Finding The Balance Between KidHistory 6 & Jack Lalanne

One of my all time favorite Youtube videos has to be "KidHistory #6", friends introduced us to the whole "KidHistory" series and Lou and I cried laughing watching this particular one, it brought back a lot of "growing up" memories for Lou. We had to share it with Mom Crist and the family because most of the nutritional drinks/foods shown in the movie Mom either made or makes and her boys are not slow to voice their disapproval of "health food". Once Mom was adhering to the George Malkmus "Hallelujah" diet in an attempt to improve her health and the menfolk in the house all started demanding "dead food"...meaning meat, instead of the "live food" salads and vegetables she was giving them. So, it will come as a surprise to many folks who know how Lou prizes his meals that we started eating "live food" by choice here in the last month! We've been trying to eat healthier these days... we didn't consciously start 2013 with that as one of our "resolutions", in fact we're not resolution makers as a general rule. It started back in the fall with me integrating more vegetables and fruits into our diet in an attempt to keep my digestive system working. Sad fact is, the "Canfield stomach" is a legend in our family (my mom's side of the family) and we attribute most of our stomach problems, digestive problems, gallbladder issues to this catch-all phrase "Canfield stomach". :) It covers all the fun things like irritable bowel syndrome symptoms, reflux, gallbladder flare ups, constipation, etc. I have my own share of these delightful issues and hopefully will not shock you all when I tell you that since becoming pregnant I've had to take medicines to "normalize" my system...in fact, it tends to completely shut down with any length of road trip, plane flight, restaurant food....which doesn't sound like a big deal, but can be incredibly uncomfortable and make one feel like a nursing home resident, daily emphasis being on elimination! There, now that the nurse is speaking....hopefully I haven't grossed you out too much but it provides a background into why changing my diet became a thing of paramount importance. :)
I had been reading a lot on integrating dietary fiber, switched to eating lots of oatmeal, fiber filled vegetables and purchasing foods based solely on fiber amounts listed, and still it was ineffective. I began drinking water in large quantities, from morning til night and even having a 16oz bottle by the bedside that I would down by morning...still no consistent results. I would tell Lou,"Oh, this says it has 25% of my daily fiber intake, this should be great for me!" only to have him tease me,"Yes Kim, but the normal person's daily requirement is 1/10th of yours...." and sadly enough, it seemed all too true. :)
We have a Netflix subscription and saw the movie "Hungry for Change" listed as a suggestion after finishing "Freaky Eaters". Our movie tastes tend to be incredibly eclectic, as we're watching "Construction Intervention", "Dr. Who" and "Undercover Boss: Canada" at the moment, but we gravitate towards documentaries, mysteries and fix it upper shows as a general rule, with some blood and guts military/spy thrillers thrown in randomly! Anyways, "Hungry for Change" was intriguing to us, we don't buy things/theories simply because we watch them but it brought up some good points as far as pre-packaged food is concerned and we decided then to start eating even more "live foods" to see if it helped us increase energy/overall feel. From that movie we saw several of the people interviewed had been in the documentary "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" and decided to watch it as well. I enjoyed it immensely, and while Joe Cross obviously went all out in his attempt to regain his health, it was encouraging to see his protegee, Phil Staples, a normal man with serious health problems also become so dedicated to restoring his health that he stuck with the juicing diet! If you haven't seen the film, its truly amazing because Joe does his 60 day juice fast while traveling through some of America's best food cities....I watched him walk down the streets of NYC past pizza joints, doughnut shops, he is a man with incredible will power! Check out this site for a synopsis, or better still, watch the movie for free on Hulu.com! :) It makes me laugh now to hear myself and Lou talk about juicing because if you didn't know us, you'd think we were those folks that buy into every new invention/diet idea......we're not. However, we started talking about Joe's metabolic and physical changes brought about and just how remarkable it was. I said,"Lou, what if after Anjuli's birth, once I've recovered we try a little juice fast, maybe just 7-10 days." He came up with the idea of starting something now, on a much more balanced scale, skipping lunch for an entire week and instead juicing. So, we decided to give it a whirl! I printed out a stack of suggestions for juice combinations, which once we tried....several were delicious and some were downright horrible!  I bought a combination of vegetables and fruits for juicing: red apples, granny smith, lemons, limes, beets, kale, collards, parsley, cilantro, spinach, cucumbers, carrots, celery, and ginger.

Arranging a week's worth of juicing ingredients to make for a smooth assembly line process!

