Redefining terms

I'll talk about my stupid juice fast later. It's going fine, I've lost weight, etc etc...
But right now I'd like to talk about something very near and dear to my heart and that's arrogant stupid people. Abortion is a hot topic these days and I see all kinds of idiotic propoganda on FB and other messaging mediums saying that  it needs to end and no one should ever have an abortion, it's murder, blah blah blah. Well, kiss my ass!!! Because NOT ONE of the people who post that stupid shit have adopted any children who were unwanted! Not one person I know who yelps about how wrong it is to terminate a pregnancy or take a morning after pill or use god forsaken birth control has ever offered up an alternative. They never post links about abused or murdered children, enraged about their treament or deaths. They don't offer up scores of solutions on how to ensure a child's safety and well being. And they damn sure don't look after any kids but their own and a lot of times, they don't even really do that very well. So to any high and mighty, know it all, do good-er, who sits in judgement of women or girls who are sexually active and are reasonable enough to admit they can't handle the responsibilities of parenting or the uncertainty of adoption, before you post any more stupid ass posters or bulletins or hold any more signs or vote for any more woman-hater politicians, how about you go and get some kids who are suffering and take care of them and see how much energy or money you have to spend on children that aren't even on this planet yet!!!!!
In a nut shell, what I'm saying is that if you're so concerned about children, go look after some real ones! Put your money where your big fat mouth is and come up with some solutions for making this world a safe one for ALL children to enter. And when you get that accomplished, I'll carry an anti-abortion poster and vote for Rick Santorum. Fair???

Day 2 - of what feels like 9,000

I did and felt much better today. For breakfast I had the smoothie I talked about last night (with peanutbutter, yogurt and vanilla soy milk). It helped to get my day started a little better and with a little less of a scowl and growl. I'm gonna do it again tomorrow :)

For lunch I had a juice that included a granny smith apple, bell pepper, half head of cabbage, 2 celery stalks, 1 cucumber and a piece of ginger. Then I took the juice and poured it into a blender and added a banana and 1/2 cup of milk. It was a recipe recommended in my Juicer booklet and it was one of the only things I saw that sounded like it might help me get the celery down. Aside from a spoon full of sugar, I don't see too many more options and I gotta get the celery down...

I was far less cranky today and felt much more satisfied and a lot less tempted; Which is why I opted for all that kale and celery yesterday. Kale really helps to battle food cravings and especially sugar cravings. Celery boosts that effect. I knew if I could suck it all down that within a day or so I'd feel more sain. I was right **I say in my most persnickity voice**

Now, I have 8 days left in the "drink yourself well" gauntlet I've thrown down. It's really not so bad today and I can only assume it will get better. I do need to drink more water. I had less than 20 oz today and that's not good. I need to improve on that very rapidly. So tomorrow my plan is to start it the same way I did today because that yogurt banana peanutbutter thing yesterday made me happy and I fully intend that it will make me happy tomorrow. And when you're drinking your meals, you need happy happy balls of sunshine wherever you can find 'em, mainly so you don't kill people (so that you can later eat them).

Will report again tomorrow. I'm sure it will go something like this: I had ____________ for breakfast. I had _____________ for lunch. I had ______________ for dinner. It was good/bad. I am happy/sad. But whatever. I promised to report on this shit and I'm doing it. Have a nice night. And eat a good breakfast! It saves lives!!!!

So.... I ate a tomato

Day 1:
Breakfast - Juice of 4 kale leaves, 2 celery stalks, 1/2 lemon, 1 granny smith apple, 1 cucumber and a piece of ginger
****morning snack****    One sliced tomato with pepper & apple cider vinegar
Lunch - Smoothie made with 1/2 blender of frozen chopped spinach, 2 kale leaves, 4 strawberries, 2 tbsp on blueberries, a chunk of fresh pineapple and 1 banana
Dinner - Juice of 3 kale leaves, 1 cucumber, 1 bell pepper, 1 carrot, 1/2 lime, 1 green apple
****evening cave**** 5 pan grilled green beans

I can feel you judging me!!!

OK OK OK!! So I caved a little and had to have a smidgeon of substance. I ate a damn tomato and a few green beans for crying out loud! God!

This was harder than I thought it would be and it tasted mostly terrible. I already love fruits and vegetables and will eat just about anything that grows out of the ground. I knew I needed to cram in as much green as I could today. Greens provide a tremendous amount of vidatim d, fiber, enzymes & antioxidents. Kale is the mac-daddy of greens. It fights fat for one and it's unusually high in fiber, nutrients, vitamin a & calcium, beta-carotene, which by many experts is believed to play a vital role in the battle against cancer, heart disease and certain age related illnesses. Then there's celery.... The shit I absolutely can't stand but that there's really no substitute for. It has vitamins a, k, b2 (riboflavin) b5, b6, magnesium, folate, calcium, and so on and on and on. I needed these things right away. I've been lacking energy, not sleeping well, racked with headaches and stress and in general just haven't been in a very good mood. I do NOT have cancer thankfully. But I do have atypical cells known as ductal hyperplasia that gives me a 45-48% chance of developing breast cancer. I'll see an oncologist next week and I feel certain he'll want to put me on some preventative drugs (that I won't be taking). He'll provide me with a risk assessment and hopefully if he's a decent doctor, a plan of action to help me prevent getting breast cancer.

