Calling it.

It's been fun and it's probably helped. But work has been hell and I can't deprive myself all weekend too, just to head into another week of that.

Besides weight loss, I haven't seen any physical changes (can't even see the weight loss,) and didn't notice any increased energy either. Only my coffee will do that, I guess.

Hasta la vista, juicers! Here's to making better food choices from here on out... But I need just that. Food.

Lost some weight!!

Down about 8 pounds this week, I'm almost pretty sure. My start weight is guesstimated, because I have trouble writing it down anywhere when it's so high.

Regardless, I weighed myself on Tuesday, so since then, I'm down four pounds.

Lost some weight!!

Down about 8 pounds this week, I'm almost pretty sure. My start weight is guesstimated, because I have trouble writing it down anywhere when it's so high.

Regardless, I weighed myself on Tuesday, so since then, I'm down four pounds.

Day 5

I'm switching to oatmeal for my breakfast. Still made a juice for lunch and will drink one again for dinner.

I've been too rushed in the morning to make two juices. For whatever reason, I've felt like I've needed more sleep all week. Maybe it's not drinking coffee.

Also, I'm nearing the end of my produce supply. And I want to eat Easter dinner on Sunday, so I'd better introduce some real food slowly before I go to town on those sides. So what better to start with than that beautiful breakfast food that straddles solid an liquid- oatmeal.

Final weigh in is going to be tonight around 6 or 7 on the scale at work. Then tomorrow, I'll eat a mix of juices, oatmeal and salad. Sunday, I'll do juices for everything but my mom's cooking. Then I suppose another weigh-in, but it will be on a different scale.

Day four down.

I must confess that I snuck about five peanuts. Lol

But yeah. Just kept swimming today.

Just what I needed.

Dinner tonight is a cucumber, about four leaves of kale, two stalks of celery, two handfuls of spinach, two apples, half a lime and a half inch of ginger root! I can't believe it, I modified a recipe from Dr Oz and I love it. Just what I needed after such a weak moment. I just shut up my brain and did it, told myself it was mandatory, and feel a lot better with something in my belly.

I really do think I go too long between "meals" at work. The only way to correct that is to make THREE juices in the morning. Having enough trouble with two.

In related news (trouble,) my cat Jonsey has been faaaar too interested in this endeavor of mine. He will snatch spinach and celery leaves when I'm not looking.

Feeling low and deprived.

I'm tired. Work has been hell. I'm sitting here, stewing about the fact that I told myself not to eat food or drink alcohol this week. I want to cry. Stress levels are way too high and I typically don't feel as stressed as other people, I don't think.

I'm sick of juicing. I'm sick of trying to find a recipe or make one up, and the whole process. If I thought this was going to be easier than cooking, I was forgetting that watching something actually heat up was only a small part of it. As far as washing, prep, cleaning up waste and washing the dishes go, I'm doing that more than ever.

Okay, pep talk time.

The "whole process" thing, I'm just gonna have to get used to. Especially if I want to eat veggie and much better than I do now. I'll consider this an "intro" to cooking prep, so it won't be so much of a shock to actually prep some food before I cook it, right? Then I can focus on my worries about the actual cooking.

Also, I have accountability. I have virtually no other food I can eat. I have a fridge full of fruits and veggies. I have this blog, and whoever may actually pay attention to it.

I keep telling myself that it's day three, it's Wednesday, I just need to get over it and keep on... I'm probably not seeing it feeling any results yet because I was so nutritionally jacked up in the first place. It'll take a few more days, right?

I really want those peanuts I have in my cupboard though.

I want a juicing vacation

Omg I can't believe I'm still doing this. It's been the longest day, and I'm spent. Yawned a lot before lunch. Probably more this crazy job. Notice that everyone in nutrition documentaries take actual vacations when they're detoxing?

I almost gave in and ate chicken noodle soup because it barely seemed like a solid, but had to remind myself that it has chicken and I don't want to eat meat anymore, and it's probably more processed than I'd think.

