Juicing Fast

Some of you may wonder, why should I juice? As for me, I’ve been reading about if forever, and I’ve also fasted a day or two in my life.  But this time, I wanted to get a little more serious and once again, I’m ready to clean out my body and see if I can’t become the healthy person I want to be.  I thought it would be fun if others wanted to fast along with me, or share their fasting experiences.

Here’s the challenge:

7 day juice fast

4 quarts of juice a day

spinach, kale, celery, parsley cucumber

beet, apple, carrot, lemon, ginger

orange, pineapple and various other ingredients, in various types of combinations

(Organic, of course)

Journal the 7 day process

See what happens to your body, soul, and spirit

DAY 1

Where can I get the juice:

I arrived at Grilla Bites at 10:30 a.m.; and Brian and Kimberly had all my juices ready and waiting.

We’re on an adventure to see if we can figure out how to provide an affordable delicious way for people to pick up juice for the day so they don’t have to juice at home.

Honestly, I don’t mind juicing, it’s the remembering to pick up fresh vegetables (organic of course), get out the juicer, juice, and then clean up the mess. Yuck. If we can get this to work out, I’m a happy girl.

How much will it cost:

We’ve decided to try a price of $38 the first day, and 30 the remaining 6 days. $8 is for the jars that I will return and then receive my deposit back. I love the jars. Reminds me of mom and canning in the fall.

4 beautiful bottles of God’s purest food ready to go.

How will I store it and keep it fresh:

Of course I forgot my cooler, so we plunked them into a box and off I went.

Unfortunately I had to do several errands in our 100 degree weather, so I had to buy a bag of ice to lay on top of the bottles. I was so proud of myself for solving problem # 1 quickly and efficiently.

Next problem, how shall I drink this elixir? I happened to have a extra large cup from Starbucks with a straw in the car, so I happily poured half of my first jar into the cup and sipped away happily. It fit perfectly into my cup holder and thankfully didn’t tip over when I took a corner too fast!

The first jar was deep red and I think was a red zinger. It was tangy and beautiful and my body loved it.

I finally made it home and poured out the melted water from the ice. Thankfully it melted into the box and did not leak! I brought all my precious jars into the house and found a small portable cooler that was just perfect. I stuck my ice in for 2 more jars and put the 4th in the frig for tomorrow morning.

The next jar was orange and I’m going to guess it had carrots galore in it. It wasn’t quite as divine as the red, but I noticed it wasn’t as cold either. Time to get some ice and pour it over the ice and down it went.

What to do when around other people eating:

The only problem I had was when I stopped to get my son his burrito bowl and I smelled his delicious food. He was starving after football and I found a bag of nuts to munch while he ate happily away.  I felt virtuous for not caving in to tacos…but it wasn’t juice either.  I have grace for myself to do the best I can every day.  So that’s my excuse today anyway:)

Last night my husband wanted to go out for dinner while we waited for our son to get down with a school event, but I had to decline, not wanting to tempt myself to eat. So we sat in the car with his tacos and my juice waiting for our son to get done. Not quite as charming as a meal in a cool restaurant with a glass of wine. Have to work on a little more planning on that one.

How much would I save by not eating out?

We calculated what my husband had spent that day on lunch, snack, dinner, drinks and it was pretty close to $25.00. So I didn’t feel too bad about my purchase of $30 for a day of juice. Just think how happy my body was!

I have to say the evening juice was deliciously tart. With more ice in my cooler I think it would be even better.

I slept 7.5 hours last night, but I was really tired around 8:00 p.m. However, during the day I had plenty of energy to complete all of my tasks.

I’ve decided to just walk this week and not push myself with too much exercise.

