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.