Ghee

Until today, I had never heard of ghee. I now have a pint sized mason jar full of it in my kitchen.

I got a recipe off the an e-newsletter from Hungry for Change. The way the recipe referred to it, it "sounded like" it was simply a substitute for butter. Which it is. Sort of. Ghee is clarified butter, which is made from unsalted butter. Simply put, you take a pound of unsalted butter, boil it at medium high heat, reduce it to medium heat, boil it a little longer, and then carefully strain it through cheese cloth into heat resistant, airtight container. It should not be refrigerated, but left in your cupboard, or on the counter at room temperature. When preparing, I actually had to strain mine twice because I poured it too quickly from the sauce pan into my first container. I then strained it again, slower this time, so that it would catch all the solid foam particles which was defeating the purpose of it being clarified.

Here's the recipe I used to make it. I can't wait to try it :) You can use it in any recipe that calls for butter.

Juice Fast - Day 4

I skipped Day 3. In a nut shell, Day 3 was tough. At the risk of giving TMI, it didn't help that my monthly visitor arrived. Due to being on the juice detox, I couldn't have my "standard craving snack of a bag of M&Ms and bottle of Coke, and on top of that, I couldn't take any Aleve for the pain. No wonder yesterday SUCKED. I was in bed at 10pm, which is highly unusual for me.

I woke up today, determined that it was going to be a better day. It was, but I sort of felt like I was going through the motions at this point. I am enjoying the results, but I can honestly say that I DON'T really like what it's taking to get those results. I HATE cucumbers. I HATE celery. I HATE carrots. I can handle lettuce in small doses. I feel like I'm backed into a corner. I've lived my whole life, eating packaged, processed garbage, and now I'm at a point when I am trying to reboot my body to enjoy food the way nature & GOD intended, but yet I feel like I'm a failure because I flat out do not enjoy it.

I told my husband tonight that I will probably enjoy juicing more when it's not a complete fast. When I juice only once or twice a day and have several other regular meals, I probably won't mind it. I dunno. I mean, maybe I should fast longer to force myself to get used to it. It's a catch 22. I LOVE the results....I want to enjoy the green juices, but I just DON'T.... and it sucks, because I wish I did. Raw Rebecca, on FB, made video posts about her first fast, and she too said she didn't like the mean green. And then someone told her it would grow on her, and now she loves it. I guess I haven't found the right combo yet.

I guess I need to continue to compare this journey to my get out of debt journey. It's not easy or pleasant making sacrifices to get out of debt, but its a necessary evil to live a better life. It's not easy or pleasant making sacrifices to be healthy, but it's a necessary evil to live a better life.

I'm trying to be strong. I think I've done very well for this first attempt, but I'm not at a point yet where I can fast for a long haul. I'm going to check out some of the recipes at the Join The Reboot website for those folks who juice and eat (rather than just juicing) and make a plan for next week. I want to continue to make healthy choices, and ultimately, that is what this journey is about.

It's not easy, but I believe that it's going to be worth it in the end.

Juice Fast - Day 2

I cannot believe how amazing I feel. After watching online videos of some other folks first juice fasts, I really thought that by now I would be feeling crummy and hungry and cranky right now, and surprisingly, I don't. Maybe God's looking out for me and giving me the encouragement and a positive attitude about it...

I'm not going to lie. I CANNOT WAIT for Friday night to get here so I can go out with the girls from church and have that bean burrito I'm craving. Yes, I know. It will probably make me sick. I DON'T CARE. I want one, and I want it bad. Maybe I'll change my mind before then, but as of now, that's the plan. 

I feel like this is going so well, that it will hopefully be easy to work juicing into a daily lifestyle. Perhaps I'll have 1 or 2 juice meals a day, and then have a decent dinner. 

I stepped on the scale this evening. I'm down 32.2 pounds since I started working on this back in November, but that's also 6.2 pounds in the last week and a half. I say week and a half because I started making some juices last week, even though I wasn't juice fasting, and to be honest, I don't remember what my exact weight was before I started fasting yesterday morning.

WHOOP!

