Game Change. It's called Juicing

This past summer I fell in love with juicing. It started with a juicer left by an old roommate when we moved back into 1712 and a dear friend who had watched Fat Sick and Nearly Dead. I'll admit, I still haven't watched it, and I think it's because I fear what I'll find.

I join the Reboot and found some recipes that I thought I'd like and would work well for me. I bought fruit and veggies out the wazoo. The juicer I own isn't the best, but it isn't the worst either. I do struggle with getting it to not jam on me, which is most likely why I stopped juicing. Juicing, in and of itself is a bit of a workout, at least for me and my bad back and weak arms.

I juiced before camping and froze my mason jars full of this amazing concoction I'd thrown together. (I eventually threw the recipes out, once you've done the research to know what will go well together and what will turn on you in a matter of hours, you won't need an actual recipe.) Those frozen drinks were a godsend in the wild. They slowly thawed into these slushies, causing great pleasure in my mouth and body. Plus one helped save a friend from dehydration and lack of substance.

I know all of the wonderful benefits, or at least I get it, so why did I stop? I'm lazy. Pure and simple.

Everyone I know, or at least a large portion of them, have jumped onto this health kick band wagon. They are exercising daily, cutting back on the "wrong" foods, delving into P90X and other intense exercise programs. The peer pressure to jump onto this band wagon with all of my amazing friends is HUGE. However, I'm a lazy ass and I'm tired of doing things simply because everyone else is doing it and thus I feel the pressure that I should do it too. (And you thought peer pressure ended in high school/college!)

Aside from my laziness and a touch of stubbornness, I also abhor exercise. Exercising purely for the sake of exercising and burning fat and building muscle does not appeal to me. I want my time spent doing such things to be productive and on a slightly grander scale than making myself healthier. (Sounds odd, I know.) It's like when I clean my house. I get an amazing work out AND I have a wonderfully clean house I can bask in when I'm done. Almost instant gratification.

So here's the deal (and I figure if I post this here I'll have to hold myself accountable, crunching the numbers is easy, follow through is another story altogether), I don't exercise, but I don't eat so great either. I snack all the time, and snack food that isn't good for me. I don't drink enough water and I certainly don't get enough of the vitamins and minerals that I need in my daily diet. All of this is my fault. I have watched myself, in my adult life go from a size 8 to a size 14! (I wore a size 6 in high school and early college and that was baggy on me.)

I keep telling myself that if I stay at this size forever I'll be ok. I said that when I was a size 12. What I'm seeing is that slowly but surly I'm packing on the weight. I'm turning into the one thing I told myself when I was young and skinny that I'd be, which is the size my mom was before she died. I'm not there yet, but if I don't do something soon I'll be there and I'm not certain I'll have it in me to do anything about it at that point.

In a little over 60 days Beltania begins. I am part of staff and will be there early and staying late and busting my rump throughout. It is an honor to do what I do while I'm there, but if I'm to manage myself better and enjoy the event even more I've got to do something about my fat ass. I intend to sleep on the ground for a 7 nights! I plan to help build a sweat lodge and then tend the rather large fire for 6 sweats during the event, as many as 2 a day, which comes to 4+ hours per sweat stoking a fire and passing white hot stones from the pit into the lodge. In order to do this without dying in the end and becoming completely useless, I need to reduce this fat floating around my middle.

In order to reduce this fat I've gotta reduce my intake, increase my energy and get off my ass and do more.

The plan?

JUICING!

Will it work? I don't know, I've got 60 days to find out. It's more about a life change than a quick fix.

I'm looking at have a juice for breakfast and lunch Monday - Friday.

So...
Make a ton of juice on Saturday/Sunday. Separate into 10 jars. Freeze said jars. Grab 2 jars each morning as I head to work. Eat a decent meal for dinner.

If I play my cards right I won't want to eat a huge dinner. I'm already cutting back on seconds and doing my best to avoid the sweets.

If all goes well and I stick to my plan I should start to lose some weight, and if nothing else I should see my energy levels rise, helping my self confidence and thus causing me to want to be more active, thus allowing me to work off some weight.

So there you have it. I'm a lazy ass, so I'm trying to find things that I will do that will help me feel better about myself physically and emotionally.

The next step is to clear out my closet of things I won't wear or look funny on me because of my weight. I've held on to some things thinking that when I'm smaller I'll be able to wear them again. But truly, one should only hold on to things for so long before that thought is just silly.

I'm purging, on all sorts of levels.