8 mile

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Rachel

The last time I ran 8 miles it was the beginning of new knee pain to add to my list of aches and pains associated with running. Today I ran the same route again with no shoes and was pain free and could have kept on running longer! Pace was decent at 9.13 avg. compared to my pace last time of 8.35 with shoes. I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and that I could definitely get back to and even improve on my old times. The only thing holding me back a little from going faster was I had a couple of blisters from the last really hot afternoon, otherwise joints and muscularly I was feeling great. I’m amazed at the improvement I’ve made just in 7 weeks of barefooting…from a starting pace of around 13.00-15.00 to back in the mid 8.00s!

IT band is working wonders…the only downside being I’m getting a tan line on my thigh and sweat tends to drip down my leg the whole time but at least I don’t have the dreaded white feet and ankles from wearing shoes!

Fueled on 2 big glasses of orange juice, a very awesome way to start the day

make it a Good Friday

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Rachel

It’s not Friday yet but back home in Australia it’s Good Friday and all the Easter celebrating Aussies will be off eating a big seafood lunch. This is the our second Easter being vegan and I don’t miss eating fish or milk chocolate (yikes what a combination! lol), actually far from it, I was sitting eating dinner tonight thinking about how sad it is that people celebrate the day by dropping land animals (yay for cows!) but gorge themselves on every poor little creature you can pull from the sea. People in Sydney (where we once lived) line up early for hours at the fish market to get parking and buy the best prawns, fish, mussels etc for their Good Friday lunches. So tonight I thought how sorry I am this Friday of every year I was involved in consuming not one or part of an animal but multiple bodies on my plate and can only be happy that it will never happen again

And my bowl tonight could hardly contain it’s contents…I had a monster appetite and lettuce was just not going to cut it. Delicious little roasted potatoes accompanied my salad. I’ve decided that the best alternative if I feel like something more than just raw fruit and veggies is to have a serving of rice, potatoes, lentils, quinoa etc. I’ve found myself just not feeling like eating any nuts or avocado and even dates anymore so if I feel the urge to eat something else I’m just going to stick to low fat high carb. I seem to feel better eating this way even if it’s not 100% raw than consuming extra fat or dehydrated raw foods and it’s only usually at dinner as I’m happy to eat fruit until then!

Ok after putting away that huge meal I need to keep moving! lol

Sweepin the Clouds Away

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Rachel

I just went for my best barefoot run ever! Beautiful sunny day which helps because the paths are nice and warm. Did 5 miles at an average pace of 8:55 and my best split was 8:30! I’m learning so much and making small distinctions every time I go out to produce a better and more comfortable running style. It’s amazing the subtle adjustments made and a mile or so in and something just clicks (and bonus not my hip!) where it feels so natural and freeing to move yourself forward.

I’m still having to work on my down hill form but I really tried to relax today and just let myself roll down the hill. I tend to want to put the breaks on but I think that is what has aggravated my knee since moving here. I wore an IT band on my leg today and that definitely helped. I can still feel some sensation near the knee but it’s not the point where when I was running in shoes and I had to stop and stretch. Self diagnosing here (because no one else could!) I think it’s IT band syndrome which would explain the pain in the hip too…it’s all connected. But feeling great after this run, no pain and just icing as a precaution, barefooting definitely seems to be working for me! And the extra little oomph in speed and the hills and wind on the way back I got an awesome workout

I love sitting outside every day to eat in the sun. There is something so nice about eating fruit in the sunshine. Today I had yummy green smoothie

Looking forward to more fun in the sun!

Juicy Cleanse 4-5/10

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Rachel

Well half way through this “cleanse” and I think it’s pretty much safe to say I suck at this! lol I’ve eaten 2 salads today, smoothies and juice. The reality for us is we are so busy with work, 2 crazy kids and exercising that I don’t really have the luxury of taking it easy and sitting around sipping juice. On this fruit diet you need high calories…I’d say for me a minimum of 3000 per day and it’s too hard to get that from just juice. I could smoothie up all the fruits but then it’s really defeating the purpose of a cleanse!

