Rocking the sexy

Ok! So it's day ONE of my 21 day cleanse. So far, so good - but - before I start on today, let's trace back to yesterday.

After a grueling eight-hour work day at school (wait, work? at school? I know, right?) I started my journey over to the health food store. It was a cute little store named Lovey's, and when I say little, I mean LITTLE! But packed into this little mini-mart was thousands of items I had never seen before let alone could have imagine existed! I was in health heaven! I will have to say, that as excited as I was the mere small space with lots of people in small isles with mini carts was very overwhelming. There were lots of workers but they were not the friendliest nor very helpful. I did finally manage to maneuver up and down the isles made for only very slim people and get most of everything on my list. I was putting things in my cart that I had never seen before and some things I did not even know how to pronounce!

I arrived home two hours later and my husband so kindly greets me, helps me tote in the environmentally kind brown paper bags and continues on to help me unload and put away the groceries. He burst out in laughter and when I turned to look at him he looked at me, at the fridge and back at me to say, "so many leafy green things!" It is true, my fridge is now fully stocked with lots of "green leafy things" and any "normal" person who opened my fridge would wonder what I am doing!

So - for today - day 1!
I woke up, had my cup of water with lemon and cayenne pepper (just a dash to help jump start your metabolism as well as to start cleansing your liver and other organs). I "meditated" for 5 minutes in a quiet place until I had a sneezing attack and decided it was time to stop. I then proceeded to do what I was excited to do - get my brand new juicer out and JUICE!

Now, I love the color green - its my favorite - and I love the green goodness and Naked juices so I thought this would be similar. Well, I got all of my ingredients together and it definitely smelled fresh and healthy in my kitchen this morning! I turned on the juicer and started to juice! The process was fun so surely I would love the product. I sipped it, not bad! I poured my glass then poured the remainder in little mason jars for later. My husband was even bold and chugged a little glass! When I started on my glass my stomach was NOT as excited as I was. It smelled clean, fresh and it honestly didn't taste that bad, but for some reason it was a little bit of a shock to my body. I was able to finish the glass and was proud to say I did! I'm a little afraid of the 4 glasses in my fridge that need to be downed, but #1 I'm ready to be healthy and I know my body needs this and #2 It's way to expensive to waste!

We continued on about our morning while I sipped on some herbal lemon tea. It was tasty. We got back home and I made Tofu Salad. (It's just like egg salad). We ate it on gluten-free bread and it was SO YUMMY!!! And did you hear that first part - WE! Yes, my husband braved it again and ate it with me and like it too! Yay!!! It's nice not having to do this entirely alone! He's the greatest! After cleaning up I did have that lovely sugar craving, so I simply took a large strawberry, washed it clean and it seemed to cleanse my pallet as well as kick that craving away!


Dinner tonight is a special treat! I am going to make gluten/sugar-free pasta noodles with an herbal tomato sauce for - ta da - spaghetti! I'm sure it'll be great!

The day isn't over, but I've had a good start! I'm so excited to keep this up! But for now I'm going to sign out, go outside on the beach and enjoy an amazing walk in the sunshine with the three loves of my life! (Hubby and furry friends!)

But before you go - I'll be back! So don't go far! Many of you have read and been reading my posts and I love and THANK YOU all for the encouragement so please don't stop! But DO turn off the TV, computers and other electronic devices and go enjoy some family time this beautiful weekend!

Beautiful Faces in Ugly Places

As I sit here on this beautiful morning I receive an email from a beautiful woman who is also going to start this cleanse. In this sweet note she relays to me that after reading my story she was inclined to share hers and what a story she has. After I finished that email, I went to other women's profiles and just looked at their 'about me' sections. I then proceeded to my facebook page and went to some of the beautiful women's pages that I am close to or know just to to read and "research." What I found was very interesting. What I found was this: behind every beautiful face there are dark tunnels, secrets, hidden "cancers" eating at them slowly. Even the one's I thought look happy all the time, of or just beautiful and look like they have everything together had many hints to their inner miserable beings. This is sad.