Difficulties on fast:

I did pretty well as long as I had a large cup of juice and ice in front of me, but the trouble came when the boys became hungry and we were far from home. That meant that they were going to have to do something from a drive through or go to a restaurant. I was doing pretty well, until that drive through mexican. What is it about the smell of mexican food that makes you go crazy? YOu keep imaging the creamy goodness of melted cheese and spices and oh, there’s that guacamole! yum. My little “I’m juicing and on top of the world mentality began to fold into “resentment and grumpiness of how could they?” Don’t they know I’m juicing?

Mike wanted to go sit in a nice cool restaurant and have a beer while Christian was at a school event, and knowing my juice was in a cooler in the back seat and I would totally blow it I voted to just sit in the car in 100 degree weather for an hour and sip on my “delicious” drink.

Tempers got grumpier with the heat and Mike trying to have a little dream session of some fun things to do next week and finally gave up when I just said “NO! I don’t want to go anywhere!” Just check in with me tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll be happier then”.

No energy that day. Had to go to bed at 9:00 p.m.

DAY 2

[/vimeo]Yesterday was pretty darn good if I do say so myself! I liked the added flavors to the juices and I was prepared and always had my cooler with plenty of ice and a cup with lots of ice. When I ran out of ice, I just went to the restaurant(when I got my son a snack) and asked if they could refill with ice. Then poured my delicious drink over the ice and sipped away while driving around to errands.

Around lunch time, I began craving something to chew, so I had a couple of peaches that were very ripe. The other interesting thing I began noticing is my sense of smell. I seemed to think everything in the refrigerator and sitting on the counter was spoiling and cleaned that out.

I still had my coffee in the morning, which probably made me a little too happy for some, but I loved the feeling I had all day. I was able to focus more and when I had a thought or idea, I really was able to go deep on it. When my friends invited me over to pray, I was able to connect with scripture quickly and pull down prayer for the moment.

All was well until I got home and the boys were hungry. I decided on a stir fry, which of course seemed to take forever and the vultures were circling. I began bargaining in my head about how i could eat vegetables while I cooked, because they were what I was having anyway. I was convinced the chicken I was cooking was not good because of the smell, but the boys began to look at me like I was crazy, so I kept my opinions to myself. I also began to find myself short tempered. I was just fine in my little world all by myself. I didn’t want to hear anyone else’s requests. After all, I was cooking this delicious meal and not eating it…

ok. I did sit down for a plate of stir fry. Not too bad I thought. But then I had to fix our son’s lunch the next day, and when I grabbed that bag of chocolate covered blueberries that was where I folded. I quickly slipped a small handful directly into my mouth and oh! was that yummy.

Quick! Get yourself out of that kitchen now and find something else to do.

I decided to help my son go through his closet of clothes for the school year. Seeing as how today is his first day of school, thought it was time to think about this. Amazing! We did this project at 8:00 at night. I’ve never had energy to do anything at this hour. Love it.

Still having hot flashes, but my skin is oh so smooth!

DAY 3

This day started out pretty good. I had my beautiful juice from the day before and it was delish. Made it in to Grilla Bites to pick up my drinks with my little cooler at noon. Probably waited a little long to pick them up, I was feeling a little hungry and weak, so I quickly slurped down half my drink. I was going in for my colonic at 1:00, so I stopped by the organic store to pick up a book or two that had been recommended. I also picked up some probiotics, which I have been told are good after you have been on antibiotics. I popped one in my mouth and headed off for my detox.

Made it to the colonics and started with a foot detox, and got really tired. I was also feeling spacy and having trouble thinking of what to say. The longer I sat there the more tired I got. Suddenly I had the most awful chest/stomach pains. I kept thinking it was like heartburn, but I hadn’t eaten anything but juice, so I didn’t know what was wrong. The pain kept up during the infrared sauna and into the colonic. It finally calmed down, but I was exhausted.

When I got home my stomach was hurting, so I had a bowl of granola and then some dinner of chicken and peas. My stomach is still hurting some, so I didn’t finish any of the juice.

I looked back at the probiotics and saw that I was supposed to take on an empty stomach. That’s the only thing I can think of that might have caused the upset stomach.