Jim really visibly lost pounds from this. I saw him eating an apple today. He did ten days. Jim's my idol. Lol.

Ugly brown

Made up my dinner. It was not. Pretty.

It tasted okay. A weird mix of veggies and fruit and felt like I could taste it all. I don't think I'm digging celery at all in this journey.

The good thing is that, even when it tastes terrible, I can chug easier than I can shovel down food. Thank you, beer!

Getting my first real temptation at my parents' house, which smells like food. Gonna grab some water.

I'm feeling much better now.

The above is a quote from The Sixth Sense. Amazing movie, people!

I went on the walk station at work for an hour... It's basically a desk in front of a treadmill. It felt like hell at the time because we're understaffed and have new policies and trying to think, document and move at the same time was challenging. But I'm really glad I did it now. Feel like it cleaned up the funk.

It was sunny out today- I drove my car away from work and sat in the sun to drink my lunch and read Game of Thrones. Can't wait til the weather gets warmer-- I'd Love to take a walking break with my juice in the sunshine.

Well, here it is.

The "cloud. "

Basically feels like I'm crashing from a crazy caffeine high.

...which I probably am.

Day 2 - I did something successfully for over a day

Rushed this morning because I slept in late. I slept on my shoulder wrong or something and kept trying to switch positions and sleep the pain away. Didn't work.

So in my rushed stated, I still managed to juice up a lemon for my hot water/lemon combo which I weirdly dig. (For someone who hates lemon in their cold water. ). Then I made up lunch, which is some mostly carrots and apples concoction and threw that in the freezer while I got ready for work.

Breakfast was kale, cucumber, spinach, and lots of oranges, which I took on the go and really enjoyed. I love orange juice, so it was perfect with a ton of extra stud in there that I didn't even taste.

Trying to keep up with water intake between meals. Doing okay so far, for work.

Not hungry yet. Not feeling the "cloud" or struggles that day 2 or 3 is supposed to have. Not feeling amazing or energetic or anything either. But I am feeling amazingly proud of myself and happy about all the produce I've consumed in the past day (and a dinner. )

Oh also, I was just informed that this Sunday is Easter Sunday, so I guess this is actually gonna be a six day fast. I'm gonna talk with my mom about some meatless (and as dairy-less as she can stand without being a horrible inconvenience) options for family Easter. I haven't even BEGUN to look into my planned vegan-stressed diet yet, but I have some friends I'd like to chat with about it.

Yummy fruity dinner

I made myself a delicious dinner today that I made up myself!!  I was seriously sick of tasting my kale and celery all day long, but was determined to still jam one or the other in there.  I know kale is crazy good for you, so I thought I'd try out some of the pears and grapes I bought to try to cover up the overpowering taste.

Ended up throwing in four leaves of kale, one cucumber, a handful of spinach, two carrots, a quarter of a lemon, two pears and a handful of grapes.  I tasted as I went along too, to see what tastes I was really adding, when.  Starting with just the carrots was surprising... I could make a carrot-centric drink easily!  Who knew I'd like that juice?  It'd be nice to have something not green, so maybe I'll challenge myself soon.

It was an amazing drink, people.  Tasted all grapes and pears, but wasn't too sweet.  No aftertaste.

I thought for sure I'd end up making myself a "treat" of mostly fruits tonight, but I'm good on this.  I tend to be too frugal to let anything go to waste, so I scoop out my pulp and run it through a second time, making my portion sizes bigger.

I did get hungry between meals at work today, but I can't decide if that means I should add in a juice, or if it's normal to just actually feel hungry around the time I'm gonna eat.  Writing that out, I guess it's kind of a no-brainer.  I'm just really used to eating on a schedule, and snacking inbetween, out of boredom or the slightest inkling of hunger, then feeling like a cow after I eat everything in sight.

Post lunch celery burps

There was this crazy moment where I could smell Tony's chicken wings and they smelled amazing but I was on the phone with a member who had 70% clogged arteries in his neck.

I'm not hungry but I feel so odd not snacking on something when I get to my bored/stressed breaking point. I've also peed like double the amount of times today so far.

