Days 4-7 The Rough and The Smoothie

Yet again a bit gap in my blogging that I hadn't planned.  The first week was difficult in places and I think at the time I wasn't ready to articulate why for fear of wallowing in the feeling.  However, having come through I'm ready to talk about it now!

Day 4 - Wednesday

This was a weird day - I felt cold a lot and didn't manage to get to my step target of 5K steps - this would become a pattern for a few days. My tastebuds were still really craving sugar and the small amount of fruit in the juices were barely registering, so the first juice of day 4 was incredibly welcome. The Anti-oxident King is full of fruit and I barely registered the presence of beetroot in it.

I knew coming into this experience that I wouldn't like every juice.  I'm not a big fan of beetroot and celery juiced.  Which is weird because I'm perfectly happy to eat them at home and do on a regular basis. I think the bitter edge of celery puts me off and the earthy taste of juiced beetroot does.  I usually have beetroot thats been "vinegared" which of course cuts the earthiness.  I must investigate better ways to eat beetroot at home. But if I can't find any then this juice is certainly a great way to get it into my diet even if its pretty fruit heavy.

Day 5 - Thursday

This was my roughest day with the taste of the juices so far.  The pattern on most days of the program is that you have a "thickie" juice for the first and last juices of the day and then a "thinnie" for the two in the middle.  The thickies are achieved by blending the juiced fruit and veg with non-juiceable items like banana, avocado or berries and sometimes a combo of these.

The thickies on day 5 were the Anti-inflammatory green blend which was fine - a very green juice made with pineapple (yum!) as well as celery and other veg and then blended with avocado.

However the "thinnie" of the day was the Rainbow Remedy which is the first juice I haven't been able to drink at all.  It has celery, beetroot, red cabbage in it as well as tomato which is a very unusual ingredient for juices here.  For some reason the taste of it hit my gag reflex straight away and I couldn't even use a straw to get it down at either serving.  When the program repeats for the second fortnight I'm going to ask for a different juice because I just couldn't do it at all.  I don't think I was alone - lots of people struggled with it and there were multiple glasses left with half or more of the juice left.

I brought with me some of Jason's "Juice in a Bar" snacks because my medication timing means that I would need to take meds on an empty stomach at some point in the day and thats a recipe for disaster. Since I have no desire for a hole in my stomach or repeated vomiting I chose to come prepared with the bars so I could have a third of a one to take meds each day.  This is allowed on the program - in fact you can have an entire bar a day if you need as a "rescue".  I can't see me needing that but I've never been so glad to have them as on this day because I was hungry!

I only made 80% of my 5K step target this day.  I just didn't feel the energy or inclination and had an extra sleep in the afternoon despite sleeping fully overnight.

Thursday was definitely the hardest day so far.  I was exhausted after having a bad sleep overnight.  I had really vivid dreams including one where I was an XFactor contestant and Simon Cowell gave me his baby to look after and it was sick and no one would help me with the sick baby.  I literally woke up hyperventilating from that.  One of the other juicers here said that the baby represents me in my struggle to get healthy.  Makes sense I suppose.

I feel like each night I've been sleeping a little better and so far no significant insomnia which no doubt my roommate is happy about.  Speaking of roommates I really feel like I've lucked out on the allocation there.  She's American, pretty much the same age as me and we get on really well.  She's chatty and lovely and doesn't seem to mind when I ramble a bit :) we have similar-ish views on everything so far and she loves her family and animals and totally gets that I want to talk to my mum every day because she's checking in with her daughters every day.  It's nice to have someone who gets my neurotic behaviour! She's also been having the vivid dreams and many others have reported it too so I guess it's a thing.

Day 6 - Friday

As a pure contrast to the day before, Fridays juices were FANTASTIC! We made it to the weekend which is awesome (our juice week started on Sunday so Friday/Saturday are our "treat" days).

The weekend is where the pattern breaks on SuperJuice Me.  We started Friday with Fibre Optics which is a delicious blend of Carrot, Apple, Cucumber, Banana and Pear with Raw Ginger and Basil. This is one of my favourite juices that I've done at home so I was very pleased to see it here.

Then the thinnies for the day were The Diuretic One which is a refreshing green juice with cucumber, asaragus and spinach leaves amongst other things.

But the best part of the day was the last juice.  We got to have Tahini Cocoa Beaney!

Recipe here: http://news.juicemaster.com/recipe-tahini-choco-beaney/

I think it's obviously had a name change but the smoothie is still the same.   Everyone loved this one and there were only empty glasses by the end!  Strangely it tasted very chocolately and sweet to me when I think it would be less so it I'd had it on the first day.  My tastebuds have definitely changed already.  This was like the sweetest chocolate pudding I've ever had!

Tahini Cocoa Beaney yummy goodness

Day 7 - Saturday

Today was the first day without much programming as the staff were having a day off and everyone was encouraged to have a day where we explored what we could do for ourselves.

Again todays juices were LOVELY and ended with another almond milk/banana combo that also had berries and spinach in it and tasted much like a milkshake.  Once again this felt pretty sweet to my tastebuds but less indulgent than the chocolatefest of the night before.

I had a really sore knee all day due to having slept on it awkwardly so didn't manage many steps.  As of day 8 my step target goes up to 6K so really need to get my skates on.

I also really wish I could have weighed myself today.  The resort doesn't have any accessible scales (they must be hidden away) so none of us know how much weight we've lost.  I can definitely see it on some of the others but looking in the mirror is still not really showing much to me.  I have taken a Sunday selfie that I'll when I write up today that we can compare with the first one I took.  Hopefully it will show something!

Fi

xoxo