My Biggest Accomplishment of 2013- I lost 56 Pounds

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: 

Here I am after 10 months of juicing. I took this photo in October 2013.

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!!!! 

Raising the Bar on Health Goals

Getting healthy in the rain- setting my goal. Dr. Stacey Ann Bough is running a challenge in ActiveRain for health goals. You have to be logged into ActiveRain in order to read her post about the challenge because it is a members only post. My posts will be public because I am not just doing this challenge for myself but also for anyone who needs to be inspired to work on their health.

This challenge comes at a perfect time for me. Ordinarily I would not participate in such a personal challenge in such an open forum. However, in light of how my year started and the big “C” scare in my life- the timing could not have been better. In case you wish to read how I got to this crossroad in my life journey I wrote a post: An Unexpected Journey- A Path We Would NOT Choose to Take. 

To sum it up briefly- I started off my January with renewed goals, new business opportunities, new mindset, etc., as most of us do each January 1st. But on January 2nd, all that changed with just a few words from the doctor. There was a 90% chance I had cancer. Nothing else will change life faster than those words. You can read the post to find out what happened in more detail.

So my goals changed from business and success to health and life in order of priority. We bought a juicer on January 5th. We started juicing on January 6th. I was going to beat this!

There was a wonderful side effect to the juicing! By January 14th I noticed my clothes were a bit looser and I had lost 10 pounds!!! 

By January 22nd I had lost 3 more pounds. By January 28th I lost another pound. This is a total of 14 pounds in 3 weeks.

We juice for breakfast, mid-morning snack, and lunch. I have a sliced tomato with Kimchi on top most afternoons or other fermented veggie on top. Then for dinner we have another green juice and I will either have rice and fish or rice and beans or rice and stir-fry veggies in curry. Sometimes we have instead split pea soup or acorn squash curry soups.

I am far from perfect and have my own weaknesses like if I get super hungry to stop and get something to eat that is not healthy. One of my weaknesses is smelling food and then wanting to eat the food. Our son eats these really awesome smelling all natural, no nitrates, no nitrites, no preservatives angus beef hot dogs. He is a ten year old baseball player after all! Well, they really taste good and even though they are natural they are still not good for me to eat. I have broken down and eaten two of these hot dogs during the last 3 weeks. We took the grandkids to McDonalds and I ate a hamburger, no cheese, no bread, just the patty but still, NOT good for me. Then I was so hungry one day when my daughter was out showing houses. She makes all my juices for me in between caring for a toddler and a baby as well as working as a REALTOR® . She helps me so I can get some of my marketing work done for our company, coaching, trainings, etc. So that was a day I was so busy and forgot to eat. So she stopped at Wendy's. I love Wendy's ‘bad for you' hamburgers! I got such a headache after eating that single patty with no cheese!

Now this part I have NEVER told anyone!!! I am 104 pounds overweight!!! Many of you have met me and have seen me speak on stages so you know that I am overweight.

So that means that I have to lose another 90 pounds to lose. I will be happy at losing another 60 pounds.

My family and people who are close to me and see how I life my life are very surprised that I am overweight. This is the heaviest I have ever been in my entire life. I was a size 5 when I dated Nestor!!! I was even a size 10 and 12 after I gave birth to our son at the age of 44. I had 5 other kids before I was 30 and never weighed this much!!! I don't eat chips and snacks, I don't drink sodas. I don't drink alcohol or even coffee. I went totally off of dairy in May 2012. I detox my liver once a year. I detox my colon once every 6 months. I ate salad without added fats nearly every day.

I did all the weight loss programs you can think of. Not a pound would budge off of me. Those pounds just kept hanging on. I would walk 3 miles a day, do my rebounder jumping, Wii fit, do it all- not a pound budged off of me.

Juicing is now a part of my new lifestyle. I have never felt better physically! AND FINALLY!!!! Something the pounds can not hang on to!!!!

So if you have stubborn weight that just keeps hanging on…. you may want to give juicing a try.

On February 10th I will be starting a strict 15 day juice fast with no dinner of solid foods. It will be 5 days of strict juicing, then 5 days of juicing and raw veggies followed by 5 days of strict juicing. I will continue on this until I reach my weight goals.

In case you want to follow along with me I am doing the Reboot With Joe plan. This is the same plan as is featured in the documentary, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.  This is my favorite website about juicing.

In February we will also be start growing our own wheatgrass and juicing it. We are taking classes in water kefir and will be making our own fizzy kefir drinks and fermented beet juices. We will be adding these to our lifestyle in the middle of February with the goal that I will be able to rid my body of the postmenopausal endometriosis on my own instead of getting surgery.