Jon's "Very Berry Blast"

I’m really happy just eating the fruit and salads and compared to a cooked diet I consider it cleansing enough. Maybe one day when my kids move out and I have nothing else to do I’ll consider trying a fast but until then I need energy and a lot of it! I like to give my work-outs all I’ve got and I’m just not trading that in for juice…811 is restrictive enough.

So I think I’ll call it quits on this experiment I did P90X chest & back today and completed 350 push-ups including diamond, decline, hindu, military, wide fly and standard and felt stronger than ever! I’m going to keep giving 811 my best and see where it takes me. Til next time! <3 R

Juicy Cleanse 3-4/10

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Rachel

Days 3 and 4 and still on a juice mission! Cheated yesterday when we went to Whole Foods to pick up some more fruits and veggies and bought a big box of kale salad. It was so good and no fat so I don’t feel too bad. Still filling up on green smoothies and also added a smoothie Jon likes to make and named “berry blast” lol bananas, acai berries and I think a punnet of mulberries or blueberries…beautiful dark purple, it is a great pick-me-up in the afternoon!

Brunch - bananas and spinach

Feeling 100% better from the other day. Went for a nice barefoot run yesterday instead of legs & back. Knocked out 5.25 miles on footpaths…the distance was fine on my knee/hip but my soles felt a little bit battered by the end of it. Funnily enough even though they feel on the verge of blisters by the next day they are fine again.

Pear, cucumber & lime

Pineapple & orange

I’ve made some really yummy juices. Yesterday we had Bartlett pear and asian pear and a big pineapple and orange juice. This morning I made a Beurre Bosc pear, cucumber and lime juice…so good! I’ve been keeping the combinations pretty simple as I think it’s better on digestion. One of my favs is orange and celery! I have been wondering whether juicing is good or not as naturally we wouldn’t juice a fruit and discard the pulp, you would eat it in its entirety. There is also the matter of the fiber slowing the digestion and therefore slowing the release of sugar into the blood stream, although I don’t seem to notice any effects after drinking fruit juice.

Speaking of sugar highs…I was really surprised to see a whole article about fruit in this month’s LA Sports & Fitness mag “Crazy Nutrition Advice Circulating in the Gym” where it debunks the myth that eating “too much” fruit is bad and especially not good for weight loss. It goes on to explain the way the body converts fructose to glycogen…muscle tissue doesn’t have the necessary enzymes to convert fructose to muscle glycogen and the liver has to do this job, however the liver can only store a limited amount of glycogen. Fruit would only be stored as fat when there is an excessive amount of glucose already available in the body which applies to all other carbohydrates. Also quotes a study from Metabolism Journal May 2011 “For weight loss achievement, an energy-restricted moderate natural fructose diet was superior to a low-fructose diet.” which was the only study conducted to date that used natural fructose from fruit rather than concentrate. It’s nice to see some REAL information being printed in mainstream media! Anyway, I haven’t seen any fat fruitarians :P

The Easter Bunny came early to our house

Juicy Cleanse Day 2/10

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Rachel

Today was tough. I woke up feeling so tired and that feeling pretty much continued all day. Foggy, demotivated and blah! I tried to drink a lot of juice to keep me upright but it didn’t seem to help me not to feel so hungry.

Enjoyed a watermelon juice Also had lots of orange, grapefruit and cucumber. Had a very green kale, cucumber and citrus juice. I used to make a lot of green juices containing no fruits when we first started out on raw but now I think I prefer the sweet juices with just a little green and eat all my greens in salads and smoothies.

Today was just P90X2 Yoga. I enjoy this session a lot more than the old P90X yoga tape. Lucky it wasn’t too intense…I don’t think I could have handled much more today. Tomorrow is legs and back so I hope I regain some energy!

Cravings are pretty strong today also. It’s probably due to a bit of calorie restriction but also toxic hunger because the longest we went on 811 without breaking it was 2 weeks. It’s no where near long enough to see the full benefits of 811 and I have been eating cooked food at least once a week since then. I’m curious to see if there will be any change after this week.

