Day 2 - So, Kale is a 'thing' now?

Today is the second day of our 60 Day Challenge.

Yesterday was terrible.  I know it's my body just getting used to the changes in how I'm feeding it but I felt light headed and had a terrible headache that started around 6:00pm and wouldn't go away.

I suppose it's all par for the course when you go from eating processed crap most of the time to all raw, plant-based foods.  No easing in for this girl.  I jumped right on in without testing the waters.

Around 8:00pm last night, I caved and cut myself up five carrots into sticks and allowed myself a teaspoon of ceaser salad dressing to dip them in.  You know, it's funny when a few carrot sticks and dressing can be as delicious as any dessert you've ever eaten.  Technically, the teaspoon of dressing made the day a fail, but I'm not counting it as a fail.

I woke up this morning with the headache still there.  I guess you can expect that to happen when you're used to drinking 2-3 coffee and/or Diet Pepsi a day and you stop cold turkey.  As the day went on, I did find that the headache eased up a bit.  All the literature I have found about changing your eating habits like this have said to expect a few days with 'flu-like symptoms'.  I guess it's just par for the course.

Will (my husband) insisted that we try using kale in our smoothies for breakfast.  I've been hearing about this green everywhere lately so I figured there must be something to it.  I threw in about 10 kale leaves, 2 bananas, about half a pineapple, and a cup of mango chunks.

The Vitamix actually had a hard time getting the kale to juice.  Now, if you're not familiar with Vitamix blenders, these babies blend at something akin to mach speeds.  I had to add more water and really push with the Tamper to get it done.

This stuff made our kitchen smell like a freshly mowed lawn.  Once the fruit was added, the taste wasn't as bitter, but the smoothie still did have a slight grass-like flavour.

The rest of the day went well.  It's been fun experimenting with different smoothies.  Both Will and I felt that today was easier than yesterday.  The headache seems to have lessened and neither of us feel as starved as we did this time yesterday.

This is what today's supper consisted of.

On to day three.

How It Started

Back in May, my husband and I booked a trip to Jamaica for the upcoming Christmas season.  Getting healthy and losing weight has been something that we have been discussing for years.  One or both of us will decide to make some changes, dive in head first, and hit a wall at around three or four weeks in. Booking this trip (where we will be on a beach in *gasp* bathing suits) started the discussion again.

Then, in July, we took our summer vacation.  We travelled to Newfoundland to see my family, Nova Scotia to see his family, and then a week in Toronto to see more family and friends.  It was here that was stumbled across the documentary called 'Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead'.  We watched in stunned silence as two people lost significant amounts of weight in a small amount of time by consuming only juices from vegetables and fruits.  

When we returned home, my husband was discussing the documentary with one of his co-workers.  This co-worker has lost well over 100lbs in the last year and is always interested in health concepts.  He mentioned that the juicing was very familiar to him, as he had lost his weight using 'green smoothies'.  This intrigued us and we had a lot of questions.  He referred us to the website for The Raw Family and gave us a copy of the book, Green For Life.

And the rest, as they say, is history.  We ordered ourselves a Vitamix, a boatload of fruits, vegetables, and greens, and challenged ourselves to stay the course for 60 days.