First Day With the New Juicer and Beck: Day 8-Create Time and Energy

Good afternoon everyone! Can I be honest with you? I'm very stressed out. One sick kid who is supposed to be in a play tonight and tomorrow night, another kid who is refusing to go to the day care that I arranged for him this week and well, just some other freakin' crap and I'm all out of whack. The old me would have fallen off the wagon at this point, turned to the fridge to heal my pain. But that's not how I operate these days.

Why? Because I take the time and spend the energy to stack the cards in my favor. Just like Beck says, successful "dieting" (oh how I hate that word) requires us to schedule time for dieting, which often means decreasing, delegating, or eliminating some other tasks and activities. In other words, it is ALL about prioritizing the tasks we perform in our lives to make sticking to our new way of eating a reality, instead of a fantasy.

For me, it means planning menus, reading healthy cookbooks and blogs, writing shopping lists, preparing food and even writing this blog are all very high priorities for me.

If your achieving a healthy weight or maintaining one is not a priority for you at this time in your life, that's okay. No judgement here! But if you are serious about this, you need to look at what you are doing every day and figure out how you are going to eliminate some of that to make room for some of this.

One of my priorities is experimenting with new foods that are on my plan. That's why I invested in a juicer. I'm not quite sure how juicing fits into my life yet, whether it will be an occassional treat, something fun to do for guests at dinner parties or something that I do more seriously like juice fasting (feasting), but I do know that I adore the taste of fresh vegetable/fruit juices. If you haven't had beet, carrot, ginger, cucumber, celery, lettuce, fennel, apple, pear, etc. freshly juiced then let me tempt you. They are wonderful!

I chose the Champion juicer because that's what Tom uses at my favorite restaurant, but I'm sure that lots of brands make decent juicers.

It doesn't hurt that my kids think it's really fun and exciting. I was practically jumping up and down when my eleven year old was drinking spinach!

Don't be confused, I'm not replacing my morning green smoothie with a fresh juice. At least not on most days. Turns out I need that green smoothie with ground flaxseed to keep my system running normally (if you know what I mean), which is very important to me. Gena from Choosing Raw explains the difference between juices and smoothies and why each are great. It's just that my health is a BIG priority for me, and this is another way of expressing that.

How have you made your health a priority?

Have you given up certain tasks or activities in order to make time for healthy eating? If so, did it feel like a big sacrifice?

Did eating/cooking healthy ever start to feel normal for you, like it just wasn't such a big deal or sacrifice anymore but rather just who you are and how you operate?

Turns out that just writing this blog post relieved a lot of the stress that I was feeling. Thank you for being here and sticking around! I mean it.