March 6th, 2010

Fresh Juice Recipe: Beet, Carrot, Apple and Ginger

In an effort to cleanse my body of tox­ins (also called “yuck­ies” by my 3.5 year old daugh­ter), I have been embarked on a detox jour­ney using a menu plan writ­ten by Gwyneth Pal­trow with her doc­tor, Dr. Ale­jan­dro Junger author of the book “Clean”. I know a lot of peo­ple hate Gwyneth Pal­trow, but I absolute love her site Goop as it has good tips for health.

At any rate, my hus­band and I bought a juicer two years ago and we were using it almost every day. Then for some rea­son, we just stopped. Detox­ing has given me the oppor­tu­nity to bring it out again and include fresh juice into my diet. Here is a tip: if you have a juicer, keep it out on the counter or you will never use it. I know that it’s big, but you know the say­ing, “out of sight, out of mind,” right? It’s true. So keep it out and then you can incor­po­rate that into your daily menus.

On to the Beet, Car­rot, Apple Gin­ger Juice. It’s a beau­ti­ful color, isn’t it? Before I decided to make this juice I looked up the ben­e­fits of beets in your diet. Beets have been shown to low blood pres­sure (not for peo­ple with hyper­ten­sion) and are a pow­er­ful blood and sys­tem cleanser.   It is also believed that beets can increase sta­mina and pro­vide numer­ous heart-healthy ben­e­fits.  It is being called a super juice and while I know that there is no one cure for all that ails, I am will­ing to add more healthy things into my diet.

The recipe fol­lows but I want to share my thoughts on this juice. It actu­ally tastes good despite the fact that I really don’t like beets. I did notice that my stom­ach began cramp­ing while drink­ing my ver­sion which leads me to believe that I used too much beet juice in pro­por­tion to the other ingre­di­ents. Beets are a nat­ural lax­a­tive and work rather quickly. Stick as close to the recipe as pos­si­ble. The recipe below comes directly from the Goop site.

SERVES: 1
TIME: 5 minutes

• 1 large or 2 medium beets, cut into wedges (My Note: I’m not sure this includes the greens. I did not as I used them for another recipe. Also, I’m not sure if beets are sup­posed to be peeled or not. I juiced every­thing but the greens.)
• 1/2 lemon, zest and pith removed
• 2 large carrots
• 1 large apple, cut into wedges
• 1″ piece of ginger

Juice every­thing into a glass, give it a stir and enjoy.

January 15th, 2010

My Weight Loss Vlog: Entry 1

December 29th, 2009

Exercise Any Way You Can

Intro­duc­ing Bucket the Wonderdog

Happy Hol­i­days every­one! If your Christ­mas (if you cel­e­brate it) was half as good as mine then you should be very happy! This year we decided to add a dog to the mix– a beau­ti­fully well-tempered dog named Bucket (my daugh­ter named him). Isn’t he adorable?! While we made this deci­sion so that my daugh­ter would have a play­mate, we did so also because of the exer­cis­ing benefits.

We live in as apart­ment and since mak­ing the deci­sion to work from home I have become some­what of a shut in. I home­school my daugh­ter and then work as a writer, web designer, Blog­ging Con­sul­tant, and am co-founder Moms of Hue and the We of Hue Net­work the rest of the time. I have very lit­tle rea­son to leave the house out­side of doctor’s appoint­ments and the occa­sional fam­ily out­ing. This has proven to be dis­as­trous to my health as I have gained weight which is in direct oppo­si­tion to what I need to do. So, the deci­sion to get the dog came from a need to force myself to brave NY win­ters and get my butt and my daughter’s butt outside.

And it has.

We live on the sec­ond floor but have to climb about 35 steps to actu­ally get there– 20 to get to the front door of the build­ing and then another 15 to get to my door. I have been climb­ing those steps twice daily at the least since bring­ing Bucket home. In addi­tion, my daugh­ter and I, along with buddy walk roughly .25 miles when we take him out for his after­noon walk. In addi­tion, in the morn­ing we have begun walk­ing an addi­tional .5 mile and plan to work our way up to 3 miles. As you can see, I have already begun to get more exer­cise since Christ­mas Eve than I have prob­a­bly done all year. All this walk­ing com­bined with my daily EA Active exer­cise (once I get the doctor’s approval to con­tinue) will help me reach my over­all goal.

It is so impor­tant to get up an move. I feel bet­ter than I have in a long time because I am forc­ing myself to exer­cise. Those trips up and down the stairs count. The brisk walks of the dog around the neigh­bor­hood count. It all counts and I plan to con­tinue get­ting exer­cise in any way that I can.

What do you do tho get more exer­cise in?