The Juicing Rules

To begin with, we're going to do a two day juice cleanse. On Sunday, we went to our fave grocery store, Jungle Jim's, and stocked up on fresh produce. This is by far the most fresh food to ever be in my house at one time. We pulled a handful of recipes from The Juice Generation and ended up with a selection of juices derived from watermelon, pineapple, pears, apples, oranges, spinach, limes, cucumber, carrots, cilantro, celery, kale, and beets. Phew, I think that's everything! We have 5-6 recipes we'll be referencing for our juicy meals Wednesday and Thursday.

Starting Friday, we will replace a minimum of one meal with a juice. The Juice Generation breaks juicing down to three phases.  Phase 1 involves small and reasonable steps, encouraging simplicity and experimentation. The juices in phase 1 will have a 30 percent green factor, meaning at least some of them must contain greens.  In Phase 2, the goal is to make five drinks in a week containing at least 50 percent greens. This phase is more exploratory and broadens your tastes from sweeter to a little more savory. Finally, by Phase 3, you'll be making a green-filled drink every day. The book includes recipes for each phase.

Since we're newbies to the juicing world, we picked all of our recipes from Phase 1 to keep it more palatable. We'll sample more recipes from the first phase to round out the first week. During weeks 2 and 3, we'll focus on phases 2 and 3, respectively. 

I plan to keep a log of calories, assuming I'm able to find calorie counts for juiced produce.  I'm still in the middle of reading The Juice Generation, so I will incorporate relevant strategies as I come across them.  Tonight I have some yummy Mexican leftovers to eat for dinner, and that will be my last solid meal for the next 48(+!) hours. 

To Juice or Not to Juice?

The juicer that my brother got my husband and I for Christmas has surprisingly been getting a fair amount of use. I think I was a little intimidated by juicing at first, but the fact remains that I really need to make a point to get more nutrients in my regular diet. So, I think *deep breath* that I'm going to commit to doing a juice cleanse.

I've been reading The Juice Generation - it came in my January PopSugar Must Have box, and it couldn't have been better timing! This was the final element to make me finally decide "it is time". I checked out a few blogs to see how others have fared in their forays into juicing, and everything seems encouraging.  

There may be some withdrawal symptoms depending on how 'toxic' my normal diet is. Considering my normal diet, yeah, I fully expect a couple of headaches and irritability, but these effects are short-term, and the boost in energy and clear-headedness seems worth it.  I love the idea of providing my body with concentrated doses of nutrients that are light on the digestive system. The goal is improved health and well-being, not weight loss. Chances are most people will drop some weight while juicing, but this is just an added bonus.  So, let the juicing quest begin!

Guest Post - My Partner's Reflections, 21 Days Later

Of course, I regularly drag my husband into my experiments as well, so here are his thoughts on our healthy days.

21 Days Later...

I’m always unsure how to begin writing something. If you are reading this, I’m sure you are following Tab’s blog posting, so you are obviously aware of our three week diet experiment. I followed a rule set virtually identical to hers, with the exception of having a higher calorie “budget”. On the whole this has been a very productive experience for me. I had roughly a 3% weight loss compared to Tab’s. Tab has mentioned time and again that it would behoove me to count my calories to become more aware of how much I am eating. This would be an especially useful habit to get into as my worst eating trait is bored eating. Having spent the past three weeks doing so daily, and getting an appreciation for how much I eat and how healthy this foods are, the calorie counting is something I plan to make a habit of going forward.

I was the one responsible for adding up all the calories that we were eating. I found caloriecount.com an incredibly useful resource. Most foods are on there, with the exception of restaurant fare. We tried to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables over the course of the three weeks, and all that nutritional info I obtained at caloriecount.

