Day 5. first round of reflections

This morning I weighed in at 202. Which was a big sigh of relief, because it’s been a strange/tough week. Here are some things that I noticed right off the bat…

• My sense of smell has become SOOO acute, i feel like supernatural almost. I could smell my wife’s whiskey drink on tuesday night from across the room (it wasn’t a huge glass of whiskey either). Seattle smells delicious and it just adds to my struggle.
• I am hungry ALL THE FREAKING TIME!!! I haven’t felt really satiated yet, don’t really expect to either.
• I realized how mindlessly I used to eat/snack. Working in the service industry, we are always on the go, so I am used to just scooping up food and shoveling it down my pie hole. It’s taken more effort than I thought it would to avoid doing this.
• People talk about food ALOT. It doesn’t bother me anymore, but the first few days, I wanted to walk around with my fingers in my ears going LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA.
• My brain HATED me on monday and tuesday because it didn’t have any coffee. Like POUNDING headache. it was awful.

So I think the most important lesson I’ve learned in the first 5 days is NEVER JUICE A RED ONION. I know, I know it sounds like a bad idea to begin with, but I found a recipe that called for onion, parsley, lemon, and garlic. I’ve been getting a little burnt out of sweet juices, so I’m trying to experiment with some savory ones. So we had half of a red onion from the stuff my wife cooked on monday. so I juiced that bad boy and right off the bat I knew I had chosen poorly. SO MUCH JUICE came out of that thing. I should have just stopped right there, poured most of the onion juice out, but did I do that…. of course not!! I tried to cover up the onion flavor with alot of other strong flavors like a whole lemon unpeeled, a fat piece of garlic, a beet. nothing worked, I threw half a bag of rainbow chard in there (i think rainbow chard tasted like dirt) as a last ditch effort. I ended up drinking about 3/4 of that jar the next day for breakfast and I swear I could taste red onion the entire day. So maybe I should have used a yellow onion, or a sweet onion….at this point no type of onion with go anywhere near my juicer. blah.

On the other hand, I did make an amazing liquid bruschetta. Tomato, Basil, lemon, garlic and a little arugula. This juice is super tasty. I highly recommend it. Here are some more of my favorite recipes so far.

• Yams, Oranges, Carrots, and a Golden Beet (Dana calls this one Sam Julius)
• Strawberries, Oranges, pear, and mint. (still waiting for name)
• Asparagus, Parsley, broccoli, Zuccini, kale, lemon, ginger (Super Green)

I’ll leave you guys with some resources that have been helpful to me. I’ve found some recipes on www.Juicerecipes.com What I love about that website is that it breaks down the benefits from each ingredient in the juice which is really helpful for me, but that onion recipe was on there so I’m not sure anymore. I also watched the following documentaries:

• Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
• Food Matters
• Hungry For Change

All of those are available on Netflix. I would recommend all of them not just for information about juice, but just about healthy eating, and how the man tries to hold us down!!! STICK IT TO THE MAN, WATCH THESE DOCUMENTARIES!

Overall I’m feeling pretty daggum good on day 5. I sleep like a rock now, which hasn’t really been the case outside of extreme exhaustion. I wake up pretty easy, and I have plenty of energy throughout the day. On wednesday my head felt really weird like my thoughts were moving through jello or something. It was kinda trippy, but now my mind is pretty clear.

This weekend Dana Jill and I are going to Port Townsend, WA just for fun (i’m pre-juicing like crazy). Apparently there is an amazing bakery there. Pray that I remain strong!! We are also going to check “the edge of the world” which I have no idea what to expect, but Dana said it’s pretty awesome. So 5 days in and I’m feeling good. Leave me some comment folks