My Thoughts On My 3 Day Juice Cleanse

Over the past 3 days I've been on a small juice cleanse. I've been doing juice cleanses for years. There are so many opinions out there when it comes to juice cleansing, so for those who are interested, I'd like to share with you my thoughts, knowledge and experience. Please keep in mind I'm not a doctor and I am not telling you or anyone, to to do a juice cleanse. I'm just sharing my own personal experience, and the benefits I have found from doing them. In saying that, remember that everybody is different, what may work for some, may not work for others. You know your body better than anyone. Listen to it, it will let you know better than anyone could tell you.

So if you want me to be brutally honest about it, I ALWAYS have an incredible experience when I do a juice cleanse. Despite the odd headache and my few hangry moments, the way I feel afterwards is just so surreal. There is a big misconception, people think that they are simply starving themselves, but in fact they are just giving their body's digestive system a chance to rest, while loading your body full of concentrated nutrients. This allows the body to give some well needed attention toward other elements of your body. Did you know that between 40-80% of your body's energy can be used during the the digestion process. The amount of energy your body uses during digestion is dependant on how processed, unhealthy, or large your last meal was. If you have ever experienced exhaustion after eating a meal you  know exactly what I'm talking about. Juicing takes most of the fibre out of your fruits and vegetables, what you are left with is a nutrient dense, and easy to digest juice! The benefit to this is less work for your body and digestive system, to absorb a ton  of concentrated nutrients very quickly. I like to make each serving of juice out of 5-6 lbs of fruits and vegetables, I personally incorporate a large amount of greens so I can get all the alkalizing benefits. While cleansing, I drink between 6-8 servings of juice a day. One of the kids and my favourite juices is Monster Juice!

If you are thinking about trying a juice cleanse be sure to ease your way into it. A few tips and tricks from my personal experience would be: Transition yourself slowly. Eat very clean a few weeks prior, and be sure NOT TO BINGE EAT the night before. You want your juices to be organic, cold pressed, raw vegan, with no preservatives or chemicals. Only fresh squeezed and/or homemade. During the cleanse you may find yourself experiencing some or all of the following detox symptoms; nausea, diarrhea, fatigue, sore muscles, crankiness or headaches. This is completely normal. I personally only get the odd headache, nothing else. The benefits I experience from these cleanses are hormonal improvement, improved digestion, increased energy, clearer skin, fewer cravings and in the long run weight loss. When breaking your cleanse/fast resist the urge to binge. Ease your way back into food, it should take you just as long to ease back as the cleanse took. ex. 3 days if your doing a 3 day cleanse, 6 days if your doing a 6 day cleanse. Breaking your fast is just as important as the fast itself.  It should be done in the morning hence the word "break-fast" and with only raw juicy fruits such as watermelon. You don't want to just go filling your body full of junk right afterwards.  Remember this is a time to love your body not shock it and have it hating you the whole way through. Being in the right mindset is key,  make your goal a happier healthier life, and nothing more. Truly listen to your body, it's the only place you have to live, for the rest of your life. Treat it like the temple it is. 

"The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison."

-Ann Wigmore

Finding Fulfillment in a Relationship

First off, I'm not claiming to be a relationship counsellor, I'm just talking, here, from my personal experience. I was listening to an audio book by Tai Lopez today, and he said something that resonated with me. "The best person to argue anything, is someone who has tried everything."

I was raised in a broken home, my parents separated when I was very young and, I too, failed at my first serious, to-be-forever, relationship. So my track record of holding a healthy relationship from an outsiders point of view was definitely against me. I had two ways to go about seeing my future in a relationship. I could have decided to throw my hands up and say, "Universe, your right!  I'm doomed and cursed when it comes to finding a loving, healthy relationship. I guess it isn't in the cards for me" or I could pick myself up, dust myself off and refuse to believe what is supposedly "wrote out" for me and change. Charles Darwin once said "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change."  I could have allowed my, not-so-good experiences run the way my life was going to pan out, but instead I chose to see it as a lack of knowledge, and that every failure is just a little more wisdom. The answer was to educate myself on what a healthy relationship is. To be good at anything in life takes knowledge and work, why would a relationship, be any different.

I think relationships are among the hardest things we do everyday because real emotions are involved. So when it came to me, I felt I didn't have the right tools in my tool box to have that healthy thriving relationship. Through extensively educating myself on what makes a relationship last, I was surprised to find out that it wasn't about what the other person did for me but what I did for them. What a concept! lol. Relationships aren't about you. They're not about how much you get from a relationship, but how much you bring to it. My happiness doesn't lie on my husbands shoulders, and why would I want it to. I would prefer to have my happiness in my control. If you go back to the beginning of a relationship, it wasn't about what they did for you, but how it made you feel, to do good by them. You would do anything for that certain someone. You would get all prettied up for every date, massage them because you felt like it, buy them gifts, heck you'd even put on your best looking pj's before bed. In turn, it lit up your own life. My happiness, in my relationship comes from what I do to make my husband happy and to better our relationship. Don't get me wrong, my relationship with my husband, like all relationships, has it's downs, but we made a promise to each other that we would find our balance within ourselves, and to never allow things to go so far, where resentment becomes an issue.

Take full responsibility of your own actions! Take the victim out of the picture. In a loving relationship there are no victims. You are in control of your own happiness. People get in the habit of making relationships a competition, one where the people involved are making tallies of who's doing more or less of certain things. I see this mindset as a recipe for disaster. It's not a competition or a game. If happiness and love is what you're in search of, I've said it once and I'll say it again, your happiness comes from you. No one can give it to you. If you are in a relationship, where you're unhappy, adapt. What I mean by this is stop playing the victim and pointing the finger. Look at your own action first and see where you can change your thoughts around the situation. Respect your partner's opinion. This doesn't mean you always agree. There is a big difference in respecting one's opinion and being a walk on. Know the difference between devaluing yourself and respecting others in their views. It's very important that this be a mutual effort and that your partner, in return, should respect your views.

Something that took me a long time to realize was that, a persons argument is just as right in their minds, as yours is to you. Communicate concerns and feelings with your partner, before the issue becomes bigger than it should be. Keeping things internal will surely lead to resentment. Understand that no human is static. We are constantly changing and evolving. I believe that a loving healthy relationship comes when you commit to, evolving, adapting and communicating with each other. With your main focus being love and happiness, because let's face it, that all life's about.  

If any of you are wondering, the photo's above are from mine and Jason's engagement photo shoot 5 years ago (hence the brown hair lol) , done by my VERY talented and good friend Maria Lang. I just had to pull them out again because she was able to capture the love between Jason and I sooooo perfectly. To Jason the love of my life, when you read this, and I know you will ;) every day that goes by I love you more than the last, I feel sooo lucky to spend the rest of my life with you!!! xoxoxo

Photo Credit @maria_lang  www.marialangstudio.com