A Fresh Start

During my haitus from the Blogging world I have been doing a little soul searching.
Every now and then its good to center yourself and rid yourself of excess drama and things that are taking up space in your mind and heart. I spent lots of time with my family and tried to remove some of the distractions that were pulling me in 100 different ways.
But I realized that no matter how much "me time" I had-- something was holding me back.
My body.

I do not live a "healthy lifestyle"
I like red meat. 
I hate (most) veggies.
I think Salads are an awful waste of space in my stomach.
and I consider wine a serving of fruit.
But I think my lifestyle and diet choices have impacted my life. Not only just because of my struggle with my weight and body image-- but I think 26 years worth of junk has started to slow my body down.

The past few years I have been a lot more sluggish-- lacking energy, I have seen an increase in the frequency of digestive issues (I'll try to keep that as vague as possible) and it has become increasingly harder for me to lose this baby weight (before the baby I just called it my "food baby"--- so I've always had someone else to blame.)
So... what's a girl to do?

Some might shrug it off and just blame the "aging" process... mind you, I'm only 26. I do everything ELSE I can to reverse any signs of aging.
Others might make some Facebook post saying they're going to change their life TOMORROW... or the day after that... and so on and so forth. (Believe me... I've done it before. I set my mind to one of those "kicks" right before my father passed away... but then I was given the greatest Carrot Cake and convinced myself that it was a serving of vegetables every night. Not so much.)
But I've decided that the time for excuses is over...

Starting TODAY (well, technically tomorrow-- but I will explain that) I'm starting THE MASTER CLEANSE.
(If you want more information the book is available online or visit themastercleanse.org)
I'll admit-- I heard about this cleanse for the first time from Yolanda on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. 
She is a beautiful person and I really admire her lifestyle and awareness of the things she puts in her body and how it will affect her.

But about 2 weeks ago I purchased the book (Its really more like a 50 page pamphlet-- its a super quick read and is full of lots of pretty interesting information) and I made the decision to spend my Memorial Day weekend struggling through the first few days of this process.
The book suggests 10 days, Yolanda says 7, but I'm going to do my best to stick it through to the end.

I'm extremely hopeful going into this process.
I hope to get my energy back and feel more awake and alert.
I hope it will help my body function better--- with less aches and pains in the morning.
I hope it will help kick start my post-baby weight loss (surprisingly the book didn't mention much about weight loss during the cleanse-- even though you're only drinking liquids for 7-10 days)

However, I'm also really nervous --
I've heard it can be a rough first few days-- with some digestive discomfort and generally feeling "bad" as your body processes (and eventually rids itself) of toxins stored in your body, blood and joints.
I'm also worried that I might flake out-- its quite the commitment, and now that I've taken it PUBLIC (aka the Internet) I'll feel like a failure if I back out halfway in. Let's hope the accountability acts as a motivator, not a deterrent.

Well.. anyways. I just thought I would let you all know about my adventure.
I'm going to be keeping some notes during this process and I plan to write a full wrap-up report once I'm done. Lets hope for the best!

With Love,
J.