Just around the bend

This is part 3 in a series, find part 2 here

The sec­ond half of this adven­ture has become increas­ingly dif­fi­cult. Every day it is a chore to choke down my healthy bev­er­ages. I am assum­ing it has been because this is the longest that I have ever stuck to a strict diet. In fact, the only other diet that I have ever fol­lowed was the Atkins diet — but that’s far eas­ier to adhere to.

I have had lesser suc­cess in the lat­ter days of this social exper­i­ment as far as weight loss. I believe that this was partly because of the hol­i­day sea­son and partly because I started exer­cis­ing more. After all, mus­cle does weigh more than fat (higher den­sity). I was also not as strict on my food intake because I was sur­rounded by tasty treats on all sides, both at home and at work lead­ing up to X-mas.

With this set­back, I was back to the same weight I was at after 30 days. This being said, I still feel as though I am con­tin­u­ing to get health­ier. I don’t have any sci­ence (BMI mea­sure­ments, etc.) to con­firm this sus­pi­cion, but I have a feeling.

Not only have I felt health­ier, but I have been sick less this fall than in most recent years. This is fairly sur­pris­ing to me since I work at a doctor’s office and reg­u­larly deal with about 30 dif­fer­ent patients a day. If that wasn’t enough, the doc I work for is an ENT (Ear, Nose & Throat) so there are an abun­dance of cougher’s and con­t­a­m­i­na­tors that cross my path every day.

I believe that my health has been improved in com­par­i­son to some of my fam­ily mem­bers, who also work in the same office. On the aver­age, I get sick just as often as they all do. This is the first win­ter that I can recall not hav­ing been sick at all. Usu­ally, I get ‘the crud’ once a year and ton­sil­li­tis once a year or more. I am cor­re­lat­ing my increased over­all health to being affected by my more micro-nutrient rich diet, which my other fam­ily mem­bers lack. We all eat a fairly bal­anced diet, but mine is the only micro-nutrient sat­u­rated diet.

It could, just as eas­ily, be a placebo affect that I have noticed from my diet, but if it is – I have been fooled com­pletely. I’m cool with that. So, three-quarters thru the exper­i­ment and I am down 11 lbs. Not nearly the extreme results of our friends from the doc­u­men­tary, but I only half-assed what they were capa­ble of. My goal may take longer to reach than our new friends, but I think that it is the right way for me.

When mak­ing healthy juices, be sure to anchor it with some sweet juices. I use a sta­ple of apples with pears or can­taloupe with hon­ey­dew for every juice. To spice it up a lit­tle, I add pineap­ple to the mix once a week. Some berries and softer fruits don’t con­tribute much juice, but ‘to each his/her own’. I wouldn’t rec­om­mend straw­ber­ries, blue­ber­ries, or bananas for the juicer. They are bet­ter off in the blender. As far as veg­gies go, each per­son has to find what works for them. Keep it as green as you can han­dle, but be care­ful not to gross your­self out. It can and will hap­pen occa­sion­ally. Spinach was in every juice and usu­ally cel­ery was too. I had started using a bunch of car­rots with my juices, but as time wore on the tex­ture from the car­rots was dif­fi­cult to palate. Some rec­om­mended adding beets or gin­ger in my juices, but I find them both disgusting.

Best of luck in your micro-nutrient rich adventures!