And I’m back…

It has been too long since I updated this blog so I felt it was time.

So, I decided, after reading Omnivore’s Dilemma and watching Food Inc, to go vegetarian.  I’ve done it before and usually last a few months and then lose momentum.  I’ve been adding a lot of books about eating healthy and how my food choices affect our environment and I hoping this will allow me to continue eating healthy well into the future.  I have also started back up on the green smoothie diet in ernest.  I decided that the most healthy I’ve ever felt and the best shape I’ve been in was when I was doing this diet and exercising about 3 months ago.  It is time to get it in gear and get going again!  The amazing thing is how quickly my body responds to this lifestyle change.  I’ve lost 6 lbs in one week and I have more energy than I know what to do with at this point.  All I can say is that I’m extremeley happy to be back on this diet and making choices that I feel are better for me and for this world.

I have also started salsa dancing again and it is a tremendous gift in my life.  When I stop going I forget how much I miss the physical and mental aspect of salsa dancing.  I can dance for 4 hours straight and there is always something new and fun to experience with each dance.  I love seeing my friends, some of which I met almost 10 years ago now when I first started salsa dancing, and be part of a great circle that comes together every week to celebrate life, dance and happiness.

It is also my birthday on Friday, Feb. 19th and to celebrate I’ll be going to the San Francisco Salsa/Rueda Festival and dance for 4 days straight.  I feel like my dancing has found a level that I’m comfortable with and yet I strive to learn more.  I feel this festival will be a fanastic starting point and also a great way to meet a lot of people who are flying in from all around the world to attend and dance.  I hope if you are a salsa dancer you read this and choose to attend.  It is amazing!

Quick Update on my diet

So here are my meals from yesterday.  I started off the morning with a 8 oz glass of green smoothie consisting of 2-3 cups of flowering kale, 2 bananas, a large red bell pepper and 2 teaspoons of honey.  I also had a 8 oz glass of water afterward.  I grabbed a small handful of almonds also.

For snacks I just kept drinking my green smoothie through the day and had one apple and one orange.

For lunch I had some white rice (I’m going to buy a nice blend of brown and other rices as soon as possible for more nutrition), 5 ozs of tuna fish, lemon juice for taste and avocado for texture.  It was delicious and very easy to make!

For dinner I had some more green smoothie as I wasn’t really very hungry and just wanted to pay attention to what my body wanted.  I was talking to a friend on the phone who is interested in doing the green smoothie diet also but stated that she wasn’t sure she could give up “crunchy things” and I let her know that she doesn’t have to give it up.  What I do, when I want something crunchy, is to eat 2 or 3 potato chips.  I have some left over ones and when I eat them I stay totally attentive to the taste and texture and it gives me what I need.  Another friend has told you can make baked kale chips that are exactly like potato chips so I’m going to try and do that in the next week or so.  I think I had another banana at night to satisfy any cravings I had.

Speaking of cravings I have to comment on them.  I would have thought that I would totally crave solid food and crunchy yummy stuff.  Amazingly, within about 3 days, most the cravings went away.  It is like my body and mind figured out that I didn’t need all that extra stuff since I was getting such amazing nutrition in my smoothies.  I basically want to stick to the diet for at least a month and see where my body weight and cholesterol end up at.  I donate platelets at the local blood bank every couple of weeks and they do an automatic cholesterol test and I’m very interested to see how that turns out for me.

Lastly, I just checked on UPS and my new VITAMIX blender should be arriving today.  I will definitely blend some smoothies up in it tonight and tell you about the resulting product tomorrow.

To your health!

Aram

My personal green smoothie challenge

So, about two weeks ago I was talking with my friend, Martine, on Facebook. She was doing a detox fast of green smoothies and I had never heard of that diet. I have been in a rut trying to lose weight and it has been very tough. For those of you that don’t know, I lost my sense of smell at age 4. I’ve never been a big fan of cooking since both the smell, and taste, is rather limited. I asked Martine more about the detox and she got me very interested in it. I read up on it on the web and looked at some of the videos that she sent me and decided, since Katia was in Russia and therefore I wouldn’t be impacting anyone else’s meals or lifestyle, I’d make a go of it.

