End of my 5th week on Super Juice Me!

I have been juicing again full time this week and dropped the weight that I gained eating solid food last weekend.  It was only 3 or 4 lbs but I hate going backward.  I am headed down again but going into the weekend where I'd planned to add some solid food again.  But I'm rethinking that as it slows my progress so much.  I am still sleeping wonderfully, and feeling good, with reduced blood pressure (normal!) and good energy.  My brain is working well and I'm doing great at work.  If I get any restless leg, I just do my yoga and that takes care of it.  No more waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to sleep.  What a relief!

I still have trouble getting my workouts in because I spend 12 hours a day traveling to/coming from/or at work.  Plus at least an hour at juicing, which leaves me little time for myself and my husband.   So it's a bit of a struggle to get it all in, but I'm doing my best.  TV watching is gone for the most part during the week.  Luckily the number of shows I'm willing to watch goes down every year as they seem to get more stupid every season.  I do like love stories and humor but not stupid humor or certainly no reality TV.  We get enough of that without watching "reality shows".  lol

The new pants I just bought are loose on me.  Wish I'd gone down a size but I just didn't think I could wear them.  Boy was I wrong...

I might just go out once for Ethiopian food and juice the rest of the weekend.  I like how I feel on it and it's a no brainer.  I've looked at some of Jason's "fast food" recipes too and some of them appeal to me.  So I will try some.  I've got to stop weighing myself so much because I need to just focus on feeling good.  I might get rid of the scale for a while and just relax into the process.  I use Jon Gabriel's methods as well and need to find time to do more visualization.  So much to do!

I will try to not get in a hurry and lose all the weight at once as it is disastrous for my skin as well.  I want to look good, not saggy.  LOL  But I feel better about myself already and so happy to be off all medications.  No more meds for me!  Food is my medicine.  Juice on!

Round 2 of Super Juice Me!

Day 21 and dishpan hands

I'm on day 21, the end of it that is, and still hanging in there.  I had a small salad yesterday with a teeny amount of dressing but it stopped my weight loss.  It's ok, I'm happy with the 15 lbs I've lost so far.  Obviously I have a lot more weight to lose and I will be continuing with the juice in some form after the 28 days.  I haven't decided how much, but I will keep juicing.  My biggest complaint(s) are how long it takes to juice every night and how hard it is on my poor hands.   My hands are a mess!  Dishpan hands big time!  They are dry and rough and it hurts!  Plus peeling the limes and other Citris fruit gets into my cuts and stings like crazy!  I can't knit because my hands hurt so much.   I have started wearing gloves for some of the washing up but preparing the fruits and veggies is not easy with gloves.  I wash everything again and again.  And my neck hurts from looking down to cut it all up.  Ok. I'll quit complaining now.  I'm happy with the results but wish I could afford a juice chef.  Lol. My husband helps sometimes but he has a lot of other chores too.  So I tough it out.  My blood pressure just measure at 100/68 so I am tickled about that.  No more meds for me!  I'm thinking to wean off of the thyroid medicine too just to see where I am.  I'll go get blood tests later once I'm off everything just to see.  My numbers were great last time I checked and I wonder how much they have improved since then.  I had to get some new clothes this weekend too.  So life is good.  Hahaha

Day 20 of my 28 day juice cleanse

21 days and counting!   I bought some new smaller size clothing today because I've gone down a good size or more.  Very exciting!

Day 19 and counting

My weight has finally started going back down from my adventure into solid food last weekend.  It sure did seem to stall things out.  My blood pressure is good, well within normal range and i feel pretty good during the day.  Oddly, when I ate solid food, I had a sleepless night on Saturday.  But juicing seems to be better for my sleep.  Even if I wake up several times, I always go back to sleep and no restless leg episodes.  But Saturday after Mexican food I woke up after 3 hours and could not sleep, with restless leg .  So one more reason to keep juicing.   I've been spiking my juice with greens powder and Maca, and all the red juices get a handful of pomegranate seeds to help clean out my arteries.  My pulled ACL has almost completely healed and I feel good in general.  I have good energy throughout the day and work is going great.  I am going to do some fall cleaning this weekend and start weeding out things from the closets.  Even my fiber closet.   I also need to fit rebounding into my routine somewhere.  I'm able to do my yoga outside now that the worst of the heat and bugs are gone.  I love practicing at sunset.  I'm determined to keep going.  To my health!