From a food preparation perspective this diet wasn’t a particularly large change of pace. We try to have most of our meals homemade, but the last three weeks had a lot more produce and a lot less pasta/dairy in it. It did kind of force us to try some more of our vegan recipes, as they tend to be by default healthier than even vegetarian recipes. The fact that we were on a calorie count kind of diet as opposed to a philosophy diet like Atkins or fruit cleanses or what have you allowed us to still have some indulgences. By aiming for healthier options and keeping an eye on portion control we had a delightful strawberry shortcake and coconut orange bread as deserts over the experiment.

As a mixed sort of experience on Monday of the 2nd week I hurt my back and was unable to workout. However, as a result of being on this diet I was still experiencing weight loss, which reinforced the notion that you can’t outrun your diet.

Lessons Learned:

As we were on a calorie count, I definitely got in the habit of thinking of “spending” calories on certain things. It really reinforced the “expense” of things like bread and dairy based meals. Bread and dairy tend to be my favorite foods, and while I knew in an abstract sense their calorie/nutrition ratio, this placed it in a easier to see kind of format.

As I mentioned above, the back injury also reinforced the general value of a good diet. I normally work out Mon-Fri, and even while only getting 1 day of exercise I was still able to stay on a weight loss track.

One of the biggest aids we had during this was a digital scale that I have. Alton Brown, the host of Good Eats, has always been one of my favorite TV personalities. A few years ago I got a cookbook of his as a gift, and he lists all of his food measurements by weight, as that is much more accurate. We picked up a small digital scale after getting the book, and while I do use it when baking, it became invaluable during this experiment. My idea of what constitutes an oz. of cheese vs what an oz of cheese actually is can differ wildly. Being able to actually measure portion sizes out by weight was incredibly valuable.

Reinforcement is probably the best way to describe the lessons I learned while doing this. I’ve always had an interest in health/diet/exercise, and doing something like this lent some weight to certain ideas. I definitely plan on semi-regular counting of calories, and using the scale to measure out food.

Back to My Normal Not-So-Healthy Program

So, surprise, surprise, I went to the Indian buffet on Saturday.  I admit, Indian food could never be accused of looking like the most appetizing food - it can look pretty disgusting - but it is deceptively tasty!  I had a couple of plates that looked similar to this one and then of course some Gulab Jamun and Rice Pudding for dessert.

There is just no way to accurately total the calories consumed at this buffet, so I just plugged 3,000 into my spreadsheet, knowing that I clearly went wayyyy over any reasonable calorie count for the day. 

Sunday wasn't much better. We decided to have a hodge-podge of food, just whatever sounded good. So, this consisted of a Salted Caramel Pretzel shake from Steak 'n' Shake, Mozzarella Sticks and a Lava Cake from Arby's, and a Mushroom and Feta calzone from Niko's Spicy Pickle. That shake alone had 860 calories, and the total meal was about 2,000. 

I don't think any of my 'cheat meals' were reasonable options in this experiment. If I were really on a diet, I would hope I would pick more reasonable splurges. I think I just ended up feeling deprived during the week, so I felt like I 'owed' it to myself to pig out on the weekends. Honestly, I wasn't even hungry enough to have eaten all of this food at the time it was consumed.

As suspected, all of that heavy eating hurt my final weigh-in figures, so that is why I summarized my results here. If I look at my ending weight for Sunday, my cumulative weight change is -2 pounds or 1.53% of my body weight. Based on my average weight so far for the year, this is about -1.5 pounds or 1.12%. 

As for the other rules, I was right on the money with my 1,200 calorie daily allotment. Over the three-week period, my average calorie intake for non-cheat days was 1,186.91. I ate a lot more fruits and vegetables than I normally do - nearly every day, I had 2 servings of fruit and 2.5 servings of vegetables, but I did fall short on a handful of days.  Good thing I take vitamins!  I hit my exercise goals every week - 2.5 hours of cardio and strength training twice weekly.  And I never had more than 2 weekly cheat meals. 

All in all, this experiment did highlight some of my weak points, so I consider it a success. 

