I was just having this conversation with my cousin the other day about our children, and I have to confess its really frustrating. See, i’m a full blown sugar addict. And from what I understand, once an addict…always an addict. The truth is that I’ve been eating healthy for almost exactly 2 years now…and I still battle with cravings for bad food. The cravings are much fewer obviously. They are usually triggered if i’m totally starving, or during an event if they serve something I really love to eat. Those cravings are to be expected…but every once in a while, its 3:00 in the afternoon, i’m working, I feel a jab of hunger and I think to myself..I could totally eat a chocolate chip muffin right now.

So then come the children. I believe any parent wants their child to be healthy and strong and develop well. Which is probably why even parents who are not particularly into a “fruits and veggies” kind of lifestyle will find themselves buying organic baby food during the first year of their baby’s life or even making some of their own. We all begin with the best intentions. But somewhere after the first year, we start moving away from the purity of it all, and start giving our children things we think they’d like. Well, what we think they like has a lot to do with our own upbringing and lifestyles and tastes. For example, if we were born and raised in India, we would likely give our children spicy food from a very young age, where as in my Cuban family, giving our children spicy food is foreign and even seems unhealthy for their tender little tummies.

Most parents generally try to be stricter with their children. Limiting sugary products at first, trying to incorporate healthy food, etc. But then come the grandparents and family members. In their never ending desire to please the children…without the pressure of having to actually raise them…they are constantly offering “fun,” “happy” treats to our kids. Lolipops, candy, chocolates, the list goes on and on. And their presentation is even more fun than the treat. “Look what grandma brought you….said in a high pitched voice with a huge smile on her face…. a lollipop!!!!” And the children are thrilled!!!

Then comes school, and school is a totally different animal because they are exposed to junk ALL the time.

So what do you do? My struggle is this:

On the one hand I want to teach my children to eat well. For various reasons: their health, their development, and also so they don’t have to battle with their weight or lifestyles when they are older…regardless of their genetic composition. But on the other hand, I don’t want my kids to feel deprived, or be the weird kid in the class, or rebel against a healthy lifestyle because I was too extreme. So I aim for a balance of the forces. I figure at home I will always provide healthy food, but I won’t be the mom who doesn’t let their child have a cupcake at a birthday party. I’ll try to make lunches “healthy fun” by making their sandwiches in shapes and providing foods that don’t appear to be too strange. And i’ll try to control the grandparents, knowing that they will always get away with giving the kids a treat of some sort. And the balance in my head seems to be fair and balanced and I envision my children being raised healthy and loving good, wholesome foods…all the while enjoying a dessert at a birthday party and not falling under either extreme.

And then comes reality.

My two year old lately tells me daily that he doesn’t like vegetables. And this is a kid who DEVOURS vegetables. But for some reason, he says he doesn’t want vegetables. He’ll say something like, “Mommy I don’t want to eat the carrots on the plate,” even though I know he loves carrots . And he eats them by the way, but it takes cajoling and patience. As if that is not frustrating, I find out from a friend that my 4year old is jealous of all the other kids’ lunches because they are so much more fun than his. OUCH!!!!!! Add to this the amount of exceptions we end up making. Holidays, birthday parties, doctor’s visit, school, grandparent’s house, a play date, I often wonder, are these really exceptions or the norm? Slowly I see that the other side of the coin is gaining strength, and our desire to create a balance and allow leeway and exceptions isn’t actually resulting in a balance of forces. And it begs the question, despite all of our efforts, are we too raising sugar addicts?????

The question is one I simply can’t answer yet. But one thing is for sure, no matter what the end result is, I will never give up trying to teach my kids a better way. So far this is my action plan:

1. Eat really healthy so my children see the example.
2. Refuse to have unhealthy foods in my home, no matter what goes on at school or at grandma’s house.
3. Talk about food with my kids and the purpose of it. I started explaining to my four year old yesterday that eating is not only to satisfy hunger but also to feed our bodies with the vitamins and nutrients we need to be strong. (Don’t think he understood or was interested in any of it but I will keep repeating myself)
4. Make sure breakfast and dinner is really healthy since I will have limited control over my children during school hours.
5. Continue to promote healthy lifestyles in an effort that our community will shift their paradigms and help our children grow up healthy.

