nd juice cleansing,  I've still been juicing breakfasts but not my other meals. I eat vegan meals but still struggling with correct portion sizes. Even with my workouts it is not making up for the regular meals I am eating and I am not mainting the weight loss I had from my cleansings :( which is kind of disappointing, but I am kind of determined to figure out how to maintain a healthy weight without having to juice all my meals, so have a stronger desire too try and really monitor my portion sizes. I'll let you know if I'm successful in that.

update on transation from cleansing to vegan

Okay so my 14 day cleansing has pretty much ended, even though it hasn't quiet been 14 days. I am at the end of my transition week (juicing breakfast and lunch and vegan meals for supper). It has been more difficult then anticipated to make sure I do correct serving sizes and I have been constantly juicing breakfast, however only juiced lunch sun-wed then started just eating small raw snacks for lunch because I was drinking late breakfasts. For my supper I have been eating a baked bean casserole I made and this evening a vegan meat loaf I made. The recipes were slightly more difficult then anticipated but have been pretty good. I am really needing to work on my portion sizes and exercising more. I plan on attempting to jog with the dogs and I am still doing my 10min beach body workouts twice a day for most of the week. ( I dont' always do it every day). This past week I have just been making my own juice recipes when I do juice. This morning I just ate fruit instead of juicing it. I don't have the recipes I made with me, they are at home and I am at my parents. But I will post those if you are interested because they were all pretty good, even the veggie one. Well this cleansing wasn't as successful as I had hoped, but I am still making a lot of progress with how I eat and with exercising more, so my change has been baby steps but I feel has been some what successful. I'll keep you updated on my progress with getting/staying healthier.

day 1 and 2 of week 2 cleansing

This is an update on how my second week is going on my cleansing. Sunday I did a juice drink that was mainly fruit but had some veggies (don't remember which one sorry :)) I turned it into a smoothie with ice and banana and spent most of the day drinking it (it turned out pretty good). I then had a taco salad for supper. If you have  noticed by the fact I had a taco salad for supper I am starting to introducee other foods this week besides just raw foods,  along with more exercises. I am enjoying having extra food such as the veggie beans that were added to my salad however it is adding extra calories I am needing to adjust for if I want to maintain my weight loss. Today's breakfast drink was so large that I drank half of it for breakfast and finished the rest with lunch as well as having a store bought bagged salad I added almonds, broccoli and cherry tomatoes too. My supper was just snacks, but not as healthy of snacks as I should have had. Tomorrow I plan on having juice breakfast and a juice lunch and will have a regular vegan supper that will be a baked bean casserole I made this evening. I will keep you update with my transition/cleansing week and let you know how it is going. The recipes I will be making for my vegan meals are difficult to re post so if you want the recipes for my vegan meals you will have to ask me and I can e-mail them too me. I will still post the juice recipes, however I did not keep track of today's juice recipes very well and can not remember the exact recipes, sorry I will keep better track tomorrow :).

day 7 (half way through)

Today is day 7 of  my newest cleansing. This time it is a 14 day cleansing. Although I still have some of the same struggles I have had from the beginning with just really wanting regular food I have made it to the halfway mark and today had a pretty good day with not really craving other foods as much. I feel that I am doing pretty good and that although I a may still just want to stop :) I will make it to day 14. Today's morning drink was Grapefruit, orange, and pineapple. I am not usually a fan of grapefruit but this drink wasn't to bad. I had a late breakfast so for lunch I just did a little snack pack that included raw broccoli, carrots and almonds. For supper I did a green juice recipe, in the paste the green juices have not been a friend of mine but this one was actually pretty good. Day 7 has been another pretty good day. Below are today's juice recipes.

Grapefruit, Orange, and Pineapple
-2 grapefruits
-2 oranges
-1/4 pineapple
-1/4 lemon

Delightful Green Juice
-1 apple
-1/2 cucumber
-1/4 green cabbage
-handful spinach (I was out of spinach and used a handful of Kale instead)

Day 6 of new 14 day cleansing

So I am now on day 6 of new 14 day cleansing. Today was a slow start because I wasn't really feeling very good so I slept in pretty late, but once I got going did pretty good today. I am getting a little tired of juicing and am looking forward to eating regular food (healthy regular food). However both of today's juices were actually really good my breakfast was called grape, orange and carrot, which is weird cause it doesn't have any carrots in it lol :). It should be grape, orange and apple. My lunch was carrot and asparagus juice which may not sound very good or really look very good :) but surprisingly enough was really good. then my supper was just salad with spinach/cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, avocado. Today was a pretty good day, besides feeling week and a little tired this morning. Below are today's juice recipes.

Grape, Orange, and apple
-3 cups green or red seedless grapea
-1 orange
-1 apple
-1/4 lime

