The Juicy Life--Day 4 of My 40 Day Juice Feast

I am now on Day 4 of a 40 day juice feast. Wow, I am 10% of the way through! I want to document my journey here. I would love to have advice from experienced juice feasters, since I am very much a newbie. I would also love it if anyone who feels so inclined would like to try it along with me. It certainly doesn't have to be 40 days! You could do a day or two, or longer if the Spirit moves you.

Juice Feasting is really a modified fast. You are giving your body a rest from the heavy work of digestion and allowing it to do the clean up and healing work it always wanted to do, but never had time for because it was busy digesting your dinner. Fasting has numerous benefits, among them healing, an increase in energy, and for me, an important part is a deepening of my spiritual experience. Like anything that is worthwhile, it can be challenging. The feeling of accomplishment at the end of the feast is going to feel incredible, I suspect. But even more, the act of doing such a loving thing for yourself, of purging yourself of toxins and leaving behind all that is no longer serving you, can be so healthy mentally and emotionally as well as physically.

I am doing 40 days because in the Bible, that is the number that symbolizes completeness. Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days, it rained for 40 days during Noah's great flood, the Isrealites wandered in the desert for 40 years, etc.

Already from this juice feast, I feel closer to God. He is my Source and the center of my life; all good things and all love flow from Him. Every time I have any discomfort or temptation, I choose to go to Him over and over for strength and comfort, and that is a very, very good thing. I am being filled with compassion for my fellow men, women, and especially children, who go to bed hungry and not by choice. They cannot just pick a day to end their hunger. I feel incredibly blessed by all the amazing produce and the abundance that is flowing into my life. I can feel the pure life energy contained in the plants that I juice nourishing me, deep down, even at a cellular level. I feel clean, and light. I know that I am being healed, even to the depths of my being.

I am working also on detoxing myself of emotional baggage: people and situations I need to forgive and send love to; limiting beliefs that are holding me back that I am willing to release. I am cleaning my house, literally, as well, giving away things that no longer serve me that they may bless someone else.

I would love to have you along for my journey, either as a co-juice feaster, a sage adviser, or a supportive spectator. Together, we are healing our lives, one day at a time.

The Juicy Life- Day Two

Yesterday, I started my juice feast with Dave, the Raw Food Trucker. I am a total noob with juicing, so I am just faking it till I make it. In the morning, I had a quart carrot top/cucumber/lemon. Not bad, but needed more sweet to balance out the lemon. I am doing the Tree of Life detox, so no sweet for me for the short run.

In the afternoon, I had a simple cucumber/kale, (I got an awesome deal on organic cucumbers!) To my huge surprise, it was mildly sweet, and kinda yummy.

Today I'm having beet greens with my cukes, and later spinach with them.

Dang this is getting to be a boring post! Ok, let me talk about why/how long I want to do this.

I am going for 40 days. In the Bible, 40 is a number that is symbolic of completion. Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days and nights, it rained 40 days and nights during Noah's great flood, the Isrealites wandered in the desert for 40 years, etc. You get the picture. I always walk for 40 minutes on the treadmill. :) (I do weight reps in sets of 12, another Bible number. I am not OCD, it's just for fun and for meaning.)

I am doing this for my health, but also for spiritual reasons. I will keep those between me and the Big Guy, but I just want to mention that fasting and prayer is very powerful and in the past, it has really deepened and enriched my spiritual life.

I am not mentioning my juice feast to any family or friends outside of my kids. So you guys and Dave will be my support system. I think I have a REALLY GOOD support system! lol

I am a little disheartened by all the waste involved in juicing. So far, I have made a filling for live swiss chard rolls with the pulp. The kids say it tasted really good with the Asian Tahini dressing (I got from It's A High Raw Life Michelle K right here in the culinary center.) I put it with a sunflower seed/tahini pate and rolled the chard leaves like a burrito. They looked yummy, and there was much scarfing and smiling among the teenagers, so I assume it was a winner.

I think I will be making lots of pulp crackers, too! Or just freezing some of it to use when my 40 days is complete.