The magic ingredients I consider to be: GINGER and LEMONS/LIMES. You can make almost any drink palatable with the infusion of one or other, plus they are excellent for you. Lou said he would have never thought of the ginger, but he's a huge fan of it now! So, we did it...and we starved the first 2 days, until I decided to introduce a "snack on the side" to go with our lunch juice. Its usually mini sweet peppers or triscuits with hummus, toasted almonds with sea salt, or tortilla chips with homemade salsa/pico de gallo. This helped us tremendously...and by the end of the week Lou lost 5 lbs, mainly around his stomach area. For me, it wasn't about losing weight but gaining some energy during this pregnancy, and oddly enough, even though we juiced and I didn't end up drinking all the "fiber" pulp as a result, by the 3rd day I was completely regulated and was able to stop taking my colace, which I'd been dependent on for the entire pregnancy so far! I also saw a decrease in the swelling in my feet, which had been noticeable since our trip back east over Christmastime. I really saw this as a breakthrough, something that encourages me I'm getting healthier on the inside and as a result will be in better condition when Anjuli arrives! So, I wanted to write this blog post to give you all a heads up on some of the changes we're making and how good it has been for us, its really been a wonderful thing! We didn't want to go all out and change everything about our diet because I feel that switching 100% leads to a short lived exuberance followed by burnout, but in this case I think we're on the right track. Vegetables and fruit can be so expensive, but so is poor health in the end. Its fun to try different varieties of juice combinations, I tend to dislike celery and prior to this the only "juicing drink" I had was a combination of celery, carrots and apples, very sweet and with that celery "zing". Now we're doing a lot of these types of combos:

We have a two person process, I wash everything in the right side of the sink and transfer to a bowl on the left after cutting off brown spots, quartering, trimming stems on a small cutting board balanced in the center-then Lou takes it directly to the juicer set up on the left and runs it through. Works well for us with minimal mess!

Juice for (2) 12 oz glasses:
1 cucumber
2 red apples
5 carrots
1 lemon
5 leafy stems kale
3-4 handfuls spinach
1 stalk celery
We taste it and if it needs a little more sweetness...we add another apple or carrot. If the "green" is not evident we add a few more kale or collard stalks. Collards are actually amazing in juice, they taste nothing like the "southern collards" I remember eating as a kid, bitter and just downright gross!

"I know its green...but what else is about it?" Favorite KidHistory quote. :)

Here are a couple of other recipes we've played with and found to be good:
Carrot-Kale Combo
1 Green Apple
3 Handfuls spinach
6-8 Kale Leaves
4 Large Carrots
1 Piece Ginger (thumb sized) 

Green Lemonade
1 Green Apple
3 Handfuls Spinach
6-8 Kale Leaves
½ Cucumber
4 Celery Stalks
½ Lemon
You can substitute a thumb size piece of ginger for the citrus in the juice and its a totally different drink. I never peel my lemons/limes, just wash them and quarter them along with the other fruits. We're continuing to juice at our lunchtimes during the week, even if we eat a small meal with it. We've consumed over 4 bags of spinach, 25 stalks of kale, 15 collards, 2 bags of red apples, 2 bags of granny smith apples, 10 lbs of carrots, 10 lemons, 2 limes, 8 cucumbers, ginger, and 2 heads of celery since we started on January 14th. Although I'm not a proponent of exclusive juicing, I'm also honest enough to admit that we'd never have consumed all those had I bought them at the store and prepared them with dinners/lunches, etc. They would have invariably sat and wilted until fridge cleaning day, for the most part. :) I also discovered much about herbs through this, for example, parsley is excellent for vitamin c/a and vitamin k, while cilantro is a strong anti-oxidant and cleanses the body of heavy metals, while serving as an antibacterial/antifungal agent. Even just a small amount in the juices or chopped and put in our morning omelet helps...every little bit helps.
Hope this little blip into our January experiment encourages you if you're wanting to get healthier but hasn't made that initial step towards it....try a 7 day "juice at lunch" experiment and check out the changes for yourself! We use the Juiceman Jr. juicer we were given as a wedding gift, but there are many good ones out there....I'm sure that a friend will let you borrow theirs as well! My two neighbors and I have started a once a week "juicing get together" to try new recipes and mixtures, just for the fun of it. :) I'll let you know if we come up with something amazing, lol.
Next update promises to be about Baby Anjuli, Lou's school and moving possibilities.....