A Year in the Life of a Home-Schooling Family: Day 58

Well, my lovely in-laws have just left, and I am sitting at the computer drinking a juice which is a peculiar shade of orange. This morning I made my way through a juice which was an equally peculiar shade of green. I have a stinking head-ache and feel really really tired. Why? I hear you ask. Good question. It is the first day of Lent, and Gary and I have decided to juice for as much of it as we can.

I feel terrible, and its only been fourteen hours of nothing but juice. I’m thinking I may not manage 40 hours, let alone 40 days and nights. Gary and I have different reasons for doing this. Gary would like to lose some weight. He will be juicing most meals except for one large meal a day, as he works at a physical job. I am juicing to get rid of my addiction to sugar. Lots of things have happened/been said/ or I have read just recently to make me realise that an addiction to sugar is just as bad as an addiction to any other substance/thing.

Last summer I did 13 weeks without sugar: I felt healthy, our whole family lost weight, and I thoroughly enjoyed our plant based diet.

I remember the day I slacked off. I remember it specifically because it was an actual conversation I had with myself. I knew I had found a way of eating which could last a life time. But I did not take my addiction to sugar as seriously as I should have. I felt it had been fairly easy to get rid of for those past 13 weeks, I was sure it would be just as easy to do again. I made the actual decision that for the one week I was going to be on holiday that first week of September I would eat what everyone was eating. When I got back, I would eat healthily again.

Well, I returned, and so started the tooing and froing of tomorrow I will start again. Monday I will start again. After the girls birthday I will start again. After Christmas… After Thomas’ birthday… After my mum’s birthday… Suddenly we were into February… well you get the gist.

So I am attempting to do a juice fast through Lent. Flipididipidy it sure is hard, and I’m only on the first day. My head hurts so badly. Fasting on juice alone means giving up my much needed coffee in the morning. I have no plans to give up coffee after the fast, but it seems a bit fruitless if I am to fast on juice alone to be slipping in a couple of cups of coffee each day. I’m fairly sure that I could debate the virtues and facts about coffee being a fruit and therefore a juice… although I would possibly be on tenuous ground 🙂

The second thing I want to do is read through the entire Bible in the next forty days. As I am going blind (well, no not really, just short-sighted) and I have a really bad headache at the moment, I am opting to listen to it instead. Morning, noon and night – those times when I would usually be eating glorious wonderful solid food.

I might just be a nightmare for the next forty days – anyone want to join me? No? Oh, well, it was worth a try 😉

We’ve hardly done any school today, but normal posting will return tomorrow along with my cries and wails about my poor head. I guess I got myself into it, so I now need to get myself out of it! Bah humbug!