I want to be healthy of course, but more than anything, I want to feel good and be around to see my kids grow up, to see my grandkids grow up. And I don't mean just BE here, I mean live - really live. I see so many overweight, sick people who aren't willing to make simple adjustments in their lives and do without some fatty greasy food and it's so disheartening. I've spent time with a number of people who are sick! I mean really really sick and I know they'd give anything to go back 30 years and take better care of themselves. They wish they'd never started smoking, or drinking. They wish they'd eaten better, exercised more. But now it's too late. Their lives are spent in utter misery, dependent on buckets of pills, oxygen tanks, breathing masks, insulin shots, surgeries, blood clots. The list goes on and on. I don't want that. I want to be a part of my children's lives, not a drain on them.

So today, I choked this stuff down knowing that in a few days my tastebuds will adapt and change and I'll be fine. The Pizza Hut commercial today only made me really hungry for about 5 minutes. Five miserable minutes. Five agonizing, disgustingly tantalizing miserably horrifying minutes........

Anyway, I got a recipe today on FB from a friend and I'm going to try it tomorrow for breakfast before heading out to see my surgeon for my follow up visit. It's a cup of vanilla Activia, spinach, a banana and some peanut butter and vanilla almond milk smoothie. It sounds heavenly and will be a welcome break. I'm hoping to incorporate more fruits and experiment with more recipes in the coming days. I've given myself permission to have slip-ups and cave into a tomato craving or a handfull of green beans here and there. I won't break from a strict 10 day diet of fruits and vegetables, juices and smoothie combinations. But if I have to have a tomato... I have to have a tomato. The only difference is I didn't juice it, I chewed it.

And there you have it, day 1. Day hungry, grouchy, angry 1. Eye of the Tiger and whatnot.

Food Anyone?

I've been making and drinking green smoothies off and on for a couple of years now. I finally perfected my recipe and it includes 3/4 blender of spinach, a few kale leaves, one banana, 5 or 6 strawberries, a handfull of blueberries, a bit of pineapple and a tsp of honey. Yummy! When I drink them for breakfast consistently the benefits to my health and mood and energy level is amazing! My mother bought me a juicer last year and I love it as well.

This afternoon my bff showed me a documentary she watched about a man who went on a sixty day juice fast. He started out at 319 lbs and in the first 10 days he lost 21 of them.  During his fasting he toured the United States (he's an Aussie) and the looks and comments he received when people found out what he was doing were astounding. Most obese people know that in order to lose weight they have to change their diet and take in fewer calories but it's astonishing to hear how oblivious they are about food in general.  I'm no foodie. I'm no expert in nutrition but I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that eating a lot of fatty sugary processed foods will make you fat and feel bad. And this isn't a knock on my Mother, but when I told her that I wanted to do a 10 day juice fast and explained to her what it entailed, her response was "That doesn't sound healthy. It's not good for you not to eat." I almost fainted upon hearing this. What this juice fast entails is instead of trying to physically chew 16 servings of fruits of vegetables per day, I'm going to combine the foods into smoothies and juices and consume them in a liquid or soft form. I will put into my body, only healthy, vitamin rich, nutritious foods. And my own Mother doesn't know if this is healthy...

The man who filmed his personal journey through this fasting's name is, Joe Cross. His documentary is aptly titled: Fat - Sick - And Nearly Dead. I recommend that everyone watch it. It's a basic and simple, non judgemental approach to regaining control of our bodies. We are a fat, sick, nearly dead, doctor and medicine dependent nation. I don't understand why food means so much to so many but it's difficult to listen to people's excuses for why they choose to be in such poor health. And it IS a choice. We don't have to eat garbage and we certainly don't have to eat a lot of it...

So tomorrow I'll begin my 10 day fast. I'm actually hoping to make it 30 days but I'm trying on 10 for size. I took my measurements and I will post my results, my menu and my feelings about it each day. I expect that I'll be pretty miserable for the first day or two or three. I'll try not to divulge too much of my misery. At the end of my 10th day I hope to feel fantastic, have lost 5 pounds and be ready to go for 20 days more. Stay tuned...

For the Record

Just to be clear, I am pro choice. I promote people making choices that best represent what they feel they can live with. And given recent firestorms of controversy, I feel compelled to state that no one I know or have ever known is in favor of abortion. Being pro choice doesn't mean you think abortion is awesome. It means you think you don't tell others what is right for them because you have no idea what it's like to BE them. I walk in MY shoes, no one elses. I've never heard anyone say that they thought killing embryos was a terrific way to pass the time. Everyone I know who supports an individual's right to choose simply supports and values existing life and appreciates that life in general is sometimes really hard and really terrible. I place ultimate value on the lives already self sustaining on this planet. When EVERY child in this world has a family, love, food & shelter, THEN I will concern myself with the children that are not yet born.

