Beyond Willpower

Blood work. My cholesterol is high, my triglycerides are ridiculous, my sugar (A1C) is 6.1, all as of last October. I have an appointment for my yearly physical on January 26th. I've been doing all I can to improve these numbers. I'm eating between 7-13 servings of fruits and veggies daily. More on days I'm off and can stay home and munch, and less on days I work. I've decided to start prepacking baggiges of fruits, veggies, and nuts, to snack on while I'm at work so that I can get as many servings in a day as I can. I wasn't going to weigh myself for 3 months, but then realized I need to weigh myself NOW so that if what I'm doing isn't working I can adjust it somehow. I've lost 5 lbs so far on this particular Way Of Eating, and I've lost a total of 25 since my high weight. Woot! Nothin' to sneeze at! I feel like my body is so sick, and I am doing what I can to make it well again. That means eating ALL the fruits and veggies, whole grai...

So, as I've mentioned, I live in Pittsburgh, PA. We have a pinball arcade place here called Kickback pinball cafe. We've been meaning to get down there and today we finally did!  Luckily they had some food options that worked out for us. We both had a salad. mixed greens, nuts, seeds, goat cheese and a light truffle kind of dressing, it was so good!  We also had kale chips. That inspired me to come home and bust out the dehydrator and make kale chips of my own! I have made them before but they were kind of a failure. The first batch was too salty, the second batch had no flavor. This time I looked up a recipe for a cashew based vegan 'cheese' sauce, so as I type this they are dehydrating! This is a pic of our fridge after we got all of our veggies. Some things you see in there are green juices, almond milk, and all that green stuff on the top shelf of the fridge is Tupperware full of chopped veggies to make tossing them in a salad or munching on them throughout...

Here's the hard truth. I have diabetes. i have non alcoholic fatty liver disease, I'm working my way to high blood pressure, in the hospital they figured out it was white coat hypertension but it's still not as good as it used to bed. I feel like I'm dying, I'm rotting, from the inside out. I have been on medications that caused metabolic syndrome, making me fat after I worked SO HARD to lose those 90 lbs.  Some days my liver hurts, it will either ache, or if I bend or strain it will hurt, and sometimes it just burns. Also, fatty liver slows your metabolism, making it harder to lose weight. Me on my wedding day March 9th, at my high weight. (I am currently -20 lbs from here) I'm buying a bottle of liver cleanse/detox pills tomorrow. Along with that I'm also going to juice 3 times a day and eat as much raw fruits and veggies as I possibly can as a part of my daily diet. Certain fats are good too so I will be trying to eat avocado and eggs as well,...

So my mom bought me a cookbook called: Vegan Fire and Spice I made my first recipe from it tonight. It's separated by country, and I had Nigerian Peanut Soup. It was amazing! The flavors were just...bold. That's the only way I can think to put it. Fabulous! I also made the blackened tofu from Appetite for Reduction . Here's some crappy blurry pics from my phone, ha.: I was talking to someone today about how beautiful colorful food is and how it's so healthy. When you eat a lot of prepackaged crap, we were saying -- it tends to just be brown. Blackened tofu ready to go into the broiler: Blackened tofu and Nigerian peanut soup The soup was truly the star of this show, but I think maybe the tofu didn't come out as well as it did last time because of my own error in prep. Anyhow, I can't wait to check out more recipes from this book, lots of yummy looking things, I recommend checking it out.  Also all the recipes in both of those books pretty much serve 4. ...

There are some things in my life that were once priorities that have been put on the back burner. I feel like due to this medication it's pointless to try and lose since I can't seem to. But that is ridiculous because I need to be healthy whether I'm losing or not. So I need to get on track with the gf/vegan eats and exercise in a big way. (I've eaten dairy some lately and it's ADDICTIVE. No joke.)  So starting today, gf/vegan all the way. I need groceries, but I'll just eat tons of rice if I must just because I can really FEEL a difference in my body when I eat gluten. It aggravates the living hell out of my fibro, I've been feeling so inflamed lately that even just sitting here has been burning my legs and back. I need to exercise. I KNOW that it helps my fibro. Like my pain doc says, if you don't use it, you lose it with fibro. It's a vicious cycle. You lay down because you're in pain but in the long run laying around just causes more p...

So the last week or two life has gotten pretty hectic. I've had work, job interviews, birthday celebrations and tons of doc appointments all over the place. I've been buying a bus pass because I've been running around so much. All of this of course makes it difficult to eat at home and eat healthy. I've been staying within my cals except for two days where I had two pieces of fruit extra. But I hate WHAT I'm eating and HOW I'm eating. The "what": I've been eating fried stuff. Fried tofu here and there, one day I had fries. I don't even finish my plate, but I still feel less than stellar after eating that crap. It makes me kind of mad that when you don't eat meat the only other options for you are unhealthy deep fried stuff. I feel awful buying a taco salad when I could just as well make one at home and they are 10$ when I go to this vegan friendly place up the street. I need to remember that it's not a waste if it's saving me calo...

So, the other day I decided to buy a juicer. I read reviews for hours looking for the best quality for a reasonable price. I also read a bunch of FAQ's about the benefits of juicing, and I found this article on juicing for weight loss today that sounds promising:  Juicing for weight loss Anyhow, this is the juicer I decided on: Breville JE900 Juice Fountain Professional Juice Extractor I'm very interested in this, and I hope it works out, I'm trying to get more raw foods in my diet and I hope this helps.  Do any of you juice? What kind of juicer do you have and do you like it?  What have your experiences been with juicing and your health?