The cleanse is over back to the sobriety

So the five days of just drinking freshly squeezed juice is over.
I weighed in at 179.2lbs which is a drop of 4.8lbs in the five days. I feel like if I can stay on track then it has been a worthwhile kick start to my weight loss journey. I don’t have too far to go but it’s nice to have a helping hand to give you confidence and direction.
My skin has definitely improved. Cleaner and with a certain shine to it. I’m really pleased but I have to say it has been a challenge I wouldn’t like to have to complete too frequently. This morning I started the day with a juice and I’m out for a meal this evening. I’m planning ahead for the next few days so I don’t go putting that weight straight back on. My clothes fit better and I’m definitely pleased with the overall results. I want to lose about 6-10 more lbs to reach my goal of 170lbs or there abouts.

So I can now digress back to my sobriety. Today is day 75 so I am three quarters of the way there. It’s strange but I feel like I’m getting so close when actually I have almost a month to go. It’s definitely a period of time which has helped me readjust. It’s long enough to allow yourself time to think about your old drinking habits and whether you will be able to change how you handle situations in future. I’m still not sure which way I will sway. A lot has happened in the past 75 days and I have a lot coming up in the next 25.

There’s not much else to report but ‘being sober’ has become so much a part of my life now I don’t seem to notice it so much. I haven’t been out as much but I have saved a lot of money and bought a lot of nice things. So lets see how the next few weeks go.

Hope everyone who reads this is well.

Day four and five

Well i’m now on the last day of the ‘cleanse’ and it hasn’t been an easy ride. 

The points which made it hard were the fact that i work shifts and the past two days I have been getting up at 4am and trying to hold out for the first juice till 10am which is not a good idea. It made me very hungry and yesterday i had another emergency avocado although my juice later in the day called for an avocado so i just left it out then. 

im sitting here drinking my first juice of four on the last day. It has carrots apples beetroots and blackberries in it and its not the most satisfying drink but hey ho. 

I have weighed myself each day and today I was 12st 11.2 (179.2lbs) which is great I may even be able to get down to 12st 10 tomorrow and then i will be back on solid foods.

Advice from the program after the five days is to stick to drinking juice in the morning and having sort of blended soups and juices through the day. I am out in the evening tomorrow for a meal but I already know they do a Waldorf salad which has my name on it. 

I think i will do one more post about it later on to sum up my overall opinion of the plan. For now I can definitely see my skin is clearer, a sort of little shine to it. My eyes are nice and white and bright which they have been since I stopped drinking.  I am not tired but I still feel a little weak, I think the shifts have messed up my sleep patterns which is probably the reason for that. I have a big day with exams tomorrow so a good night sleep and a healthy breakfast will get me ready I hope.

I would recommend anyone to try it. If you work normal days then this totally attainable Monday to Friday which not a lot of preparation. I chose Jason Vales plan over the Fat Sick and Nearly dead one only because he was English and the juicer and vegetables and fruit were all spelt out in the vernacular. Not that its that difficult but it seemed more straight forward. 

So far I have lost 4.8lbs and the plan is 5lbs in 5 days so right on the mark there. Though I’m not bounding with energy just yet I do feel like I’ve completed a mini challenge or I will have done by this evening.

Still sobering along too. Im on day 74 now i believe. Only 26 days to go

Day two and three

So it’s now 6pm moving towards the end of day 3 of 5 days juice fasting. It is somewhat of a hellish challenge but I suppose it depends on your attitude and ability to deal with different mental and physical emotions.

The thing I notice most is weakness. Not necessarily tiredness, but a weakness in my arms and legs and a general loss of endurance and a small increase in fatigue. Running up stairs makes me ‘feel’ like I’ve worked for it. I’m still cycling to work but some how this is fine I don’t notice the tiredness there. I’m drinking a lot of peppermint tea but tomorrow I’m going to switch the tea to just water and try and keep super hydrated as I know that might be the issue here.
Towards the end of yesterday at about 8.30pm I was already in bed but I couldn’t sleep as I had a rumbling stomach and a head ache. You are allowed one hunger SOS each day so I chose to use mine right then. I had an avocado with lemon juice and crack black pepper. 15 minutes later everything was fine and I was drifting off to sleep.
One thing I have noticed straight away even after only 3 days is that I feel lighter than ever. I’ve lost 2.6lbs so far (mostly probably water weight) and my face has definitely lost some puffiness. I have some patchy coloured skin which I’m hoping will brighten up a bit more too. Clothes feel a lot more comfortable and even the tighter clothes feel better as I’m not full of food.