Also, all the juice recipes I've found have fruit, which is obviously tasty, but I don't get any. Does anyone have any "veggie only" juices that are the bomb? Don't leave a sister hangin'!

Looking forward to a juicy day!

My Dinner With Dave The Raw Food Trucker

Some of you may have heard about Dave, the Raw Food Trucker. He is pretty well known in the raw community because of his awesome Youtube videos. Dave is a remarkable guy--he used to weigh 430 lbs. He was also diagnosed with cancer, and had diabetes that was bad enough that he almost had to go on insulin. That would have meant giving up trucking, which he loves. Instead, Dave had some great friends who introduced him to the raw food diet, and he released over 230 lbs, is cancer free, and has normal blood sugars! He is also warm, funny, and genuinely caring. I know, because I got to have dinner with him!


Monday afternoon, Annette from here at RFR messaged me that he was coming to town and there was a spur of the moment meetup planned at our favorite live cuisine restaurant, Blossoming Lotus to meet him. I was excited about meeting Dave, but honestly I was just as excited about meeting the fabulous Annette!


So I had a great meal and met lots of nice people. A lot of folks had never heard of Raw Food Rehab, so you KNOW I gave them the 411! Gotta share the love. We've got such a good thing going, but we can't be greedy and hog it, lol. There were so many people that showed up to meet Dave, that he ended up sitting at the other end of the table, but said he'd come see us a little later. So Annette and I had a great visit. It was like that line from the song The Rainbow Connection, "There's not a word yet/ For old friends, who've just met." She is a fabulous lady and I got to hear all about her raw catering business and I showed some stuff on her iphone and we laughed and ate, my two favorite things!


Sadly, Annette had to leave before Dave came to our end of the table. But when he did, I totally hit it off with him. We had a great talk, and I ended up driving him back to his hotel (his truck is in the shop.) He gave me great advice about "long-haul weight loss" since he's released more than 200 lbs, and I have released almost 100 but have a 150 more to go after that. He mentioned that he'd like to try another juice feast, and asked if I and another guy we met who has released a lot of weight, but like me, has a long way to go, would join him.


I have never tried a juice feast! I have always fallen firmly into the Green Smoothie camp because I believe the fiber is a sponge that gets rid of your toxins (I got that from Victoria Boutenko, whom I have tremendous respect for.) I have also water fasted, but 10 days was the longest. But our gorgeous Penni has been educating us about juicing, and then I meet Dave by chance, and he suggests a juice feast, and I'm starting to believe that God is trying to show me something, here.


So, ok, I am willing! Dave, Thubten (the other guy) and I are all going on a juice feast this month in honor of International Day of Juicing that is coming up next September 12. I am going to feast for the month (yikes!) and then I am going, along with Dave, to the big International Juice Feasting conference in Seattle at the end of my feast. I will get to meet Matt Monarch and Angela Stokes Monarch! (Here I am rubbing elbows with all these raw food celebs! I've had Rawdawg Rory and Amanda at my house, I've had dinner with Dave The Raw Food Trucker--next thing you know I'll have high tea with Ani Phyo or something!)


I am nervous but excited about trying juicing. Dave said that if I can't do it, it is perfectly fine to go back to eating, but we are going to stick to Gabriel Cousens' Rainbow Green Live Cuisine, Phase 1 recipes. That is the plan that Dave had so much success with, and the one he recommends for the short run.


So I will fill you in on my juicy adventures as we go along here. I feel like such a name-dropper! This is just so kewl. Any advice for me on juicing? Of course I am joining the Liquid Lounge and reading everything I can find about it. I am more wanting advice about the sticking to it for a whole month! I know Penni did months and months. Also, am I going to go broke buying all this produce?! Time will tell!

My Interveiw With Rawdawg Rory

Mallory Loses 90lbs and Shares Amazing Advice! from Rawdawg Rory on Vimeo.

The Proof Is In the Healing: My Lab Results!