Day 17 on the 28 day Juice Cleanse

Still hanging in there after 3 weeks. I ate one meal on Saturday but that is all.  I just smell food and get hungry.   I try to keep drinking the juice and it does fill me up but is not always the most tasty option.   I like most of the recipies though and my husband has joined me, part time to get the benefits of all those vitamins.   I will make this work. I am determined.   

Day 12 in my Juicing Journey

I am 12 day into the Juicing Cleanse.  I started this journey about a year ago when I came across Jon Gabriel's methods and decided to try meditation for weight loss.  I tried hypnosis some also, but don't think I gave it enough of a try.  I was always too busy to sit and listen to the hypnosis, although I did use it to go to sleep.  I liked Jon Gabriel's voice and I liked his way of thinking.  If you are interested, go to www.gabrielmethod.com and see what he has to offer.  I still use his visualizations at night and as often during the day as I can remember to do it.  My husband likes to go to sleep listening to Jon as well, it's a soothing and positive message.  He has an app, and you can only get the ones you want.

I lost about 10 lbs listening to Jon, but was still having high blood pressure and my weight loss hit a plateau for a number of months.  Then I was reading Dr Mercola's website and he talks about intermittent fasting and how it helps your body learn to burn fat again and get off the cycle of refined carb burning.  I liked this idea and so I started doing that.  I was wonderfully successful at it on the weekend when I could go outside and work in the yard before eating.  But when I was at work, sitting at my desk, I would get so hungry and need to eat.  So I couldn't do it all the time.  Plus I was still having issues giving up the sugar.  I've been a sugar addict since childhood.  I truly believe that refined carbohydrates like sugar and white flour are as addictive and as bad for you as narcotics.  But they are not illegal and so easy to get.  My body has labored under the burden of these foods and stress for so many years that I wasn't even sure I could really heal. I tried every kind of diet, and knew I needed to give up the refined carbs, but had trouble doing it.  Even when I did, it was short lived and I lost and gained weight a number of times.

All this set me up for being insulin resistant and after a while, my body just would not respond to my attempts to eat sanely and in a healthy way.  I didn't eat that much, but was still stuck at an incredible weight that I can't believe I was even at.  Then a few weeks ago, I saw an interview on Jon Gabriel's site where he talked to the Juice Master Justin Vale and something clicked for me.  I watched the interview, then I watched Jason Vale's documentary where he helps 4 people get healthy.  And I decided to give myself the gift of health for my birthday.  I'm 58 years old now and I won't be getting healthier any younger.  So now is the time!  Go to www.juicemaster.com to see Jason's website and you can watch his documentary for free there.  

We had tried juicing before and had the ultimate Omega juicer languishing on the counter from our last attempt.  But my husband got tired of doing it and we had only done it for morning, never for all our meals.  So I had the equipment, I just needed a bit of guidance.  So I got Jason's 28 day plan, and decided to try it.  It was that or consider weight loss surgery, and believe me, I was not willing to go there.  But I also could not go on any longer dealing with the side effects of high blood pressure or the meds to artificially keep it low.  So I decided to do it for me, for my birthday, for my sweet husband who loves me no matter what but was so worried about my health because we married late and we have a lot of catching up to do. 

So far, so good.  Here is my 12 day video blog.

10 days and still going!

