My biggest accomplishment of 2013 was that I lost 56 pounds.
While I had many achievements throughout 2013 in business and in my personal and family life, if you ask what is the one thing I am happiest to have achieved it would be my weight loss.
My clothes are loose, I dropped over 4 dress sizes and well on my way to a better and healthier body. This is the suit that I wore to speak in Atlantic City at the RainCamp:
Sometimes things show up in your life so that you have no choice but to deal with them. It seems like just yesterday when they told me that there was a VERY big chance that it was cancer.
On January 5, 2013 I went out ready to kick the big “C” out of my body. We went to buy a juicer and I started to juice. We live very near Hippocrates Institute and I have been there on many occasions to learn and eat at their raw food restaurant. I remember all that they said they did with cancer patients and I started to mimic it all.
The good news is that 3 weeks later the tests came back clean of cancer. But there was a side effect to my actions- I had lost over 10 pounds!!!
I felt full of energy and my double chin was disappearing.
Now I look at my photos from a couple of years ago and can not even recall being that obese. But I was.
I still have 40 more pounds to lose which I already know I will lose in 2014.
There were a couple of habits that I formed that have really helped with overall health.
The first thing they teach you to do at Hippocrates is first thing in the morning to drink a cup of hot water with a fresh squeezed lemon in it. We have a lemon tree and our lemons are large so I use half of a lemon. I started this on January 5th of 2013 and have not missed one day of having my hot water and lemon on an empty stomach first thing when I wake up. The best part about this habit is that when I fly I can take my lemons with me. In the hotel room I use my Smart Water and run it through the coffee maker in the room to get hot water, and hand squeeze the lemon. When we drive for vacation or baseball games, I take my lemons and water with me. There has not been one single day in 2013 where I could not find a way to start my morning with hot water and lemon.
The second thing that I have learned and continue to do is to eat naturally fermented foods along with any solid food that I eat. This helps the digestive track and helped me get rid of the “belly” fat which amazingly was the first noticeable change. I used to look like I was 8 months pregnant. My belly is near flat now.
The third thing that I did was have fresh carrot juice with pineapple and with strawberries when they are in season every morning. No, I did not turn orange:). Every morning for a year with the exception of a few times when I was speaking in another state and could not bring my juicer with me. I miss the juice so much when I don't have it.
I also drink my green juice, I love green juices. I do not juice for all 3 meals and if I had done so, I most likely would have already lost the other 40 pounds. But I did not that. I am still working on the “smell” of food factor going on in my mind. But I do work towards eating 70% all raw foods, juices, nuts and snacks. I am not a vegan.
We are a totally Dairy Free family. We do eat grains and we do eat meat sparingly and when we eat flesh, it is mostly fish.
In 2013 I wrote about my juicing journey on my blog and video taped our starting to juice on YouTube. Now it is time to do an “after” video!
This was never a new years resolution and I am glad for that because resolutions rarely create the desired end result. But it was the push, the scare that I needed to get going!
For those of you who follow me and this journey- you know that I was supposed to have surgery to remove the tumors but now my doctor believes they are no longer there. I will go in for another ultrasound to make sure they are gone. Wouldn't that be awesome!!!!