Got Juice?–Wrap Up–The Good and the not-so-Good

In Deuteronomy 8:8, The Israelites are promised:

"a good land…, a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey."

God was giving us a peek at healthy living.  Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians to exercise “self-control.”  And I feel that this applies to our overall lifestyle, including our daily diet, as well as to our behaviors.

And, I know you have been waiting for this post for two weeks and I apologize.  Life got in the way. So here’s my recap.  It’s a little long, so stay with me for just a little longer.

Better late than never, here is a wrap-up post about my 6 day juice fast/detox plan created for me by Tiffany Finney with Pour Me Some Juice.  If you haven’t visited her blog or Facebook page, take a minute to take a look.  You will really learn a lot and get some great recipes.  And, if you are from the Jackson area, I highly recommend getting a vegetarian meal or two a week prepared by Tiffany and Amy – freshness and goodness.  Can you say yummy?  Check out Wholey Chow for the menu.  They will be teaching classes on Raw Food Prep in November at UT-Jackson.  Check it out.
Now to the detox wrap up.  First and foremost, at the end of the period I felt better and had more energy than I have had in 10 years!  And now that I have introduced “healthy” eating into my daily lifestyle, I continue to have energy and feel great.  I can also immediately tell the difference in how I feel when I “cheat” and eat foods that are good in taste, but not so good for your body. I feel sluggish, tired, too full- just a little miserable.  But, that will happen from time to time, because even though I am slowly changing my eating habits and daily diet, I will “backslide” and that’s OK.  As long as I don’t continue the slide as I have in the past.
I can tell a difference in my skin.  My face kinda glows (to me anyway) when I am eating and drinking healthy.  And, BTW, I don’t think I have mentioned how important it is to drink, drink, drink water.  I try to drink close to a gallon a day.  So good for your skin.
After a couple of days, I wasn’t hungry at all and felt satisfied and without the urge to snack all the time.  The juice, smoothies, soups and salads were very filling.
I slept like a sweet baby.  As opposed to a newborn- they usually wake up all during the night and I often did that.  No, on detox I fell asleep quickly and slept sounding.  Didn’t wake at all during the night.  And felt absolutely great when my feet hit the floor in the morning.  I was tired when I went to bed because I was bustling around all day getting stuff done- because of all that energy.  Love it!  Got that craft room cleaned out (watch for a future post about a HUGE sale on my gently used products- Cheap).
My weight went down about 5 pounds during detox week.  Now, I had read that a lot of the weight loss during detox is water loss and that you will gain it back when you start eating normally again.  So wrong in my case, because, I did not start eating “normally” after the detox.  That was the whole point- changing my eating – changing my daily diet to include healthy foods. I did gain back 1 pound, but it is gone now.  Total weight loss since I started with Tiffany – 9.5 pounds.  My wardrobe just got bigger!  Now, I need to get moving to go along with the diet change to help get the pounds off. 
All systems go!  I did drink a lot of liquid and ate very little food that needed to be digested.  Tiffany uses a powerful juicer that removes the fiber from the fruits and veggies, so digestion got week rest.  I was a little concerned that that would have an effective on my systems, but everything worked and worked well.  Here are photos of our juicers.Mine on the left, Tif’s on the right.  Mine is about a thousand years old and I still love it.  It has been a staple on my countertop for a long, long time.  It takes a lot of work to make my juice- so glad to have Tiffany around to do it for me.  She is also the master encourager and kept all of us on track during the detox- and continues now that I am on a daily juice plan.  I just love her.
I did miss my coffee.  I was good and cut out coffee and had a cup of hot green tea each morning.  I was a little drowsy in the early evenings the first couple of nights.  But that went away.  However, I never acquired a taste for the hot tea.  I finally found a lemon and Stevia combination that was fairly tasty, but I am a Southern gal and we just don’t drink our tea hot!! 
Thanks so much for hanging with me for this long email.  And for sticking with me during the detox.  I hope you stay tuned.  Next I will be posting about what I am doing now.  For instance, today my cupboard is pretty bare (grocery time), so for lunch I had lettuce wraps with homemade roasted red pepper hummus, a couple of medjool figs, some almonds and a few cranberry raisins- plus a few bites of avocado.  And it was tasty and filling – more importantly: I Feel Great!
‘Til next time……
Blessings,
Diane