And as far as lunch goes…I asked my 4 year old what he liked about the other kids’ lunches, and one of the things he said is that they always get sandwiches. I guess he doesn’t want to eat lentil soup if his friends are eating a ham and cheese. So i’m working on some healthy sandwiches and hoping for the best .

Yesterday, I made:

GRILLED CHICKEN SALAD WRAP

• Grilled chicken
• sliced apples
• sliced carrots
• sliced celery
• avocado

I chopped everything up into TINY little pieces and mixed it in well with the avocado so it had the consistency of mayonnaise. And then I put it in an ezekiel bread wrap. It was truly delicious.

Funny enough, when I picked up the boys at school, Justin had left about a quarter of the sandwich uneaten. I asked him if he liked the sandwich I made him and he responded that he doesn’t like vegetables. So when we got in the car, I handed him the sandwich and asked “are you still hungry?” He took the sandwich and started eating it. All the way home he ate his sandwich telling me how yummy it was. But I guess he doesn’t like vegetables 🙂

For all you healthy parents out there, I beg for your advise and guidance in this area. Please feel free to comment.

Have a wonderful week!

I remember once having a conversation with some girlfriends and one of them telling the group that she read an article regarding general eating habits that were discovered of thin people.

One of those habits was eating a salad with their meal. I remember the concept feeling so foreign to me. I don’t know why. It just didn’t feel easy or natural. I would have never thought then that I would make a salad for myself and my husband almost every single day for almost 2 years (and hopefully for the rest of our lives!)

But that’s how it goes in all journeys. Things that seem unnatural or difficult or tedious become common play after a while. And then you can’t even remember the reasons why it felt so impossible before.

So salads are a big thing in my house. It is our lunch. Almost every day, pretty much without exception. Sounds miserable? I promise you its not!!!!

Salads give us the opportunity to eat RAW, load up on good calories, stay healthy, and pile on the greens! And the beauty of it is that salads allow for so much variety.

When we first started this blog, I posted about my lunch salads and gave a guideline of the ingredients I used. But of course, as we evolve, so does our blog. I no longer put corn in our salads. Is corn absolutely delicious and sweet….YES…is it good for you….NO! Most corn is genetically modified and high in fructose. At least that’s what the hype is. And although I love it and will not hesitate to eat a corn at the cob at the Youth fair, I’ve chosen to remove it from our daily salads. I used to think that my salads wouldn’t taste good without corn, but once again, we have learned to love salads without corn and are doing just fine! The same goes with Craisins. We love craisins, but they have added sugar. Instead, we now put raisins. They are still high in sugar and add a nice sweetness to our salads, however, they have no added sugar which I prefer.

So, every day I prepare a different salad. Sometimes its out of this world delicious and sometimes its just ok. But everyday its good for our bodies.

Here are some of my basic recipes:

Salad #1 – (I always use olive oil and balsamic vinegar or lemon to dress my salads.)

• Organic Spinach
• sprinkle of sliced almonds
• 1 tbsp of chia seeds
• 1/4 sliced apple
• sprinkle of raisins
• 1/2 an avocado
• 1 hard boiled egg
• shaved carrots

Salad #2 –

• Organic spring mix
• a couple of broccoli florets raw
• 1 cup of chia seeds
• 1 tbsp of chia seeds
• 1 tbsp of flax seeds
• 2 red beets
• 1/4 sliced pear
• shaved carrots
• sprinkle of raisins
• sprinkle of sliced almonds

Salad #3-

• Any leafy greens I have (sometimes I mix kale and romaine or butterhead lettuce and collards…just depends on what I have in the fridge)
• 1/2 zucchini sliced (raw)
• 1/2 yellow squash sliced (raw)
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• sprinkle of raisins
• sprinkle of almonds
• shaved carrots
• 1/4 sliced pear or apple
• 1 red beet sliced

The truth is that these combinations work with any number of substitutions. I rely heavily on what i have at home and on ripeness. If I used a pear in my smoothie I toss the remainder in my salad. I focus on not wasting my ingredients.

Ok, the last week of the Whole Living cleanse is week three:

Fruits, veggies, seafood, nuts and seeds, eggs, gluten free grains.

Orlando has successfully completed his fast and whole living cleanse right before his 36th birthday. And lost 10lbs that creeped up on him during the holidays and fantasy football season.

