Juicing- Update

I know you are all biting your fingernails, losing sleep and just dying to know how our juice fast is going.  Okay so you've all probably completely  forgotten that I was doing a juice fast at all but indulge me and let me feel important, mkay? :)

It's been two weeks that my husband and I have been juicing our fruit and veg.  We also eat nuts and seeds and include flax in some of our recipes in order to get in some protein.

We are both sleeping much better, our skin is changing in dramatic ways, our insides have never been so squeaky clean and our energy is through the roof and hovering somewhere about a mile south of the stratosphere.

Oh and did I mention that we've been steadily losing 1-2 pounds a DAY! Not per week, per DAY!  I've lost 16 pounds.  He's lost 17 (showoff)! Here's the kicker...our doctor told us NOT to work out until 3 months after we've been fasting and eating well.  She said our bodies are going through a big change and we need to let them adjust.  We are doing moderate exercise like walking and yoga but nothing hard core so that weight loss can't even be explained away by grueling efforts at the gym.  That's plain and simple fat flushing.

When I go to the supermarket and buy 5 pounds of carrots, 3 pounds of celery, and various poundage of kale, parsnips, pears, oranges, apples, spinach, collards, dandelion, turnips, beets, lemons, pineapple and ginger, well...people tend to look at me funny.

I actually cleaned our local supermarket completely out of kale and parsnips the other day!

I've found that the trick is to eat a majority of vegetables and then do moderate amounts of fruits and when mixed in the perfect balance, the juices taste amazing!  Like so good the kids come running from upstairs to get the first sip kind of amazing.  And trust me, the palate of a picky 7 year old is a very tricky one to please.

We fully intend on doing two more weeks and then re-evaluate.  My intention with the fast is to get my body to a place where it's rid of toxins and I get a re-boot of sorts.  I've already noticed a reduction in my allergies since I started juicing.  My allergist said that many times, if you go 4 months in a detox diet, your body will actually reset itself and you often see allergies reduce or completely disappear!

I'm all over that!  I fully intend to go back to eating full meals filled with healthy, natural and organic foods, nothing processed.  I plan on increasing the amount of fish I put on the table as well as reduce the amount of red meat although I don't plan on giving up anything completely.  There will be times when I want a hot dog or I simply can't live without some lime chips.  That's okay.  They just can't be something I eat daily, even weekly.

I'll admit that when I first started this, I wondered, "why can't we just EAT the fruit and vegetables."  It wasn't until I realized there is no way I could possibly get the nutrition into my body through eating, the same way I can through juicing.  I can eat (and get the nutrients from) a huge bag of kale, 3 beets, 5 carrots, 2 apples, 1/2 a pineapple, 2 pears, 7 stalks of celery, 2 cucumbers, 2 lemons, fresh ginger, 2 parsnips and 2 oranges in ONE DAY! That's more nutrients than I often consumed in a week!  I can do it quickly and deliciously and still enjoy other foods when I'm hungry and I can do all of this while still losing weight.

I never realized how undernourished I had become.  I feel sad for how badly I was caring for my body and how little vitamins and minerals I was consuming.  My poor, poor body.  I put it through hell.  And while I can honestly say that I will do my best to eat healthily when the fast is over, I can also say that I will likely continue to juice every single day, at least 1-2 large glasses a day.  There is no way that I could get that amount of nutrients otherwise.  There simply ain't enough time in the day to eat that much!

I'll touch base in two more weeks and let you know how it's going.  Hopefully by then, we'll see even more amazing changes and better health!