I myself have a tendency to be very hard on myself. My husband tells me all the time that what we think and say reflects through our lives and eventually comes to be. Over Christmas he even took time to ask me to please be kinder to myself. I laughed it off telling him that it doesn't bother me. That it motivates and reminds me to change. But when I really sit and think about it it's not true. It is just a fear that I will be complacent with my current self and not ever become better. - BUT - I cannot become better if I tell myself that I am fat, ugly, not worthy of love. If I keep that up my mind can't and won't comprehend beautiful, smart, pretty girl. This in and of itself (positive self-affirmation) is a daily thing. It is not always easy, but it does help to think (when you see a beautiful woman) that somewhere deep inside she had dark places and struggles too. (But she shouldn't) We are beautiful women!

God made us all in His image, making us marvelous creatures! So what if the media says you should be a size 2 or 0. SO WHAT! Are you healthy? Are you happy? Is your inner goddess at peace? If so, then you are everything you need to be and more! This is no excuse to not care for yourself and let yourself go saying that you are what you're supposed to be. No - this is quite the opposite! This is the biggest excuse to take time for JUST YOU! Take a candlelit bubble bath, indulge in your (healthy) cravings, spend a little more on groceries if it means you will spend much less on doctor's visits. Talk a walk in the woods and just breathe in deep. Do whatever it is that de-stresses you. For me, it's play piano, write, walk, or just drive. Find whatever yours is and DO IT! You don't have time you say? Well, do you really NEED 8 hours of sleep? What about 7 or 7.5? Get up 30 minutes early before anyone else and just take the quiet time for YOU. Do you really NEED to watch your television sitcoms? Cut it off and pamper your beautiful body! Do you really NEED that one whole hour lunch break? Find a quiet place and just indulge in the silence. Just 30 minutes a day can and will do you so much needed good! You deserve it but you, and only you can make it happen.

I send out a special thanks to my husband, for his patience and loving kindness. I also say thank you to my new found friend who is caught in this tough life but who is also strong enough to recognize the "cancer" in her life and bravely want to begin weeding it out. You both made me really think and have inspired me greatly!

Go out today, love yourself and be beautiful!

My New Crazy Sexy Life

Ok! So - here's the juicy scoop! My health sucks! Appointment after tedious appointment, medication after medication I have only come to one conclusion - it is up to ME to save ME!

It started around June of 2009 when I got diagnosed with Malignant Melanoma Skin Cancer on my back (Happy Birthday Me!).They were luckily able to perform surgery early on to stop it and my treatments were minimal.
I was married in JULY that year - to my wonderful and supportive husband.

<--------- Sexy, skinny self and sexy hubby!

In NOVEMBER I started having passing out spells as well as chest pains and heart palpitations. I started seeing doctor after doctor and went through test after test. Come to find out one of my valves was failing to perform and that was causing my heart to over-compensate which in turn caused my resting heart rate to be 130-140. I got the lovely privilege to wear a sexy heart monitor around the month of JANUARY due to my heart rate only increasing. They (of course) just wanted me on more drugs. (I'm pretty sure pharmacy companies just typed my name in as, $$$$$ $$$$$!) In MARCH we got pregnant (and although this is so personal to me, this is my life and the only way for me to express it is just to share it as is - raw). Only a few short weeks later, we lost our baby - this one makes four lost babies for me. Doctors soon found out that my body was not absorbing vitamins and minerals,.. really was not absorbing anything but I found that so confusing because if it wasn't getting nutrition, shouldn't it be thin and frail? APRIL came around and just when I think it couldn't get a whole lot worse I started to get this choking issue when I ate. It had started a few months ago, but it was getting so bad that I could not breath certain times and my husband had to hit my back to get the food to go down. So now what? You guessed it! More doctors, more tests! They found that my esophagus had numerous ulcers as well as was enlarged three times the normal size do to a food allergen. Great! I'll just get tested to see what I'm allergic to, avoid it and wham-O! problem solved. Right? Wrong. Insurance would not cover this test and it was far to expensive for us to cover on our own so journaling what I was eating when the choking happened seemed to be the next best idea. JUNE - only year since my cancer surgery! Things should be looking brighter, but instead I had lost babies, passed out like it was going out of style, started choking like it was a part of normal eating habits and the cherry on top - I had gain 50 pounds in a one year marker.

