Juice

Would it be weird to say I'm considering only eating one solid meal a day? Would it be weird to say that I wouldn't change my caloric intake in a day by only eating one solid meal? And how strange would it be to say that I have the support of the medical field in only eating one solid meal a day?

You think I'm crazy don't you?  Well I'm not, and I'm not going to do some drastic fad diet and starve myself, then binge eat my one meal a day.  I'm going to begin juicing.  Again, I swear I haven't gone off the deep end.

I've been doing a lot of research about food. If you haven't picked up by now that I like to be informed about things, then I don't know what blog you've been reading! lol.  We tend to look at food as just a necessity to life, and I admit that is how I've looked at it for a long time too.  The fact is that yes, food is necessary, but what food we consume is a choice.  We can choose to consume a McDonald's Double Cheeseburger, or we can choose to consume a Chicken Salad with Raspberry Vinaigrette.  We have options, we just don't always take advantage of.  For me taking advantage of my options has been a big part in my healthier life style, but I think there was room to improve.

I've been watching a lot of documentaries about food, and what we eat.  Some have been a bit more...um...earthy than I would choose to be, but I've learned things from all of them.  For instance I would say that about 90% of the fresh fruit and produce that I eat now is USDA Organic.  I'd also say that of everything else that I purchase, meat, processed food, etc. about 45% is also USDA Organic. I also have begun purchasing more "All-Natural" items, not even just for me, but I've even got my cat using natural litter now, and eating "Natural" cat food! I've even become an independent sales represenative for Wildtree, a company that makes simple, healthy, and natural, blends, spices, and culinary blends. (Visit my Wildtree Website to learn more!) Why the change?  Well several of the documentaries I watched pointed out that we are using pesticides, and growth hormones in our foods.  Things that are intended to kill other living creatures, and make our food larger and better looking.  These chemicals contain ingredients that we wouldn't eat normally, but we are putting them in our foods and then eating them anyways.  To me it began to make sense, why do I want to eat chemicals that we don't know the effects they will have on us in the long run.

One documentary I saw called Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead really stands out to me though.  You can now watch this documentary for free on Netflix, and YouTube.  In this documentary Joe Cross decides to go on a 60 day juice cleanse because he is overweight, fighting medical conditions, and unhealthy.  Not only did he have amazing results, but an individual he met on his journey also began a 60 day juice cleanse and had similar results.  Health problems were solved, weight was lost, energy was gained, and live was given back to these individuals.  It really is rather amazing to see.  So this got me thinking, why juicing?  Could you have just eaten the vegetables that you juiced and had the same result?  Yes, it is true, but how many of us really are able to sit down and eat 2 apples, 1 whole cucumber, 4 celery stalks, 6-8 leaves of kale, half a lemon, and some ginger.  Juicing gives you the best of both worlds, you get the nutrients and vitamins from fruits and vegetables, but not all the filling fiber.  No one eats as many fruits and vegetables as we should be during the day, and this is a great way to help us get what we need.  I found a video of Joe Cross speaking about the health benefits of juicing in case you want to hear more about it, but don't want to spend all the time watching the documentary.

So I've decided to not do a full juice cleanse, but a partial one. Breakfast, lunch, and two snacks are going to be juice, dinner will be a regular meal. The reason I'm choosing to still have one solid meal is because I don't want to seclude myself from friends, and social events. I fear that if I did juicing all the time, I would be secluding myself from chances to go out with friends and spending time with them.  I'm going to begin this cleanse tomorrow, August 1, and go to the end of the month...or as long as I can stand it.  I've gotten the ok from medical professionals to do this so no worries there!

Why am I doing this? Well simply put, although I'm healthier than I have been, I still think I can be doing more. I eat a lot of fresh produce, but I know I'm still not eating enough.  I know I'm healthier, but I'm still not ideally healthy, and I know that I still need to lose quite a bit of weight too. So I figured why not, this isn't a fad diet, this isn't taking a pill or anything, this is changing the way you eat and it's what I've done since the beginning of this whole thing.

So tomorrow I say goodbye to many solid food, and embrace juicing my food for a while.  I'll keep you posted on progress, and life in general as always. =)

Secrets

We all have secrets. Some secrets are small, like you took the last cookie from the package and put the empty package back so no one would notice that you ate it. While other secrets are large, and often consume you. I have one of those types of secrets right now.  Sorry, I'm not going to spill this secret. To be honest it's not totally my secret, I share the burden. This secret though has begun to be all consuming of my thoughts recently and it is getting harder to bare.

In Harry Potter there is a term used for people designated to keep the location of a place secret, they're called "Secret Keepers".  The secret is kept in their soul, and they are the only ones capable of revealing the protected information to anyone else. When I read the Harry Potter series and came across this term it didn't mean much to me. To me this seamed normal, this is how someone keeps a secret anyways, so why need a special term for them. The fact is I understand this a bit more right now. A "Secret Keeper" doesn't keep just plain old secrets, they keep the secrets that have the greatest importance.  We're all our own Secret Keepers, but some of us become Secret Keepers for others as well.  I have only a hand full of people I trust to be my Secret Keepers, and of that handful there are only two I'm not related to.

Trust is something I struggle with. A very long time ago someone broke my trust, and I've had a difficult time recovering from that ever since. Granted, the person who broke my trust did a bang up job of doing it and made me a mess because of it, but I still I have done a poor job recovering from that breach of trust.  I've not only punished myself for having trusted that person, but I've noticed that I punish others as well for something they never did.  For many people you trust someone, until they give you a reason not to trust them. While I tend to not trust people at all until they give me a reason to trust them. This has the adverse effect of being closed off to people, or seeming that way to them. I hate the fact that I do this, but I don't know any other way because I've been this way for so long.

The people that know the secret that is weighing on me are being very supportive, but there is only so much that they themselves can bare. I fear that the individual I share this secret with is going through this right now. I haven't spoken to them for a while, and what I am able to follow of their life through things such as social media show that they are going through their own struggles. We allow secrets to consume our lives, and take over other parts. Personally my secret is not only consuming my thoughts, but taking over my sleep, causing me nightmares, and as I discovered the other night, threatening my relationships.

So how do we control something that we can't deal with publicly? Well I don't have an answer to that, I'm still trying to figure it out for myself. What I can do is trust the people in my life to not only keep this secret, but to help me deal with it. This may even mean sharing it with more people, and trusting them with this information. As I said, this isn't easy for me to do, but at the same time we have to do things that scare us from time to time. All I know is that once a secret begins to consume your thoughts, day in and day out, you have to do something about it. It's time for me to get a good nights sleep again, so I'm refusing to allow this secret to consume me anymore than it already has.

By the way, before friends and family begin to panic...I'M OKAY!!!!! My secret is something that happened a while ago, nothing to worry about, just been weighing on me. =)