As a kid, I remembered seeing Jack Lalanne and thinking, "look at this old bastard with his juice and muscles!". I really thought it was some kind of circus act to see a 70 year-old man lifting weights and slamming green fluids down his piehole. Mr. Lalanne was onto something and he spent a lifetime trying to tell us how to stay slim and healthy and we couldn't hear him over the chomping of potato chips and the cans of soda we were popping.
About two years ago, I started to notice that I was loosing my hairs' natural luster and shine. My nails were brittle and my skin looked dull. I bought every hair product for curly hair that guaranteed to restore luster. I bought every nail strengthening lacquer and every skin serum and cream with hopes of seeing some kind of result. It's all a damn lie. All of it.
Onto...my body (yikes). I've always prided myself on the fact that I'm happy with the way I look. Big and all. Damn sexy if you ask me. Well, I actual started LOOKING in the mirror. What I saw was terrifying. It's like someone threw pizza dough over a skeleton-shaped thing and added hair and features. I'm not shitting you.
Upon closer examination, I started noticing other unpleasant things. My ass looked like it got smacked with a bag of nickels. My thighs looked like a group of small children poked holes in the pizza dough body. I had also developed the infamous "batwings" (I believe I can fly).
I watched a documentary about a month ago with my hubby called Fat, Sick, And Nearly Dead. I was stunned. It occurred to me that I've approached EVERYTHING from dieting to hair and skin care to dietary tract care ALL WRONG.
In the documentary a man named Joe Cross made the same observations of himself and did research and found out that people who "juice" are healthy, fit, happy, and LOSING WEIGHT! And not a little bit of weight, like five and six bowling balls worth of pounds!
Rebooting is sweeping the nation. For 60 days, you drink only fresh juice and eat beans and nuts to provide your recommended protein. Some people who aren't sure whether or not they can commit to 60 days have an option to do 10, 20, or 30. Whatever you can possibly handle.
He warns however, that because people are so highly addicted to not just food, but the ritual of eating, the first few days to a week can be brutal. Think of a drug or cigarette addict. Your brains' receptors that are hard-wired to accept processed foods, go apeshit and make you want to run to the nearest Taco Casa and get one of everything on the menu! This is not wise. Eventually your body will begin to reject processed food and will make you violently ill. Good.
After the withdrawals, your body begins to reprogram itself to actually LIKE fresh juice. It begins to crave it. Then something even more amazing happens. Your skin begins to glow. The color of your eyes gets brighter. You hair is shiny and healthy. More importantly, you begin to produce collagen which restores the elasticity of your skin! The years begin to melt away! Basically all that time and money you spent trying to mask your body from the outside is beat out by fixing it from the inside by changing how you eat.
If we examined a plate of super greens and fruits that we would have to ingest to make a serving of super juice, you can't possibly consume it all. Juicing allows you to juice the whole fruit (seeds, skin and all) and extract the juice and nutrients without compromise. In short, your bombarding your system with super nutrients and all you have to do is let it do its' thing.
Now the ugly part of juicing. Super-concentrated juice is like natures Ex-Lax. You are going to shit like a baboon. Seriously. If you already have bowel issues, get some depends. Most people don't complain of accidents, they complain that they don't know "where it all comes from". All I'm saying is get ready to get REGULAR!
Now my husband and I have vowed to take this challenge. A full 60 days. I'm not saying we'll make it but we're going to try. Which is better than not trying at all. We're buying an elliptical and going to give it a go.
Now I'm not saying this is a quick fix or some kind of age-reversing magic. No people, this is HARD work! The main reason we're doing it is because we have no motivation to exercise and this is a problem. I swear I could be happy on the couch letting my dog fetch me the bottle of Merlot and eating southwest eggrolls all day. But apparently once you start juicing you can't sit still and FEEL like working out. So I'll pass up the Merlot and eggrolls and jump on the elliptical!
We're not getting younger and the older you get the harder it is to drop the weight. I'm great at starting things but piss poor at finishing them. Not this time precious. Oh no, not this time. If I can make it and show others that a BBQ-eating, beer-drinking, burger-loving, no-exercising, smoking housewife can drop 60 pounds in 60 days and inspire someone else the way Joe inspired us, then I'd say drinking juice was well worth it!
I've watched enough reality TV to consider myself an expert on the subject. I've understood for years that you don't have to have any talent at all aside from being a really fucked up individual. Or be surrounded by really fucked up individuals. In this case, I qualify in both categories.
I've done some pretty amazingly retarded things over the years. Most recently I've gotten sucked in by my older sister (the childhood came rushing back) on a dare. The dare was to take half of a full roll of Bubble Tape, split it between us and chew it completely soft without spitting it out, throwing up, or swallowing it. It's harder than you think. Mostly I just spewed little bits of sweet, sticky saliva all over the place while laughing like an idiot.
I know you think that's not so bad. Well it was my daughters and she asked for some before bed and I yelled, "NO" and then turned around and stole it due to this stupid dare. She woke up the next day looking for it and when I told her what I did and why she didn't have it anymore, she looked at me like a whooped puppy to which I replied, "grow up, it's just gum". Really? Her grow up? Who's the asshole who stole their kids candy to participate in some middle school dare?
