If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you may have seen me joking complaining about doing a juice fast. A few people have asked why. Well that is the easy part. There are usually two reasons people fast, spiritual and health based. This one happens to be health based. Here is a little about how fasting works:
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The principle of fasting is simple. When the intake of food is temporarily stopped, many systems of the body are given a break from the hard work of digestion. The extra energy gives the body a chance to heal and restore itself, burning stored calories to rid stored toxic substances. During fasting, the liver and immune system are essentially freed to detoxify and heal other parts of the body. Many healers claim that fasting is a particularly useful therapy for the American lifestyle, of heavy diet, overeating, and constant exposure to food additives and chemicals. Some alternative practitioners have gone so far as to estimate that the average American is carrying 5-10 pounds of toxic substances in their bodies, for which fasting is the quickest and most effective means of removal. [source]
Several years ago I tried the Hollywood Diet cleanse, than last year I attempted the Master Cleanse. Both massive fails. Last summer we did the Look Better Naked Diet's 2 Day Cleanse and it went over much better. I would suggest doing that diet leading into a cleanse. With juicing and the green smoothie thing becoming popular I decided to give it another go, after J mentioned fasting a few weeks ago. We tend to do it once a year. Needless to say the only weekend we could was this weekend, because let's face it fasting during the work week just wouldn't work for either of us. Expelling high energy at a time when you have little to give just isn't easy and quickly leads to massive fatigue, and in my case my blood sugar drops and I get dizzy. So Memorial Day weekend it was. One of the fattest summer weekends around and we are running full speed in the other direction, genius.
So far I am mostly done with day 2. We started yesterday. Great start, but by night fall I was wanting a cracker big time. I eventually decided my best bet was to just go to sleep, with the aid of Benadryl (allergies are still killing me), and I slept great. I actually had a dream about eating food at a pub in England, I had a British accent to boot. Great dream. when I woke up I wasn't hungry and felt great. We headed to band practice and about 9am I got super tired. Since then I haven't exactly recovered. We got home, napped, and are essentially waiting for tomorrow morning. I want a boiled egg and whole wheat toast so bad!
Don't let that juice fast documentary fool you, it sucks. I would love to chew even a piece of gum and it's just day 2. But gum would be very, very bad. It actually sends signals to your digestive parts telling them you are eating, which you are giving your body a break from doing. Totally counter productive. I am guilty though, I had one single piece of gum yesterday.
Jeremy is doing much better on this than I am, and we have deduced it to how we eat on a normal day. Jeremy tends to eat whenever, where my day is very planned and I eat at the same time every day. Half type A, half teacher work schedule. And yes I even stick to the same eating routine during the summer, with a little variation.
For this juicing routine I have decided to drink 8oz of juice (of your choosing, but real juice. Tang is not juice.) every two hours until I go to sleep. That turns into 8am, 10am, 12pm, 2pm, 4pm, 6pm, 8pm, and maybe 9pm depending on my mood. Yesterday I stuck to that hardcore, but in a hurry today I left for church without my juice and have spent the whole afternoon attempting to catch my calories back up. I haven't gone over 1000 calories a day so that I am still cutting back from caloric intake in some way. It is real easy to drink up 1200 or more calories.
If your a Coke drinker completely cut it out one week. You will see major changes in your weight just from giving up drinking your calories in a single week.
With all that said, I don't profess to know a ton about juice fasting. But I do know that some sort of fast helps me get back into super clean eating real easy(and let's face it I have fallen off my clean eating wagon). You appreciate those under appreciated veggies much more after not eating a day or two.