Will go to bed, and try again tomorrow.

Robbie Frank

p.s. Brian, I won’t be in to pick up any drinks tomorrow. I’ll just use what I had today

DAY 4

Well, this has now extended to the 8 day juice fast, just because I didn’t drink my juice yesterday as planned. No worries, we have to allow for some unknowns that could happen to my body.

Note to self: Do not mix probiotics, beet juice and a foot bath detox. I guess I’ll never know what was

Starting out a little tentative today, after yesterday, with a red juice from yesterday and will finish with the other two for the rest of the day. I’ll go in tomorrow for new juice. the problem because I’m not willing to experiment with that one again, but spent the night with a heating pad on my stomach. It was still tender this morning when I drank some cool water, but seemed fine with warm water…go figure. Chalk that one up to research I guess.

Maybe I’m detoxing, maybe I just ate the wrong combination, but day 3, was not a good one. Hoping for much better day today.

DAY 5

Yesterday was a tired day.  I seemed to be tired most of the day, so I decided to just take the day off.  I’ve heard that is a good idea when you’e doing a fast because my body is cleaning itself out, and you want to support that, plus it was great because I had an excuse to lay around and read books all day!

DAY 6

🙂  Good morning!  Well, let’s just call yesterday a wash.  After getting to church yesterday morning, I raised my arms in worship and boiiiing!  My back started spasming.  I left right away and went home, but couldn’t get it to stop.  So I finally found some good painkillers, and parked myself on the couch…for around 10 hours!  Kinda slept through the night, but it definitely was not a juicing day.

DAY 7

Well, yesterday went pretty well. I was disappointed that I had this darn canker sore, so I wasn’t going to juice. However, Grilla Bites called and said they had my juice ready. So, I had to start over again! I guess I am juicing today. I’ve already paid for it, and it’s ready to go and I’m too cheap to let it go to waste, so I decided to collect the juice and continue.

However, I hadn’t planned on going in to town yesterday, (I live a whole 15 minutes from the restaurant), so I called my husband and asked him to deliver it when he came home. Perfect! I didn’t have to leave the house.

Just an fyi for juice fasters, you don’t want to be doing too much. I think if you have as much quiet time as possible, it leads to more time in a contemplative place and more time to connect with God. Once I get in my car and start driving around I think of all kinds of things I want to do, and really don’t spend much time in thought or prayer at all.

Today the same thing happened with my trip to town, and I had a friend coming to visit. She stopped off for me and delivered. So fun! She’s going to juice too! We can compare notes.

DAY 8

The other night my husband and I decided to go for a little ride in the boat while the sun was going down.  It was a glorious idea, and why not invite a few friends.  Hey, we could also make some frozen margaritas!  What fun.  We happily packed our cooler and got ready to go.  I began to think about how good those margaritas would taste.  Then the other side of me began to think about how good I’d been doing on my juice fast and how that much sugar would really set me behind for a day.  Then I began to think about how much fun this was going to be, and why couldn’t I just relax and have some more fun!  Why can’t I have a margarita?  Totally forgetting that in a few days I could have one if I wanted.  It seemed very important to me in that moment.  Then I had another thought.  Why not put your jar of green juice in the cooler.  Then you can choose and not panic.  We got into the boat and happily poured our margaritas for our friends, and then I pulled out my green juice, poured it into a margarita glass and happily sipped away.  Hey, I figure I’m going to have all kinds of opportunities to crash and burn this fast, and I’d better get used to navigating my way through them.  It’s beginning to show me how much I want to just “have my way” instead of pulling through the next adventure in making good choices.

Summary

Well, I didn’t make it all the way through.  That’s the discouraging thing about my juicing program.  I saw some things that were amazing.  Beautiful skin, feeling satisfied from hunger, knowing I was giving my body all the perfect nutrients, and having a clear head and more energy.  But I got this darn sore on my tongue (I know, too much information), which made it impossible to drink juice because it burned my tongue!