If celery and kale keep coming up in my burp tastes, I'm gonna have a problem.

Mid-lunch update.

What am I drinking? It tastes like I juiced 20 kiwis. I don't remember doing that.

Please fill me up, please fill me up....

Hiding in my car for some solitude from comments about my lunch l and also so i can actually read and think. Being alone is the bomb.

Pre-lunch update.

I'm hungry. But weirdly not ravenous just an actual legit hunger. I would be "eating" now if I didn't have to abide by the ultimate schedule of Big Brother.

Breakfast of champions!!

That may be the first time I've EVER said that unironically!

The new food pyramid!

Most everything on the top shelf is junk-- the rest is just produce for the next week. Wow.

Good morning, day one!

I used the citrus function on my juicer, which was pretty cool. Maybe in the summer, I'll treat my family to some lemonade and whatnot. The cleanse recommended hot/warm water with lemon to start and I'm actually kind of digging it as a tea kinda thing. Just chilling out, sipping on it and watching Xena on Netflix.

I made my lunch already and threw it in the freezer. It won't have time to freeze- maybe I should have done this last night? But then it wouldn't be as fresh. Ack, who knows! That went into the freezer at about 9:15 and I won't leave until about 11. I'll take an ice pack and stick it in my insulated bag, and probably throw it in the fridge at work.

I snuck a taste of it and it certainly was much better than last night's test. I skipped the ginger root- not sure I'm sold on it. It seems to overpower everything else and I'm using tiny amounts!

Waiting to make breakfast until about 10:30. I might not get lunch until 4ish, so I hope it fills me up until then.

Goodbye, Tim Horton's... hello gross kale burps.

So I set out tonight to buy a juicer and a metric fuck ton of produce.  And I did both, yay me.

As I'm driving out to Target, I passed by a Tim Horton's, and on impulse, I swung through the drive-through for a double-double.  I don't know if I ever consciously admitted it to myself, but doing this detox means no coffee, something I cannot happily live without.  So I knew if I was going to juice tomorrow, I had to say goodbye to coffee for a while, if not forever (hah!) and Tim Horton's is truly the coffee of the gods.  Which is why I'm still up at 2 am, by the way.

So juicer, bought, it was about $70 from Target.  Both Walmart and Target only had about two juicers (and Walmart didn't bother to stock them,) which I found surprising mostly because of the amount of food processors they had there.  What are those things for?  Like I said, clueless on the whole cooking thing.  I just know my Sims use them for like, every meal once you've bought one.

I bought so much produce that I felt like an insane person.  Maybe because it was like 10 pm, and maybe because it was obvious that I haven't set foot in that section since I used to trail my mom around the supermarket.  Anyway, Wegmans is fairly good with buying local and organic, or so they tell me, and at this point in my extremely uneducated ways, I'll just have to believe them.  All of those documentaries basically said anything the stores and labels tell you is warped truth.  Ugh.  I don't have time to decode all this shit.

So, I hadn't eaten dinner, and I have work tomorrow, so when I got home, I set up a game plan.  I unwrapped my juicer, which has about 398 parts, all wrapped in individual baggies and cardboard.  I picked out my ingredients for the drinks I wanted to do tomorrow, and one I'd try for tonight so that I a.) have something in my stomach for the night, and b.) am not fumbling with an expensive chopping device with no experience tomorrow morning.  (I'm following this plan, btw.)

I feel like I used up half of my produce for these three meals.  I didn't make them all, of course, you're supposed to drink them right after you make them, I guess, a fact that will have to be tweaked when it comes to lunch, because I'll have to make it in the morning and refrigerate it during work.  I just don't see any way around it.  And I'm sure that even with all the lost nutrients they say will oxidize or whatever, it's gonna be a way better lunch than the "two hot dogs and mustard" fare I'm known for.

So I decided to go hardcore and choose a dinner drink to start out with (being 10 pm and all,) and the less-appealing one at that.  Because then, hopefully, that's the worst it gets.  And then my morning "meal" with the apples and orange will just be delish, comparitively, even if it still has kale in it.