Juicy Cleanse Day 1/10

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Rachel

I recently bought a copy of Jeff Sekerak’s book The Super-Fit Vegan and felt inspired to do a short 10 day cleanse to try and once and for all strip my system of cooked food cravings. We’ve still been about 85-90% on 811 but after a week of a few too many good times including sushi, wine, PIZZA! lol I really started to feel crappy and I don’t want to feel crappy! I thought maybe it’s ok to have a meal out once a week and it wouldn’t effect me and eating right the majority of the time would be enough but it just doesn’t work. Why eat all this great raw, enzyme rich food and then go clog your system up with rice and tofu a few days later SILLY! I just need to be patient and detox from all these things I’ve been letting stop me from achieving my goal of a complete raw fruit diet.

So I’m just juicing for most meals and adding a couple of green smoothies (banana, spinach & water) per day mainly because I have so many bananas and I don’t want to waste them! Plus I’m not slowing down on my training so it won’t hurt to have the extra calories. I know my calorie intake overall will be down for 10 days but I’m hoping to get around 1700-2000. With the Hurom juicer (which is a masticating juicer) I get a lot of the pulp with the juice so it helps slow the release of sugar into the blood stream but discards enough to give my digestive system a break. Once the 10 days are over I’ll go back to whole fruit, a large salad, dates/raisins and a small amount of nuts.

This cleanse isn’t far removed from how I normally eat when eating 811 except I’ll be cutting out more fat and not caving into sushi at the end of the week! I’m only going to juice fruits and tender green leaves because I tend to want to stick to eating vegetables I could eat a lot of at one sitting raw rather than things such as carrots and broccoli or harder leaves like kale which are tougher to digest in their whole form. Also veggies are lower in calories than fruit and I still need lots of energy!

Today I made 3 big juices, one citrus/cucumber for breakfast, a greener celery, spinach & orange for lunch and apple, celery and oranges for dinner. 2 big servings of green smoothie as well and I’m actually really full! I also did a big workout of P90X Arms & Shoulders, AbRipperX and 100 pushups. Taking the day off running because my soles are slightly tender from doing Insanity barefoot on carpet lol but I think it’s helping strengthen the skin doing everything barefoot! (we’ve ordered a wet vacuum to keep the carpets clean ) Might try and incorporate some Super-Fit Vegan body-weight exercises in to my routine also, even just some hindu squats and mountain climbers.

I logged everything into cronometer to see how it went. It’s a bit inaccurate because I had to log some of the fruit in whole rather than juiced but it’s handy to see the fat, protein, carb breakdown. I think 10 days of this and I’ll be set to really give myself and 811 a real chance!

Prickles don’t tickle!

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Rachel

We found another trail close by so thought we’d give it a go today. It didn’t look too steep from the bottom but the incline was deceiving! Jon wore his lunas and I went barefoot. I’m not too scared of sharp rocks anymore but this track was covered in big spikey prickles and really hard, sharp dry grass/straw stuff…ow!

I think we need to find some nice dirt roads these hills are killing me!

It’s working out nicely alternating running and 7 weeks to 100 push-ups with P90X2. I get a good variation of workouts and give my feet some time to recover between runs. The blood blister didn’t turn out to be so bad so I’ll try road running again next. I find running on the trails really improves my form though and is definitely helping me to not land so much on the toes.

Push-ups are going well. I feel my range of movement has improved and recovery time between sets is easier. Still not sure how I’m going to get to 100 consecutive, maybe magical push-up fairies visit in the night and give you special push-up powers while you sleep the night before!

Ok enough rambling I’m off for a green smoothie for dinner

Rituals

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Rachel

Tomorrow is 7 weeks on mainly 811! We’ve been doing ok this last week only having a couple of cooked dinners. I always feel like I need a little extra something around 5pm and want some brown rice to go with salad but lately even something as simple as rice has made me feel a bit nauseous. Cravings for other cooked food have mainly gone and I think a few more weeks and the occasional feeling of needing some denser carbs at night will go away also. Mostly drinking green smoothies, juice and mangoes these days… I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of eating mangoes

Other little changes are I’ve lost a bit more weight. I’ve just started the weight training component of P90X2 so I’m hoping with the reintroduction of more weight bearing exercise I will gain some muscle. I feel like all those weeks of balance and core were good but that combined with extra cardio just makes skinny and no shape. I do have a little bit of fear of becoming too thin on 811 but I guess if it’s calories in-out you just need to eat more to keep the weight on. It does say in the book that you will look quite thin comparable to societies standards and his recommendation for body fat percentage is under weight on most conventional charts…I think he put women at a min of 13%. So I feel I’m at a decent weight range still and with some extra weight lifting hopefully build some lbs back.

