A Juice for the New Year

It's been a dog's age since I've written a post for Married with Veggies, and it's not been a pretty epoch on planet good health. Pounds have been gained. Couches have been surfed. Eyeballs have popped out looking down at numbers on scales we'd sworn never to be at (and in Lady* Married with Veggies' case MORE than at) again. Like I said. Not pretty.

In December, Lady Married with Veggies had a wake up call. After a relatively fallow period in the migraine suffering department, during a 10-day period in December she (OK--I) had six very bad migraines. Couldn't see. Couldn't talk. Couldn't think. Worse? The headaches  freaked me out enough that I refilled a prescription for the blood-brain barrier medicine my doctor advised me to stop taking. I know. Believe me, I know. But when you know the old stuff works and don't yet trust the new stuff, well. Bad choices can sometimes seem like the only way out.

I was doing pretty well with this cycle of head hell, all things considered. And by all things considered I mean my rampant hypochondria. But an hour into migraine number 6, I cracked. Convinced myself I had a tumor. That I was dying. And I was going to leave Lord* Married with Veggies alone on Christmas. So I slinked away to be scared and alone, but sir Married with Veggies found me crying and curled up on the bed in the guest room. In retrospect, our condo probably isn't  nearly big enough to nurture selective disappearance. 

Lord Married With Veggies brushed my hair back and assured me I very likely wasn't dying and gently reminded me about all the shit we'd been eating over the last few weeks and months and suggested that before I write out my last will and testament, I might want to consider getting back on the horse. The, err, veggie horse. 

I'm paraphrasing.   

So that's what we're doing. But in true disordered fashion, I decided it would be good to combine our New Year's Eve movie marathon with a last hurrah of Chinese food and baked goods and chocolate and, well. I did say it hasn't been pretty. 

The first movie of the feasty film fest?  Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. A documentary about an Australian who saves his life by rebooting his body with a 60-day juice fast. It was inspirational--though not inspirational enough to inspire me to lay down the fork full of (vegetarian!) chow mein. Though I did cheer (out loud) twice while watching. 

By midnight we'd watched The Artist and The Avengers, and I'd eaten myself into a big belly ache. I asked Lord Married with Veggies where exactly the appendix was, and he bopped me in the head. No, he did not. But you get the idea. 

I would like to say I got up this morning and started my own 60-day juice fast, but that would be freaky crazy nuts talk. What I did was I got up and reminded myself that I want to try and be 90 percent plant based in 2013, and with the inspiration of Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead fresh in my mind, I decided to juice a big plate of fruit and veggies...and it  took me nearly an hour to choke down the results.

Will I do a juice fast any time soon? I think I want to concentrate on eating better first, but when I feel better, I may give it a try.

For now, it was a very vegan breakfast to start off 2013 right. Now I know that a quart of juice isn’t exactly going to wash away the sins of the last half year or anything, but watching Lord Married with Veggies' face when he tried the results of my juicing experiment gave me my first belly laugh of the new year…and that’s a very good thing.

Pre juice: A head of broccoli, 2 cucumbers, 2 green apples
2 oranges, 2 red peppers, and 4 handfuls of baby spinach

Post juice: Sorry. It looks WAY better in the before picture. 

Dressed up with a fancy glass and a colorful straw! 

Veggie blood! 

The purple dress I had dry-cleaned
to serve as motivation. Perhaps I will
wear that on New Year's Eve....2015 (it's
veeerrry small).

*Mayhap Lord and Lady Married with Veggies  have been watching a wee too much Downton Abbey this fall.