Back Story

I think I'm pretty typical...maybe a little worse than typical.  I'm a mother with a big family.  As anyone can tell you who has kids, they gradually eat up your time until you get to a place where you have given up on all the things you always did to stay healthy and you end up where you never meant to be.  I've always been super healthy.  I practiced yoga for a long time, ate a really high vegetable, whole grain and beans diet for a long time, ran and bicycled for cardio through two kids and college. Somewhere down this road I lost my way between budgeting for meals, being pregnant (again! and again!) fighting with kids to eat healthy foods and getting tired of being the bad guy all the time.  I caved in.  Meals became less and less home-made and healthy and more and more expedient and un-imaginative.

I found myself over-weight by about forty pounds and out of shape, barely able to walk without taking frequent breaks.  One big wake up call came the day I walked to the book store and wanted to cross the street.  True to Vermont nature, all the cars stopped to let me walk and I wanted to jog across to be nice and let them get on their way quickly.  Guess what?  I couldn't jog.  I did this Igor kind of shuffle across the street--how embarrassing.  One leg just didn't want to come along so I sort of dragged it.

 That was 2 years ago. I started walking, then riding a bike...it was hard and I was so bad at it.  I even kept a meal journal from that time.  And the truth is, I didn't really know how to eat any more.  Egg McMuffin was a big feature in those days, not much in the way of veggies, lots of protein and carbs though.  I did keep up the exercising and even joined a boot camp in town.  These things made a lot of difference to my fitness but not to my waistline.  After 8 months busting my rather large butt, I only lost about 15 lbs.

Then I found an interesting movie on Netflicks: Fat Sick And Nearly Dead.  It's about a man on a journey to regain his health who does a 60 day juice fast and re-invents a new healthier version of himself.  Intrigued, I showed it to my husband and we both got really excited to try this crazy idea.  It made sense...lots of nutritious fruits and vegetables in the form of juice (seriously, you get tired chewing when you try to eat massive amounts of raw plant foods).  This was the start of a real transformation in how we eat and how we feel and look.  I am writing this on day six of my second juice fast. This blog is the story of the journey.