Another odd thing I’ve found since starting 811 is my eye lashes and eye brows are growing like crazy! I’ve never had really fast growing brows and only need to maintain them every so often but lately they are needing tidying every other week. Eye lashes too are longer and thicker but I won’t complain about that one. Jon also noticed the same thing with his facial hair…he is like growing a beard every few days! lol Our 4yo is especially displeased and says “go shave buddy!”.

I’ve committed to running barefoot every second day even if it’s only a few miles. I just can’t help but over do it with either speed or distance. I should only be running around 15-20mins and slowly but as soon as I get out there I want to run for an hour and go faster and faster. I think I hurt a tendon a little bit a couple of weeks ago which seems to be ok now. I went for a run today on the trails in gorgeous high 70 temps, only 3 miles but the last mile home on the streets I was just flying along…got the whole mile under 9:00 pace and as fast as 8:40! such an awesome feeling but now I think I have a little blood blister under my big toe lol

Lately my days have been so jammed packed I often wake up and for a moment feel slightly overwhelmed of all the things I want to achieve in the day. I started listening to some Tony Robbins again and set up a morning ritual to help me mentally prepare for the day ahead. I asked myself a list of 5 questions as soon as I wake up and it has really helped me feel motivated to do my best…

1. What am I grateful for today?
2. What am I excited about today?
3. What are some things I can do to improve myself today?
4. What am I committed to in my life at the moment?
5. Visualise the kind of person I want to be.

In the past I’ve often made a big list of things I need to get done in the day but if you just write a list and forget why you are doing them it doesn’t feel very inspiring, it just feels like a whole lot of jobs! By taking the time to consider why you want to do something, the final outcome and feeling excited and grateful about everything you have, it really does set you up to enjoy the process.

And now I even managed to write a blog post! I can check that off my list <3

Fruity update

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Rachel

It’s been a bit over a week since I last wrote and during that time my adherence to 811 has either been really fantastic or pretty bloody ordinary! I’ve had some great days like yesterday, fueled up on fruit and salad and bursting with energy but then during this last week we’ve eaten out a couple of times and strayed off path. A weekend trip to Disneyland ended with…pizza! oh no haha

It is such a psychological nightmare! Jon and I are both feel really gung ho about wanting to be 100% fruit for the most part and we pump each other up and are like yeahhh let’s do this! Then all it takes is one little outing and we buckle at the knees for cooked food. The only solace I can take is that each time I learn from the experience and know that I’m closer to finding the balance I need to do this long term. Each time we eat cooked food I think we feel more strongly that it doesn’t make us feel the best and it’s going to be something we need to practice on a day to day basis and try our best.

In some aspects eating the standard raw diet was easier to stick to because a lot of it is replicating versions of cooked food and it being so high in fat and protein it does give you that full feeling. I am still learning to eat enough fruit in one sitting to give me the same effect but I seem to be getting better and adding more dates and raisins definitely helps. Dinner time is still my weak spot especially when cooking for the kids. I often steal a few spoonfuls of rice or potatoes even though I just had 2 liters of banana shake!

Exercise is no problem…I always have motivation for working out. I’m on week 3 of 7 weeks to 100 pushups and started phase 2 of P90x2 today which was hard…pushups on medicine balls is pure agony! I’ve also started using the spin bike again which I find so boring but since having to take barefoot running slow I think I’m in need of the extra cardio. I’ve got to say though I am dripping with sweat after 20 mins on that thing!

It’s also good too because although I’m wearing shoes it’s no impact and won’t effect my form. Otherwise for all my other exercise I’ve been going without shoes and it feels a lot better especially for balance.

Only other little treat I’ve been having is hummus again. Since I don’t eat avocado much I don’t mind adding a few spoonfuls of hummus on salad…I could eat that stuff all day long!

Less than 2 weeks to half marathon. I’m not running now for sure and Jon is going to do it by himself. I’ll take the kids and throw dates at him instead!

I think that’s all my healthy fruity news! <3