Now I wanted to write my intention so I could go back and read it if I need to this week.
I'm juicing because my friend Chris wanted to do a juice fast to have a jump start to good health. I said I would do it with her. We watched Fat Sick and Nearly Dead and it was so inspiring so even Matt said he was willing to do it! As I thought about what it was that making me want to do this, I discovered that I had a short list of reasons:
Firstly, I've put on a few pounds again and that's reason enough for me to jump start a change. If I think about it, I have been snacking more and eating higher fat snacks like nuts and dehydrated cauliflower snacks that I make for the cafe.
I also wanted to change how I was eating a bit. Typically I have a huge smoothie in the morning that fills me up for hours and hours. I don't typically get hungry again until 4 pm. I thought if I had a juice in the morning and then did the bigger smoothie in the afternoon, it would be better for my digestion. I also want to do smaller dinners. When I'm at the cafe, I put other things before me (something typical that I find myself doing, I admit) so I will skip lunch a lot and then by the time dinner comes, I'm pretty hungry so I pile on the veggies and rice and beans. The kids are always looking for some dessert afterwards and I haven't been saying "No" to that either (well sometimes.) It's not a huge dessert but still, I don't need it to thrive or survive so it's really just a bad habit. So I was feeling in a rut, so to speak.
But the main reason, for me, would be to help with the ongoing inflammation I've had now for about 10 years. Things are a whole lot better for me than they were and I attribute that to my eating and my lifestyle. I still have some residual stuff going on, though, that I'd like to give my body the chance to do what it needs to do to release and heal it. With juicing, it's like a tiny break on the body. The body is getting fuel and nutrients in good concentrations and without the fiber and without needing to spend lots of time break things down and digesting. So it can put more attention on healing what needs to be healed.
We all will defrag our hard drives. We'll all clean out our bags and purses and wallets. We'll all clean out our cars when they are feeling too full of stuff. Same for closets and cupboards. Well, this is the same thing. Juice fasts have a way of cleaning out what isn't needed - there's usually some taking stock, some rest, some more energy to put towards sweating, etc. I'm looking forward to seeing what this juice fast does for all of us that have said we'll do it for 10 days.