On a regular basis, here are a few things the camera would catch me doing:
1. Pissing all over myself when I'm throwing up
2. Getting hammered and making inappropriate comments about illegal immigrants
3. Talking my kids into rubbing my feet and laughing when they complain that they're "snaggy"
4. Crushing up my sister-in-laws Xanax and spiking my hubbies tea when I think he's being a pissy douche (he caught me, he was pissed)
5. When people tell me their gay, I go into my elaborate story about an "experimental" phase when I was 19
6. Going on a camping trip with friends and throwing handfuls of moss and slimy lake vegetation at the drunkest friend who has no idea where it's coming from
7. Telling hubby to try on my thongs to see if it will turn me on (he did it, and it didn't)
8. Talking so loudly about those damn Democrats at the voting polls that people actually walk out
9. Getting hammered and talking my hubby and some friends into breaking into the barn on the property next to the house (cause I swear no one's been there for years) and making out with some sweet DVD's and a dresser
10. Trying to be sexy for hubby and leaning over the back of the couch and the son of bitch snaps in two
Here is a list of things the fucked up individuals in my life have done that the camera would catch:
1. People wrecking out on motorcycles in my driveway because they don't know how to pull onto a rock driveway
2. Running after someone at the races intending to kick their ass but their shorts fall down around their ankles and they trip and eat gravel instead
3. On a river trip, a friend decides to drink moonshine with a group of Navy boys at a bachelor party and ends up jumping on top of coolers and squatting to pee
4. Get invited to a party and walk in on the couple fighting and the hubby flips the kitchen table into the sliding glass door, sees you, then says, "hey y'all come in and have a drink with us?"
5. Having your fully-dressed neighbor disappear for a few hours only for them to reappear in socks, shoes, and underwear
6. Taking a friend to another friends house only for them to fall asleep and you walk into the room to find a dog humping their face vigorously and when you pick the dog up, it's wet underneath
7. Having a friend climb up the step ladder to your above-ground pool and falls through the top and gets stuck
8. High school reunion 2009. There isn't enough room for all of that. It was nuts
9. Watching your cousin roll up catnip in Bible paper and smoking it because SURELY if it gets cats fucked up, maybe we're missing out
10. Beer store is closed. You want beer. Your friends have a solution. Need I say more. They did leave money for the beer, smokes, and cost of the window
If you notice I didn't drop names but you know who you are!
So TLC, get ready to write the check. Honey Boo Boo, suck an egg!
It's been a couple of weeks since I last blogged and I promise I will get around to covering ALL of that. In the meantime, I've been using my keen parental, observational skills and found some things out about my "baby". She's a pain in the ass.
Now when I say baby, I'm sure most of you who don't know me personally are thinking about a parasitic little bundle of spit-up and horrible Tigger onesies, hanging off of some crazed-haired, unbathed, TLC-addicted shadow of a former female human being. No. MY baby is almost six and she's the nightmare my parents had high hopes of me being cursed with.
Up until about six months ago I let that child get away with murder. Seriously. She put a body in the septic system. Whatever Evie Booty wanted, she got. When Evie Booty ran crying to me that her sister hit her because she (allegedly) tore the legs off of her sisters' Monster High doll, I'd smite the older child and give Evie Booty a cup of hot cocoa.
Not fair you say? Horrible parenting you say? Piss off. All parents have a favorite. I'm just woman enough to admit what you're all stuffing down in that (fifth) glass of chardonnay. It was totally fair. After all, she was my youngest and last child. She's the only one of FOUR girls who actually looked like me. And she's too stinking cute, so there.
Well, I started really paying attention to what was happening in my home. I began investigating the catalyst to the unnecessary amounts of drama and chaos being conjured up in the "kid caves" and found Evie Booty Doo at the center of a LOT of it. Don't get me wrong, the eight and ten year-olds can be assholes too.
Then something happened. I became...annoyed...with the Booty. I realized just how needy and spoiled I had made her. I'd pour a Dr. Pepper (when I say Dr. Pepper I mean a glass of wine). I set it down. The Booty asks for a drink of Mommy Juice and I yell, "NO!" I walk into my room for two seconds and BOOM! I walk in and find the "BABY" trying to grab my glass off the counter.
I'm cooking dinner and Evie runs up and begins hugging my leg or finger and I have to peel her off of me like a Bandaid (I am stuck on Bandaid brand cause Bandaid's stuck on me). The child kisses me anywhere she can get her big boogery lips. I'm not kidding. If there's an exposed knee or toe or belly, she's kissing it.
Now I'm not complaining that my kids love me too much (and in fact they do). I'm complaining about the fact that between marriage and kids, I've lost my interdependence. The thing that USED to tell me I am me, and you are you, and I chose to marry/give birth to you, but we are still individuals but it's the unity that I love because of the conscious choice to do it but knowing that my heart would keep beating if any of these things ever ceased to be.
So now I'm trying to wean my kid off of "spoiled". I laugh at crack addicts. This kid is a full-blown mommy addict and her withdrawals are nothing short of spastic. Now when I tell her, "no", her whole face turns completely inside out and I am now looking at the meat inside her body. Her body looks as if it's melting like a Salvador Dali painting her shoulders are now parallel with her knees.
I was surrounded by people who told me "you'll regret it if you spoil your kids" and all I can say to them is "NO SHIT!". But in all fairness, I would do it all over again. Only next time, I'd use a lot more duct tape and a low-powered paintball gun.