I just got my annual labs done. I have had dangerously high cholesterol, as you can see, since at least 2006, when my total cholesterol was 253. (For reference, it is supposed to be under 180.) Even more alarming, my triglycerides were 396! They were more than double what is considered the maximum safe level of 150 mg/dl. Triglycerides measure the fats in the blood. My blood was so fatty it was thick and hard to pump through my body. My poor heart had to work over-over-over time just to get blood to all my organs. No wonder I had sky-high blood pressure, too. (Don't worry-the doctor was happy to give me a drug for that, too!)

The next few years, I was on a cholesterol-lowering statin, drugs like Lipitor and Crestor. You can see my cholesterol went down, but not enough. The bad thing is, statins lower your cholesterol, but they damage your liver! I was lowering my cholesterol, but I was doing toxic things to my liver! This was double bad, because I already had a "fatty liver" from being obese. My liver was so clogged with fat, it wasn't able to do it's job properly. Then I added toxics to it. Not very nice of me!

You can see where I made an honest effort to get healthy in 2007. I didn't know about raw foods, but I went vegetarian (not vegan) and I started exercising. That, combined with the drugs, got my cholesterol down to 163, and cut my triglycerides in half, yay me! But sadly, I had not dealt with my compulsive eating issues, and I was "white knuckling it." I fell off the wagon, hard, in 2008, and went back to fast food, sugar, meat, cheese, quit exercising--and my cholesterol went up just a little (due to the drugs) but my triglycerides doubled again!

In Sept, 2008, fresh off the bad news from my doctor's office, my friend Chasmyn told me about raw food. I was intrigued but it sounded hideously healthy. I knew I could never live on fruit and salad and wheatgrass juice! lol But she did a wonderful thing for me: she took me to a live food restaurant here in Portland, called The Blossoming Lotus. And the food was AMAZING. Beyond delicious! It made me think, "hmmm, maybe I could do this! ....Nah!" But I decided to try anyway. I did a 100-day RawFu challenge, but quit after 30 days because of the compulsive issues I had not dealt with. Still the seed was planted. I knew how great I felt on raw food. It just felt right! I love animals, I care about the environment, I wanted really badly to do the right thing and be vegan. I wanted so so much to be able to control my crazy binging, to release the weight that held me down (I weighed 402 lbs!) I wanted so badly for me to be healthy!

I took time out to deal with my compulsive eating. I did it following a Christian path, through an organization called Celebrate Recovery at my church. That worked for me where nothing else had. (Remember: 402 lbs! Lifetime obesity! Child abuse survivor! I had issues, people!)

Once I experienced the miracle of being relieved of my compulsions, wonderful things started to happen! I gave up all artificial sweeteners. (I found out they were basically poison. That was pretty easy to give up.) Bouyed by my success, I tried giving up other things, like caffeine. I loved iced tea like crazy. I drank it all year long! I loved fancy coffee drinks. I live in the Pacific NW, the birthplace of Starbucks! But I was able to let the caffeine go.

Fast forward to January this year: my miracle of relief from compulsion happened and I gave up: sugar, white flour, and meat! Then I went all sane, and went vegan! Then, I went even saner and went back to raw! The results: 4 and a half months later, my cholesterol is 140! My triglycerides are 136! I have released 80 lbs (60 of it since January on raw!) I exercise at least 5 times a week (walking and coming thisclose to dancing, bopping out to my tunes on the track or the treadmill! lol) I love to move my body to the music, big as I am. My body finally got off the couch, and it is ready to boogie!

I am eternally grateful to my Heavenly Father for my daily miracle of abstinence, to my body for healing itself, and to you my friends for supporting me! And last night, for the first time, I DID NOT take my cholesterol-lowering drug before I went to bed! It served it's purpose when I was battering my body with SAD cooked animal fats daily, but I won't let it hurt my liver anymore. With my doctor's complete blessing, I am throwing it away!


(EDITED TO ADD: I can't get the stupid chart to publish successfully in blogger. If you want to see it, go to my journal on RawFu, I posted it there.)

