Day 6 and I'm done

Well, it's official. I have made the decision to come down off of my juice feasting high. I really wish my body could take more as I would love to go for 20-30 days. It was easy for me, after the first few days of course. I didn't suffer any emotional moments that I know of (they may have come out in my sleep?) and the only physical outbreak I had was on the inside of my mouth. I have a few cankers in my mouth, most likely from the acidic fruits I'm using.

I was going to go one more day so that I could say I had 10 days of fasting under my belt (remember the 3 days on green smoothies prior to the juicing), but I was getting a little too concerned about my blood sugar and the fact that I wasn't able to stabilize it as much as I would have liked. However, I can't remember the last time my body hasn't hurt when I've gotten out of bed. The last 4 days, seriously, I am pain free!
This has been a great experience for me, and yes I plan to do it again but I think I will have to limit myself to 3 or 5 day fasts.

I will continue to juice in the mornings because I don't think I've tasted such yummy juice as when it it freshly made, and you can experiment with so many combinations.

If anyone wants to join me in another fast next month, or would like to try your own, I will be happy to share what I have learned from my wonderful juicing community. I am no expert, but knowing all the questions I had as a virgin juicer, I should be able to help out somewhere.

Day 5 is behind me!

I have made it successfully through a weekend! It was not easy, but it's over. Phew. By far the hardest time to be different from anyone else. I passed on Friday night Pizza with Jon, passed on Costco lunch with the family on Saturday, and sat at the table Sunday evening and watched while all the family ate our one big meal of the week.
No regrets, I can always catch up with my eating and cravings at a later date.

Things I've noticed so far - Suddenly my daily aches and pains are gone. Like, completely gone. I used to wake up every morning hurting so much and for years have been blaming it on my mattress. I think the juicing has eliminated all of the toxins in my joints that caused me to ache. Incredible.

This is the end of day five juicing, day 8 with the green smoothie fast. This is the day that I started getting my colon cleanse, if you know what I mean.

For the past couple days I have had dry eyes and usually a few doses of eye drops takes care of the problem for another month or so, but this time they just weren't going away. As I lay in bed tonight, it hit me, I have had no oil in my diet lately. I'm no expert, but I wondered if that had anything to do with the uber dryness I've been having. So tomorrow, I plan to add some flax seed oil to my juice and see if that doesn't solve the problem.

I feel good, but I still think about food. The pull to eat or cheat isn't there but I find myself fantasizing about my first whole meal. I feel like I'm pressuring myself to make it super special or to go somewhere that I really love. Is that normal? I don't know, but it seems to be for me. I just want a date night with my hubby!

Juice Feast Days 3 and 4

Still going strong! Realized that in the area where I live, juicing is a very lonely lifestyle. No juice bars or raw food cafe's close to where I live. Jon says I shouldn't worry because we have a juice bar in our own house. He's right, but it's not the same!

Day 3 went off with no challenges or hitches. Eeeeeeexcellent. However, being the nice wife that I am, I stopped on the way home from work and picked up my hubby his favorite pizza at Papa Murphy's. He's recovering from hernia surgery and I'm afraid I haven't done too well providing him with anything more that liquid food lately. Being the good sport that he is, he doesn't complain and if he gets hungry, he goes and fixes himself something to eat.

Day 4 (Saturday) was going to prove a little more challenging. Mi sister and her family came to stay with us for the weekend as they had a wedding a few hours south of us. Normally, I would say "you are on your own for food!" But this sister has put me and my family up for the last 33 years and has been so accommodating, that I wanted to return the favor, however small. Saturday morning I got up early and made my juice and then I started preparing them a breakfast of pancakes (my weakness), scrambled eggs, and cut up cantaloupe and watermelon. I did not cheat. First challenge: check.
That afternoon, we went with our son and his family to Costco and Smith's to do our weekly shopping, and while they ate lunch at Costco, I sat there at the table with my lemon water and didn't cheat!
Oy. I know I am doing something good for myself, but I do miss the socialization that comes with food.
Tonight, for the first time since this started, I woke up at 12:30 pm hungry. That's never happened in my life. I'm thinking I either didn't drink enough juice during the day, or I was dreaming about eating and it woke me up. Probably the latter.

Juice Feast day 2

Day two of juice feast day is behind me. It would have gone great if I hadn't been a little too zealous with my new juicer. For my sweet juice I used spinach (about 5 or 6 cups) and 1 1/2 oranges and about 7 strawberries. It was quite tasty. My throughout the day juice was a disaster. I just pulled stuff out of my fridge and just went crazy. Spinach, kale, celery, carrots, a whole beet with greens, 1/4 of a cucumber, an orange, 1 apple, and a wedge of one lemon.  Here's a tip for you. Don't ever use a whole beet in your juicing. Every time I took a drink I felt like I was drinking dirt. But being the trooper that I am, and because I didn't have anything else for lunch, I endured. About every 30 minutes I went in and drank about 4-5 swallows and followed it with a lemon water chaser. It's the only way I could get it down. 

Thanks to the most wonderful juicing support group I am doing this juice fast with, I got all sorts of great ideas for the next days juices. The best recipe to follow is simplicity. I put too many flavors into one juice and expected goodness. I think it's best to stick with 4-5 ingredients for a good, appetizing outcome.

Since finishing the 3 day smoothie fast and now wrapping up the 2nd day of my juice fast, I am pretty confident that my detox day hit on day 2 of the smoothie fast, because so far, that's the only day I've had to restrain myself from hurting someone. I was very surprised at how fast I would enter the detox zone; I was thinking it would be closer to day 4 or 5, like when you give up soda or sweets. 

The craving for foods has diminished a little more each day, my energy level is good, and my sleeping would be awesome if I could get past having to get up between 3-4am every morning to go potty. Not something I'm used to, but I think multiple trips to the terlet are a side effect of drinking all your calories and all the lemon water each day.

When I was telling Jon one day that I missed chewing (and come on, chewing your smoothie or juice is just NOT the same; admit it!) he suggested that I take some of my extra juice and put it into Popsicle molds. I thought that was a great idea! So last night as we were sitting out on the porch reading, he eating his ice cream drumstick, me eating my fresh juiced frozen treat, it felt great. Did I cheat? I don't know. Someone will have to tell me!

Let the juicing begin!

My new Hurom 100 Slow Juicer is ultra attractive. I ordered it on Thursday and got it on Tuesday from Chef.com. It's a masticating juicer which means you get about 60% more nutrients from your produce than from a centrifugal juicer. All I know is that it works pretty slick and it's moderately quiet, compared to my Blendtec, which, by the way, I LOVE.

I have now completed my first day of juice fasting. The only changes I've noticed so far is my headaches are gone, the craving for foods is becoming less and less. I did suffer a pretty good crash right about 2:00 in the afternoon where I had to go into a dark room and shut down for a few minutes, but that night I slept better even though I had to get up at 3:00 am to use the terlet, but I fell right back into bed and slept like a baby.

My head feels much clearer today. It's almost like each day gets a little bit better! Maybe that's why people do these for 10 days?

I will say one thing though, I really need to simplify my method of juicing so it goes much faster. I spent an hour this morning washing, cutting, peeling, juicing, pouring, and then the rinsing and cleaning up. Wow.It doesn't take that long to fix my lunches for a whole week when I'm eating crap!

So this weekend, I plan to do all my washing, peeling, and cutting of the produce that I can, package it up and have it all ready to go each morning. That way I'm hoping to cut my prep time in half each day. 

After juicing for a day, I'm so glad I decided to start out on a green smoothie fast first as that helped me merge into this so much better. I am committed to follow through on this at least for 9 more days, and then we will see how it goes. 

My weight loss, well, I won't even go there yet. I am not going to reveal that until the end because so far it's been pretty phenomenal.

Smoothie Fast Day Three

I woke up this morning feeling soooooooooo much better! My head only hurt slightly, nothing like the vice grip I had experienced the day before. I was still not looking forward to downing another smoothie, but today I decided to mix things up a bit and boy, was I rewarded!

Jon had a hernia surgery scheduled for today and we had to be at the hospital by 6 am. I didn't know if I would have time to come home and "eat," so I hurried and made my breakfast. 

Today's smoothie was:

water

5 cups of spinach

1 cup of kale

1 cup of carrots

1 tbsp flax seed oil

1 slice lemon with peel

1/2" ginger

2 cups mixed berries

This revived my appetite to go on and make it another day!

Today was great. I had energy, mental clarity, and the draw of outside food was waning quite a bit.

My new Hurom 100 Slow Juicer arrived today and I cannot wait to try it out. I'm crossing my fingers that I won't have to experience another detox day, so time will tell!

Oh, and Jon is doing great! And he seems to like this new smoothie better that the others I was making. Bonus.

Day Two of Smoothie Fast

Wow. Waking up today was not pretty. My head was pounding from a major headache. I felt like I hadn't slept at all the night before. My body moved so slow and my mind even slower. Every movement I made the entire day was difficult. However, from reading experiences other people had on juice fasts, I expected my body to go through a detox phase, I just didn't expect it so soon or for it to slam me so hard.
I pushed through it. All day I reminded myself of why I was doing this.
Even though I was claiming that I was living a vegan lifestyle, I wasn't eating 100% raw; I was probably at 60% to 70% with the remaining being made up of carbs and sugar. I had gotten so addicted to sweets again that I found myself coming into work early, raiding the sin bin (chocolate drawer), grabbing up a bunch of mini-candy bars and throwing them in my desk drawer. Instead of allowing myself a treat once or twice a day, I would sit there and eat all of them like a robot; not even thinking about it. It's amazing how fast bad habits can form and it takes 3 times longer to form good ones! Today that drawer was literally screaming my name all freakin' day long. My will held out and looking back I have no idea how I resisted. I was so ready to give up because it's in my nature not to follow through with things that are hard.
I, Kris Thorne, am a closet cheater when it comes to food. But this time I really want to succeed, so I am coming clean. I am being completely honest with myself and not rationalizing that "just eating this one handful of chips will be OK," or "no one will know if I go to Pizza Hut and get a personal pan pizza for lunch and then to Sonic for a Route 44 Diet Coke." I made the decision that I would know. I had to be honest with myself. I didn't care what anybody else thought, heck Jon would be perfectly happy if I let junk food back in my life, cause then he would have someone to eat it with and I wouldn't be shoving green smoothies down his throat!
I made it through the day. It was not the easiest of my life and I buckled and took some Tylenol that night before bed just to have a peaceful sleep. But I have to be honest, the thought of drinking smoothies for another day was not sitting to well. I just keep telling myself  "One more day."