With our herbal “bedtime” tea last night we ended day 5 and thus phase 1 of the “reboot.” Today begins phase 2, a 10 day phase where what little solid food we had for the previous five days has been replaced with more juice.

I’ll admit that I was actually looking forward to today. The previous days’ “solid” food often left a little to be desired and I had to force it on myself more than I had to some of my less-favorite juices (I’m looking at you, “Mean Green”). Even though I knew it would be weird “eating” juice five times a day, I knew it would be cool because when the juices sucked I could at least pound them and chase them with water – a trick I learned with the aforementioned “Mean Green”. Today started off with a “Peach Pie” juice consisting of sweet potatoes, peaches, apples, blueberries and a dash of cinnamon. It was lovely and I told Erin that if I could just drink that one for every meal every day that’d be alright by me.

Alas, it was not meant to be as Erin explained to me the percentages of fruit vs. veg this reboot is supposed to hold us to. Our daily “meal plan” consists of breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunch, a mid-afternoon snack, dinner and dessert, all of which are color-coated based on the type of juice one should have that day. I believe this morning’s was “orange”, lunch and dinner’s were “green”, afternoon snack was “yellow” and dessert’s will be “purple” (our mid-morning “snack” being coconut water, something I’ve not become a fan of just yet). Plenty of vegetables in most of these that include some veggies I’ve either never had or rarely have such as kale, collard greens and beets. All things considered, though, today hasn’t been too shabby.

My cravings haven’t subsided just yet but they’ve gone down considerably today. A friend of mine posted a photo of some leftover pizza on Instagram this morning and I drooled a little. While making juices for tomorrow I noticed a link of chorizo in our fridge and I shed a tear. Soon, my little chorizo friend, soon.

Juicing while working a normal job (something Joe obviously didn’t do) requires some preparation so we set to it tonight. While preparing some juices for tomorrow I began dropping whole beets into the juicer and the juice that filtered out into our pitcher looked like it came straight out of Tom Savini’s workshop. To add a little bit of drama I decided it was appropriate to scream “IT’S BLOOD, IT’S BLOOOOOD!!!” every time. I won Oscar for Best Dramatic Juicing Man while Erin brought home the award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance wielding a blood (I mean beet juice) covered paring knife.

We put together breakfast for us both (2), lunch and dinner for us both (4), afternoon snacks for us both (2) and tonight’s desserts for us both (2) bringing our total juice count to 10 juices made all at once (obviously cleaning and emptying the juices between recipes). What we’ve concluded from tonight’s marathon juicing was:

Juicing is freaking time-consuming and will wear you out. We’ve no use for the leftover pulp just yet so it also makes your trash bags heavy when it’s time to empty. We finished our juice-fest and had to come lay down for a little while. That may sound lame but it really was a lot of work.

I rewarded myself for getting through day 5 and starting phase 2 by buying myself some work-friendly shirts from Old Navy and entering a contest to win a three-pack of beard oils.

Nine days remain – I can totally do this.

Today (Day Six)

Feeling: Great. Had a small headache off and on – I figure it’s because my caloric intake has been a bit less but I can’t be certain.
Mood: Silly. I’ve actually not been angry at anything today.
Weight: 251 lbs (10 Pounds lost!)
Blood Pressure: 117/79
Feelings Toward Joe: Would love to juice his head

We’re about to get down on our “purple” dessert juice. It’s collard greens + watermelon juice. Weird, but whatever. I’ll be sure to have my water chaser nearby just in case of emergency.