I Think I'm Becoming One of Those People

After I got over my short-term juice aversion, I got the new juicer out of the closet.  The couch to 5k training has been going well and I can feel myself getting stronger and fitter, which is great, but the weight has been coming off pretty slowly.  I think I hit a wall about 3 weeks ago and the scale has just stayed glued to the same maddening number.

I've been wanting a juicer for a while and decided to try to give the weight loss a jolt by attempting a juice fast.  Except I pretty much knew drinking nothing but fresh juice would be way too hard and drive me crazy, so last week I attempted a sort of modified juice fast.  Meaning I decided I could still eat food.  Juice and maybe a cup of peppermint tea in the morning; a salad of romaine, red cabbage, chickpeas, and Parmesan with olive oil and vinegar for lunch; green juice in the afternoon; a whole fruit snack after work before a run or yoga; green juice after the workout and maybe one or two bites of whatever Joe made himself for dinner; peppermint tea before bed; and lots of lots of water all day.  If I had just read that on someone else's blog, I would totally be snickering to myself right now because hello crazy.

I made my juice for the next day every evening which made it do-able for me.  In the mornings I had something fruity made with some combination of apple or pear or pineapple or kiwi or strawberries or mango or papaya or watermelon or cantaloupe or lemon or banana, etc.  And then in the afternoons and evenings, I stuck to the green juice or something more veggie-based.  After lots of experimentation, I found a green juice recipe I love and don't mind gulping down (which doesn't make me hurl): 2-3 apples, 3-5 stalks of kale, handful of spinach, 1 cucumber, 2 lemons.  I washed all the fruits and veggies as soon as I brought them home and cut up all the greens and kept them in freezer bags so I could just grab a handful whenever.  That helped a lot since it meant I could just throw things in the juicer with minimum prep.  

I was the first one expecting this to not go well.  I even had emergency snacks in my desk drawer because trying new things is fun but hunger is not.  I was really surprised to find I wasn't hungry throughout the day, I felt satisfied, I had a lot of fun experimenting with the juices, I had a ton of energy, slept really well, and felt really good during my workouts.  And I lost 5 lbs last week.

So...I'm doing it again this week.  I don't expect the same crazy results, but it's working for me right now so I'm going to stick with it and see what happens.  If I want to knock it off or eat something different, I will, no worries.