suzyness.com

We’ve come so far! Thanks for sticking it out with me.

I was asked yesterday what the difference is between a juice fast/flush and a raw foods diet. An excellent question. For those who haven’t spent hours researching this topic, I’ll shed some light on it for you.

The main difference, is, of course, the fiber. So, why does that matter, you ask? Here’s how I understand it… a fast gives your digestive system a chance to rest. It flushes out your last few meals, then it takes some time off. The juice provides your body with nutrients, while giving your digestion a break. Digesting food normally takes a whole lot of resources and energy. When you give your body a break, that energy goes to housekeeping, or a detox. Your body seeks out damaged cells and tissue to get them out of your system.

During a juice fast your body eliminates toxins from other parts of the body and uses your digestive track to get them out. This is why it’s so important to keep up on fluid intake and find a laxative that works for you, herbal or otherwise. Without food, your body doesn’t get the normal signals to rid itself of those toxins, so you have to help it out a bit.

That’s the jist I’ve gotten from my research, at least. Hope it helps.

Observations:
- Down to 143 this morning. Nearly the weight my license says I am. :) While I know it won’t last, my pants are fitting loose and I’m enjoying that “light” feeling while it’s here. I decided a while ago that anything in the 140 range was respectable for a 30+ mom. While I’d love to get back down to 135, the whole “having a baby” thing may not make that realistic.

- I’ve started freezing some of the pulp, with intentions of using it for a roasted veggie casserole later in the week. Really, I only make the effort of saving pulp when the combo seems nice. Carrots, celery, broccoli, brussel sprouts, butternut squash & spinach. Add some butter, sage, salt and pepper, then bake and yummmm. Salivating again. Here’s a picture of my freezer bag. Not super attractive in this form, but I’m hopeful it will be tasty after cooked.

- Hit a wall late this afternoon. Tired, hungry, sore and irritable. I attributed it to poor timing of, well, other stuff (ladies, you know what I’m talking about). I juiced up some apples, strawberries and kiwis. Life saving. Delicious. A quick energy boost was exactly what I needed. And just when I was that close to diving in to my emergency stash of chocolate.

We’ll break the fast tomorrow night by adding some raw veggies in at dinner. Romaine salads with avocado, edamame, peas, tomato, carrots, bell peppers, salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar and oil. Even writing this now makes me drool. Considering we are moving away from the fast and over to raw foods slowly over the next few days, the detox should continue to happen, just at a slower rate.

And it continues… rather well, actually. Our fridge is stocked with produce. More than it’s ever seen before. It’s pretty awesome, actually. Flew through day 4. Juice consumption was WAY down today. Which is great from a cost perspective, but I had to stay conscious of getting enough water instead.

Hunger wasn’t an issue today, especially after about noon, when I passed the 72 hour mark. Cravings are pretty much gone. When I do think about eating, all I want are fruits and veggies. Seriously. No joke. I fantasize about chomping in to an apple. Getting a nice big green salad. Stealing some of the steamed broccoli and spinach I made for C tonight. Unbelievable, I know. I hardly believe it myself. What? What do you mean an animal style double double doesn’t sound good right now? That’s just unheard of.

Observations:

- I’ve come up with a few systems that seem to work well. Our sink is set up for washing and rinsing produce. This is what it looks like these days.

- This retro tupperware pitcher is FANTASTIC for fresh juices. The lever in the middle is connected to a paddle that mixes the juice when it’s pulled. For fresh juices, this is essential. It separates quickly, and needs to be mixed before pouring. The fact that the container is opaque is also great for fresh juices. The more clear a container, the quicker the juice loses nutrients.

- The workhorses in all of this? Carrots, apples and celery. They’re cheap and produce a decent amount of juice. Some other fruits and veggies have been somewhat lacking in the cost to juice ratio. Veggies I’d hoped would have a high yield haven’t. Leafy greens, although I never expected a high yield, almost don’t seem worth the trouble. The benefit, I guess, is the high vitamin content.

- Since we’ve moved to juicing immediately before drinking, I prepped and bagged the fruits and veggies we’ll use for tomorrow’s breakfast. This will make it easy to throw in the juicer in the morning.

- Feeling warmer overall. Maybe all of this has improved my circulation. Or maybe the fact that Ben turned the heater back on yesterday helped. Regardless, sleep attire has gone from pants and sweatshirts to shorts and t-shirts.

- I read a recommendation to reuse your pulp to make veggie broth, then strain it and you can drink it for juice (or freeze it as veggie stock to use later). Just throw the pulp in a pan, cover with water and simmer for about fifteen minutes. Add herbs as desired. Great idea for one final use for the pulp before it goes to compost. We tried it today, turned out ok. Not fantastic. Not sure I’ll do it again.

C enjoying her dinner

- Here’s a better use of pulp… Broccoli and spinach with cheese over rice. Yum. C approved. I was jealous.

- With the exception of my headache and sleep deprivation last night, I’m feeling pretty good today. Tired, needing more sleep, but still alert and high functioning.

Ever watched the documentary “Food Matters“? It’s good. A little biased against the medical profession, but has some good info. You should watch it. See what you think.

Much to Ben and his Traeger’s chagrin, all of this research lately is making me want to go back to a vegetarian diet, adding more raw foods in this time. Maybe not entirely vegetarian… it would be easier if I didn’t love steak so much. :) Maybe we can meet in the middle and find a local ranch somewhere to buy our meat from.