These salads were great for Orlando’s cleanse because they were no different than what he had been eating before.  Note: I did not put any eggs in his salad until week three.

Next week we will post some of our dinner recipes used during the cleanse. Have a great week!!!!!

Hello all! This is the longest stretch I have ever gone without posting since I began this blog. To be honest, I have so many things to share, I don’t even know where to begin.

First things first…the recipes.  There are way too many recipes to put in a single post so I’ve decided to share with you a list of recipes that we used during these weeks. Some of these recipes have already been posted and you can see them in our recipe page. The other ones will be posted separately.

Week 1 dinners included:
Beet soup with a side of beet tops – My favorite part about this recipe is the beet tops. Did you know that beet tops are even more nutritious than the actual beet? And they are delicious sauteed in some olive oil with a sprinkle of salt and pepper!!!! I will elaborate more on the health benefits of beet tops in a separate post.

Butternut squash soup – this recipe was Orlando’s favorite cleanse recipe of all. He fell in love with this soup and made it several times throughout the cleanse in large batches. Then we would have it for dinner or lunch on other days.

Veggie tray – the veggie tray is Orlando’s concoction of different roasted vegetables.

Ratatouille without cheese or grains

Week 2 & 3 dinners included:

• Butternut squash soup – it’s really yummy!!!!!
• Salmon with a veggie side such as roasted asparagus or sauteed leeks, shallots, and asparagus, or broccoli
• Snapper with a side of veggies and cauliflower mash
• Salmon en Papillote

Now for the aftermath:

These are my thoughts about the cleanse. My perspective might differ from Orlando’s. But from observing him, this is what I gathered.

The cleanse started out great. The 48 hour fast put Orlando in a good place. It made him feel powerful. It is an empowering feeling to know that you can control your hunger… that you control food instead of food controlling you. He broke his fast with a delicious ratatouille. We had never had ratatouille without cheese or grains and it was actually delicious. The first week of the cleanse went well also because it just feels so good to eat so clean.

The nicorette gum was terribly difficult for Orlando. He gave up too much all at once and he wasn’t feeling well. He decided for his own sake to wean off the nicorette gum instead of quit cold turkey. He had 2 gums a day for the first two weeks of the cleanse, then he weaned to one and I am so happy to say he is OFF NICORETTE ENTIRELY!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!

So far so good. The cleanse was going well…and then we hit the second weekend. Weekends are rough on all of us. Orlando is not really a fall off the wagon on the weekends kind of guy. For the most part he eats well. But he likes his drink. He loves to have his cigar and wine or scotch on the weekends.  The weekends are relaxed from our routine. So when the weekend hit, it sucked that Orlando couldn’t have a nice glass of wine with his cigar. But that wasn’t all, he couldn’t have anything. No chocolate, no cheese, no meat, no sauces, nothing.  Going out to eat was very difficult. He found himself simply not eating. Side note: we did go to Ruby Tuesdays and were shocked with their great selection of vegetables.  We recommend to anyone who is trying to stay healthy.

By the time he got to week 3 he was done. He was cranky. He was irritable. He wanted cheese on his Ratatouille. He wanted a piece of chocolate after dinner. He wanted his life back. He was so done that on the last day of his cleanse we visited his father in Hialeah and went to a little market that had awful disgusting food. And Orlando would have devoured it at that point. He was in such a bad place. And what’s funny is that he wouldn’t touch that food normally, but he was just sick and tired of not having a choice.

My opinion is that he did the cleanse for too long and it goes against what we promote in the first place…to have a healthy, balanced lifestyle. During the last week, he began to respond as if he were on a “diet” that he couldn’t wait to get off. It only strengthened my view that diets simply don’t work. Life is to enjoy. We are not meant to feel deprived all the time.  When we put ourselves in a place of constant sacrifice to lose weight…then we eventually lose weight, are tired of the sacrifice…and rebel…hence, we gain weight and the vicious cycle begins again.

I think the biggest reason we have successfully kept a healthy lifestyle is because we have learned to enjoy eating healthy. We are not bored to tears with our food choices  or eating bland food day in, day out. We have found delicious “alternatives” to the food we used to enjoy. We pick and choose what we cut out of our diet. We can eat a pizza on the weekend if we really want to. We are super clean during the week and then on the weekend we relax a little. If there is something we really want we have it. For me for example it might be ice cream cake at a birthday party. For Orlando it’ll be his scotch during a domino game. Its the 90/10 split that I always promote. If you make good choices 90% of the time, the other 10% doesn’t count. The key is to keep it at 10% only!!!!! Orlando gained a little weight during holiday/fantasy football season, and its because his exceptions were more than 10%, and he unfortunately has the tendency to gain weight.

But the cleanse was a different story. It was 100% all the time, no exceptions. And it took its toll. I would venture to say that it even had a negative effect on Orlando. The things he loved before his cleanse even became boring for him afterwards…like his lunch salad. He even started complaining about cooking. He was tired of chopping vegetables. He lost motivation.

The results were good from a weight perspective. Orlando lost the 10lbs he gained. But worth it??? I guess only he can answer that. I think a 1 week cleanse would have given him a jump start and he could’ve gone back to his 90/10 lifestyle and maybe it would have taken a little bit longer to lose those extra pounds but it would’ve been better.

But all in all, it was a great learning experience. Now we are back to our middle ground. After a couple of weeks of feeling worn down from the cleanse,Orlando has recouped and is happily back to his salads for lunch and although he does want to cut down a little on the cooking, he is finding ways to simplify his veggie chopping and making quicker meals.

And so my friends, the journey to health, happiness, and balance continues for our family. We hope it continues for yours also.

Orlando has successfully completed 2 weeks of his cleanse. Here is the breakdown:

Week 1 – fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds
Week 2 – fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds, seafood

I realize that sometimes the most challenging part of changing your diet is that you don’t know where to begin. That’s why we all desperately look for sample menus or recipes. The whole concept appears bigger than our minds can handle. This used to happen to us. I believe our success in this process has been in keeping it simple.

Especially when doing things like a cleanse which is so strict or when starting a lifestyle change, sticking to a simple regimen makes it easier for us to follow through with it. Then when it gets boring or you’re more comfortable with the foods you’re eating, then you can start incorporating more alternatives.

The basic meal plan is as follows:

Smoothies for breakfast
Salads for lunch
Powersnack balls or almonds for snack
Hot Dinner

There are so many things I’d like to share about the cleanse that i’m having a hard time putting it all in one post so I’ve decided to do several posts regarding the recipes used during the cleanse.

Let’s begin with a few recipes for our morning smoothies:

I’ve made all sorts of smoothies in the past but during these 2 weeks I’ve really focused on cleansers for us to maximize orlando’s detox month.

I bought a few herb plants: parsley, mint, thyme, cilantro, basil, oregano and put them in my backyard. I’ve been taking advantage of them!!!

Smoothie #1 (Orlando’s favorite)

• parsley
• cilantro
• celery
• cucumber
• lemon
• pear
• water

Smoothie #2 (my favorite)

• cilantro
• cucumber
• pineapple
• blueberries
• lemon
• water

Smoothie #3

• celery
• parsley
• lemon
• ginger
• apple
• stevia
• water

Smoothie #4

• cucumber
• celery
• lemon
• green superfood
• pear
• water
• stevia

The great thing about these smoothies have been their consistency. Orlando does not like the seedy smoothies and he really doesn’t like it when the smoothies are thick. But we do smoothies instead of juicing in order to preserve the fiber content of the fruits and veggies. Well, the beauty of these is that they come out juice-like. Much smoother than some of the other smoothies and Orlando likes drinking them a lot more. I use the nutribullet for these and I make sure to always add water to the max line and they are great.

All these variations are great for cleansing the system, great for the skin and quick and easy to make in the mornings.

My husband has made a lot of changes in the last few years. The most significant are that he stopped smoking cigarettes the day our first son was born…and that he lost 60 lbs. Well, it should always be our goal to continue to improve and change and be better. And I’m proud to say Orlando is constantly aiming to improve, change, and be better.

The one thing he has been clutching on to with both hands is Nicorette gum. That one really got him hooked. The problem is that its absolutely terrible for you. Besides the obvious nicotine factor, our doctor explained to him that it has all sorts of chemicals that affect the liver, etc. Even the label warns you not to use the product for more than a certain period of time, I believe 6 months or so. But yet my husband has been chewing the gum for 4 years and 4 months. So the time has come for him. It will probably be harder than any challenge he has had in the past. And because he tends to be an all or nothing kind of guy, he decided to take a month to do a full body cleanse. No alcohol, tobacco, nicorette, dairy, chocolate, caffeine, animal protein…YIKES!!!!!

So it started today with a 24 hour green lemonade fast.

Here is the recipe.

• 1 gallon of water
• 6 peeled lemons
• 6 scoops of green superfood
• 5 drops of stevia

He will spend the whole day drinking this gallon of lemonade with no other food. Pure detox.  Then he will begin a week of vegetables and fruits and I will update you on the foods we make and supplements we take to help him with this cleanse. This will be a difficult challenge for him but if he can manage to complete it, I am certain that he will be grateful he did it at the end.

Wish him luck!!!!!!!

So as I promised yesterday, I’m posting the salad recipe I made last night. My husband was not going to be home for dinner, which meant no cooking for me. Its so easy for me to put a salad together that it was the best choice.

The ingredients were:

• Romaine Lettuce
• Raw Zucchini slices
• Raw Yellow Squash slices
• Raw carrot slices
• 1 cooked red beat
• goat cheese (just a few crumbles)
• sliced almonds
• dried plums
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• 1 heirloom tomato sliced
• 1/4 sliced pear
• light drizzle of olive oil and vinegar

Absolutely delicious!!!! I’ve never really posted my salads as recipes because its just something I toss together. But I must confess I do have knack for making some tasty salads. We don’t often eat salads for dinner since we’ve already eaten one for lunch, but today I had some leftover Ratatouille for lunch so that fresh salad was a perfect evening meal.

Side note about a great buy: We LOVE beets, so every once in a while we roast a ton of beets, wrap them in aluminum foil and put them in the fridge to use for smoothies, salads, or a side veggie. But the other day Orlando found this little treasure at Whole Foods. Vacuum sealed cooked beets. They don’t expire until May (I think because they are vacuum sealed) and the only ingredient is: beets. He bought a couple of them and they are wonderful to have in the fridge just in case you ever want beets but don’t have any pre-cooked ones in the fridge or you don’t have the time to roast them yourself.

Just a few days ago I ran into a lady that works at my office. This lady is 46 years old and runs marathons, competes in body building competitions, eats super healthy…and needless to say….looks phenomenal. So she comes into my office to meet little Ryan and mentions to me, “You know i’ve gone 80% raw.”

I know about people who are raw vegan , but when she said she was 80% raw, I really didn’t understand what she meant, so I asked her. She told me I eat raw most of the day. Meaning salads, seeds, nuts, fruits, fats, etc. And then she explained that she hasn’t really been able to let go completely of “hot” food so in the evening she may sautee some veggies or cook a salmon.

Throughout this whole journey, I’ve read about a lot of different diets if you will. Paleo, Raw, Vegan, Raw Vegan, Vegetarian, etc. I really can’t say I subscribe fully to any of these lifestyles fully because there are things I eat that don’t fall within their plans. What I try to do is take good information from each system (from any system really) and try to apply it to my life as much as possible. But our needs vary as our ages and lifestyles vary. There are times when you need more of a particular food than another and that is always changing.

Back to RAW – so what does this really mean:  The theory is that heating food over 118 degrees Fahrenheit destroys much of the nutrients in your food. So the claim is that if you eat food in its preserved state, you will have increased energy, weightloss, better sleep, better bowel movements, less illness, and more hydration and oxygenation (anti-aging).

Every article I’ve read suggests that  it is not necessary to go 100% raw to get the benefits of this lifestyle. In fact, to go completely raw without any sort of transition might cause your body too much stress because it starts to cleanse too quickly. So it is encouraged to simply increase the amount of raw foods in your diet slowly and gradually.

After my friend explained to me her diet, I realized Orlando and I are pretty “raw” ourselves!!! It was something that happened so subtly that I didn’t even realize there was a name for it.

So our daily diet looks a little like this:

• SMOOTHIES IN THE MORNING FOR BREAKFAST
• SALADS AT LUNCH
• SEEDS, FRUITS, NUTS, FOR SNACKS
• HOT FOOD FOR DINNER – VEGGIES WITH A SIDE OF SOMETHING ELSE
• DARK CHOCOLATE FOR DESSERT 🙂

Naturally there are variations to this. For example, I incorporate hard boiled eggs a few times a week into our diet. Or maybe one day I’ll have steel cut oatmeal for breakfast or maybe the prior days hot veggies get tossed in my otherwise raw salad.

But the point is that we spend most of our day eating whole, unaltered foods that help improve our digestion and keep our weight down.

Interesting story: Orlando gained about 8 pounds in the holiday months. Orlando has a tendency to gain weight so we were not surprised since the holidays involve lots of parties, alcohol, work functions, and change of routine. But in January when our lives settled back to normal, we were talking one day and Orlando commented that although we did make a lot of exceptions during the Holidays, he really never stopped eating lots of vegetables. We started to run through our dinners and they had not changed much except the days we were not home. So why the weight gain? And it hit us like a ton of bricks. LUNCH. Lunches were Orlando’s worst enemy. Where I normally make his salad for him to take to the office, that routine was most affected because of scheduling, lack of planning, and holiday lunches. So although it did not seem like a drastic change, he went from eating raw pretty much all day until dinnertime…to eating hot food at restaurants. Nothing major, maybe a soup and a sandwich, or a grilled chicken…nothing totally unhealthy but enough to make a difference in his weight.

So our challenge to you this week is to take a hard look at your diet and see how RAW you are. Are you feeding your body enough raw, unprocessed, unaltered foods? If you’re not, what part of your day can you add a little raw to? Maybe a smoothie for breakfast? Just type in smoothie in the search box on our home page and pull up some of our smoothie recipes to try. Or maybe just a salad for lunch where you can sneak in some raw veggies? We will post a couple of our salads this week so you can take a look. Who knows…maybe it’ll make a difference in your life as much as it has in ours!

My 2 year old woke up at 12:30am screaming on Monday morning because his head and ear hurt. He was coughing and his eyes were red and clearly he had a cold. People question me all the time as to why my kids get sick despite how “healthy” we feed them. I actually had this same question and asked my doctor about it. His response was…because they’re kids. We live in a society where we are indoors much more than outdoors. The a/c is always circulating and germs circulate as well. These kids are always touching everything and then putting everything in their mouths and combining that with not getting enough sun and being outdoors enough is a bad combination. So our kids get sick just like all other 2 and 4 year olds. But from the moment I know the cold is coming, I attack with all my remedies. And to be honest, my kids usually bounce back pretty quickly and (knock on wood) I have not had to give either of my children antibiotics in over a year.

Anyway, Monday morning I made a boost your immune system smoothie and it was delicious. I just had to share it.

• 2 chopped carrots
• romaine lettuce
• 1 apple
• frozen pineapple
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• 1 inch of fresh ginger root
• almond milk (unsweetened) I fill to the MAX line on the nutribullet

This is where I really got creative. I have a bottle of vitamin c with bioflavanoids capsules. I opened up two of the capsules and poured in the vitamin c powder in the mixture. I also put in vitamin D drops.

It continues to fascinate me how I can do whatever I want with my food at home. This concept is one I simply did not have before. My mind was totally limited. I would have never thought that I could boost my kids’ smoothie with vitamin c because all I saw was a pill that they are too young to swallow. The old me would have thought, I have to go to whole foods and buy vitamin c drops. Crushing a pill or taking its contents out of the capsule would have never dawned on me. But it does now. My paradigm has shifted and I see possibilities I never saw before. This makes me so happy. This is the creativity my husband has always had that makes him cook such delicious food. It is finally rubbing off!!! YAY!!!!!!

A note on the almond milk: I was quite hesitant to make this smoothie with almond milk because I didn’t think the combination would taste too good. And I usually juice my carrots because I really don’t like the texture of the carrots blended in smoothies. But I always make a carrot/ginger/orange  juice and I didn’t have oranges on Monday only apples and pineapple. So I looked up some recipes and all the carrot/pineapple recipes called for almond milk. I decided to give it a chance and was pleasantly surprised. The almond milk helped a lot with the consistency of the carrots. This is great because I prefer smoothies to juicing in order to preserve the fiber from the vegetables and fruits.

The boys and I loved the smoothie and along with all our other home remedies, everyone is  feeling better. Keeping our fingers crossed that the 2 week old doesn’t get sick!!!!!