Flirting with 811 LFRV

The second week of the Initiative at Raw Food Rehab is almost over and I am feeling great! (If you haven't checked out the 'hab, run by Penni Shelton, you really owe it to yourself. It is awesome, very supportive, just like my beloved GeekedFu.) I expect to see nice things from the scale tomorrow. I worked out a lot this week--pretty much every day except Sunday. Yay me. My awesome 17 yr old daughter supports me by getting up with me at 5 o'dark o'clock and hitting the gym with me before I go to work and she goes to school. I have also ramped up my raw intake which I think was responsible for my epic weight release last week.


Now that the weather is nice, I am really enjoying walking around the park that is across the street from my work at lunch. I don't try to "feel the burn," it is just a meditative, joyful time for me to celebrate being outdoors, the beauty of Spring, the fresh air and whatever sunshine we get in April in Oregon. Sometimes I listen to praise music on my iphone, sometimes I don't and just think and talk to God. It really makes the second half of the work day go well, with less stress.


I have been flirting with 811 "low fat raw vegan." It's called 811 or 80-10-10 because you eat 80% of your calories from carbs, 10% protein, and 10% fat. I've trolled around Dr. Doug Graham's website and gone on message boads like this one. It's interesting. I'm skeptical but intrigued. What appeals: everyone looks super healthy, seems very happy and active. Like, uber active, doing marathons and triathalons and whatnot. Obviously they feel good and have lots of energy. I also like the laziness of the diet: Eat fruit! All day long! Eat a salad for dinner. The end. So little food prep! So easy! Even I can manage to make a kick-butt salad once a day. What doesn't appeal: Eat fruit. Only fruit. All day long. And for a big fun suprise, eat a salad! Woo! Seems a wee bit monotonous and I don't know that I could stick with it. There is no onion, garlic, spice, or even salt on this diet. No honey or other natural sweeteners. Also: the people on these forums are true believers. Like, scarily so. 811 is their Rawligion. They won't even let you post a picture of a food that is not a fruit or a salad, seriously. They won't let anyone who does not agree 100% with them even post on their forums, and treat Dr. Graham like a messiah. Now, I'm sure Dr. Graham is a heckuva guy, but I don't need a savior. I've got one, thanks! And yes, I worry about nutritional deficiencies over time. I think legumes, nuts, avocados are nutrient dense and besides, I wouldn't want to live my life without them. (I do think that some gourmet raw fooders get carried away with the nuts though--I believe we ought to eat mostly fruits and veggies with just a few overt fats like nuts and avos.)


So for now, I'm not an 811 girl. I may be a flirt, but I'm not ready for a commitment. I will eat fruit all day if that's all I want and need an easy day. I love fruit! I love salad! I may even eat like that most of the time. But I won't climb into someone's box. I'm going to eat what I feel like my body and my heart is telling me to eat.


It does make me feel better, on my uber busy days or days when I can't be bothered to do anything else, that somebody thinks I should be eating like that anyway, hee. <3 Mal

Released 80 lbs! Woo-hoo!

Hi Everyone! Last week was hard because I caught a cold, but good because it only lasted 3-4 days. I am sure I bounced back quickly because of my healthy diet. YAY! When I was SAD colds would always last a minimum 12-14 days or longer and usually turn into bronchitis and kick up my asthma and make me absolutely miserable. So I am even more sure that this is the right path for me!

Easter was hard (the bunny got me and I gave in to cooked food like Mom's potato salad and even robbed an Easter basket for some chocolate, which was super sad because I had been sugar abstinant since Jan. 1 and blew it. :( ) So I was very happy to have the inintiative start right after that so I could make an official fresh start.

My appetite was down from the cold so I was able to eat nearly all-raw all week, and released an astonishing 9+ lbs. I am now down 80 lbs on raw overall. Woo-hoo! Very thrilled with the results.

I have been flirting with low-fat raw vegan, ala 811, but the last few days I have gotten sooo hungry, I've actually given in and eaten some cooked food at night (and some of it had dairy, huge NO for me.) I'm going back to what works for me, which is: if it is raw and sugar-free, eat it and smile. I'm glad to get back to exercising this week. I missed it when I was sick. Raw love to all of y'all and have a great week!