Kaleah’s Health Blog

Last night I attended a Yoga class down at my local gym and it was a great workout.  I went earlier in the day and sat in the infrared sauna for 30 minutes.  These are things I committed to doing for myself before I decided to do the juice feast.  I came home and my husband was making Kale chips, my favorite.  Not that he was trying to tempt me but we went to the organic farm last week and it was their last week of the season, so we came home with this big box of Kale.  Kale chips had been a huge staple in my diet being that I was mostly eating raw food.  But now I need to juice my kale.  So while smelling the kale chips seasoning in the dehydrator I made a juice of mostly kale, carrot, garlic, cayenne pepper, and sea salt.  Wow was it ever strong.  A little too much!  But I drank it slowly and decided that was definitely not a favorite. 

Last night while trying to sleep I could feel the energy pulsing through my veins.  I was both tired and wired at the same time.  Probably not a good idea to drink so much juice that late at night.

So this morning I got up and drank a glass of water with a teaspoon of MSM as suggested by juicefeasting.com.  Except they suggest taking a tablespoon or more of the MSM.  I’m not ready for that yet.  I did about fifteen minutes of yoga and then got my rebounder out of the garage and put it in the solarium where I rebounded for about twenty minutes with my two dogs and cat looking on.  I then poured myself a cup of Yerba Mate tea and went to work. 

The first few days are always the most challenging when I juice.  I have to get used to the part where my stomach tells me it thinks its hungry.  I answer with “want some juice?”  And it proceeds to give me a few suggestions of what it would rather have…kale chips, dehydrated apples and bananas, raw carrot cake.  Its all good stuff!  But not juice!  So we go back and forth and I remind that part of myself that really isn’t into the fasting that there is a reason for this.  We are doing it for our health and well being.  “just think” I tell myself “this will make you feel stronger, look younger, get rid of that itchy rashy thing going on around your neck, give you a deeper spiritual experience, and all around more energy.  Most of all it is a deep detox!  After six months of eating 95% raw, you need to go the next level to assist your body with that detoxing journey!”

So I encourage myself to keep going and get beyond the discomfort of denying myself solid food. 

I had John take a “before” photo of me last night.  I wished I had him take one six months ago before I re-committed to raw food.  I would have liked to see the difference.  I won’t post it for a while though.  Because at this point, I don’t know how long I’m going for.  I know I set out to fast while my CD is in manufacturing.  It is a way of celebrating the CD’s completion after a year long journey and help me to get clear about how I want to introduce it to the world.  Yes, I know, I have a strange way of celebrating! 

Right now, it is only the beginning!  But after a week or so the effects of juice feasting will be in full swing.  So for now I just need to get over this hump.  It is the beginners hump that always prevents me from ever starting.  My last fast was the first of January so I’ve gone nearly nine months without a fast.  Although I had intended to fast again last March, I went raw instead.  Something I knew in my body, mind and spirit that I needed to return to.  I had gone a full year back in 2004 100% raw and loved it!  It was an emotional crisis that caused me to stop and although I’ve eaten a lot of raw food since that time I had never stayed committed until this time.  Now that I’ve done six months I can’t foresee going back to a cooked food lifestyle. 

The interesting thing about being high raw is that I’m not having the results I had last time when I went raw for a year.  I didn’t lose so much weight, maybe just a little, but I’m really not overweight to begin with.  It is either because I’m menopausal, or that I’ve eaten s much raw for the past five years that I’ve detoxed a lot already.  Time will tell.  But for now…I think I’ll have some juice!

After the completion of my “Emergence” CD I have decided to go on a juice feast until the CD arrives from manufacturing. I have several boxes of good organic apples, carrots and kale, which will be the staple for the feast.

My reasons for juicing are both physical and spiritual.  Even though I have been eating high raw for six months I am still having physical issues that seem to be a sign of toxicity.   So I need to up the challenge.   On a spiritual note I am getting clear about the launch of my CD and what that will involve.

Juice feasting is much easier than most fasts in that whenever I am hungry I just have another juice. I tend to add about a half glass of water to my juice. I started this morning with about three apples, four carrots and a cup of kale diluted with half glass of water. I did have a bit of dehydrated fruit this a.m. I didn’t wake up intending to fast but knew I was wanting to start one soon. Today just seemed like the right day to start. So off I go.

In January I embarked upon a juice fast in effort to alleviate some very uncomfortable menopausal symptoms including sleeplessness, lack of energy, night sweats, hot flashes and basic irritability. I went two weeks on only fresh juices, water, teas and miso broth. The symptoms went away pretty quickly and I felt great! I knew I would probably have to do a fast about every three months in order to keep up the results. But when April 1st rolled around I really wasn’t looking forward to fasting. I didn’t like going through those long days of always feeling hungry. I loved the results but not that constant growling of the stomach.

So instead I decided to modify a bit. I would do a basic raw food diet without the gourmet fare. This meant I would do the juices, the teas, add a few raw smoothies, and eat my raw trail mix to take care of the hunger pangs and desire to chomp.

I’ve been on this diet for over a week now and it is going great! I’ve had a couple green salads, eat trail mix every day, which consists of goji berries, raw cacao, raw sunflower seeds, and raw pumpkin seeds. It’s kind of like eating bird food.

As far as cleansing it is a great cleanse but a little slower going than a juice fast would be. This means it takes a bit longer to experience the result, yet the result is still coming.

A true fast is an opportunity to give our bodies a break from digesting. It is a good thing to do a couple times a year, but if you want to keep the results of a fast you have to really watch what you put back into your body after cleansing. I’m feeling a renewed commitment to my raw food lifestyle which tends to come around every spring after eating way too much cooked food all winter. I love the hot soups, breads, potatoes and comfort food the winter season brings. Which is why it is a challenging time to be a raw foodist. However in everything there is balance. Perhaps I could eat raw half the year and add a little warm food in the winter without leaving behind my raw food lifestyle.

I feel confident my raw food lifestyle will keep the menopausal symptoms away. They never returned full force since my fast in January but I could feel them returning.

Although the medical field has explanations as to why women have these menopausal symptoms, i.e. hormonal imbalance, and associated problems, I couldn’t help but feel that my symptoms were related to toxicity. I just felt toxic! Prior to my fast I tried a lot of the suggested supplements to keep the symptoms at bay, but they just didn’t work for me. The fast was a quick fix and actually quite long term considering they symptoms didn’t begin to return for nearly three months.

My toxicity theory was justified by the way I felt when I cleansed. However cleansing and eating a raw food diet may also help to balance our hormones which would alleviate the symptoms. I don’t have to know exactly what is going on, all I have to know is that eating like a bird gives me back my youth and vitality.