Carrot and Asparagus
-4 carrots
-1/2lb asparagus
-4 celery ribs
-2 apples
-2 cups firmly packed spinach leaves

day 5 of 2 week cleansing

The longer I do this cleansing the harder it seems to be. I have little motivation when it comes to drinking veggie juices(and rarely finish them) and I just want to eat a sandwich , but I am still sticking with it despite the struggles. Changing your life style and how you do stuff is never easy and although the last time I did a 7 day cleansing I might have said it wasn't to hard and I could do it longer this time it is a lot different. My last 7 days I was at a different job, most of the time was spent alone(except treatment times with kids when I was not eating). At work I just went from school to school on my own, I stayed at home on my own making my own foods. At my new job there is always multiple numbers of  other therapists and children around eating many different things, little cracker snacks, candies, whole meals etc. I have also been spending more time going to visit my parents then I have in the past and it is difficult trying to make sure I have the stuff I need to juice and that I just juice while they eat regular meals. I have stuck with it and plan on trying my best to keep going, I just wanted to acknowledge the struggles I have had. Today I was able to sleep in really late so I had a very late breakfast juice called mango,orange, banana. Because my breakfast was so late I did not get around to lunch until getting home from work which ended up being a late lunch/supper combined. My lunch and supper where just a very large salad, I decided to do things a little differently and start to work in learning how to eat out healthy so my salad was actually from subway and when I got it home I just added avocado and cherry tomatoes, I also cheated a little bit and put a little bit of non dairy organic ranch dressing on it, in the future however I am going to try and flavor with lemons or limes or something like that. Yesterday I weighted myself after not weighing myself for a while and I was down another 5lbs. I don't think that is all just from the last 5 days but I'm sure a majority of it was lost from this current cleansing. It helped give me a little motivation to keep going along with pep talks from my mom and a close friend. I will keep you updated on how I am doing and if I do truly make it the 14 days this time around. Below is the recipe from todays juice.

Mango, Banana, Orange

-2 mangoes
-2 oranges
-1/4 lime
-2 bananas
(I only had one mango left so only made it with one mango but it was still good)

update on new cleansing

So I have not posted since my brief description on day one, I am now half way through day 4. This time around has seemed to be quiet more difficult when it comes to wanting regular food. I have not been feeling full of my juice meals and have been graving and getting hungry for other foods more frequently.This time around has been so much more challenging with wanting to stay with it that I have considered multiple times stopping or just making it a shorter cleanse. I did get a new juice book to help with ideas for different juices so I do not have to have the same juices all the time, that has been nice with lots of options and different choices. Yesterday due to some conflicts with meetings and other things I had one juice meal and 2 raw meals with raw fruit or vegetables. My dinners are the same they were before, spinach salads with tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and avocado.  I am going to try and make it through at least the rest of the week and then see how I am doing. I have not been feeling any different this cleansing around, besides hungry :). I tried to keep track of the recipes I have been using the last few days so here is the list and recipe of juices I have used this week. I did adapt some of them for what ingredients i had such as a few times using spinach instead of kale and sometimes an apple instead of a pear or cutting recipe in half.
(all recipes say they serve 2 people)
Tropical Carrot
-4 carrots
-2 celery ribs
-2 apples
-1 mango
-1/4 lime

Carrot Kale
-6 carrots
-4 celery ribs
-1 apple
-3 cups firmly packed kale leaves
( i have used with kale and with spinach in replacement of kale, like with Spinac better :)

Peach and pear
-3 peaches
-3 pears
-1 apple
(calls for 1/4 fennel bulb but I didn't add that)

Grape Kiwi and orange
-6 kiwis
-2 oranges
-2 celery ribs

Blueberry, strawberry,apple
- 1 qt. blueberry
-1 pt. strawberries
-2 apples
-1/4 lemon

beggining of new juice cleanse 14 days (2 weeks)

In my last post I said I would let you know the time I was starting a new juice cleansing. This time I am doing it for 14 days instead of just one week. I am doing a second cleansing and one a little longer for the following reasons. 1st I got off track and feel I need to clean out my system again and restart, 2nd I was having some trouble adjusting from juicing to a healthy diet and I feel extending a little bit will help me see more of a difference then I did with just 7 days. However this time around I do not feel as strong and as confident as I did when I was doing 7 days so we will see if I am able to stick with it. I started this morning on a Sunday, the beginning of the week so it would be easier to keep track :). I plan on doing it how I did it last time 2 meals juiced on meal pretty much raw foods. I will keep you further posted on how it goes.  So far today I've just had breakfast, it was a an apple berry drink the recipe will be below. I will post again later on how the rest of the day went and what I did for lunch and supper. Because I am still at my parents my lunch will probably be raw food and my supper will be a juice meal. Below is today's breakfast stay tuned for other meals :)

Blueberry, strawberry, and Apple:
-1qt. blueberries
-1 pt. strawberries
-2 apples
-1/4 lemon
(can garnish with strawberries)
(services 2 people)

struggles (2 weeks after 7 day cleansing)

Its been just over 2 weeks since I stopped my cleansing. Sorry my update is a little late, but its hard to update on stuff when your not quiet doing what you are supposed to be doing. the last week and half has been a little bit of a struggle for me, I've been preoccupied with a job change I've been going through so other things kind of fell to the side. I took a break from my workouts for a day (after an over 2 and half hour work out on monday), one day turned into 2 and into 3 and so on, and a similar thing happened with my juicing. I have juiced a couple times in the last week but not like I wanted too and I am back to not really eating breakfast and lunch and then eating a bunch of little meals later in the evening, and even though for the most part they are still pretty healthy to much of healthy food can still be bad. My struggle came with the shift of no longer just juicing and being able to eat regulare foods again. It is very difficult to find a good medium between just juicing and balanced meals. I am still working on exactly where the line is. So I have decided its time to get back to consistent juicing. I need to get myself back on track and juicing gets me on a good starting point. I have not made it to the grocery store to buy my supplies to start this as of tomorrow so I will probably have to officially start it on wednesday, but I plan on doing a juicing diet of some type starting Wednesday at the earliest and I plan on doing it for not just 7 days but 2 weeks. I will also be getting back to more consistent exercises every day and drinking my water bottles everyday. I will keep you informed on when I start this and if I am successful. I wish this update could be more inspiring but changing a life style isn't always easy :). Wish  me luck.