I am tired of all the conflicting messages about what I should and shouldn't do in order to be healthy, and what I should and shouldn't eat in order to provide my body with decent fuel. I'm not overweight but I am tired of feeling 'chubby' or 'lumpy' or 'heavy' or 'sluggish'. I am tired of hating my wobbly bum and my skinny jeans in equal parts and feeling entirely uncomfortable with the idea of wearing a bikini. I'm tired of the fashion industry making tight and flesh-revealing items of clothing popular, but mostly because my limited fashion knowledge tells me that muffin-top of crop-top don't go together all too well. I am tired of 'unwillingly' comparing myself to a glossy-magazine, marketing-intended, photoshop-engineered ideal, but also I am tired of 'unknowingly' falling for the advertising for fat-laden treats and sugar-laden diet foods. I am so tired of starting on a health kick or a new-found miracle diet and then succumbing to temptation and boredom after a couple of days - having two helpings of roast dinner washed down with (at least) one (quite large) glass of vino and then gorging on a MASSIVE slice of chocolate fudge cake and perhaps finishing off my 'naughty' day with several biscuits dunked in sweetened tea...then feeling really guilty about it and thus finding myself continuously looping around on a diet-binge cycle!
I am quite frankly tired of every 'Tomorrow', every Monday, every 1st of the month, every New Year being the start of 'The New Me'!
So I am creating this blog to keep me on some kind of balanced, healthy straight and narrow... Here I will be putting diet and exercise advice that I come across on trial by testing them out myself and recording the results. Hopefully this will give me a bit of motivation to stay heathy as well as provide me with a little bit more knowledge on healthy living. I am a bit of a fanatic health-fact hoarder so this should be fun.
Also I'm a loony illustrator, so if you see little diagrams and weird cartoons that would be me just attempting to make visual sense of complicated health-ramblings!
SO to start off I am setting myself a little bit of a tough first challenge: Juicing!
For the next seven days I shall be attempting a juice cleanse, which can be found on the marvellously helpful Just On Juice. I recently purchased a juicer (only 45 quid from Amazon) and after trialling the diet last week I found that going for 3 days without solid food really wasn't as hard as I thought it would be so I'm not terribly daunted by it. Just On Juice provides loads of advice and even a super-helpful shopping list so I feel fully prepared and ready to face the challenge!
Exercise-wise I will be sticking my normal, non-drastic routine of going to the gym for about 30 - 40 mins in the morning - just a little light cardio whilst catching up with my gym buddy Judy. I also walk or cycle to and from work and make sure I find time during my break to walk around a little. I will later be focusing a little bit more on exercise, but for now I just want try out the juice thing without too much extra pressure.
Day1 and 2:
Actually starting the diet and knowing I have several days ahead of me has made me think a lot about the cons of just drinking juice, so I decide to dig a little further...SO many sources are saying there is little or no evidence that the juice diet has any benefits whatsoever..
Here are some of the cons I found:
An article from Huffington Post makes me re-consider a few of the great things I've heard about this diet. It informs me:
-juicing is dangerous to certain people due to the high sugar content
-juicing actually removes some of the nutrients in the fruit
-it doesn't keep you feeling full
-it's not a sustainable/lasting route to weight-loss
-it's not cheap
-it's not really necessary as we have several vital organs in place to do a pretty good cleaning job already.
Joy Bauer points out simliar flaws with the juice diet, pointing out the lack of protein and fiber in particular:
"You’re basically following a high-carb, low-protein and low-fiber diet, which can cause dramatic spikes in blood sugar, and lead to headaches, mood swings, dizziness, and fatigue. Another major drawback: liquid calories do not have the same fill power as whole, solid foods, which makes it hard to stick with a juice-only plan for longer than a few days without feeling irritable and completely ravenous."
And this article also states that the body is fully equipped to clean itself of toxins without having to go on a juice diet. It also tells me that there are no studies to back the claim that there is any benefit to juicing creating a more alkaline PH in the body....that's a claim I was unaware of until now actually - I may need to check that out tomorrow! And although Health.com gives me the chirpy line of...
“When you eliminate toxins from your system, your entire body feels better and reacts both internally and externally"
...it does say that the benefits come from only limiting the diet to 3 days...I'm doing 7...
Searching further through articles from the same site I find a few do's and don'ts that tell me that although juicing has worked out really well for some..
"others struggle with moodiness, irritability, depression, fatigue, constipation, constant thoughts of food, and rebound overeating."