What I made was a lot of kale, spinach, and celery.  And it tasted like a lot of kale, spinach, and celery.  If this was the entire diet, I'd be in major trouble.  It wasn't puke-worthy, because I am generally a fan of vegetables, and can get things down when I know it's best for me, but I'm not gonna say it was too enjoyable... or enjoyable at all.  So hopefully my theory on tomorrow is gonna work out and my morning drink will be fab.

It didn't look like a lot at first, so I ran my pulp through again, on a higher speed.  That made a lot more juice than I thought it would, so maybe I should try running the higher speed on the first run, tomorrow.  I'm saving my pulp for my mom's compost pile.  She's gonna think I'm crazy for all this, but at least she gets something out of it.

This detox also recommends you start your day with hot water and lemon, so it's gonna be REAL interesting to wake up to that tomorrow instead of some brewing coffee.  I'm drinking some Sleepytime tea right now, which I'm not 100% sure is "allowed," but since it's literally all plants and hot water, please just let me have a hot liquid with flavor.  I restocked on this and green tea and I'm trying to trick myself into thinking these are "treats" or something.  haha.

Day 1 officially starts tomorrow... I passed my little "test" tonight, though not exactly with flying colors.  I can still taste it when I burp.  Ugh.

Attempting and Failing to Actually Explain Why I'm Doing This

Alright, so, I've never created a real blog with a subject before (so many amazing blogs start out with that sentence, right?) but I've never also decided to forgo eating actual solid foods for a week, either.  So, here's to commitment and scary new things!

How do we feel about commitment and new things, Terry?  Not great, Other Terry.  Not great.  Basically, I get into my own little routines, and I love them.  But I love being not attached to them, you know?  I live on my own, and I have no one around to call me on flaking out on stuff, really.  It's fabulous, but it's gotten me into some really terrible habits.  Like starting a no-carb diet, failing, and then continuing to eat an entire package of bacon with all my carbs, too.  Since trying no/low-carbs, I've become so addicted to bacon that I fear my microwave will smell like it forever.  I suppose I should really clean it out now that I'm cutting it from my diet.

Basically, it all started with Jim from work.  Jim from work comes in one day, drinking something green, and gets everyone all a-buzz with his crazy juicing fast.  I'm not sold.  I think he's crazy.  Days go by, and he's missing solid food and I'm getting all smug and thinking, "I'm not gonna do that."  In the back of my head, I know that I will look into it, because I look into each and every thing.  I have a sickness, and it's called "wanting to lose weight and being terrified to cook." So, on friday, through conversation, I ask if he's doing this because of the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.  Not that I've seen it, but I've seen it around.  You know, on Netflix.  Where I hang out.

The thing is, Jim said he's lost like 11 pounds in 5 days.  That's crazy.  Even on Atkins, the most I've lost in a week was at MOST five.  And I keep going back to that one because it worked for me initially, but today I realize that it's been less and less effective each time, and causing more weight gain back.  It's extremely temporary, at least for me.  So I say, "Oh god, I'm gonna watch that documentary and I'll be juicing by next week, just watch."  WELL.

Well, I planned on watching Game of Thrones with commentary all weekend.  But the commentary isn't ON the DVDs, just on the Blu Rays, and let's not even get into how outraged I am that I'm being forced into the third video format of my life so far and I'm only thirty one.  (Gee, I can't wait to replace everything again, only to have some whole new thing come out when I'm forty!!)

So I put on Netflix, and find Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.  Then it recommends Hungry for a Change, so I watch that, too.  Then Forks Over Knives.  Then Vegucated.  I'm gonna warn you a little about Vegucated-- the other ones mostly stress the advantages of organic raw foods over processed foods (FS&ND stressing juicing almost entirely,) but Vegucated is basically a project to convert three meat-eaters to veganism.  It's a great documentary, and spoiler alert, she turns all of them into at least vegetarians, if not mostly-vegans, but there is a lot of content in there about the treatment of animals in processing plants.  They show it, and they go into detail.  If you can't handle that, or don't want to seriously consider going vegetarian or vegan, don't watch it.

