What I Know For Sure ....I Think

Day 4

As promised, I said yesterday I would update about the avocado in smoothies. Avocado mixed with spinach, blueberries, and mango = yummy. Avocado mixed with spinach, banana, and strawberries = not so yummy. It's so strange how a fruit can add so much to one smoothie but completely ruin another one completely. As a verdict, though, I really enjoy the texture that avocado gives the drink. It really is like a more yougurt-based drink.

What I also learned yesterday was that my dislike of kale wasn't a one-off. It's bitter and a weird consistency when blended. I think I'll stick to spinach, lettuce, and mixed greens, thank you very much.

I am finding each day getting easier. I did all of my prep work before we started, which means all the fruit was cut up and frozen, I blended half my spinach with water and froze them so when I want a cold smoothie I just throw those in, and I turned a corner of our kitchen counter into a 'smoothie station'. It has taken the throught process out of making meals.

Before starting I would spend half my day wondering what I was going to cook for dinner and the other half preparing it. That doesn't work, and it's often half the reason I was eating the way I was. Throwing a pork roast covered in spices from a package and bottled barbeque sauce into the slow cooker to have with buns would be way easier than making everything from scratch. This is part of the change I'm trying to make permanently for us. While we've set our 'challenge' for 60 days, once that is over, my goal is to continue on with no processed foods. I don't want to live a vegan life forever (I enjoy meat too much for that), I do want to make healthier choices out of habit instead of it always being a conscious effort. I firmly believe that once you hit a goal weight (which is a huge motivator for me) that you can eat healthy 90% of the time, allowing yourself to indulge a little the other times and maintain your health. Part of the mental shift for me has to be to reverse those numbers. It can't be 90% bad foods and 10% healthy.

Another fun positive that I have noticed in the last few days is that we have less dishes to do! We have a dishwasher and usually by the end of the day it was full and we were pulling things back out that we needed. I always tried to do pots and pans by hand, which was a pain. Now we're using two glasses (that we rinse after each smoothie), a cutting board, and a knife. The Vitamix is amazing in that it pretty much cleans itself with a cup of water and a drop of dish soap and turned on high for a minute. I can get used to the decrease in time spent organizing the kitchen.

On the downside, my face has a few blemishes, which doesn't happen often for me anymore. I assume that it's part of the detoxification my body is going through. On the other hand (heh), I cannot believe how fast my fingernails are growing. I love nail polish and am constantly doing my nails. I put polish on them on day one and I noticed this morning that I'll have to change it today because the nails have grown so fast there is a noticeable gap. Healthier, stronger nails will motivate me any day!