Owl Bee Healthy!: Week 4 of Partial Reboot!

Sunday, July 8th, marked the last day of Week 4 of our Partial Reboot experience! We're still calling it that for now, because we aren't necessarily following all the Reboot with Food rules, but we are following a set of our own adapted rules that we can improve upon once we're ready to.

These rules are as follows:
1. Swap 2 meals plus one snack with a Juice or Smoothie, totaling 3 per day.
2. All other foods/meals must stick to a plant-based diet; no meat, no dairy, no refined sugars (we use honey, agave nectar or TruVia), no processed junk.
3. Snacks must be as close to nature as we can manage: veggies, fruits, nuts, hummus (no tahini if we can find it), guacamole, flax wraps, popcorn (kettle is as naughty as we'll go), and Bee likes to eat dates with breakfast (which is fine, because they are fruits after all!).
4. We allow cheats about once per week. So if someone makes dinner for us with cheese or meat, we aren't going to insult anybody. We just eat it, enjoy it, and move on with life!

Oh-my-gosh, I can't believe we've been doing this for a whole MONTH already!!!

Even though we are busy, we've been able to manage the Juicing. We've learned to make our Juice at night for the next day in a big batch, and store it in either glass or metal containers so as not to get plastic leached into our juice. (The whole point is to weed out the poisons!) We really like using these Klean Kanteens for storage and transport! They are pricey, but durable and the lids screw on super tight, so we don't need to worry about spillage.

Owl told me I get a lot of strange looks from our customers while I drink my Juice at work... They're always so surprised that what I'm drinking is not only healthy, but it also doesn't have any booze in it! They can look all they want- hopefully they'll notice I'm shrinking in size as well.

We're doing well staying on the Vegan track so far, with the exception that our cooks at work make our stir-fry veggie dishes with chicken stock. That's a bummer, but I'm pretty sick of the Chinese flavor anyway, so we're going to have to find some new things to eat at work.

Actually... Owl has been talking about trying a true Juice Fast again, and soon!

We have a vacation coming up, and we really want to lose more weight over the next two weeks. We've got some flax wraps, about a gazillion pounds of home made guacamole, and a few non-juiceable fruits (I REFUSE to juice perfectly good cherries!) still in the house, so perhaps once all that stuff is gone, we'll give it a try again!

Also, we've been trying to balance out our Juice recipes so that we aren't taking in too much sugar with the fruits. We learned from John the Juicer these awesome tips, below:

The rules to a good Green Juice are...
1. Start with one of these mild yet juicy Bases: zucchini/squash, cucumber, celery, carrot, apple. Your Juice should be 70% Base.
2. Make the remaining 30% of your Juice with dark, leafy green veggies, such as: kale, swiss/rainbow chard, spinach, collard greens.

Green Juices are supposed to be mainly vegetables. Fruits are supposed to be eaten, mostly, and not juiced. However, we personally enjoy a nice flavorful Juice, so we'll add something that has a flavor kick to it. I like adding kiwis, or pineapple, or a few grapes for sweetness. Ginger, lime, lemon or mint can be added as well!

OH!!! OH!!!! I almost forgot to tell you this...

We've finally started to exercise!!!

Yes, for real and for true! Now that we're lighter, and feeling better, we felt up for a nice walk. And since then, we've been committing to walking three times a week for one hour, outside in our hilly neighborhood! And we've been using this app called Endomondo so we can beat our own record. So far, we can walk 3 miles in one hour, (1 mile in a little over 17 minutes). Isn't that GREAT?!!

Here are some of our other "exciting" moments this week: