Long time coming!

I owe you lovely people an apology. I have been very selfish lately. I have been hoarding my time to myself and only wanting to spend it with the people who I live with.

I want to tell you why I have been absent. I have made a very significant change in my life. No, I am not pregnant! As a family we have made some decisions that are going to make a huge difference in our future. It has taken much of our time and emotional energy to make these choices and that is why I have not been writing. I have needed some time to gather my thoughts.

First thing first: My husband is applying to the local fire department. We are very excited and ask for positive thoughts and prayers during this time. We truly believe that this is a great move for the long term financial security of the family. While there is not a guarantee that he will get the job we are putting forth most of our focus toward this goal. I will keep everyone posted about this process as it is a very long one.

Next: I have made huge strides in helping with the financial security of our family. I have found something that I am passionate about. Something that combines my calling to stay at home with my passion for health and wellness. Through my weight loss journey, I have read books on nutrition and proper ways to feed your body. I feel fairly informed about what I should be putting in both mine and my family's bodies. It really boils down to real food of course. You know those things that come out of the ground or off of bushes and trees. I have been saying this phrase a lot lately: "Colors and numbers are not food". Reading labels has always been common practice for me, but as of late I have seen that it is not always for the people I know and love.

Now to the fun stuff! Recently I was introduced to a product. I am sure that most of you who read this are aware of what I am doing. For those who are not. I have invested in my family's health through Juice Plus! I am so excited to share what this has done for my own personal health, but my family as well.

Now before you get on to me about being "one of those people", I want you to keep reading. I would never get on my own personal therapy blog and pimp a product just for making money. That is not why I am writing this. That is not who I am. I am writing this because this product moved me and expanded my life to being something that I did not think was possible. That is worth sharing. You all have read some of my most personal thoughts and been supportive while I write things that are scary to admit.

I began taking Juice Plus. At first I was just buying it from my mom because she was a new distributor. I wanted to be nice and help her out. I bought enough for me and my husband to share and then some for Andrew. The baby was not old enough to take it, but he has had some here and there.

Within 5 days I noticed something; I had not taken a nap in a few days. This is not normal for me. I am a napper! I have napped as often as I could for as long as I could remember. I just wrote it off  though and went on about my life. About three weeks later I noticed that I was sleeping better at night. Well of course I was you say; I was no longer napping. Here is the thing though: I was getting less sleep in a 24 hour period and having more energy. I was able to go to bed at 11, wake up at 5:30 and stay happy and alert all day. No dip in my energy lever after lunch, no crankiness around 4pm, no pissed off mom at bed time! Again I am thinking there is no way that this is from Juice Plus. I must be having just a really good month. Life goes on and I noticed something else. I am not craving sweets. I had them all over the house out of habit. They just stayed there. I didn't eat them when no one was looking. After about two months of being on just the Juice Plus chewables I felt generally happy. This was a new feeling to me. I have battled my depression for a long time. I have always felt like I was straddling the fence of depression and happiness. I knew I could control my blood sugar with food as a mood stabilizer. I knew that if I would binge eat I would slide into a cycle of self pity. I knew that exercise helped me with my hormones. Could this product really be helping me this much that I have finally crossed over this hurdle in my life?

Yes, it did.

I ran out three weeks ago. After about a week, I felt sluggish. After about two weeks, I felt sad. Here we are in week three and I have some sort of head cold that won't go away. The first thing I noticed though was I was having trouble falling asleep at night. Then I was tired during the day so I would nap. The old cycle that I had fought for so long was starting to rear its ugly head again. I was having trouble staying positive. I was experiencing prolonged feelings of sadness. I was anxious about things that while on Juice Plus I was able to talk myself through. I started to feel that happiness slipping away. Is this a cure for anything? No, but proper nutrition does amazing things to the body.

Juice Plus is just food. It is fruits, vegetables, and grains in a capsule. It is more nutrition than you can cram into your body just by eating. It is not a drug, it is not a vitamin, it is actual food that has been picked from the ground or off of a bush or a tree. Then washed, juiced, dried into a powder and put into a capsule. I never knew how much I was missing in my body until I put it there.

I am sure that so many of you will read this and think that I must be crazy. I can tell you now that the feelings I have felt are genuine. Through all of this I went to a few Juice Plus events, because my mom asked me to. I sat there very skeptical and judgmental of these people who must have drank some kind of kool-aid. Even though I knew how I was feeling; I still could not believe that these people were experiencing all of these things. Even though my mom told me she was making money as a distributor; I was reluctant to join her.

I began to research what this company offered. I talked to a few more people. I made the jump from consumer to distributor. Sure, money was a reason. Who doesn't want to be able to make money? I would not get on my blog though and become an "infomercial" if I didn't have a story to tell. My heart tells me that everyone should be able to experience the product. It has given me so much more than proper nutrition. It has given me the opportunity to have financial stability, power of my own health, and a voice that I did not know that I had.

I hope that you all will support me in this journey. I hope that I can show you how much food has changed my life. I hope that you will share my story with someone who like me has been through a struggle with obesity related depression. I hope that you will join me in this process. Again I want to thank you for reading this and for giving me such positive feedback when I write.