Day 1: Reminiscing & the Weekend

Verse of the Day - Day 1: "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the
world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world." - 1 John 2:15-16

Well, my weekend got off to a great start...and it just kind of stayed in this state of awesome greatness. Jason works a lot of weekends, but every three weeks or so we get a weekend off together. This was one of those weekends and it did not disappoint.

Friday we saw my favorite band at the Boutwell Auditorium. Before the show, we ate at the Bottega Cafe - which was a new experience for me. I've eaten at Bottega once before, but that was when I was still in high school and visiting Samford. Then we went to the Needtobreathe show, and we even ran into some friends! This was my third time seeing them live, and Jason's fifth. Interestingly enough, they're MY favorite band, not his. Hehe, guess he'll have to keep taking me every time they're close by ;-)

Jason & I between sets

Needtobreathe

My new hoodie.

Saturday Jason drove me around what is now my "dream" neighborhood (emphasis on the dream). We also loaded up on fruits and veggies for this week! Yay for Aldi. We only spent $56 and that included some normal food for Jason. That night we ordered Tazikis to go, stayed at home, and watched The Impossible - which was super intense but good. I can't believe Anne Hathaway won Best Supporting Actress over Naomi Watts. Nothing personal Anne, Naomi was just that good. We also caught up on some of our TV shows, one being Person of Interest. When we were in NYC, we saw them filming an episode and we were about three feet away from Jim Caviezel (aka John Reese on POI and Jesus in The Passion of the Christ) and Michael Emerson (aka Harold Finch on POI and Ben Linus on LOST). Well, this past Thursday, "our" episode was on! We finally got to watch it on Saturday and we literally both freaked out!

If you own this house, I'll be your best friend forever if you sell it to the Morales' for $10.

Cleanse groceries.

The top picture is what we saw in NYC. The bottom picture is what was on TV Thursday.

Sunday we went to church, relaxed, and then went to a wedding to see one of my friends from work get married. I spent a little bit of time answering the "Personal Reflection" questions in the Made to Crave book (which I finished on Friday...YAY). In keeping with vunerablity throughout this process on my blog, I wanted to share this with my blog readers. I hope and pray that maybe just one person can halfway identify with me on this.

Question: What fantasies do you have about what life would be like if you were at your ideal weight? Do you imagine everything in your life would somehow be better—your relationships would improve, your confidence would soar, your problems would fall away, you’d be respected, admired, obeyed? Why do you think your weight has so much power to influence your outlook on life?

My Answer: "I think that I've always thought that if I were skinnier I'd have more friends, find a really great and good looking guy who would want to date me, get a super awesome dream job, and have better relationships with those who are currently in my life. But now that I'm married to the perfect guy for me, and I'm not skinnier, I know that skinny does not equal happy. Even though I may not be happy with myself, I am more than happy - in fact I'm overjoyed - with the life that God has given me. My weight battle is now more about loving myself and being confident in who God made me to be. I feel like my weight holds me back from accomplishing things that He may be calling me to do - not physically, but emotionally, mentally, and spiritually (I know that I'm not obese or even really fat...I'm just uncomfortable). I want to find my worth in Him and follow ANYTHING He calls me to do. I've found that being married and still being my version of overweight, I find a lot of my self worth through the eyes of my husband...which I think is good in many ways...but I want to find ALL of my self worth and confidence in Christ - internally and externally."

I'm not sure how well I actually answered the question, but those thoughts have been on my heart for a while so it felt good to get them all out.

This morning I got up at the normal time, made a juice, and packed an ice chest (yes, I have an ice chest at my desk today) full of fruit.

1 Granny Smith Apple, 1 Kiwi, Some green grapes.

Please excuse the piled dishes. We were in a hurry this morning. Ahh...Mondays.

My bag-o-fruit to take to work. It's a few layers deep.

My goal is to write a blog post that will go up before lunchtime that gives an overview of the previous day and the prep for the current day.

A few things to know if you're doing the cleanse along with me:

1. You can't have coffee. Now, I don't really use super bad stuff in my coffee, or at least I don't have to. I can do black coffee with a little skim milk and Splenda, so there may be a day that I have to break down and drink a bit of "gray" coffee. Tea is a great alternative in the mornings.
2. After day one and two, you may feel a little "swimmy headed". I honestly don't know how else to describe it. This went away for me after the first few days once my body got over the shock that I was actually eating natural foods. 
3. If you're hungry, you need to eat. Maybe eat a little something every 90 minutes or so.
4. Drink LOTS of water.
5. Stick to the plan as best as possible. This is done best by not putting yourself in temptation of breaking the plan. Don't go "sit" with your bestie at Pizza Hut, it won't go well. 
6. Don't try to exercise. If you do, go for a brisk walk or something, but don't try to do heavy weightlifting or intense running or anything. 
7. The recipe soup on Day 7 makes a TON. I actually didn't buy stuff for it because last time I ended up throwing a lot of it out. I may end the cleanse at lunchtime on Day 7 this time because I got really really weak on this day last time. After eating protein for a few days, it was really tough to go back to eating only veggies at the end of this. So, I think I'm just going to make about 1/4 of what the recipe calls for and then I'll eat protein at dinner.
8. Don't try to eat anything fried for a few weeks after the cleanse. It will make your tummy feel verdy uncomfortable. 
9. Get lots of sleep! 
10. Pray through this thing! Cleanse your body of toxins, sugars, and bad things, but also cleanse your heart of the nasty-ness that clogs it up on a daily basis.

If you have questions, please feel free to blogbacktome by commenting below or sending me an email! Thanks in advance for the prayers and encouragement :) 

That's all for Day 1 folks.
I've blogged to you...
Now you can blogbacktome