I lasted all the way until day 34 of my juice fast before I gave in and went back to food.  I did, however, adopt a vegetarian diet consisting mostly of vegetables, fruits and allowing for lean chicken and fish.  It works for me, I have more energy than I've had in years.  The downside is that I am limited when I eat out but it saves me money because now I eat out less.  Smaller waist, thicker wallet! Winning.

The 20+ pounds I've lost have stayed off despite the fact that I'm not on a full juice fast anymore which is awesome.  I want to lose more weight, I need to lose more weight and even though I've adopted a healthier vegetarian diet, I haven't lost as much weight as I'd hope to have lost by now.  Most of that is because the day job has been so stressful and time consuming that I have little to no time for exercise and stay up far past the bedtime that I should have.  Bedtime...the mere mention of the word makes me feel like I'm talking about my son.  Funny how parenthood affects the way you think, speak, write, live.

Oh.... my boy, he has bronchitis.  Nasty thing, that darn bronchitis... making it's way throughout my family and extended family.  My nieces, my brother, my poor mother... all have had it and now my son Alaka'i caught it and I'm fighting it valiantly off and on.  This cold and the mucus it brings wreaked havoc on my poor mom and her one and half lungs.  She's a lung cancer survivor, it was so hard watching her deal with the coughing and aching of bronchitis.  My son caught it and though he's beyond the fever and chills, the cough remains though it is subsiding every day.  It's tough watching my big guy going through the awful stages of this cold. Thankfully he is beyond the worst although I cringe when I hear him cough.  I've got a cough and I had a fever but it's going away much faster for me than it has for everyone else and I think my diet and juice has a lot to do with it.



Back to juicing and eating.  Well now that I'm back on food, even though it's vegetarian, I still have yet to cut out one of my weaknesses... starches like rice and pasta.  In Hawai'i, rice is like the staple that comes with literally everything....everything.  I'm rather fond of it, strange as it may seem and although I have no problem cutting down pastas or adopting whole wheat pastas, cutting out rice is much harder than I thought it would be.  That's my current goal, to give up rice completely or at least only eat brown rice...which I don't hate but I don't care for it.  Rice causes inflammation for me so I need to cut it out.  I could get away with eating the other starches on my diet because there aren't many, if I could just quit that darn rice!  Le sigh.

What are some of your weaknesses?  Other than rice, I get a little too generous with my portions of nuts and dark chocolate lately, darn PMS.  I think it's good to indulge once in awhile though.  Nuts are super good for my diet and health it's just I consume a little more than the recommended portion.  I think that's one of my worst problems, portion control.  It's an American thing I suppose because when I was in Europe traveling and performing, the portions were much smaller and the food we ate was much healthier and fresher.  I think in the good ol' US we've become too accustomed to fast-everything, bigger is better, more the merrier mentality in regards to food.  It's literally killing us.  I need to really adjust my portions, even vegetarian food can make you fat if you eat too much.  I think it's time for a juicing reset while I fight this bronchitis and then cutting down portion size when I eat.  Challenging, but achievable.