The Aftermath of Christmas & Veggie broth

The beginning of Veggie Broth.

My last post I talked about going into the Christmas celebrations and food without a diet in mind. Seriously you can’t diet during the holidays. Why bother, all you do is beat yourself up every time a cookie or glass of wine lands in front of you. My advice was to go for it. So you did, and here we are now, feeling bloated as a stuffed turkey, because you swear you ate the entire stuffed turkey, and all the sides in one sitting. You probably roughly consumed about 4000 calories  or more on Christmas day. And that wasn’t the first day you ate that many calories. If you’re like me, my calorie count shot through the roof for the past two weeks.

The large stock pot

What did I do? I planned ahead.

I knew this just wasn't coming, but was here. So while buying Christmas dinner, I bought a lot of winter veggies and brightly colored veggies, for planned preparation for a fast. I made my favorite veggie broth to help clean my body out.

Draining off the broth

The day after Christmas, the first thing I did was get rid of  high sugary foods, cookies, cakes, candy, whatever was left. Tomorrow, any snack stuff, like dips. By Friday the leftovers from Christmas dinner should be consumed. I sent a lot home with family.  Hubs wants his leftovers, so I kept a couple meals worth for us. Not that I can blame him, they are good. I’ve put my house back together, while searching for my sanity, I lost it somewhere in the rum spiked eggnog. Today I got back on my exercise routine. I fell off the wagon or treadmill the past two weeks, now I’m ready, at least mentally to get back to it and plan on hitting it really hard.

Cooked down veggies

It isn’t hard to recover from the aftermath of the holidays. Really it isn't, its all mental. After a few days of cleansing out the system, and you’ll be ready to go and get back to the diet plan and exercise routine quickly. Have faith. You can count on at least the first 5lbs of weight gain during this period to be water weight. If you've gained that much, it will come off easily as soon as you change your eating habits back to plant based and lighter meats, such as skinless chicken and fish. Don't wait for January 1st to start. Get back on the diet bandwagon now. It make its easier when the New Year rolls around. 

For Veggie Broth:

The end results. A dark colored healthy broth.

It is very simple, put into a large stock pot, lots of colorful veggies, deep greens, spinach, kale, chard. Then bright orange, carrots, sweet potato. I add a parsnip, a sweeter cousin to the carrot and bit paler. I also add two cinnamon sticks, two star anise, and two nutmegs. You can add any kind of herbs, for taste, and salt and whole pepper corn. Cover the veggies with water. Bring the pot to a boil, simmer for 30 mins. Turn off and let sit for 1 hr, then drain off veggies and save your broth. I run it through cheese cloth once to make clearer, but that’s just me. Drink it like a tea.One thing about making your own broth, you know whats in it. One piece of advice, scrub your veggies thoroughly. This broth is great if you're feeling a bit sluggish, the bright green veggies are loaded with magnesium, which is essential to your energy levels. It freezes beautiful.  

Saturday I’m going into a juicing and broth fast for three days. But, I will consume healthy calories in the form of solid veggies and light fish for dinner. This should help to kick start me right back into my regular eating habits. Fingers crossed.

Follow me through a 2 1/2 day of a juice and broth fast

I'm fasting this weekend on juice and broth. This is a difficult fast, that really flushes out the body of toxins. Why now right before the big "T" day? To prepare for all those foods that I don't normally eat. I'll fast again in the following week after Thanksgiving, and probably twice during the Christmas holiday. I eat foods I normally don't eat during this time. Especially the high sugary ones, and more alcohol then normal, that includes a lot of mixed high sugar drinks.

First I prepared myself both mentally and physically for this fast at least four days prior to the dates I decided to fast. A fast should never be any longer then 3 days.

I eliminated from my diet this week the following:

1. Red meats. 
2. Alcohol.
3. Dairy
4. Highly processed foods, such as sodas and canned goods.  (Rarely eat or drink these anyways.)
5. No Caffeine. I switched to decaf.   
6. No sugary foods.
7. No fried foods. 
8. I don't eat fast food, but if you do it needs to be eliminated during this process.
9. No deserts. (I'm not a desert eater, so this was another easy one.)
10. Drink lots of water.
11. Eat lots vegetables and fruits. 
12. What proteins I ate, was chicken and fish. 
13. Everyday I ate less and less carbs in the form of breads, pasta, grains and rice. 
14. Hang up my bike and running shoes. No exercising until Monday. 

It seems like a lot to give up and all at once and honestly it is. Which is why I gave up a couple of things a day, not all at once as my fast date approached. I suggest if you've never done a complete cleansing fast, you prepare at least two weeks in advance. You may lose weight in the prep process. During the actual fast weight lose is normal. But it is only temporary.

