smith stories.: Juice Reboot: Day 1

Today, Blake and I begin our 3-day Juice Reboot. The documentary 'Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead' by Joe Cross changed our lives - literally. After watching this, along with 'Forks Over Knives', we began our vegan journey. We have been juicing almost every day since June 1st of last year. That's a TON of veggies - and some fruits - that our family has consumed through juicing alone! And we love it! We began eating a vegan 'diet' (it's called diet to describe our lifestyle of eating, not a diet to lose weight) the beginning of August of last year and have had so much fun learning about whole food, plant-based eating. I will admit that over the last nine plus months we have cheated a few times. Blake loves his occasional pepperoni pizza and the kids love their corn dogs, and, though I have not eaten even a bite of meat in over nine months, when I feel in the mood to deal with digestive issues I splurge on Old Spaghetti Factory's Mizithra and Brown Butter angel hair pasta. We do not cheat often, but it has happened and we do not dwell in guilt. We chose this food lifestyle for our health (there just happen to be other benefits, too!) and we are much healthier because of eating whole, plant-based foods.

Back to our reboot... Even vegan eating is not always 'healthy'. If you are not careful - meaning reading every single ingredient on every single label - you can end up consuming a whole bunch of crap. Many vegan substitutions (Vegenaise (mayonnaise), soy 'cheeses' such as 'cheese', cream cheese, and sour cream, vegan 'meats' such as sausages and seitan, etc.) are majorly processed and have little-to-no nutritional value. In the beginning of our vegan days, we simply swapped out our non-vegan food items for vegan substitution food items in order to fulfill our cravings for meats and dairies. However, we realized being vegan does not necessarily mean you eat healthy food and we made the choice to do it right or not do it at all. We avoid most oil, all animal products, and processed foods.

As of recently, we made the decision to push even further into living a healthy lifestyle. We have been more intentional about exercise and physical activity, focused more on meeting our vitamin and mineral needs, and have started to cut out extra foods and drinks that we have overdone the past several months. Caffeine, alcohol, and the amount of soy we eat is being majorly limited. My personal reasons have to do with a major hormonal imbalance I am dealing with, doing everything in my power to avoid surgery, medications, etc. (Maybe I'll blog more on this specifically later...)

Essentially, we need to reboot. Start from scratch. Become more aware of how our nutrition lines up with our individual needs. Blake suggested this reboot, so we are going to juice our veggies and fruits (and a few herbs!) for three days (he has three days off in a row!). Our fridge is LOADED with veggies and fruits (besides the foods/meals I have prepared ahead of time for the kiddos since they will not be joining us with this reboot, besides sharing some juice, of course!) and, to be honest, it is hard to believe that by Friday we will have consumed every bit of it!

This 3-day reboot will help us: