Day 10 – The First Milestone

Well every day is a milestone on this juice cleanse. Every day has been an opportunity
to show myself that I can do it. Every day has been an opportunity to show myself that
I can’t do it. This truly is a battle of wills. I believe the hard part is over, where my
body is actually feeling the difference between my regular food intake and this new
regime. I think my body has learned now how to run on what is really a significant
increase in nutrients and vitamins and a significant decrease in calories and fat. I think
that’s the biggest misconception, that we are starving ourselves or somehow we aren’t
getting enough nutrients. Yesterday for lunch I had a beet (which I would never, EVER
normally eat), 3 carrots, a cucumber, a handful of spinach, a knuckle of ginger, 2 apples,
some pineapple, and little lime for taste. A completely balanced meal, even with a little
protein in it. How many of you can say you ate that well for lunch yesterday? So we are
not starving ourselves, we are re-training our bodies to function on things that are good
for us, and getting all the crap out of our systems.

You may be wondering where and why we got this crazy idea to subsist on juice from
fruit and veggies for 60 days. Ismael stumbled on a documentary called Fat, Sick and
Nearly Dead. It’s about a man who went from being a champion swimmer in college, to
being, well, fat, sick and nearly dead by the age of 40. He was over 300 pounds and had
an autoimmune disease where he would get rashes and ulcers on his skin from people just
touching him. He was on a litany of medications. He decided to do something extreme.
He consulted his doctor and was on his way. The first 30 days he spent in NYC checking
out all the millions of juice bars. The second 30 days he spent on the road with his juicer,
traveling the country, not trying to convert or proselytize, but to inform people about the
benefits of juicing and trying to get them to taste his weird little green concoctions. It was
amazing to see the resistance and sometimes anger he would bring out in people. How
set in their ways people were and how convinced so many of them were that they had
no control over whether lived or died and just wanted to eat what they liked in the mean
time. He met a truck driver along the way who had the same disease he had and was
even more overweight. The truck driver was resistant as well but after thinking about for
a few months, decided to try it. He was in very poor health and was so ashamed of his
lifestyle and his weight that he wouldn’t even visit his kids. Long story short, in 60 days
these guys were each able to lose over 80 pounds, not just juicing, but exercising every
day! But more importantly they got off all their medications, their illnesses disappeared,
their skin just glowed and they looked at least 10 years younger by the time they finished.
And of course the story ends with the much smaller, much healthier truck driver playing
football with his son. Sappy, I know, and certainly not rocket science (we all know
we need more fruits and veggies and to take better care of ourselves), but it hit home
nonetheless. While Ismael and I are crazy gym rats, our diets had gotten out of control
and we felt we could be on the road to where these men were.

So here we are, we both lost over 8 pounds in our first week, but we are noticing having
significantly more energy and that we surprisingly are not missing a lot of our favorite
treats. I am still in utter shock that I have survived this long without precious, precious
coffee. But it’s Day 10, the first opportunity to turn back, and we haven’t even discussed

the possibility of not pushing through for the full 60 days. Next big milestone, Day
30 (and every day in between, especially Superbowl GO NINERS!!!) And Go Team
Mendoza!!!

When Things Started to Change

 Wind BLOWING!

As usual, Ismael is transforming faster than I am and he’s really looking great.  I can already see the muscle tone reforming and his wind is starting to blow again (inside joke).  It’s encouraging to see in him how good we are being to ourselves.  Exercise has never really been the issue.  We both love working out.  But for people who work out as much and as hard as we do, we are just shooting ourselves in the foot by coming home and throwing down on beer and nachos.  I know for me the battle with the refrigerator has been life long.  Anyone whose known me for a long time knows my weight fluctuates considerably.  It’s never exercise, it’s always food.  I think I read somewhere that weight loss is something like 10% exercise and 90% food.  I’m starting to agree with that statement. In early 2008, after I made some substantial changes in my life and dropped about 70 pounds in a year, I threw away all my fat clothes and promised myself I would never be that heavy again.  I was committing myself to good health and self-control.  Ismael and I met in May of 2008 and we continued on the warpath to taking care of our bodies.  I dropped another 20 pounds after we met because we lived at the gym and trained for marathons together.  We enjoyed life and each other so much that eating was an afterthought.  I thought I had forever changed my relationship with food.  Even when I got pregnant with Blake in September 2009, we continued to eat well, exercise and take care of ourselves.  But around month four, all communications broke down (MAYDAY, CODE BLUE!!!).  Because I was so worried about something going wrong with my pregnancy, I stopped exercising except for walking on the treadmill or outside.  But I quit any real vigorous exercise.  And I replaced exercise with food.  Also my iron levels were so low that, after trying a million alternatives, I had to go back to eating meat which I hadn’t done in over 10 years (except bacon of course because it’s in its own food group).  This started the ball rolling eventually back to fast food which I also hadn’t had in over 10 years because there is nothing to eat at fast food places for vegetarians. I think there was part of Ismael that wanted to stop what was happening, but there was another part of him that was glad to take it down a notch and not be so strict all the time.  We both have little internal fat kids, so between the four of us, we were on a roll that has brought us to where we are today. Time to start eating to live and not living to eat again. But this time we find a balance. We recognize food for what it is: sustenance, energy to go to work, exercise, play with our son, keep the house organized, get shit done! Food is not the answer to sadness, anger, depression, uncertainty, worry, lack of communication and stress!

Beautiful Family

GO TEAM MENDOZA!!!

Starting to see change

Bunch of Awesomeness!!

So just for clarification the juice fast doesn’t start till 1/22 the day we get back from California (my husband jumped the gun as usual…love you babe!).  Till then we are preparing ourselves for it by significantly cutting back the type and volume of food we eat so that it’s not a total shock to our systems when we start the juice fast.  However, this change has been a shock in and of itself.  I didn’t realize how bad things had gotten. It’s not so much that I’m feeling hungry, we are eating enough to sustain ourselves, but I’m realizing how different I feel.  Last night for the first time in I can’t remember how long, I felt energy in the evening! I was giving Blake his bath and he was throwing water all over the floor and usually at that time of night I’m so tired and sluggish that I’m not able to really join in the fun. I’m usually trying to rush him out of his bath so I can rush him to bed, so I can go to bed.  But last night was different.  It was like the old days of giving him his bath when I enjoyed every minute of watching him play and talking with him.  Bath time and bed time are our special time together.  Just mommy and Blakey.  And I regularly hate myself for being tired and grouchy. But last night I realized just how much of an impact food and alcohol consumption have on my energy levels.  Just four days maintaining our exercise routine, eating significantly lighter and not drinking I really noticed a change.  And it makes me feel encouraged to carry on. If only all that extra energy last night hadn’t prevented me from being able to go to sleep. For the first time in 3 years I couldn’t sleep last night!  Usually I’m out in about 3.2 seconds once my head hits the pillow. But you know what? When my son woke up from a nightmare I was at his bedside and not laying in bed praying for the strength to get up. He opened his eyes, saw my face, gave me a huge smile, and cuddled up next to me and went back to sleep. If that’s not reason to take care of myself, I don’t know what is.

Hey Check BIN Out!!

The Journey Begins…

We met almost five years ago.  Even though so much has happened, the time has flown by.  In a whirlwind of events, we got married, had a beautiful little boy, moved across the country, changed jobs, left our families, made a whole new set of friends, bought snow boots.  One thing has stayed the same…our commitment to each other.  And so we take this life journey to the next step, having healthier minds and bodies.  For ourselves, for each other and for our son.

We started out in tip top physical shape, running every day, constant gym rats.  Then we would party at night and get up the next day to do it all over again.  Mentally we were excited about our life together, our dreams, and what lay ahead.  We had a fun life, we had finally met someone with whom we were in agreement about how to live life, and what was important in life.  We lived on a cloud.

What do they say, change is the only constant?  Well we are a case in point; our life together has been a lesson in change.  Somewhere in the process of all this change we lost sight of our goals which were always to put each other first, our son ahead of everything, and nothing else going on outside our bubble mattered. We let the outside in and started allowing ourselves to feel the pressures of the outside world; money, stress, family issues, distraction.

This New Year’s Eve we made a pact to make 2013 about self-preservation, about getting refocused on what really matters: each other. To kick it off, we are committing to a lifestyle change that we hope will help us regain our focus on being all-around healthy people again. This will start off with establishing goals for ourselves for the year and beyond.  The goals will be mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, whatever we want.  We will then start a 60-day juice cleanse.  Sixty days is a long time to juice!!! We will be tested on a lot of levels, mainly on Friday pizza night and Saturday Patron/Chivas Regal night. But it’s also about turning off the TV and talking to each other more.  Picking up the books we said we want to read together.  Taking our son outside to ride his bike even though it’s 30 degrees outside.  Getting our home and our minds organized.  Not being wasteful, not being lazy. Seeing and reveling in how far we can push our bodies and minds. And making time for our personal goals as well. 

We hope you will come along this journey with us.  It should be a lot of fun! There’ll be fat pictures and skinny pictures (hopefully), ups and downs, challenges and successes, tears and joy.  And in the end we hope we can say we are stronger people and are more connected to each other than ever!

TEAM MENDOZA

Nina

Blake

Ismael