The way the world is, isn't the way it's supposed to be. War, perversion, hatred, discrimination... It's just not right. But just because the world isn't what it should be, doesn't mean that's not the way it is. Sublime ideology is not a basis for an argument.

Why THIS Sin?

I fancy myself to be more of a mental sinner than an acting one. But from everything I've learned, that doesn't matter. Sin is sin and one is no worse than the other. There are of course, the deadly ones or capital vices: wrath, sloth, greed, envy, gluttony, pride and lust. That just means they are a gateway to actions or vices that lead to very threatening, even deadly consequences; Hence the reason we should do our best to avoid them.

I hear a lot about how people have a particular disdain for homosexuals. I've heard railings against homosexuals from people all of my life. Today in the news I read about a gay man who was stalked as he went into a grocery store and then when he exited, a group of hate mongers lay in wait for him. Two of them had cameras and filmed the other men beating this man nearly to death. Because he is gay! And I need to know why people think that being a homosexual is more repugnant to our creator than say, being morbidly obese or being a drug addict or a busy body? Why don't people try to stop alcoholics from getting married? Why don't churches try to keep really overweight people from becoming preachers? I point to these two specifically because they're sins that are often much more visible to the casual observer but don't seem to draw nearly the hatred or criticism that homosexuality does. I have a lot of gay friends and some of them are much nicer people than I am. Some of them were far less promiscuous than myself when they were younger and some are much less quick to anger as well.

I just don't see it. I don't see where the fear and hatred come from. I don't understand blatant bigotry, which is also a sin... None of us are perfect. And most of us would make a sailor blush if we had to confess what we were REALLY like on the inside. If we had to say out loud, everything that was sinful and true about ourselves, most of us would crumple in shame before we could sputter the words. So why then are we so quick to crucify the people who have little chance of being as secretive as we? Aren't we all forgiven?

For My Hero, Dr. King

Probably because the MLK Jr. holiday is right around the corner, he's been on my mind a lot lately. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been one of my lifelong heroes. And for all of my life I've never understood why anyone had a problem with a national holiday in his honor or why there wasn't a monument erected in his honor in Washington, D.C. Funny enough, I recognize that I'm a middle American born caucasian who by most standards has not been subject to racial prejudices of any magnitude. I have no particular cause to find this man to be of radical importance in making my life any easier. But what I've always loved and clung to, was the amount of courage that one human being can posess...

I believe that we all have a purpose. No matter how great or small, each contribution is of the utmost importance. We are all needed. I also believe that there have been a few, precious few people put on this Earth for a short while, who were so diligently and deliberately planned, prepared for and retrieved, that there can be NO doubt whatsoever that there is a living God who knows and commands all that resides on this planet. I believe Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of them. For what other possible explanation can there be for the existence of a man who was as tenacious, as brave & as good as he?

"Drawing inspiration from both his Christian faith and the peaceful teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King led a nonviolent movement in the late 1950’s and ‘60s to achieve legal equality for African-Americans in the United States. While others were advocating for freedom by “any means necessary,” including violence, Martin Luther King, Jr. used the power of words and acts of nonviolent resistance, such as protests and grassroots organizing, to achieve seemingly-impossible goals. He went on to lead similar campaigns against poverty and international conflict, always maintaining fidelity to his principles that men and women everywhere, regardless of color or creed, are equal members of the human family."

We are all prejudice. We all pre judge, be it by appearance, color, gender, class, intelligence... We have all at one point or another made up our minds about someone based on nothing factual - but on what we saw or felt in their presence. And I think that's ok. If we recognize that judgement can be a good thing and can alert our senses to impending danger or risk, then we are lucky to posess such judgement. But when we allow ourselves to discriminate against and mistreat our brothers and sisters because of our prejudicial fears, we are in fact wrong. Dr. King rallied masses of people to protest the mistreatment of African Americans through non violent acts. When we are attacked and are faced with danger, our animalistic instinct is to relatiate in violence. If we are cornered or harmed, we lash out in defense of ourselves. And this man, this brilliant man knew that if things were ever going to change, that African Americans had to maintain a steadfast resolve against violence at all costs. To lead your fellow man into a war where your only weapon is the ground you stand upon, to supress all instinctual survivalistic urges, in order to command a change so great that the entire world responds, is beyond comprehension. Dr. King always knew the dangers he faced and yet he stood in the face of inequality and prejudice and stared it down. He drew legions of followers and led them to do the same. This man changed the perception of African Americans and started a revolution so grand, we have not yet bugun to see it's full impact. He was a revolutionary. He was change...

Dr. King continues to inspire me to this day. Any time I have ever been faced with difficult decisions, whenever I feel I might be judged or suffer consequences for doing what I know is right - I think of him. I remember this gentle, eloquent man who put his life risk every day for 13 years on behalf of his brothers and sisters around the world. His fight was not just for his people, but for all people. His fight was for you and for me. Because at one time or another we will all face a judgement, and he knew better than anyone that there would be a price to pay. He gave his life for his dream. And what a dream it was...

From the "I Hava a Dream" speach - 1963
"But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.