Time flies when you’re eating real food. Today marks one whole week of solid food after our 30 day juice fast. I thought I would check in to let you know what’s what nowadays. Very soon I’ll be sharing our entire tracker, which includes our daily juice intake (quantity, frequency, type), grocery lists for every week, weight tracker, ALL of our custom juice and nut milk recipes, and other stuff, too.

But first …

• I miss juice. My friend Steve says I’m Stockholming, which is probably right. There is a sort of simplicity to juice, and once you’re back out in the big, bad world of “real” food, there is so much variety it can be overwhelming. And overeating is entirely too easy. It’s a little scary, to be honest. So we’ve still been juicing from time to time. We’ve juiced at least five or six meals since the fast ended, and it always feels and tastes so good.

• Breaking the Fast: We stayed up until midnight to celebrate and break our fast. We were in Colorado, so as my mom pointed out to me a few days later, we could have actually broken fast at 11pm, being in Mountain Time and all. Oops. Had I made that connection, I could have saved myself the excruciating pork and bacon food specials on the travel channel, which is what I chose to watch in the hour leading up to midnight. Btw, did you know about chocolate-dipped bacon or half-bacon half-beef burgers? They’re so hot right now.  Anyways, back to the breaking of the fast. At midnight, we pulled out some leftover appetizers from my mother-in-law’s 60th birthday party earlier that day, and together we took our first bites. Mine was (drumroll) … fruit! Soon followed by a baguette cracker with smoked salmon, a little cream cheese and a honey-dill sauce. Pretty dang tasty. We ate a few more bites of party apps, and then felt full and called it a night. A thrilling, accomplished night.

• The Transition: We weren’t as careful as everyone warned us to be, and it all went fine. Our first day back we made homemade kale chips with soft-boiled eggs for breakfast – one of our most favorite meals in the world. For lunch we were up in the mountains and we stopped at our favorite little deli in Frisco, where we each ordered a 6″ sub. Between the two of us, we finished half of one sandwich and were super full. Every meal out since has ended with a lot of doggy bags in the fridge, so sooner or later we should learn to just stop ordering a full meal each. We’ve gone right back to eating meat, but smaller portions of it. Overall we are eating a lot healthier. Fewer carbs, more veggies (and fruits!), little oil and butter. I just don’t crave what I used to (What’s that? It WORKED?!).

• Looking Ahead: We had both been greatly anticipating a good workout routine, but were holding off until we finished the fast and got our feet back on solid (food) ground again. Andy has been on a pretty intense push-up/sit-up regimen since our first day off the fast, and yesterday we did our first real workout: Jillian Michaels Ripped in 30. It is no easy thing and I wanted to puke and die after the first five minutes. OMGsofun!!! Today I’m sore, but I feel great. Let the ripping/burning/othergymrattermsforexercis-ing continue!