So, my basic day would go like this: I would start with a 32 oz smoothie and drink about 12 ozs of it to start off. My usual smoothie was pretty simple. It consisted of 2-3 cups of spinach, 2 bananas, 1 apple or orange and 2 teaspoons of honey. Martine had suggested not sticking to only one type of green so I changed daily from spinach to swiss chard to red chard to collard greens to flowering kale. I wanted to see if one or the other made a major difference in the flavor. Again, my tastebuds are a bit limited and I didn’t notice anything so I’m good to go. I would suggest not using lettuce since there is basically no nutritional value in lettuce at all. I would have a 5 oz can of tuna and possibly some rice if I felt like I needed some more substantive solid food but, surprisingly, I barely needed it. I made sure to get enough protein and couldn’t believe how fast the weight was burning off of me. I drank the green smoothie constantly and kept drinking loads of water and yet the weight kept falling off. I also added watermelon and other fruits to try them. They were all delicious!

Okay, now came the hard part. I was going on vacation to LA for a week and I was only one week into my challenge. I knew that I would have to really pay attention and make positive changes if I wanted to continue this lifestyle. I was staying with my friend Christopher and his family and they were very gracious about letting me hog their blender and fill up their veggie area in their fridge. Luckily, Tina, Chris’ wife, loves smoothies and was making them for her family too (she made normal smoothies not the green ones). This made it very easy because we just doubled the load of oranges, apples and fruits and I just bought loads of leafy greens. Eating out, which could have been the really tough part of the trip wasn’t. It was actually quite simple. I just asked for a nice salad, with the dressing on the side and some salmon or something grilled on top of it. My whole meal was under 1000 calories and the rest of the day I just drank my smoothies.

As my vacation progressed, I noticed that my shorts were starting to slip off my hips and that is something that hasn’t happened in years. I came back home with a new determination to start excercising and geting in shape. On Sunday morning I woke up at 7 am and went out for a 10 mile bike ride from my house to Marin and back over the Golden Gate Bridge (how lucky am I to live in San Francisco?) and then went salsa dancing at the Oakland Art and Soul Festival and over to Allegro Ballroom. A number of people told me that I looked much thinner and that I looked much healthier. I did a 30 minute walk-run today and enjoyed it immensely.

I have to admit, I was getting pretty excited and was looking forward to coming home and checking my weight. When I started my challenge, just 14 days ago, I weighed in at 204 lbs. I felt pretty upset with myself for allowing this to happen and really didn’t like that I had a gut at this point. Well, when I came back to work on monday, 14 days later, I weighed in and the scale showed 192 lbs. I had lost 12 pounds in just 14 days. It wasn’t water weight because that is all I’m putting in and I’m drinking more than I ever have before. All I can say is that I am very pleased with the results and the ease at which anyone could do this diet. It is not hard at all and it is better for you as a person and the world overall. The environment isn’t as affected and the smoothies only take about 1 minute to make so it is a fantastic time saver for busy people.

Anyway, the next step I wanted to take was to buy a Vitamix 5200 blender. These blenders can actually emulsify avocado pits in about 30 seconds. They are so powerful that they can make smoothies in 15 seconds and can actually make HOT soup because the blades spin so quickly (about 240 miles per hour!). I was talking to my mom, who owns one, and asked her about it. Sadly, the price is unreachable for me at this point (about $400). My mom told me how amazing her one was and then offered to help me buy one. My step-father also chipped in and so did my dad. I’m going to be ordering it tonight and hopefully it will be here within the week. I cannot wait to see what kind of delicious smoothies it can make and other things (like ice cream, nut butters, and salad dressings). I have a feeling that will be my next blog update. I’ve included a couple of links so that if my story has intrigued any of you and you want to check it out, just click on them!

This is the original video that Martine sent me with Victor Boutenko:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW5LUkeVA6s

Here is another with his mother, Victoria who seems to have started this revolution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUlJZD-RzEM

this is a link with a 2 week smoothie challenge. They will send you recipes and encouragement each day:
http://www.greensmoothiechallenge.com/

This is the blender I’m getting and what it can do:
http://www.vitamix.com/

Tags: health diet emotions