I'm 10 days into my 28 day juice cleanse and still going strong.   I've lost about 13 pounds and my blood pressure is lower than it's been in 15 or 20 years.  I am so excited to have such great success.  Nothing else has worked so well for me to lose weight.  I've tried it all, counting calories, counting carbs, Nutrisystems, you name it, I've done it.   I had some small success with intermittent fasting, lost maybe 15 lbs on that but I would hit plateaus and I got so hungry at work.   This just shows such great results that it keeps you going.   I feel so much better being able to sleep.  Plus my blood pressure is NORMAL.  I've been 130-135 systolic for so many years, and now that's lower.  Every time I take my blood pressure I just start laughing.  It's so crazy.  My father-in-law said that maybe I should have tried another blood pressure medicine, but I told him that lack of blood pressure medicine didn't cause my high blood pressure. It was stress, weight gain, and possibly buildup in my veins.  So why mask the symptoms when they don't cure the problem, it will just get worse!  I am so happy that food is healing me.  I'm getting better adjusted to the liquid diet and am excited each day to get up and see how well I'm healing.  Here is my video diary.

Day 6 of my Juicing Journey

Well, as of the morning of Day 6, I have dropped 11 lbs and last night when I took my blood pressure, it was 117/72!  Tonight, more of the same, 116/70.  I'm so thrilled that my blood pressure is doing great with no drugs.  I've been off my blood pressure medicine for over a week now, and I'm sleeping so much better!  I feel great and I'm drinking the juice.  I'm pretty regular too, so no issues there.  I get food cravings but I'm not usually very hungry.  Once in a while my stomach grumbles but not too often.  Yesterday I had trouble drinking all my juice and tonight, it was a bit much for me also.

I don't look so happy in my video this morning, but I was happy.  I just still am a bit slow first thing and need time to wake up and look more normal.

Day 4 video blog

I'm having some technical difficulties adding my videos to my blog.  So I am going back and adding day 4 video after the fact.

My Juicing Journey

I have decided to try juicing to improve my health.  I'm 58 years old tomorrow, about 140 lbs overweight and have been on thyroid medicine and more recently, blood pressure medicine.  I gained a lot of weight after my kids and dieted to lose and then would gain it back.  Of course a highly stressful relationship had something to do with the weight gain also.  But I was also a fitness instructor part time and was teaching 5 aerobics classes or more per week as well as doing yoga and was still 50 lbs overweight.  So something else was wrong.  I've been low thyroid probably most of my life although my mom swears she had us tested as kids.  But the old standards were faulty as many of you know now.  And I had many symptoms of low thyroid for years and years.  Finally, getting medicine helped me feel more normal but it didn't seem to help my metabolism.

I figure at some point I became insulin resistant as well from the diets.  I've done many, low carb, low calorie, Nutrisystem, and many others, but nothing really helped much.  When I hit menopause, I gained another 50 lbs and was at my highest weight ever.  I've been up there for a number of years but have now started to go down.  I started using Jon Gabriel's meditations to help and started gardening to get me out and about.  I have a job where I sit all day and don't see the sun at all.  So getting outside is a must.  I was Vitamin D deficient several years ago but that has turned around and my last level was around 60 which is decent.  I take 5000 units a day which so far has not hurt me and is finally bringing my levels into the healthy range.

I lost about 20 lbs with Jon Gabriel and the gardening, but it is slow and in the meantime, my sleep was increasingly bad.  The blood pressure medicine I was on, tended to make my Restless Leg Syndrome severe and it was hard to sleep at all, plus I would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to get back to sleep from the pain in my legs.  So I needed to do something or else go crazy.  I'd had a lot of trouble sleeping since menopause and I believe my cortisol was also off the wall.  I had it tested and it was all out of whack, low in the morning and then up and down but not at the right times.  Add sleep apnea on top of all this and I was seriously dragging every day.

So I decided I needed to lose weight NOW and get off the blood pressure medicine immediately.   Plus it would help my sleep apnea.   So I downloaded an app from the Juice Master Jason Vale and started today for a 28 day juice cleanse.  Here is my first day's video blog.

I stopped taking the Lisinopril with the HC(whatever) about 5 days ago and I have slept so much better.  No restless leg, or nearly none and I can go back to sleep if I wake up.  My blood pressure is steady around 135/80, better than before, but I think that will improve once I get the juice cleanse going good.  I think the 20lbs I already lost has helped some with the blood pressure.  

I'm hungry, but I don't care.  I think it will be worth it long term so that I can enjoy my life with my husband and my children/grandchildren.  This is a journey and I will post things I've found that have helped me as I go.