Juice Cleanse! Days 1 & 2!

Ok… so this is what I was teasing earlier… Our newest venture on our constant path of seeking better health and wellness. Yesterday, Mary and I started our first juice cleanse! 🙂
First a little recap of the past year or so. Back in December of of 2011, we both decided to switch to an all plant-based diet. There were many reasons for this, the first being for the health benefits. Then there was the treatment of animals, the impact on the planet, etc. It has been a great journey thus far and I truly love the foods I now eat. I have also been blessed with new friendships and fantastic discoveries since embarking on this journey. At the same time that I cut animal products out of my diet, I also launched into the P90X workout program. I’ve been a gym rat for most of my life, so this took some getting used to, but I began to really enjoy the workouts and the convenience of the at-home program. I blogged daily throughout my 90 day journey and after completion… I started it again! People kept asking to see my progress photos but to be quite honest, I wasn’t satisfied with my progress and failed to share. I was in pretty good shape to begin with but wanted to be stronger, leaner, and get totally shredded. I didn’t understand why my body wasn’t changing that much if I was working out so hard and eating so clean. During round 2 of P90X, I got anxious to get back into the gym. I missed the atmosphere and also felt like it was time to start hitting heavier weights. I had actually lost some of my size during P90X and wanted to switch it up. So I found a nice balance of gym and at-home workouts. But still… I was not achieving the results I was seeking.

After speaking with a vegan bodybuilder and trainer, I learned something very interesting. He said that my body was detoxing from all the years of eating so much meat. That my muscles would naturally go down a bit as the toxic waste left. We store much of that in our muscles, so this made a lot of sense. He told me to press on… and so I did. I noticed that it took about 8 or 9 months for my body to full clean itself and start rebuilding. But this time I was building clean and my body was getting denser and stronger and I started to really see some change. But… If you read my blog from earlier today, you would know that I had an injury set-back in November that took me out of the game for about 5 weeks. I am back in it now, but slowly. I have not lost hope… these things happen, just like when a football player suffers a season-ending injury. It can be really frustrating and even depressing, but you still gotta come back strong. And so I am!

Which brings me to the original reason for this post… the juice cleanse! I have never done a cleanse before. Some call it a fast, but the word ‘fast’ has too similar a meaning to ‘lack of’. So to keep it positive, we are calling it a ‘Juice Feast’! Of course also a ‘cleanse’ as that is all positive in my book. The idea is to take it a step further than we did over a year ago and truly clean out our bodies and reset our systems. This is the final step to getting on the right track to help us reach our fitness goals and truly put us on the path of ultimate health and fitness for years to come.

Since we have never done this before, we did our research for the right program to achieve the goals we were seeking. The program we chose was developed by Drew Canole of FitLife.TV. Here is the link to his site: http://www.juiceupyourlife.tv/

We began the program yesterday. It’s a 14 juice cleanse, but no, we don’t starve for 14 days straight. Days 1-4 and 8-11 are all juice, days 5-7 and 12-14 include juice and food… and a lot of food, just all the right foods. It also encourages daily exercise, gratitude, and inspiration. The goal of this cleanse is to obviously clean and reset the body but also to help train us to a whole new way of eating. Our bodies are truly amazing machines, but we must fuel them right to keep them operating at the most efficient level and even a vegan diet can have flaws.

Yes I am hungry right now, but I feel good. I’ve had 4 juices thus far today (all vegetable juices) plus tea, lots of alkaline water, chia seeds, and a teaspoon of coconut oil. I will go into more detail in my next blog as this one is already quite long. But feel free to comment or ask any questions. And I will keep sharing my progress, my photos, and my inspiration.

Have a great night!