Made it through day two. The first twenty four hours were fairly easy, actually. I had a few moments of weakness when the aroma of something sizzling nearby caught my nose, but nothing that derailed me. Around two pm today, though, I hit a wall. Feeling irritable, tired and struck with a full force headache, my resolve was weakening. I threw some stuff in the juicer and made an apple, carrot, kiwi juice. Yum. Within minutes of drinking it, I started feeling better. A surge of energy and new motivation to make it through the day filled me.

I think I’ve figured out the pattern of how various juices affect me. The fruit juices get me a little wired and buzzed. Definite quick sugar high from these. The vegetable juices are refreshing and give me a full and nourished feeling, if that’s even possible. Carrots and higher sugar vegetables fall somewhere in between. Giving me a bit of a buzz, but still feeling full when I’m done.

Overall, I’m feeling lighter and more energetic, although I’ve noticed my tummy was a bit distended today. Drinking lots of fluids, both water and juice, so it’s possible my stomach is just adjusting to the mass of liquid. The weird thing is, my shirts were fitting looser today. So perhaps my stomach is actually normal size, but I’ve lost some water weight from the rest of me, making my tummy seem out of proportion. I was surprised today when I put in a normally snug tank top, to see it hanging down. Hmmm… perhaps measurements are in order.

Tomorrow is day three… the hardest day in any fast, oh, sorry, flush. It’s basically the hump. Once you get past it, your body adjusts and things get easier. But, man, on day three, your body wants to know what the hell is going on. It wants answers, and doesn’t care who it has to hurt to get them. I’m hopeful that day three of this flush will be better than my previous experiences. I’m actually quite impressed with how my hunger is being satiated by the fresh juices. When I’ve done this before, using mainly processed fruit juices, I spent much of the day hungry. I’m not dealing with that issue so far. Only time will tell, though. I’m holding out hope. You might be wondering, how long will I stick to this? My previous juice fasts have gone about four days, max, but my hope this time is to stick it out for a week (breaking it before heading to Hawaii and being stuck in a plane for five plus hours).

Headaches continue to rear their ugly head. Tylenol PM knocks me out well enough that I can sleep, but I’m avoiding it during the detox. The whole point is to clear all the random crap out of my system, not add more back mid way. So, I’ll suffer through them for a few more days, hoping the detox will be effective against them quickly. Crossing fingers.

Observations:
- Advertising is evil. Seriously, if I could live in a vacuum without billboards or TV ads, I think I’d be ten pounds lighter in general. Getting rid of cable tv helped, but Hulu had been adding more food ads lately. Our maybe I’m just noticing them more. And food ads are everywhere when you’re driving around. Those fast food joints are sneaky.

- The veggie juice blends are incredibly yummy. Especially when you add in some higher sugar veggies in, like carrots and butternut squash. This was a pleasant surprise. I really didn’t expect that to be the case. I was also impressed by celery, bock choy and brussel sprout juices. They were all mild and slightly sweet. The darker greens tasted more earthy, and, well, darker. I guess what you’d expect from dark leafy greens. Not bad, just strong.

- I’m going through produce quicker than I expected, and using a whole lot more veggies than I thought I would (I figured a lot of fruit would be needed to make the veggie juice more palatable). So I ran over to trader joes yesterday to pick up some more veggies (squash, kale, broccoli, cauliflower), but also grabbed some frozen stuff to test out – peas, green beans and edamame. I dumped them in a big bowl and put them in the fridge last night to give it time to defrost. I juiced them today, but the output didn’t seem all that economical. I didn’t get much juice from them, and the green beans were still mostly whole in the pulp reservoir. Not sure if this was due to the type of veggies or the fact that they’d previously been frozen. Either way, disappointing.

- Yesterday, pulp all went in the compost pile. Even though it was going to a good cause, I knew there were better uses for it. Like using it in cooking or baking. But, it’s time consuming to strategically plan out and juice each veggie separately. Today, when the defrosted produce experiment went awry, I looked at the pulp and realized it would make a perfect casserole for Cs dinner. Peas, green beans and edamame. I dumped them out, added some eggs, yogurt, feta and spices, mixed it up and threw it in the oven. She loved it! Score.

- Citrus fruits… PEEL, PEEL, PEEL! I ran a test on the clementine oranges to see how much of a difference peeling would make (because I’m lazy and prefer the least amount of prep time possible), and oh my… definitely peel. Every time. Leaving the peel on made the juice so bitter it was nearly undrinkable. I washed the whole machine after that experiment – it tasted that badly. I didn’t want to taint any juice that would follow. I’m sure the internet would have told me about this critical step, had I looked, but I was in the mood to learn from my own mistakes.

- Although weight loss and improved physique are incredibly motivating reasons to keep a flush/fast going, it’s not my ultimate reason for wanting to do this. I have to keep better health and getting rid of these intrusive headaches at the forefront of my mind. It’s easy to lose site of that when a donut is taunting you from behind the glass case. The immediate thought is, oh, I can’t wait to eat that next week, when the more rational thought should be, look at me getting healthy and not needing a donut to fill an emotional hole. Oh, wait, what? That’s not why you eat donuts? Oh, me neither. Just ignore that last comment.

-Ben has asked whether wine is allowed in this flush, as it meets the stated “juice” requirement, albeit slightly fermented. My thought is no, but I appreciated the creativity.

Ok, that’s it for tonight. Sticking to exercise during all of this, both the rebounder and exercise bike. Feeling energized tonight. Excited about Hawaii. Excited to be detoxing. Life is good. :)