(50lbs heavier) ------>

SO! - the first of JULY I got a personal trainer at my gym. Yes! This is perfect, I thought. After 6 weeks of training hard and eating better I had only gained 4 pounds and GAINED 2% body fat! AAAggghhh!!!! How is this possible?!? Even my trainers were stumped. I stuck with it for 3 more weeks giving me 9 weeks total, but after a complete loss I could not afford to keep it up. Then, excited as I was walking in to the dentist office in OCTOBER I was almost in tears when I left. In six months I had gone from ZERO to NINE cavities. The dentist said that she was almost positive it was due to the acid in my stomach (that was causing ulcers in my esophagus) that was coming up to my mouth and causing cavities. Ok - something HAS to give!

What do you do when you have seemingly tried everything you know to do? Well - the only thing left was to do this myself. I went to a health store and met a sweet holistic doctor who kindly sat me down and figured out what it was that my body really needed. She figured out that my body was overly acidic - by a LOT! That I needed to balance it out. She did a great job explaining it all to me, but when I tried to do it on my own it was SO confusing. I tried to stay away from any meat that wasn't organic (thinking it might help) but I just didn't understand. Every pH scale I found was different and after a while, I just became, simply and sadly, depressed.

As I was walking through Sam's Club in JANUARY just getting some foods for the house I fell upon the book, Crazy Sexy Diet. It looked bright, fun and not all about counting calories or carbs (because let's be honest, who has time to weight and measure every bit of food they eat and oh how that seems to just suck the fun right out of eating). The book seemed to be more focused on strengthening the inner-self (mind, body, spirit and soul) versus a book telling you exactly what to do and why what you have been doing is wrong. I set it down because I was really only looking for a healthy recipe book, but after scanning a few others I just kept being drawn to this book. So, that was it - this was the one. As I started reading I couldn't have been more excited to find that this book was exactly what I have been needing - a new outlook on life. Filled with facts, encouragement, structure and lots of helpful ideas I was ecstatic!

Come to find out this was new, up and coming. Two days later the author, Kris Carr, appeared on Good Morning America, the day or two after her book became a #1 book on Amazon and only a few days after that it was sold out everywhere! Kris's story is amazing, how she battled an incurable cancer and although she still has cancer, her change of diet and lifestyle has saved her life. I want to be another Kris Carr. Better yet, I want to be a healthy, crazy, sexy, fully of spark Emily Auman!

<---- Sexy, healthy I would LOVE to get back to!


Well, I am over half-way through the book and loving every page I read! There is a great support website where so many women and men who have started this lifestyle can give and get together, give help, advice support, comfort and love. The women on there are brave and simply amazing. I am excited to say that I am going to be starting my 21 day cleanse/detox on Sunday. This is just 21 days of purely eating healthy (No sugars, processed foods, dairy, meats, gluten). This cleanse is just to rid your body of all the unhealthy and unwanted toxins and to help return your body to its natural and most healthy pH balance. After the 21 days it's up to you, whether you decide to eat 60/40 or 80/20 of alkaline/acid. My personal goal is to stay dairy and meat free since I strongly believe that those are my main reasons for health decay. I am afraid, as this will be a complete change for me, but I have support, love and faith which is more than enough for me - and I believe the best thing for me to continue on track, is to... blog it! :)