...I guess these are signs that I'm going to have to look out for, and be careful of! The same article is also advising me not to exercise, as a juice diet typically won't provide enough fuel and it will put too much strain on the body. This might create the unwanted side effects of tiredness, dizziness and nausea.
The article does, however, also make an important point:
"detoxes and cleanses prevent you from being able to act on your usual emotional, social, environmental, and habitual eating triggers, which can be the first step to breaking unhealthy patterns."
And even the Huffington Post article tells me that there are a few benefits to the diet - a sense of accomplishment, getting more than your recommended helpings of fruit and veg in per day, breaking bad habits..I am an emotional eater, and I have found myself somewhat stuck in unhealthy eating patterns...therefore I am hoping these 7 days will be the little re-boot I need in order to replace those bad habits with healthy ones.
I am still a little worried about the protein and fibre problem though...and the high sugar content...and about wasting time and money when my liver and kidney and intestines are doing a pretty fab job already...
Hmmm, well I am sticking to it nevertheless...I guess I need to keep reviewing and gathering more views, and listen closely to my body at the same time. If I keep having stomach aches or start getting other bad symptoms I might have to reconsider
Day 3-4:
I'm noticing that juicing is expensive, and I'm feeling pretty bad about all that pulp I'm having to throw away (I should really find something to do with all that pulp...like add them to raw bars or something..)...but apart from that, I'm finding that I am surviving well on just juice.
I'm learning that sticking to tried and tested recipes is a good idea, as I tried an experimental combination last night an it. was. horrid! This morning I made this:
Half a ripe mango, a handful each of blueberries and grapes, a few strawberries, two oranges, two apples, one lime and a carrot...It was LOVELY!!
I'm also finding myself being addicted to a juice with the name'Super Detox' from the conveniently placed juice bar just outside my studio, which combines carrots, beetroot, apples and ginger. It's satisfyingly sweet and the ginger gives it a nice kick! However, they are £3.85 for a regular size...
My work colleges are testing my willpower by bringing in gorgeous looking cakes and cookies and mini-eggs for the coffee table, and the delicious aromas from my housemates cooking is driving me crazy...but I'm reminding myself that I am half way through this little experiment.
Here is a nice little pro-juice point that's keeping me motivated:
-The amount of nutrients packed into a single juice is so much more easily digestible in that form than it would be if you ate all of those fruits and veggies whole - imagine how bloated you'd be eating two apples, a carrot, a stick of celery, half a cucumber, a large handful of kale, a large chunk of broccoli, a handful alfa-alfa sprouts, a beetroot, a courgette, and some lemon....
....well actually to be fair that might just make a really yummy salad. Might have to try that when I'm back on solids!
But anyway, by giving your digestive system a bit of a break from having to break down loads of chunky solid, and often nasty sugary fatty, food it can focus it's energy elsewhere - like healing!
The above recipe was from Jason Vale's Juice Master. Actually he gives a pretty nice little introduction to juicing in video form - check it out!
I'm loving the enthusiasm Jason, also I'm a fan of your recipes, especially SUPER CHUTE and MEAN GREEN WAKEUP MACHINE. May have to get his book, which includes smoothies and salads and put it to the test ;)
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Also, whilst doing a little bit of research for a friend of mine, Dave, about his newly-discovered dietary need to avoid sugar I found this website (Express.co.uk) about 'How to give up sugar', and as I'm reading out loud I come across the following (at which point Dave turned around and smirked at me):
4. Fruit juice
It’s a big myth that fruit juices are healthy. In fact, it’s fair to say they have no redeeming qualities, as you’re just extracting the water and sugar from the fruit and throwing away the healthy fibre.
The end product is biochemically identical to a soft drink, with around 10 per cent sugar. “People ask, ‘What about the vitamin C?’” says David. “But we already have huge stores of that in our bodies from ordinary food – even ‘unhealthy’ food like a portion of chips contains plenty of vitamin C."
Fruit and veg
Halo: There’s no such thing as an unhealthy vegetable: even the sweetest (beetroot) has the same fructose content as a kiwi fruit, one of the lowest-sugar fruits.
Fruit contains fructose of course but it’s fine to eat one or two pieces a day because the fibre in it mitigates the damaging effect of the sugar.
Opt for fruits lowest in sugar and highest in fibre, such as cranberries, raspberries, gooseberries, peaches, pears and blueberries. But low-sugar, high-fibre avocado is the biggest hero here.
Horns: Avoid melons, grapes, pineapples and sweet-tasting apples – all high-fructose fruits that are low in fibre. Bananas and oranges fall somewhere in the middle.
So from now on I'll be focusing on juicing mostly veg and low-sugar fruits!
