Getting the Juices Flowing

Holy cow, holy cow, holy cow.

I was feeling particularly sluggish this morning- eating nothing healthy, lying flat on my back glued to my computer, the works. And it just kept eating and eating at my mind. Yes, I know I said I'm not striving for perfection, but this just felt like it was actively causing the problem, rather than maintaining status quo or working to correct it. But I couldn't make myself do anything.

I reopened a document I started a few days ago about juicing. I'd heard about juicing, of course, but never given it much thought until Emily talked about watching Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. Suddenly, juicing was on my mind. I checked my Netflix- Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead was available for instant watching. I instantly watched. Suddenly, juicing was all I could think about.

But I'm on a student budget. The juicer Emily was getting was $200. Hmm. I started brainstorming all of the different ways I could raise that amount of extra cash. Even if I started implementing all of those steps right away, it would still be easily a month before I felt I had the disposable income on hand. And it ate at me.

Then, today, as I moved from lying flat on the couch back to lying flat on my bed, a serious discontentment started festering. About 20 minutes later, I suddenly jackknifed up. I don't remember any thought process taking me there- I think I was in the middle of watching an episode of Chuck- but I had an urgent need to see if Walmart had any juicers. I checked my store specifically. Yes, they had exactly one model in my store- $30, with pretty good reviews. My heart rate skyrocketed. I remained in bed long enough to read through most of the reviews, and check the questions area to see if it would juice greens. All things checked out.

It was a Scarlett O'Hara moment of types. I knew I needed to do it, I knew I couldn't stay in my apartment any longer. I had to go out and get it. I had my makeup on in record time, and was feeling bold enough to wear lip color. Then I remembered to grab a reusable grocery bag, and skipped to my car. I have rarely felt so empowered. I felt oddly serious and driven, but with an underlying jubilation that caused me to loudly sing along to my radio during the drive to Walmart. I marched straight in, located the juicer within a minute, snagged a cheapo pitcher so I can make up large batches in the morning (my model only holds 8oz at a time), and was out of the store within 5 minutes, less than $35 dollars poorer. [Geek sidetrip: according to my microeconomics professor, I may have actually been about $150 richer, because I was able to get something I would have spent almost $200 on for less than $50, thus giving my $150 in Consumer Surplus]

I carefully placed it in the trunk, and then zipped over to Whole Foods, where I scouted for all of the sales on produce. Carrots, Fiji apples, kiwis, a lemon, a grapefruit, two cucumbers, a bunch of kale and a bunch of romaine. I already had spinach, tomatoes, limes, and more lemons in my fridge, languishing unloved in my vegetable crisper. I think I am being entirely honest when I say that I currently have more vegetables in my fridge than I have eaten in my entire college career combined.

Triumphantly returning home, I was energized to clean up my kitchen (which was in an absolutely incredible state this morning, adding to the extreme lazy bum feeling of the morning). I looked up a few recipes online, and decided that there was enough variation to basically wing it. Out came the sparkling new juicer, cleaned and set up, and I chopped up enough kale, cucumber, and carrot to make 1 glass (250 ml/8 oz).

I set it in the fridge to get nice and cold, and cleaned up- really quite an easy affair, though I do need to invest in a cheapo toothbrush to help clean the screen. Around this point I started having my standard "Oh God it's vegetables" brain freeze, so I snatched the juice out of the fridge before it could get properly cold. I took a picture to commemorate the moment, and ran to my computer to crank my number one Changing My Life Song- "Watch Me Shine" by Vanessa Carlton (also known as the song to which Elle Woods changes her life in Legally Blonde). Then I downed it, the whole glass. It wasn't super yummy by any means, but it was certainly palatable. I only had a gag reflex once, towards the very end when all of the micropulp started to build up at the bottom of the glass. But I pushed through and finished it all.

Now I'm all buzzy and super excited. I think I will be jumping up and down and calling my mom in short order, and then probably zooming away on the bike as I cackle hysterically at last night's episode of The Mentalist. I don't even know if it is a particularly funny one, I just think I'm going to find everything as amusing as possible.

I did it! I ingested KALE. I juiced! I have a juicer! And I'm using it! Scarlett O'Hara, this is how we do things in the New South.

Too Many Cooks

When I started getting serious about turning my health around, I started hitting the books, and more specifically, the blogs, like crazy. I read and read and read and collected tips and made lists of foods to get and routines to start. I gradually filtered my way down to what I follow on a regular basis. Out went a lot of larger, less targeted places, like AOL Health, and even Shape Magazine, and now I always get a little bummed out on weekends because Emily and Angela take the weekends off. I also love Matt over at NoMeatAthlete.

Though there are individual differences, overall these three sites provide me with relatively similar overall health schemes. Something I've started to figure out over the past few months is, I really shouldn't delve any deeper than that right now. As you start delving deeper, you start getting more and more contradictory evidence. How much protein do you really need? Are grains and beans superfoods, or are they slowly killing you? Fruit- yes or no? Everyone has scientific evidence up the wahzoo about why their set-up is best. Everyone has anecdotes and the very compelling story of their own personal enlightenment.

I know of two quick-loss diets with very similar concepts. Stick with veggies and protein most of the time, and occasionally splurge on what you want. In one plan, it's at dinner, in the other, it's one day a week. Both forbid fruit except during the splurges. However, one expressly forbids beans but highly encourages dairy. The other expressly forbids dairy but insists it will never work without beans. At one point early in the summer, I literally wandered around my kitchen starving for three hours because I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be eating. I don't actually remember what I ended up having, but I'm fairly certain it was in violation of both.

