First off, I wasn't trying to lose weight, so I'm not really sure when it all started. It must have been around when I bought our new fancy schmancy juicer and the tailgate markets started ... May? I don't know.
Anyway, we got inspired by watching the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead ... it was quite the wake-up call. I'd been juicing on and off for a while, but this got me really motivated to be more regular and take it a bit further. Easy to do with the bounty of tailgate markets in our area. Hard not to be inspired by so much good food.
I would hit the Thursday and Saturday markets and load up on greens, then everything else from WholeFoods. My juicer is a slow juicer, so I make a lot of juice at once - usually 6 pint size canning jars filled to the top ... that's at about 3 days worth of juice. It takes about an hour - prep, juicing, cleanup. Because I wasn't trying to do anything specific, I didn't worry about too much of anything in particular - just what looked and tasted good and what I was drawn to.
My "kitchen sink" juice usually consists of whole bunches of chard, 2 or 3 kinds of kale, a couple of red beets with greens, 2 cucumbers, half a big bunch of celery, a big knot of ginger, one granny smith apple and one pear and a lot of carrots.
Then there's my smoothies. One cup almond milk, one banana, a heaping tablespoon of HealthForce Nutrionals Vitamineral Green (most of the time, Amazon's the cheapest place to buy it), a heaping teaspoon of maca powder, 1/3 cup frozen blueberries and 1 tablespoon of chia seeds.
Most days I'd start with a smoothie and a small handful of toasted almonds. Lunch is juice and some more almonds, maybe some more fruit. If I need a snack - almonds. Some days, I'd drink two jars of juice, some just one.
For most of the summer, dinner was a plate of Organic Girl Super Greens, topped with a 1/2 a chicken breast sauteed in olive oil with seasoning salt, chopped up broccoli stalks, cucumber, maybe edamame, toasted sunflower seeds, juice sweetened cranberries, tomato if in season and my own balsamic/olive oil vinaigrette and Caesar croutons.
Sometimes a glass of red wine, most days not. Dessert was and still is a couple of bites of Chocolove 70% dark chocolate.
I think a big help was my apple cider vinegar (ACV) concoction - 1/3 cup unfiltered ACV, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda to cut the acidity, a few drops of stevia and then fill up with water to a quart. I'd drink one or more of those a day. It's also really good for allergies and clearing seasonal glop.
Me being me, there were my side trips for fast food evilness ... politically incorrect ChikFilA's or my favorite $2 lunch - a McDouble and large iced tea. There'd be pizza and beer nights - pepperoni and pineapple with pints of porter, breakfast out every Saturday and maybe BBQ for lunch and those wicked good deep fried maple pecan scones from Greenlife/WholeFoods on Sundays with scrambled eggs.
Like I said, I wasn't trying to lose weight. But come September, it cooled down and I put on some jeans and they were huge ... wow, how'd that happen? I got on our not accurate scales and it looked like I'd lost 18 pounds ... wow, when did that happen?
After that, I got to trying a bit ... now, I want to make sure I keep it off. As of today, I've lost 23 pounds. At my heaviest, which was in Port Townsend, I was close to 150 pounds. For the last 4 years I've been about 137. Right now, I'm hovering around 114 or 115. BTW - I'm 5'2" ... eyes of blue!
And for a grand experiment and because we've never tried it, we've been doing mostly vegan since early January. There's still the occasional side trips to 12 Bones for BBQ and lately back to breakfast out on Saturdays which includes eggs. Still, we do very little beer or wine, not much wheat and, if I have coffee - 1/2 and 1/2.
So that's it ... my skinny on gettin' skinny. If it helps anyone, I'll be a happy camper. If you've got any questions, give me a holler. Bottom line, it's all about getting healthy and feeling better.
l i g a - kvk
p.s ...
- my juicer is an Omega J8006 masticating juicer - right at $300 ... but the best juicer is the one you'll use. There's a ton of good info online and on YouTube about choosing a juicer.
- all those people who say it's close to impossible to lose weight after menopause are dead wrong
- I didn't really do any exercising at first. Somewhere along the way, I got inspired to stretch a bit and end with a headstand. Amazing that I could just hold the headstand for as long as I wanted. It started getting my core muscles interested in doing a bit more. Then I got going pretty regularly with a series of yoga stretches, which led to stomach and isometrics, which led to 3# weights and some upper body work.
- for straight yoga, I really like this Jivamukti DVD; for a nice combination of yoga and core strength work I like the Gaiam DVD, Fit Body Yoga
- for plain old inspiration, I'll end with a favorite that, if you've been following my blog, you've seen before ... My Friend Maia ... pure joy
Once again our lives intersect. I've been wanting to lose some post-menopausal weight, and I've been reading about juicing for the past month. The local healthy food store that I love to visit is having monthly luncheons that follow the Joel Fuhrman plan.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post. I think it's a sign for me to get back on track.
~Christi
Just heard of Joel Fuhrman - looks good! Cool about the monthly luncheons ... whatever works!
DeleteYou look great! And thanks for sharing what you did. I'm on my own healthy journey, too. Less processed food, more vegetables. I'm thinking smoothies and juices would be one way to get veggies in because they are not my favorite. Do you mind sharing what juicer you have?
ReplyDeleteThinking I've covered your questions ... holler if need be!
Delete