(Almost) Final Results

And today begins the weekend.  2 and a half more days of eating healthy! Ha, yeah, right. More like one-half more days.  I have already figured that I'll get through today, but Saturday and Sunday will almost definitely include massive cheat meals. I have even been envisioning a certain buffet I've been craving...

And that's totally within my rules...I just have a feeling that massive 3,000+ calorie buffet bombs is not a recommended healthy cheat meal option. But that's okay; the rules didn't get THAT specific.  Yeah, this is definitely a weakness for me... ;-)

The good news is that as of my weigh-in last night, I have met my goal of losing 3 lbs in 3 weeks. Exceeded it, actually.  I weighed in every three days for the first two weeks and then every day for this last week. So, from my beginning weigh-in, I lost about 5 pounds or 4% of my body weight.

I also calculated my weight change based on my average weight so far for the year because I think I had a particularly fat weekend before starting this experiment. This change was along the same lines, 4.5 pounds lost, roughly 3.5%.  

I used my handy-dandy Google Docs spreadsheet to keep track of the changes:

Sadly, I will probably reverse any positive changes over the weekend, especially if I give in to that buffet that's calling my name. That is why I thought maybe I'll review the results now before I completely invalidate them! ;-) 

Not On a Diet

I don't like diets. Both because they're not fun and because I don't much support the concept of them. I'm much more an advocate of a healthy lifestyle, and I support adapting your diet so that you maintain a reasonable, flexible diet that is not overly restrictive while still being rewarding. These healthy days have definitely felt more like I'm dieting, and I know that that's not sustainable in the long-term. 

Counting calories is something I just do occasionally on a normal basis. I think it's good to check in with my diet once in a while and make sure I am comfortable with what and how much I am putting in my body. I also aim to weigh in on a weekly basis - again, just so I'm staying in touch with my body. I know what is normal weight fluctuation for me, and if I start to accumulate extra poundage beyond that, I may need to pay more careful attention to my calorie intake.

That said, I love food. Going out to eat and trying out new recipes are some of my favorite things to do.  Of course, moderation, as in all areas of life, is key. I think after my healthy three weeks is over, I'm still going to have issues with over-indulging on weekends. But I'm not going to stress too much about it. 

I think it works for me to focus my healthy habits during the week. So, the plan is to try and do better at that. Because it was still not uncommon for me to order the Papa John's large carry-out Monday special...and then have leftovers on Tuesday...or grab a handful of cookies from the kitchen at work if someone leaves oh-so-tempting Girl Scouts boxes with notes saying 'Help Yourself!'...

So, I don't want to be "on a diet", I want to have a diet...that works for me and my lifestyle. I want to be healthy, but I want to have the flexibility to indulge...but not over-indulge (at least not TOO frequently). 

Healthy(ish) Meals

I've gotten into a pretty good flow with this diet...this means that I don't go to bed hungry EVERY night.  I've been tracking my calories pretty carefully, so I know exactly how much dinner I can have.  Sometimes this means I have nothing but seitan and baby broccoli for dinner. 

I had this Roasted Vegetable Pizza for dinner last week. It only had 150 calories, and it was pretty darn tasty. It was a product I had picked up from Whole Foods when we were vegan for three weeks, so it had been sitting in the freezer for a while looking decidedly less appealing next to its cheesier brethren.

It had vegetables though, so it could at least help me hit my veggie quota for the day!  I was about to dig in and then I had a duh moment and reminded myself that I'm not vegan anymore! So, I added 100 calories worth of shredded Muenster cheese on top for a little extra flavor.  

Avoiding processed foods was an objective but not an official goal of these healthy days. I've incorporated a lot of whole fruits and vegetables into meals, but occasionally, I won't have leftovers from the night before to eat for lunch, so it's just more convenient to heat up a frozen meal at work. I've only had Amy's frozen meals though, and while they're probably still considered processed, their products are all vegetarian and usually include organic ingredients. Definitely could be worse. 

Occasionally, I finish dinner and even have a few spare calories for dessert...like this delicious homemade Coconut Orange Bread.