Juice Feast DAY 7

Hi,

Seesaw. Up and down. Up and down. I found out the hard way that I need to take a juice with me when I am not at home. Even if the enzymes get depleted over time, I need to have something with me.

After I came home from church last night, I had a tough evening. I was not tempted with the appearance of food but the desire deep inside me -- which was quelled with prayer, a large juice, and a cup of chamomile tea. I also needed to take some taurine (for good mood) and L-theanine (for anxiety.) Thinking about it from this morning's perspective I recall that I was very tired when I went to church. I had been to physical therapy yesterday afternoon which is like a tiny gym for infirm people. I was worn out when I got home, but still had to go to church.

Last night I nearly walked away from the feast. But the thought of why I am doing this helped me make right choices. I was even counting the days until the juice fast was over and contemplating how I was going to deal with it. At the time a hamburger sounded really good. (No, that is not the solution, it was just what popped into my mind.) "Hunger" had become the companion talking in my left ear -- tempting me to quit the program. But I am really tired of quitting. Thank God! I did not quit. I prayed, I got a juice and drank some tea and took care of myself. A good night's rest helped, too.

Temptation is only hard to deal with when your defenses are down. That is when it suddenly moves from the background (about six feet away) to the foreground (in your face) -- when you are tired, or when it has been too long since the last meal. That is the purpose of temptation -- to make you jump off the high road and go back to the ditch you just climbed out of. Just say, "No." At the time it was not easy to say but it was necessary to do.

When I started this juice fast (which is a "feast" when I eat on time, but on the whole is a "feat") I was under the influence of the movie "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" which I have shared about. I wanted what Phil and Joe ended up with -- slender, healthy bodies. Well maybe not "slender" but I can't think of a better term -- because that was what I was thinking about -- a slender, normal sized, healthy body. The thought occurred to me that I was watching what happened over more than a sixty-day period in about an hour and a half on Netflix. Living through the sixty days is definitely harder to do than watching it on a DVD, or even contemplating it in your head. If you want the same results, you have to juice the juice, over and over again, for the same amount of time. It is a day by day "way of life" change. Keeping the goal fixed in the mind is absolutely necessary to staying on track. I am hoping that the longer you do it, the more likely you are to stay doing it because you will figure out what you need to do to get through each day, just like they did. Each journey is unique.

Eating fresh raw vegetables and fruit (especially in the form of juice) is a radical thing to do in our current culture, but there was a time when that is precisely what our recent ancestors ate. Eating fresh raw vegetables and fruit (organic) is the answer to the health and obesity problems we are seeing in our country, and over the whole world, right now.

When I was growing up, fifty years ago, many people still had gardens in their own yards. They ate fresh tomatoes, and zucchini, and green beans, and even corn all fresh from their own back yard. My parents often had a garden, until my mother went to work. Dad would till it, Mom and us kids would plant it. Mom weeded it. Dad would water it. I remember going out to the garden with my Mom and my brother and sister to help her pick peas. We were not really interested in the chore until Mom showed us that we could pop open a pod and eat fresh peas right there in the garden. Once we learned that we practically had a meal right then and there. I don't recall if Mom got enough peas to cook that night!

When, as children, we walked down the alley to school what we walked by were people's gardens. In our town the alleys were tiny streets between the main streets that often separated the back yards. They were safe for us to walk on, because they were kind of narrow and people only drove down them if they had a specific destination in the alley.

The yards did not butt up against each other, the yards were separated by "alleys" and the gardens were usually next to the alley. It was part of the design of the residential area. A man or woman could pull their truck up to their own back yard and unload a sack or two of manure for the garden or haul away some trash out the back way. They were often fenced so dogs and kids could not come in and trample them. We, as children, also knew we were not allowed to go into other people's gardens. It simply was not done. Cities and houses are no longer purposely designed for gardens, but, any spot will do. Till the ground, plant some seeds -- voila! A garden.

It has only been in that short time span (fifty years) that people abandoned their gardens for grocery store produce. I am glad to see that some people are going back to it. If I ever get to the point where I can do the work, I would like to do a small garden on some of the yard that I live in. Maybe even a few pots on the porch with tomatoes would be good.

Anyway... I am still juicing. Going to rest today. Hope all is well with you,

If you decide to juice, please let me know. It would be so nice to be doing this with someone else. And like I told a very dear friend: Oh how nice it will be when we both try on a size 14 and find out it is too big!!

Have not picked out the piece of clothing to represent my goal, yet. Cannot decide what size to get. I think my first one will be a 2XL (same as Phil). If I can get to that size, then I might consider a 14 for the next one.

You gotta keep the goal in mind!

Be back soon,

God bless you!!

Marcia