Day 9 - still on original plan...for now

We woke up this morning and decided that we are going to keep going for now.  Today's lunches and dinner is already planned out and it's all plant-based so we're in it for another day.  One thing we discussed last night was why are we doing this for 15 days?  Where did that number come from?  I found that 'Reboot' website and plugged in a few answers to their generic, on-line questionnaire and the answer popped up that we needed to be on the 15 day plan.  But what are the benefits of 15 instead of 8?  What's so magical about 15?  It takes 30 days to form a new habit so that can't be it...hmmm....

We originally started this fast to do an internal cleanse.  And the first couple of days we felt we were getting 'cleansed'.  But we haven't had all the horrible flu-like symptoms that some people experience during a fast.  Our conclusion is that we were eating pretty healthy before we took this challenge on.  We had already stopped eating bread, rice, pasta and beans.  We rarely eat fast food and limit our processed foods.  I try to buy organic whenever possible, and I read labels.  If there are too many ingredients on the label I don't even put it in the basket.  My weakness in that area is when we have all the kids. It's so much easier to throw a box of eggo waffles in the basket.  Or a big pizza. We know they'll eat all of it.  We know they won't complain about the food for dinner.  And they cook it themselves (most of the time).  John and I just hope that they are also observing our eating habits and some of it soaks in with them.  We have 5 kids ranging in age from 18 - 8.  Four of them are teenagers who can eat us out of house and home!

Morning juice
Today's morning juice was back to being awesome!  This had plums, strawberries, blueberries, apples and a banana.  Yum!!

Not for weight loss
My dad asked me the other day if I was doing this to loose weight or for nutritional purposes.  My answer was 'nutritional purposes.'  I did step on the scale on day 1 and I took my measurements.  But that is not the reason I'm doing this.  At the end of 15 days I will step on the scale and take new measurements just to see. John on the other hand, has a number in his head that he wants to reach.   I threatened to hide the scale during these 15 days because he steps on it every couple of days against all of my preaching.  There was an article I read recently about a woman who weighed 155 lbs and the picture of her was very flabby.  Then she hired a personal trainer, cleaned up her diet and a couple months later she STILL weighed 155 but was down two dress sizes and she looked great!!  It's not always the number.  I remind him of that story but it doesn't register for him.  I told him to take his measurements but he says he doesn't need to because he's happy with all of his body except his stomach.  So we have agreed that I will my diet my way and he will diet his way. 

Mid morning juice and lunch
Today went a lot better than yesterday in the land of food.  The spaghetti squash didn't sound so yucky to me today and actually was a delicious lunch.  However the mid-morning juice was only so-so.  John reported that it was the worst one yet.  He said he didn't like the beet and lime combo.  But I can say with much certainty that I didn't put lime it in!  It was beets, carrots, zucchini, radish, ginger and 1/4 pineapple.  That's what I get for not following a recipe and just throwing things in at random!

Dinner
John loved the veggie soup that we made last week so he wanted that again. He was just going to cut up the veggies again and let me do the rest (so I thought), but when I got home he had the soup totally made already!  Good job baby! I was flipping through the recipes for our 15 day fast looking for what juices I wanted to make for Day 10 when I came across a butternut squash and pear soup.  It sounded awesome so I started making that along with our juices.  I was in the kitchen for about 2 1/2 hours making juice, cleaning the juicer, making more juice, cleaning the juicer, answering text messages, chopping up pears and onions for the soup, cooking the squash, cleaning up, etc, etc.  I love to cook and there's nothing on tv right now that I'm watching so I'm not being pulled out of the kitchen and sucked into tv so it gave me something to do.

PIZZA...
Things were going just fine until Parker, my 18 year old, cooked a pepperoni pizza.  The soups on the stove were smelling sooo good.  Then he pulled out this cheese bubbling, saucy, round piece of deliciousness from the oven. It was so tempting to just have one bite.  Just one.  It smelled and looked amazing.  I am proud to say I didn't have any but I will have to say that I'm not going to totally rule out eating pizza after we're done with our fast.  I have tried a Paleo

Company
So we had a friend come over last night who's in town for work.  He originally suggested to John that we just go down to our clubhouse to grab a bite to eat.  First we weren't sure if they were open on a Tuesday night, but more importantly John and I didn't want to walk in there and be tempted by crabcake platters, french fries, burgers, etc.  So we offered him some of food (non-juiced of course).  He thought the veggie soup looked good so we gave him a big bowl of that.  He was surprised John made it and he kept asking if it wasn't just a can of Progresso!  I had purchased a loaf of bread and some ham sandwich meat for Parker so we didn't totally punish our guest; we gave him a sandwich too!  John made the sandwich and was salivating over the meat!!  I was just finishing up the butternut squash soup and I asked our guest if he'd like to try it.  He passed when he heard it was 'squash' soup.  However, I had made myself a big bowl and it was too much so I gave it to John to finish.  He thought it was delicious!  The exact phrase was, "Baby, you really put your toe in this one!"  He got a little more pushy with our guest and made him try some.  We have a squash soup convert.  He was amazed how butternut squash could taste so good in the form of a soup.

We faced many temptations last night and we made it.  Day 10 here we come!