Well it's day 3 of my 10-day juice fast. Which is also day 3 of my 100 days of He@@, my focus on fitness and nutrition. Since I'm getting into the flow of juicing (no pun intended), I thought it would be a good time to blog about juicing.
Juicing is not for everyone, let me just say that first off. Too bad, though, because there are a lot of health benefits related to juicing. One of the absolute best things that juicing does is to give our digestive systems a "rest" from all the stuff we've been throwing down into it. Think about it, if you have a sore shoulder, you try to give it a rest, right? But not our digestive system. We keep pouring crap down into it, year after year. No wonder the antacid market is booming. Now some of us eat better than others, but even good things make a digestive system have to work. Juicing requires very little work by our digestive system. Within roughly half an hour, the nutrients supplied by a juice have been readily absorbed into our system. Barely enough time for our digestive system to have a cup of coffee. Which incidentally, probably would take longer to digest than a juice. This is why juice fasts are often called "cleansing detoxs." Juices aren't adding any harmful foods that lead to toxins.
Also, our bodies are like machines. Just the normal activities that we do expend energy and burn calories. Digesting food takes energy. A good meal can take several hours to digest. As mentioned before, a juice takes about 30 minutes. So now the hours that were expended before to simply digest the food are now off doing great things, like burning fat. That's how juice fasts help one to lose weight.
What I do hate about juicing, however is the clean up. One thing that the unhealthy western diet has over the healthy diet is convenience. But in the long run, it's more than worth it. The best time to drink a juice, for nutritional value, is immediately upon juicing. Juices that sit do lose their nutritional content. One way I combat this is to freeze a lot of my juices. Today I did enough juicing for two days, and froze all of the juices that I'll be drinking tomorrow.
I first started juicing after watching the film "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead." I would encourage everyone to watch it. It's very true to life and quite moving. I was touched by the stories of both Joe Cross, and especially Phil the trucker. You don't have to be juicing or thinking about juicing to enjoy this film. My first 10-day juice fast surprised me in how quickly I lost weight, and how good I felt afterwards. I thought it would be a perfect way to start out my 100 days, and it has been. I plan two more juice fasts along the way, only they will only be 5 days each.
I bought my Breville juicer on Amazon for $100, and a second one too. That one is back in Colorado. I was quite concerned about some of the reviews I read. Not about the juicer, but about juicing. One reveiwer spoke of the health risks people face when coming off a juice fast, even resulting in death. That was scary. What you have to remember when coming off a juice fast is that your digestive system has been pn a vacation, and it has to be eased back in its 24/7 job. Your first few days back should have easily digestable foods. For me, that was oatmeal.
As I mentioned, weight loss seems to easily accompany juice fasts, when I make sure not to cheat by eating nuts or other fatty (but healthy) foods. In two days I've lost 7 pounds and I look forward to getting on the scales tomorrow. Thanksgiving will soon be but a pleasant memory.
