I am giddy-upping to the end of this juice fast!
Yesterday I did a colon cleanse with some herbal teas. It worked. I am fairly confident that my digestive system is really clean right now. I slept in today because I haven’t had a chance to do that since I started my juice fast. I am going to guess I went to bed around 1 to 130 AM and woke up at about 10 AM. Then stayed in bed until I had to get out probably closer to 11 AM. I figured that since I had a clean digestive system I would let my body rest as long as possible and do some healing on the inside since it was no longer using its energy to digest poboys and meat and tortilla chips. Or maybe I was just procrastinating because today I had to do my workout.
I finished my couch to 5K week two workouts today. I walk/run in intervals and today I kept up with running 160 beats per minute (for every beat of the music I have a foot hitting the ground). It was a little challenging but seemed to fit my stride I had been running. I might need to slow the beats down when I run for longer intervals because it was a challenge for me to stay at that pace.
I played with the thought of having today’s juice fast be a water fast day. Water fasting is super good for you because you don’t have the novelty of the juice’s calories and nutrition going into you so the detox hits harder and your cells get cleaner. You are also in a higher state of ketosis. I lasted until about 6 PM and am ok with that because I committed to a juice fast. It wasn’t unbearable just having water all day. Usually on the weekends I go most of the day until dinner time without eating. It is just something that happens not something I ever plan – I should maybe stick with that in the future and just accept it instead of freaking out at 6 PM and eating everything in sight. Maybe it is something my body and digestive system is craving at that time – a break – and I should ride that wave. Be prepared. That way when I am ready to eat I just sit down to a normal meal instead of putting thoughtless junk into my mouth to feed the “I’m Hungry!'” demand my stomach is giving to my brain.
In the video provided to me in my juice fasting forum yesterday Natasha St. Michael said something that struck a note in my head and I have been thinking about ever since. Her message was all about connecting with yourself and your body. I have connected with myself, my inner self, through yoga and meditation in the past, but not so much with my body. My body has always been and outsider to me, something that needed to be changed in some way shape or form and something that never cooperated. My mind or my self, however, was always my best friend. Natasha said something along the lines of paying attention to and taking care of this body that I will be in until the end of this life.
It just makes sense then when you put it that way, doesn’t it? My mind and my inner self is of course limitless, I believe that it will go on and out into the universe in some form after my body dies. Right now I have been granted a remarkable opportunity to experience life here on earth and to experience love, sadness, hurt, pain, laughter, everything that goes along with it. In order to have this experience I have to live inside a body, a body I was born with, a body that I have known for 36 years. I have always separated it from my mind. I try to bring them together from time to time, but not to the extent that I am concerned about how my body is doing or the complex systems that work inside of it. That light bulb went off last night. I need to pay attention to what is going on with my body. I need to mind what I am putting into my body and how my body reacts to different things. The more I give my body top of the line care, the more my body will respond and be there for me in the long run. I don’t have to grow old and be hunched over a walker mumbling insanities into the air. I can keep my mind, my legs, my eyes, all of it – just by waking up and paying attention to the care I am giving it now.
It seems so easy when you put it that way, doesn’t it? It should be the easiest decision to stay away from meat and dairy in the future because of the side effects it will have on my body. It should have been the easiest decision to make when I got my first psoriasis itch back 20 years ago to re-evaluate my bodily system and figure out what was causing that reaction. Same thing with when I was diagnosed with high blood pressure – demand more than casual acceptance of a medication and its future side effects – re-evaluate what my body needs and give it just that. Don’t just take a pill and hope for the best. My body has high blood pressure because I am doing things wrong. Fix the problem by doing things right.
That is what brought me to where I am today on my juice fast. And feeling good about it too. Not as bad today as yesterday. Funny how those waves can pass through you.
I have decided to give everyone a step by step video on what to expect when juice fasting based on my personal experience with it. I am NOT an expert at any of this! This is just basic info for my friends who read this blog in case they want to consider a juice fast in the future. I will post each of those videos in a separate blog.