I'm actually quite impressed with the energy I have too. I thought I would be tired...but I'm not. I cringe at the smells of food...because I'm afraid I'm going break. But if I do... which I probably will... I'm just going to get right back on and keep on trying. No point in giving up completely due to a weakness.

Y'all..... I'm a fast food junkie, cheese burger, chicken fingers & fries and Mexican food ADDICT. If my fat butt can do this, there is no excuse for any of you out there who might be interested. If curiosity is killing you - JUST DO IT. You can do it, if you want it bad enough. I have told myself I want it bad enough. I am so dag-blasted tired of being fat. I want to go trade all my fat clothes in at Plato's Closet for some cute skinnier ones. One day soon... one day soon.

Juice Fast - Day 1

Okay, so I'm behind on updating this blog. Long story short, I hit a major plateau for about 2 months. I didn't gain, but I didn't lose either. I recently watched 2 new documentaries, Fact, Sick and Nearly Dead, and also Hungry for Change. As a result I'm now on a juice fast.

Today wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. Folks at work think I'm nuts because I took a cooler to work. Not a single personal size cooler, no no, this was the "I'm going to the beach" cooler. Why? Because the amount of fruits and veggies I had to take with me to work would have taken up ALOT of room in the community fridge. I didn't want to hog the fridge with my craziness. So, the veggies took up about half the cooler, and there was still room in the cooler to put the pieces of my juicer in it. So yes... me, my cooler, my veggies and my juicer all took a happy trip to work today.

I had an Apple Kale juice this morning when I woke up- 2 apples and 1 kale leaf. A very simple, sweet, wake up breakfast juice. It was YUMMY. Almost couldn't taste the Kale - straight fresh apple juice which was to DIE for.

At 11am, I rolled my cooler into the break room, before the big lunch crowd started congregating in there. I set up my juicer, and pulled out the following: 2 celery stalks, 2 kale leaves, 1 carrot, 1 zucchini, 1/2 lemon, 1/2 cucumber. I LOVED it. It was alot yummier than I honestly expected it to be. I think I had a bad experience last week with my first juicing concoctions where I used way too much spinach and kale and the taste was just.. blegh. This was good. I liked it.

At 2pm I made essentially the same juice as above except I used a yellow squash instead of a zucchini....and I realized after the fact that I forgot the carrot. You know whats funny about this? I HATE raw carrots. If I eat carrots, I want them cooked through and through, as soggy mush. I used too many carrots in the juices I experimented with last week and I could "taste" the carrot and I didn't like them. Well, by forgetting the 1 carrot in this particular mixture, it changed the WHOLE taste of the juice. I drank it, but it wasn't as good as the 11am version.

At 6pm, after I got home from work, I threw together another concoction. This one had a little more fruit. I'm trying to stay away from doing too much fruit because of the natural sugars, but I needed something yummy before the co-ed softball game tonight. So this one had an apple, a handful of grapes, 2 strawberries, 1 celery stalk, 1 kale leaf, 1 carrot, and a small handful of spinach. It was good - but it was sweet. It was definitely a FRUIT drink, and I know that I need more veggie based drinks rather than fruit drinks because of sugar.

It's now 10:30. I feel like I should make another juice before going to bed, but I've been drinking water, and surprisingly, I don't really feel hungry for another juice. That, and I feel too lazy to really go make one. I think I'm going to head to bed in a bit. I HOPE and pray I wont wake up starving in the middle of the night.

If the next 3-4 days are like today, I can totally do this. I did smell people's lunches today, and the mid afternoon popcorn snacks. Jonny cooked his dinner tonight...and all these other things. I'm not letting it get to me yet. I CAN do this. I'm not going 60 crazy like some people do. I'm going going to do 5 days right now. I can make it, I CAN do this. I can, and I will make juicing a regular part of my diet. WHOOP!

I learned an important lesson today...

I must remember to always pack my cooler to prevent getting garbage I do not need..

I must remember to always pack my cooler to prevent getting garbage I do not need..

I must remember to always pack my cooler to prevent getting garbage I do not need..

I must remember to always pack my cooler to prevent getting garbage I do not need..

I must remember to always pack my cooler to prevent getting garbage I do not need..