Because guess what?  I can't handle it.  I broke down and sobbed like I was hearing about all of this for the first time.  The truth is that I've wanted to be a vegetarian for years, to varying degrees.  Of course, when I learned about what was really going down in slaughterhouses, or even really, when I first encountered the foods I was being served as a still-living animal, I was heartbroken, outraged, grossed out, and annoyed that no one else felt the way I did.  And to be honest, I've never liked meat.  I don't like things on my plate that can come "bloody" or need to be ripped from bones and have tendons I need to avoid.  Ugh, gross.

But I am from Buffalo, NY, okay?  We live and breathe our chicken wings.  I've never been a fan of "beef on weck" but I will take just about any chicken and smother it in hot sauce.  I'm accustomed to friday night fish fries and polish sausage.  I eat hot dogs all the time in the summer.  And all of this has happened since my parents wouldn't allow me to become a vegetarian, because they weren't going to cater to one out of a five person household.  I get it.  I turned a blind eye to everything and stopped preaching about it and steadily and sparingly added meat to my meals.  Despite all that's listed above, I'm still known as "mostly vegetarian" to many who dine with me... I will favor the meatless meals, and when I do meat, they're usually breaded, boneless, or processed into a tube shape.  Or recently, bacon.  (This aversion to meat is actually why I bought into low-carb-- I thought maybe I'd entirely change gears and my body would freak out and lose weight or something.)

Anyway, long intro remaining extremely long, all these documentaries basically told me what I knew all along.  Meat is gross.  Meat isn't needed, and I don't like it, and I don't like thinking about things I'm eating once walking around and snorting or chirping or mooing.  But what actually surprised me is how grossed out I suddenly became at all the processed food I ate on a regular basis.  I live alone, and I am a horrid, lazy cook.  Usually, my fridge has some pop and eggs in it, and my freezer is packed full of tv dinners, hot dogs, sausages, tator tots, pizza rolls... whatever frozen appetizer strikes my fancy that week.  I'll just buy something that takes five minutes or less to microwave and I'm good.  I haven't touched produce in months, because I hate shopping and it always goes bad before I eat it all.

I was eating pizza rolls while watching one of these films and they grossed me out so bad and I felt really ashamed of it.  Anyway, despite me being TERRIBLE at expressing any of the reasoning why I am now grossed out by processed food, high fructose corn syrup, meat AND fish (just, seriously, watch these movies if you want more info on this part,) I decided that I cannot go on, knowing what I know and feeling what I feel, eating the way that I do.  That would be a matter of denial vs. willpower.

Like I said, I have issues with commitment and change.  I've tried this before.  So I'm going to state that I am trying to get to a more plant-based diet, preferably organic when available.  If that means I never touch meat or dairy again, great!  If I end up clinging tight to the cheese, I'm not gonna beat myself up too bad about it.  The truth of the matter is that I eat GARBAGE, and my eyes have really been opened to the fact that it MAY ACTUALLY AFFECT ME.

I have always been a slower-mover than everyone else I know.  I'm slow, I'm lazy, I have ADD and I never feel like I'm "mentally alert."  That's a total myth to me.  Except for maybe when I've had a nice big double double from Tim Horton's.  I've been drinking coffee since middle school, because of all the before-mentioned (and there are studies that say it helps with ADD.)  I have asthma, depression, indoor and outdoor allergies, dry skin, dandruff, I snore... gosh, I dunno.  Does any of it have to do with my diet?  How could at least some of them not??

So I decided to go for this 7 day long juice detox.  Hopefully cleanse myself of some of the absolute JUNK in my system and let me start fresh into a life of more actual nutrients.  This is gonna be the hard part, but I'm hoping it will, as they say, "reboot" my system and my taste buds, so that after I get through this, opting out the meat for the plants won't be as much of a challenge as it would be from my pizza rolls and bacon binging ways of right now.