juicing!

"let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food"

hippocrates

we have been on a journey for the last two years of examining our diet as a family, 

learning as much as we possibly can, 

and making pretty drastic changes.

two of our boys have suffered from the trifecta that is: 

allergies (both food and environmental), eczema and asthma.

it has been awful, to say the least, 

but through some pretty incredible dietary changes (as well as the use of essential oils)

 we have seen significant improvements and a drastic decrease in dependence on prescriptions medications, steroid use (both topically and orally), and hospital trips.

i will be sharing much more about the details of this journey in later posts!

today i simply want to share one way that i have been able to successfully get lots of fruits and veggies in my little guys.

we try to eat a primarily plants based diet, with some exceptions here and there.

we have found that a 75:25 ratio works best for us as a family,

75% plants based and 25% other.

within this, we try to stay away from processed foods completely and keep sugar to a minimum.

now do we cheat from time to time?

absolutely!

especially when we are being served by others. :)

anyone who has kids, knows that getting them to eat raw fruits and veggies in mass quantities can be difficult.

however, juicing has worked wonders in our household for doing just that!

i usually only offer my boys water or almond milk, so any variation in that is very welcomed.

they have liked almost every juice i have made so far, and that is saying something, because i am pretty heavy handed with the vegetables.

they have dubbed all of our green juices, their "hulk juice." :)

i also make smoothies for them daily and use whatever juice i have made as the liquid base for the smoothies.

it is no secret that raw fruits and vegetables work miracles in our bodies!

i have seen improvements in our family not only with the allergies, eczema and asthma,

but with our overall skin health,

moods,

ability to bounce back quickly from illness,

energy levels,

sleep patterns,

and so much more!

we have yet to do an actual juice clean, primarily because ricky and i want to do one together.

 because i am still nursing our youngest (you do not want to do cleanses while breastfeeding since a large portion of the toxins will leave through your milk) and running 20-30 miles a week, we have decided to wait on that one.

a resource i have gleaned much from is of course joe cross's website

and then a go to for new recipes is this site.