January is here. And for anybody who knows me, you know that where I work, January is very busy. I tend to work through my lunch, and forget to take any sort of break, simply because I'm trying to stay caught up and ahead.

I packed a cooler today, but I didn't pack a second snack for my mid afternoon lunch. I thought I has something in the fridge at work that I could eat, so I didn't think it was necessary. Well, without getting all in to it, I didn't take the time to have my mid afternoon snack. So I had lunch at 1:30, and I was supposed to have another snack between 4:30 and 5. It didn't happen. I worked late, left the office at 6:20, rushed out the door to make it to Zumba at 6:30. Busted a move at Zumba, and left.

When I left at 7:30, I thought I was going to eat my arm off. I wasn't at work anymore, so I couldn't go to the fridge for that extra snack, and of course, I didn't have anything else packed in my cooler. Home was 12 miles away, and honestly, I thought I was going to go crazy if I waited until home to eat. So.... dun dun dun.. I went to a drive through. Not a big chain fast food joint, but a drive thru that definitely was not clean. I KNEW exactly what I was doing when I did it, but I was so hungry, I didn't even care.

Yes folks, I am human. This is hard. Nothing worth doing is easy. I never said I was perfect. But I'm not giving up. I'm trying to live by the 80/20 rule. Eat what I'm supposed to at least 80% of the time, and not beat myself up if I screw up the other 20%. This evening was one of those 20% situations.

Fall down, but get back up again. I'm not going to let this deter me. I'll be better tomorrow, and that's really the best that I can strive for.

Getting Serious...

I'm so GLAD the holidays are over. I tried to eat clean, but there was just too much room for error while out at gatherings with the family. Today we got back on track.

For Christmas, Jonny got me the Eat Clean Diet Recharged book which has recipes, but it also explains the hows and why's behind the Eat Clean Diet. I read the entire book in less than a day. I was just soaking it all in like a sponge. On FB I posted that I have a goal to lose another 35 pounds before going back to the doc at the end of march, and another 100 pounds total by next Christmas (with the exception of unless I get pregnant in the next year). Lofty, but attainable goals.

The book is teaching us about what combinations of foods to eat, and how to measure portion sizes to not overeat. Today, I had the following:

Breakfast: Cream of wheat (Starchy carb) with 2 hard boiled egg whites (protein)
Mid morning snack: apple (carb-fruit) with handful of pecans (healthy fat & protein)
Lunch: Tuna (protein) and leafy greens with carrots and mushrooms (carbs - veggies) tossed with a home made vinagerete of olive oil, honey, balsamic and red wine vinegar, all rolled up in a whole wheat wrap (carb).
Mid afternoon snack: protein smoothie with ground flax seed, pinto beans (carb OR protein - beans are both!)
Dinner: pork medallions with couscous and sauteed mushrooms, with a side of applesauce (weird, I know, but I got the recipe from the Clean Eating magazine, and OMG it was SO good! I would have never thought to have applesauce with pork - buuuut, it works!

So... now that the holidays are over, we'll have to see where I go from here. Jonny is on board with me and he's excited about this process as well. I am hoping to lose enough weight that i can actually shop at VS and NY&Co again.

I re-joined the YMCA today - and this time, I'm going to make it worthwhile. My company reimburses me for a gym membership if I prove that I went an average of 3 times per week, or 12 times a month. I cannot afford the gym membership otherwise, so that in itself is motivation to get my ass moving so I don't have to pay for it out of pocket.

Right now, I'm loading the ipod with some work out music so I can drag my butt in to the gym in the morning. Woo!

Oh lord, I'm gonna pay for this...

Happy Birthday to me.

To celebrate my birthday, I decided to splurge.... just a little. Hubby and I went to Red Robin, because I could get a FREE gourmet burger. Much to my delight they had WHOLE GRAIN BUNS. Yes!!! So, I ordered my burger with a whole grain bun and no mayo. Yes, it was still beef, and yes, it still had cheese and ketchup on it....Was it clean? No not really, but it was alot better than having it served up normal like I would have in the past. We also skipped having an appetizer. I enjoyed it down to the last 2 bites, where I was full and couldn't eat anymore. If you can't splurge a little on your birthday, then when can you?