Yesterday, we ended our Juice Feast….nothing but fresh fruit and veggie juice, water, and herbal tea. Today, we are keeping the course with high volumes of produce but supplementing the juicing with salads and some nuts, seeds, and beans. We decided to tweak our food in that way while our bodies adjusted to the amount of detoxing we were doing. The Juice Feast itself left both of us feeling emotionally healthy, quite a bit lighter, and eager to improve our normal eating habits.
To cement our commitment to juicing, we upgraded the $25 Juiceman Juicer we found at a church rummage sale to a Hurom Juicer. Holy Moly! It is a beast…. a JuiceBeast! It is still in the box though….because we are contemplating returning it for an Omega Juicer. The body of the juicers is basically the same and come from the same manufacture, but the Omega comes with an extra screen good for juicing softer fruits and with 9 additional years of warrantee for the most fragile parts. So many advantages and disadvantages to weigh out when buying something as diverse as a juicer, it can be easy to miss something like that.
Some of our friends, family, and co-workers have been wanting to know what is up with this juice thing we are doing. So we decided to create a space where we could gather some of the things that have inspired up, share our experience, and keep you updated on our progress.
If you haven’t heard, we have been eating nothing but the juice of raw fruits and veggies since August 6th. We decided to do this on a whim. Our friend Irene Jaan borrowed our juicer for a few days and when she came to pick it up, she mentioned having watched the movie Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead on Netflix.
We couldn’t resist checking out the movie, it had such a crazy name. And as we watched it, we felt inspired by the claims it was making, and the results we saw in the people who had made the change.
We were familiar with juicing. We have been incorporating it into our lives for years now. On our trip to the Northwest, we sought out every juice bar we could get our hands on.
We had previously found a trucker on YouTube who had used juicing to change his life. Over the course of a year, we watched Dave the Raw Food Trucker as he started at about 420 lbs and lose 230 lbs on green juices. But losing weight wasn’t the only benefit he had…. here’s his story.
So we decided to give the detox a try. Now, neither of us considered doing the full 60 days going into it. We were approaching it with a lot of curiosity and hope.
We started it on a Saturday with our room mate. We talked about doing it 5-7 days. There was some fear that come along with it. Could we go without EATING?! Could we juice a Whataburger? Would the detox be unbearable? Would people think we were crazy? Were we crazy?!
We watched more on Youtube about juice fasting. Some people call it a juice feast because they want to emphasis the fact that the juice is rich with the things your body needs to get healthy and heal. Some people had very impressive results, some talked about how awful their experience was. We decided to dive in.
The week before the Juice Feast, we tweaked our food. Between the two of us, we cut down or cut out fried foods, sugar, caffeine, and refined carbs. We could feel some of the detox then. The night before, we shopped. We bought apples, oranges, lemon, ginger, cucumbers, kale, spinach, carrots, swiss chard, cantaloupe, tomatoes, cilantro, celery, and mint. We cleaned the fridge and organized things in large plastic bins.
The next morning….we juiced!
Since then, we have gone through some of the detox symptoms we read about. Headaches, fatigue, coating on the tongue, sinus drainage and mucus, difficulty with elimination…I know! But just trying to be honest about the WHOLE experience. That is all part of detoxing.
A few days in, we noticed changes on the scale. That was really motivating. We watched more videos showing individuals who did the juicing and had incredible results. Now we are contemplating staying on the fast for awhile. 15 days? 30 day? 60 days? You will know when we do. We are listening to our bodies. No matter how long we stay on, we feel like we will have made our life better for it.
We want to add some more info here as we can…like our favorite recipes for juicing and a few additional things we think are important to the juice feast experience. If you are interested in following up, feel free to subscribe….we won’t hold it against you if you don’t. Either way, you will be able to hear more of our juicy news by watching for our post on our Facebook accounts.
We want to thank everyone for the support as well! We are feeling good and strong, it is awesome to have loved ones who support that!
