Last Saturday, Nathan and I spied a juicer on sale at GNC.  I’m not a juicing aficionado, but fifty bucks for a juicer seemed too good to be true.  After the girl behind the counter assured us we could bring it back if it was a piece of crap, we decided to jump in, head-first, into the juicing craze.  We stocked up on carrots and celery, kale and spinach and headed home to give it a go.

And the next thing you know, you are a vegan.

Seriously.  Almost.

After getting so-so results from our first batch; it was palatable but not everything we’ve heard the blogosphere raving about, we started researching a little more about juicing.  It seemed like every other “juicer” (of the fruit ‘n veggie variety- not ‘roids) was going on and on about this movie Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.  

“Hey, that’s on Netflix,” I told Nae.

Allow me to preface the rest of this by explaining that Nathan and I are some of the most skeptical, suspecting Debbie Downers on the planet…  Nine times out of ten, we are very much those people who mutter “bullshit” quietly to each other while watching the news or a documentary.  We only trust our mothers slightly more than we trust CNN.  We’re bad.

After getting all pumped up and ready to do a mini juice fast after watching Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, we watched Forks Over Knives at the behest of Nathan’s mom.  And over the course of a weekend, we went from chowing down on McDonald’s for breakfast to cutting my favorite foods out of our diets.  My mom asked me if I was giving up cheese – my fifth food group.

“Yes, Mom.  Even cheese.”

“Ah, ha ha!  We’ll see how long that lasts!”

Love you, Mom.  Thanks for the support. 🙂

Basically, we have decided to cut down our consumption of animal derived foods to 5% of our diet.  You math majors at home might deduce that means 95% of what I eat is from plants – non-processed ones at that.  We have decided that our goal is to work toward changing our eating habits forever, and being realistic about our goals.  So yes, I’m still going to make a regular old birthday cake for Finny.  We’ll still eat out “regular food” once in a while.  I don’t expect my stepdad to whip out the tofurkey at Thanksgiving in our honor.  And this vacation to Disney?  Yeah – nothing is standing between me and a Dole Whip.

I’m still wearing leather shoes, too.  I’m not trying to be a PETA-Membership-Card-toting-Greenpeace-flag-waving hippie.  This just feels right.  It is kind-of like it is what we are supposed to do.  Not that it isn’t without its challenges.  Nathan came home all whipped up about the change – he “loves eating like this.”  Then I fessed up to shoveling a fistful of chocolate chips and marshmallows into my mouth for and afternoon snack.  And following it with a peanut butter chaser.

“Oh…  I had a Daily Double at McDonald’s today.”  He sighed.  “But just the sandwich.  And I was SOOO hungry!” he added quickly.

Like I said; it isn’t a cakewalk.

Like my mom said; we’ll see how long it lasts.