Last day of the cleanse!

Day five, and the final hour is upon us. I'm enjoying my carrot/apple juice at the moment, as a matter of fact!

I have also concluded that if ever I should be proud of myself, it's today. Not only have I (almost!) completed five days of juicing, but after work today, I thought it would be a good idea to head to Costco and get some sprouted grain bread (for my chocolate french toast in the morning!) and some non-fat Greek yogurt, just because I like having it around the house.

More than $100 later, I made it out not only alive, but not having sampled anything in the store. And oh, boy, was I tempted. The first demonstration booth I came across was an outside vendor sampling their five different gourmet cheesecakes. Brianna, Spartan juice warrior. Self-control of steel.

Or something like that. Only one of their cheesecakes had chocolate on it. I might have been more tempted if I'd had chocolate dangled in front of my face.

Anyway, more juice recipes.

Juice 6:

• 1 (6-oz) container blueberries
• 1 (6-oz) container blackberries
• 1 orange, peeled, with pith removed

Adds a little extra "body" to the blueberry/orange one I did before. 

Juice 7:

• 1 pear
• 1 (6-oz) container blueberries
• 1 (6-oz) container blackberries

This one was breakfast this morning. Holy delicious!!

Juice 8: 

• 4 - 6 carrots
• 1 apple

Yum! The one I made last night had 4 larger carrots. This one I'm drinking now has six carrots because I just decided to use up the bag. 

And so for the last five days, I've been living off these eight juices (and a few mistakes). I've been incredibly surprised at how tasty most of them were. (The most notable mistake involved cucumber. That one was not at all tasty.) But of the recipes I put up, I think I would try all of them again, and the breakfast ones I might continue and add into my usual breakfast repertoire. 

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And since I left this up all evening rather than posting, I am SO pleased to tell you I made it the entire five days! And I broke my fast with something healthy - an avocado and a handful of pistachio nuts. I needed some crunch and some healthy fat. I'm going to guzzle down some water and head to bed. You might be able to catch a new recipe or two from me tomorrow! I don't think I'm going to do the chocolate French toast (I forgot to get eggs at the store today), but I definitely have something up my sleeve for lunch. 

Thanks for stopping in, and thank you to those who have followed me through this last week and cheered me on! I really appreciate it. :)

Juicing, Day 3

Day three is over! Only two more to go. :)

Breakfast usually means two juices, because I can't pick just one.

Breakfast #1:

• 1 mango, peeled. Can't put the pit in there. 
• 1 6-oz. container blueberries
• 1 apple

Delish. My favorite. 

Breakfast #2:

• 1 orange or grapefruit
• 1 6-oz. container blackberries

Also delish. 

During the day, my "snack" juices usually involve carrots and celery, with a ratio of about 2:1, respectively. I didn't put any kale in my juice today. Oops. 

All this healthy stuff running through my veins now has prompted me to look a little further into the Paleo diet, though. I might make more of an attempt to eat Paleo / Clean throughout the year. I also think I'm going to try to meal-plan. I often get pressed for time and end up only eating veggies for dinner. I could probably use a little forethought in my life. 

In that vein, my weekend is probably going to look a little something like this:

Saturday.

Breakfast: steel-cut oats with fresh blueberries

Lunch: Avocado quesadillas

Dinner: (hopefully) Kale & ricotta stuffed shells, to use up some of the extra kale from this week that I'm sure I'll have. 

Sunday.

Breakfast: I've been eyeballing this baked oatmeal for the last few days. I would use blueberries instead of strawberries, since I have 13 containers of blueberries in the fridge right now. 

Lunch: Maybe a Greek salad of sorts. I have plenty of cucumber that needs to be used and that sounds really tasty. 

Dinner: A soup of some kind. I'm thinking about this Coconut and Red Lentil Soup. But by red lentils I really mean green, since I bought a bunch of green ones today. 

... Most of that is decidedly not Paleo, and not much of it is Clean either. But making more of an effort to eat protein is a huge step for me, since I'm usually a snack-on-veggies kind of girl. (And before you get any ideas, my kind of veggie is a marinated artichoke heart. I'm not that healthy.) 

Anyway. There will certainly be an update at the end of my cleanse! So far, so good. I'm surprisingly not hungry, and drinking probably less juice than I should be, even. I crave gum less now than I did the first two days. I never noticed a decline in energy, but the fact that I'm still up at 2AM when I'm hardly consuming anything is probably notable. Day three is definitely the easiest so far. 

The first day of school comes early in the morning, so I should probably crash. Thanks for stopping by! 

Juicing my way into 2012.

I'm home, and the new year is here!

One of my resolutions for the new year is to lose the nearly-45 lbs. I've put on in the last 9 months. So I decided to make that a two-part goal, and made another resolution to complete a 5-day juice cleanse.

Today is day one.

I unintentionally fasted until about 4:30 or 5 o'clock this afternoon, because I was completely unprepared. I got off the plane yesterday morning and basically went straight to work. I didn't feel like going grocery shopping after I got off work at 9:30 last night, and I ended up sleeping in a little this morning and then running some other errands before heading to the grocery store.

I spent about $45 and got the following:

• 3 mangoes
• 4 (12 oz) bags fresh cranberries
• 4.65 lbs. organic gala apples
• 4 cucumbers
• 3 lemons
• 2 bunches red leaf lettuce
• 3.3 lbs. navel oranges
• 2 bunches organic spinach
• 6 lbs. carrots
• 4 grapefruit
• 3 avocados (for coming off the cleanse) 
• 1.3 lbs. broccoli crowns
• 1 bunch turnip greens
• 3 bunches kale
• 2 (6 oz.) containers blackberries
• 2 (6 oz.) containers blueberries
• 4 bunches celery

My first juice this afternoon was a little sweet. I was actually surprised by how tasty it was! It's something I might make for myself even when I'm not cleansing. The apple juice definitely lightened it up quite a bit. (That's it to the left.) This one made just shy of 8 oz, I believe. 

Juice 1:

- 1 apple

- 1/2 lemon (peeled, without pith!)

- 1 carrot

- 1 kale leaf

This next guy to the right is my second concoction of the day. I was surprised, when I cut out the apple, how much juice I lost. 

Juice 2:

- 1 celery stalk

- 1 carrot

- 2 kale leaves

- 1 lemon wedge (without pith, again)

This one tasted a lot like V8 to me, minus the tomato, obviously. It was pretty tasty as well! I rarely (read: never) crave V8 juice, but as a homemade replacement, I'd take this any day. It made 4 oz. of juice, so I'll need to double the recipe from now on. 

I'm going to make another glass of Juice 2 before I head to bed, to stave off any midnight cravings. One of the things that has surprised me the most is that I am not all that hungry, but my mouth and brain are desperately craving something to chew. I broke down and have been working on the same piece of gum for the last hour and a half. It's sugar-free and curbed the war going on in my brain, so I'm not too upset about it. 

I hope to update daily with my other strange concoctions, and I have several recipes to post from my vacation when this madness is over!