Even though I haven't properly stuck to either- one of my favorite No-Starchy-Grains Diet meals is beans and cheese, which has a strike against it in either column- I have felt a little guilty for months every time I have a grain. There is the little voice somewhere wondering if I shouldn't be having it, because it will slow down my weight loss.

Yes, I would love for the pounds to just fall off. There was a brief glorious period in the summer of 2009 when I dropped about 25 pounds practically without thinking about it. Every single morning, I would excitedly rush to the scale and see at least 1, often 2 or 3 pounds off the previous day. I've isolated everything I can think of about that month, and tried to recreate it, and so far, nada. Can't repeat it. I've just come to realize in the past day or so that that drop in 2009 brought me to a state of equilibrium. At the amount I eat, the quality of what I eat, and the amount of exercise I get, this is where I stay pretty darn consistently. It oscillates by about 5-8 pounds depending on how good or bad I am being month to month, but it has not strayed from the same 10-pound range (think 0-10, 10-20, 20-30, 130-140) in two years, save for a few precious days when it dipped down into the 9.5s of the next 10-range, on a few occasions.

To be accurate, I actually realized the equilibrium factor over a year ago. Where I am really going with this is that in the past day I have realized that quick change probably isn't really an option right now. I need to work with what I have to get what I want. One of the things I have right now is a fondness for whole grains and beans, and a distaste for most fruits and vegetables. I am working steadily to improve my palate for the fruits and veggies, but I'm not going to turn up my nose at nutrient-dense grains and beans that have been sustaining highly active and healthy populations for millenia if I know I'm not going to be replacing it with produce.

I'm going to stop delving deeper, and just enjoy my two blogs that I know and love. A few years down the road, when it is a lifestyle and not a goal/transition, I would love to start looking into raw veganism and the "fruitarian" 80-10-10 thing discussed on NoMeatAthlete today. But if I do it now, I either won't eat, or I'll end up self-destructing, figuring that I can't win in any case, so might as well eat junk that I know is junk. I'm going to read NoMeatAthlete a little more carefully for right now, since he discusses and sometimes espouses a lot of the more intense options. I need to stop confusing myself. I need to get to the point where I'm addicted to how good I feel physically (and emotionally) when I treat my body right. Right now, I love how that feels, but I'm addicted to the emotional feeling I get from stuffing my face with things I know are bad for me. So I'm not going to worry about what The Ultimate Best Way to treat my body is. I'm just going to focus on treating it a lot better.

Six Weeks

Definitely not feeling as strong with my push-ups this week. I wonder if I am shifting into better form, and this is why? I'm being hyper-vigilant to have my chest stay between my hands, instead of behind them. I guess I don't know my physiology very well (right word?)- I would have assumed that having hands forward would use my weaker shoulder muscles more than my chest muscles. Maybe my having my hands directly under me, I'm targeting my triceps more?

Still, all shaking and griping and weakness aside, I still managed Day Two of Week Three today- a total of 70 push-ups in under 10 minutes! And all with really good form. I tried a few different times to get more than the minimum required 19 on my max reps, but I could never complete it with good form, so it stays at 19.

Did a LOT of walking over our weekend in the South of France, and have confirmed that I am definitely nowhere near ready for the bridesmaid hike this August. Five months to whip this girl into shape! Tomorrow on my way back from classes I am going to run into GoSport to grab a cheap long-sleeved exercise shirt. It's not about needing the right equipment (though I am sorely lacking in any cold weather exercise gear), it's about removing all of the excuses that I use to keep me inside and sedentary. I'm going to start the Couch-to-5K plan this week. I think it's a 6 week course, just like the push-ups.

Six weeks is a good amount of time for these sort of things, I realized recently. Think about it:

1. Week One: Yay! You completed the first week! You are on your way.
2. Week Two: Wow, you are already a third of the way done! Way to go!
3. Week Three: Half way. You are really doing it!
4. Week Four: OMG! Two-thirds of the way done! Who would have through you would make it this far?
5. Week Five: Only one week left- what?? When did that happen?
6. Week Six: You did it!!!

Constant gratification. Love it.

On the food front, still being stymied. I got my electric cooler, and it totally does not work. Kind of crushed. It whirs and makes noise, but nada. Even after being constantly on for over 48 hours. Not really sure how to return it, either. It was from Amazon, though, so it should be doable... I should have gone with my initial instinct and just bought a minifridge for 120 euro in the first couple of weeks, so it would have paid for itself multiple times over. Alas. Hindsight. Gotta love it. 

Vegetarian Woes

And apparently the rice in Mexican restaurants isn't safe either. Every single recipe I have found for Mexican rice has listed large quantities of chicken broth. Though some research indicated that most restaurants actually use oil and not lard for their beans. Definitely need to start asking.

MAJOR drat on the rice!!



P.S. Stairmaster has a new model out, that actually has a rotation of stairs. It KILLS. 4 minutes made me acutely aware of the upper portion of my lungs, which is not a usual thing to be aware of. But then, when do you ever actually spend 4 minutes non-stop powering up stairs? Well, the eventual goal is 8 minutes w/ a heart rate under 200. And by eventual I mean after my third full marathon.