Fasting isn't for the faint of heart. This process needs to be planned out in order to be successful. I've picked this particular weekend, because it's going to be cold and rainy. I can't ride my bike or run. It's the quietest weekend I'll have prior to the holidays. I don't have any distractions. I can hunker down, juice and drink vegetable broth and write.

I'll do regular updates on my Facebook, Lee Lopez author, on what I'm doing and how I'm feeling.  
 

 

The Diet, Stress and Little Insanity for flavor

Stress is probably one of the biggest diet killers along with that bottle of honey Jack in the cupboard. If anything can throw you off track from bothering to weigh food, watching every fucking calorie that goes done the gullet, and gives the biggest excuse to miss the Zumba class because of emotional exhaustion, it’s STRESS. Yes, stress will take a perfectly good diet and exercise day, and just trash it right into the gutter. It does for me, because I’m a stress eater.

When I’m under stress, nothing that even resembles food, wither I like it or not, will go in my mouth. I’m like a teething two year old. It all goes to one place, in the pie hole, including a piece of pie. And I don’t eat sweets.

Right before I went on vacation with my friends to beautiful Mendocino, I was slammed with over the top family drama. My dad is 90 something years old, (there is a whole story behind why we don’t have an exact age) and seems to think his new job in his golden years is to make his kids crazy. He should get a raise because he does a damn good job of it. It just might be pay back for our teen years. I’m beginning to really believe it.

The problem is more dad’s live in girlfriend, than him. On his own he’s pretty good. His girlfriend, who has been with him for only two years, is a mean nasty thing. Twice we’ve called Adult Protective Services on her. The first time she called her son to come and get her, because of this bodacious insult. The son refused, doesn’t want mom under his roof making him miserable. What my dad saw in her, I don’t know. She’s vicious enough to end up as the villain in a book. Yep, never piss off an author, ya might end up in an Indie book, which stays up on Amazon for fucking ever and ever, one more ever to grind in the point. Actually the whole shebang goes in the will, along with the image of being a really repulsively ugly bad guy, with the very well worded imagery.

What this whole situation has done, is completely throw me off my diet. While in Mendocino, I actually did pretty well, because my friends all eat healthy. It was the wine that was the killer, but it was so beautiful, having a glass of wine on the front porch with ocean view, can ya blame me. We hiked every morning and spent hours exploring the area, so I burned off every calorie that passed my lips. I even managed to lose a couple of pounds while I was there. In between stress and walking, I'm sure that did it. I would never prescribe this as a diet. Stress will kill ya, or your 90 something year old dad.

I had to make a run to dad’s when I got home and confront the girlfriend and her bad behavior and lies. It was ugly and once more, my diet went further south, due to the stress, and because I was eating out. I didn’t want to eat there, I was afraid she’d poison me. APS was there, again, and things were straightened out, again. We're getting to know the social worker well, maybe we'll invite her to Thanksgiving. Oh the girlfriend would love that, maybe so much she'll leave for the day. We just have to get one of the girlfriend's six kids to take her. Damn, maybe I can pay them to take their mother. Buy She Cried Wolf, so I can bribe this woman's kids into taking her away. Please. It's only $1.99. This whole situation has slowed my writing progress way down, to a near stop.

So now I’m fighting to regain my diet footing. I rode my bike like the wind yesterday. Today, nothing, I had a migraine. Tomorrow, I plan on taking a nice long ride. My diet is slowly going back to normal. I’m eating a lot of veggies, juicing and adding more fruit, trying to get more sleep, that’s a challenge, since my dad makes me fucking crazy, (he won’t kick the girlfriend out because he feels sorry for her). I don’t, I’ll do it.

This is turning into the further adventures of Lee and her diet. Stay tuned for more disruptions. The one thing, that is helping with my stress and physical exhaustion, is Kale juice. I drink it everyday. I swear by it. Kale juice helps with detoxing the liver. The liver stores energy. The better functioning it is, the more energy there will be for the body to burn.  This nasty little veggie is one of the healthiest things you can put in your body, especially for women. Try different recipes to get use to it. I swear this dark green veggie is keeping me sane right now.

If you have a juicer it's very easy, 2 bunches of cleaned kale, with two apples. When I drink it, because it is nasty, almost as nasty as the girlfriend, but not quit, I squeeze one lemon in it. It helps to cut the bitterness.

The pictures I took while in Mendocino. It's such a spectacular area. My muse did manage to wake out of a deep slumber a couple of times.