It’s a very testing experience and if I hadn’t bought all the food I advance then I may have quit.
Stopping smoking and drinking alcohol is a breeze in comparison. The mind is a powerful thing, you can tell it that you don’t need poisons and it will help to repair itself, but if you try and tell it that it doesn’t need food it will literally kick you in the balls. I’m just drinking juice 3 of 4 at the moment because I went to bed at two and only woke up half hour ago. I have to get up again tomorrow morning at 4.20am or work so it won’t be long before I head back upstairs.

The fast coach says that day four I’m expecting to bounce round the room on a super energy high. If you told me that earlier I would have snorted in your face but I will wait and see. It would be nice because I have a hard day at work tomorrow.

Alcohol wise, I’m not really sure what t say, I’m just strutting down this sober road, problem free, waiting for day 100 to come along and give me a big kiss.

Hope all you guys are well.

Day one of the cleanse

So I said I would post for each day and I am now at the end of Day one of my Juice ‘cleanse’.
I’m going to unpack the name cleanse as it’s really just a way of saying ‘packed full of nutrients but really low calorie 5 day challenge’ though it doesn’t have the same ring to it.

First off it’s nice and simple, 4 juices per day along with the most amazing ginger shot in the morning (1cm ginger and half and apple juiced in a shot glass) blew my head off so I had two.
Then the first and last juice are the same and the two during the day are the same meaning you can prepare them n the morning and store them in the fridge.

It was simple enough, but, as always I am a shift worker so I knew I would be out till midnight. I started my first juice at 10am second at 1pm third at 4pm and final one at 7pm. With five more hours of work i took an emergency banana which is permitted but I didn’t bother with it. I’m now home in bed with a glass of hot water and lemon (recommended). I also drank a lot of peppermint tea which is allowed too.

Here’s what I found.
The first few hours of the day were exciting. Planning the juices and feeling ready for the challenge. Then about half an hour before my second juice I felt a pang of hunger. I relieve it with the next juice. By about 2.45pm I felt very tired so I went back to bed for an hour before work at 4.30pm. At 3.50 I got up and had my next juice and cycled to work as usual. I felt absolutely normal right up till about 6.30 when I got a bit tired again. After my last juice I felt good again but by 8.30pm I was talking to a friend on the phone about it and I think what got to me most was no actual food was available. I could seriously smell food a mile away and everything smelt delicious. I kept getting little sharp pangs of want for food. It was exactly like when I quit smoking. A little pang which fills you with disappointment because you know you’re not doing that at the moment.

So yeah I coped through day 1 and I’m ready to sleep now and looking forward to tomorrow’s juices as they contain beet root?! Random I know. Will write again. Btw weight started at 182lbs.

Fortune, favour and setbacks?

Ok I notice overall I have blogged a very rose tinted view of my sobriety so far. I’ve hit two months today (61 days) so I though I’d google the hell out the topic ‘2 months sober’. It got me across a load of incredibly well written pieces about how crap people still felt and how much they missed drinking at weekends. One even mentioned upping and leaving a family to go somewhere to drink all their problems away.

I had a sudden rush of fear and trepidation. Is this what comes next……? Then I realised that I was reading the Internet, duh! Not everything is how it seems online. It’s something I have come to learn. A lot of the time when looking for information, the internet can confuse you even more the longer you look for stuff. A lot of the time I guess you can weigh up the evidence and make a confident decision. Here’s the thing though. I really wanted my 100 days to go well. I started with a great feeling because I knew there was a better place. I really felt like if I stopped then everywhere that was covered in sh*t would suddenly start growing roses. In all honesty that hasn’t happened. So because of what I have read today I wanted to post a few bad items I have discovered from being sober. I don’t want people to think that every morning I wake to the sound of angels singing only to spend hours pirouetting through the day like a river dancer on acid.

1. If you think that social situations are awkward then they get a little bit worse. They do get better again but the initial telling people that you have stopped becomes a broken record and the retaliation an unwelcome repeat. I handled this well because I was determined not to be a bore. I fought hard to remain my silly self and somewhat succeeded which really confused the hell out of my friends, most of whom expected me to fall at the first hurdle. It wasn’t super easy though. I had to throw myself out there like an inexperienced swimmer in deep waters, so it was kind of scary. It was also kind of exciting like the nervous anxiety you get from waiting to ride roller coasters. So plan ahead, or the awkwardness may become a depressing memory of your first sober social encounter.

2. Health and weight loss seem to have missed me out completely! (Not completely but….meh!)
For someone who had quit smoking and stopped drinking I expected in my first week to have lost 4 pounds and to have developed the ability to breath underwater. The shocking truth as anybody would have told me, had I listened is that these things take time time time. I am an eager beaver and wanted to jump straight into the last week of rehabilitation. I wanted to be sipping mango and kale smoothies on a sunbed in Hawaii, a few days from coming home after transforming my life. All of this on day two….hmmm. So yeah patience is a virtue, but time is a b*tch.

3. Next up is the status of social pariah. I have done well because I think my friends are pretty awesome but there is always one who want to put you right down amongst the rats. The one who wants to laugh because you can’t handle beer, the one who spends all night trying to make you drink why simultaneously mocking at your inability to ‘join in’…. Fortunately those ‘w*nkesr’ Are few and far between and I haven’t seen mine again nor will I for a while, but it makes you choose which friends you hang around with.

So what else can I drag up in this doom and gloom post?
4.It’s easy to forget how much or an arse/annoyance/alcoholic you were before you stopped drinking. The extra money in your pocket, the extra miles you can actually run, the extra hours you have wide awake and coherent. All of these things don’t remind you how far you have come, instead they blind you to the facts, and redirect you to the longing for that missing buzz. Now I am on this. I am owning this 100 days, whether it kills me or takes me even closer to the edge. I am doing this because it is in my DNA to fail and give up so I want to complete this so much. I know in my mind that I am going to. It is taking up a lot of my concentration and I know there is still time for the neuro synapse thingys in my brain to re-align so I will wait it out patiently. Things can only get better right? Every time I mentally ask myself would I drink on day 100 the answer roughly 7 times out of 10 is yes, I would.
I hope I will learn more before my 100 days is up. The more I think about it the more I am intrigued to see what 200 days feels like so who knows where this might go.

So to clarify because like I said even though there are a few bits of crap to wade through. It IS all worth it, especially when I look at my bank account. Which I do on a regular basis now just because I can’t get over the fact there is still money in it. I definitely have a good time when I go out and I feel like I still fit in even without the poison, I get to drive home too, so I fall asleep in a bed for the recommended time suggested by scientists, (sounds like a riot doesn’t it?). The second paragraph talks about weight loss and health, and now after two months I can confirm I have lost about 4 or 5 pounds and I now cycle to and from work almost everyday. This is 10 miles a day, I am enjoying it too. It’s becoming easier and so I guess I’m improving. Just remember it takes time time time. The social pariah status is all decided by a small amount of people and if you’re lucky enough to have some good friends then hopefully you won’t encounter any of the b*stards who want to rain on your parade. As for the last paragraph I have to relate to my own blog, it takes time to readjust and there are stages you will go through. If you’re new to sobriety and you can relate to any of this then I hope it helps to know that 90% of the time I’m riding the crest of a wave and the moment I crash and burn I’m still nice and sober so I can pick myself up and dust myself off, climb back on the board and reach the top again. The biggest thing I have learnt is that it all lies up there in your mind. The ability to enjoy life sober or drunk is all up there in your synapses and it is you that decides what side of bed you get out of in the morning. Don’t always rely on other people to tell you how you will feel and always take other people’s journey with a pinch of salt, we are all individual. You are the master of you own destiny and if you smile the whole world will smile back, I promise. Good luck to all of you.