juicing: Day 3

Today was another interesting day.  Dane and I drove up to my parent's house last night in order to spend time with family who have come in town this week for Thanksgiving.  We got there just in time to put Lynlee to bed.  Which meant we had a nice evening to spend with my sister, her family and my parents. They were all (in there own way) interested in my juicing and since church was at 9:00 am this morning, I decided to do all my juicing for today, last night.

It was really nice to just have everything ready for the day so I didn't have to worry.  Also, it was nice to have a chilled juice for breakfast.  And I found my new favorite way to store my juices:

I know you are all totally in love with my super awesome counter tops from the 70's, huh?

A shaker bottle.  Really I would maybe say a must have.  After not too long in the fridge, all of my juices have separated and need to be stirred or shaken before drinking.  I made 3 juices for today.  Two of the ones from yesterday, Rise & Shine and Lean & Green.  Accept I didn't have anymore romaine lettuce, so I added another one to the menu to make up for the lost volume.  And I have to say it was my favorite on so far:

Candied Carrot (makes about 2 C)--I doubled this

5 carrots
2 apples
1 orange


Now, I know that I couldn't/shouldn't drink this juice all day for this kind of cleanse because it is pretty much all sugar...which is obviously why it tastes so amazing.  But it was really nice to have lots of variety today.  And because both the Candied Carrot and Rise and Shine make a lot less juice, they were easily stored in blender shaker bottles in the fringe.  (Many thanks to my mother for having a bunch of those bottles for me to borrow!)  Anyway, I LOVED this juice.  It truly was a treat.  I sampled a little of it last night after I had made it and decided to save it for my last juice of tonight.

And I am glad I did.  A ton of my family were at my mom's tonight for a prime-rib dinner complete with Costco's American Chocolate Cake for desert.  Seriously, it smelled so amazing!  But when I thought about eating it, it wasn't even a temptation, and to be honest, my Candied Carrot juice waiting for me in the fridge sounded devine when compared to the cake.  I consider that progress.  It was tough though, I will admit.  The food all looked, smelled and sounded soooo good.  I think I really do miss food.  Mostly as an emotional gratification thing.  And also chewing.  Chewing sounds really nice.

As far as hunger and energy today, I felt petty good.  I usually started getting hungry about 2 hours after drinking a 16 oz glass of juice.  But I feel like that is a good sign that was telling me that my body was absorbing it quickly.

So, I do have some bad news.  Today was pretty much my last day of juicing.  Not because I can't handle it anymore or because I don't think I could go for my full 5 days that I talked about, but because I am out of produce.  I made one big trip to the market before I started and got what I thought would be enough for my full 3 days and then 2 more half days.  I know that I could go get more, but I really had planned to just go until I had finished what I bought.  Well, I had just enough produce left tonight to make one more juice, that of course I sampled (and it is maybe my favorite one so far!), and then put in the fridge for tomorrow's breakfast.  And then it is literally all gone.

I can't believe how quickly it all went either!  As I was shoving it all into whatever space I could find in my fridge a few days ago, I couldn't even begin to imagine how I was going to eat all of this by myself.

Here is the Juice I made for tomorrow:

For the Love of Kale (makes about 3 C)

5 carrots
2 small red apples
6 kale leafs
 (I also added 1 orange, one more apple and 3 more carrots, just to finish everything off.)

I actually am really looking forward to tomorrow's breakfast juice.  (And I would be lying if I didn't say that I am really looking forward to tomorrow's lunch and dinner too.)  I plan to take it pretty easy as I get back into real food.  Like have soup for lunch and dinner and still stay away from lots of refined sugars and such.  I don't want to shock my system and I really don't want to blote back up--I didn't really think about this as a way to lose weight when I started, but all in all I lost about 4-5 lbs.  Now whether that stays off or goes right back on, I am not too concerned about but I do like the way that I feel right now and that's what I hope stays.  I like feeling empty at the end of the day.  I like feeling hunger before meals.  And I like not feeling like I ate too much at the end.

I am glad that I had a few days to give my insides a rest from digestion and a super boost of nutrients   I am glad I had a chance to get used to juicing, and I think that I would like to start juicing often.  Thanks for following me on this!

juicing: Day 2

Yay!  Another mini victory: two days down!  I woke up really excited to start another day of juicing, especially because I was going to try two new recipes that sounded a lot less celery-crazy.  And I have to say that I really liked both of the juices today.  I started with a big glass of Rise & Shine and then drank Lean and Green throughout the day, saving my last tall glass of Rise & Shine for "desert".

As far as hunger and energy, I think today was a little harder than yesterday.  Some of that may have been because I wasn't working today and so I had a little more time to be bored and hungry.  Another reason is probably because it was my second day juicing and I didn't really have any left-over food hanging out in my body from the day before. But the biggest reason was probably because I ran a 5K this morning.  I know, probably not the best idea.

Actually I had decided to not exercise at all durring my juicing cleanse just because I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't be making myself extra hungry (and also because my foot is still a little sore from my half marathon 3 weeks ago and I really think I need to take it easy).  So, I know, it was a dumb idea, and my foot is totally sore again.  But over all, I still felt like I had plenty of energy to make it through the day.  And I got to the point where I was actually looking forward to  drinking my juice!



Rise and Shine (makes about 4 C)

1 large grapefruit
2 fuji apples
2 granny smith apples
2 cups of green seedless grapes
10 sprigs of Italian parsley

This one is soooo delicious!  It was very refreshing and the grapefruit added nice strong fresh flavor.  I loved it.  But that shouldn't really be a surprise because it is basically all fruit.  It was a huge contrast from yesterday and I am sure had much more sugar, so it gave me a great boost of energy.  I would definitely recommend this juice--especially to people who may be a little tentative or skeptical of the idea of juicing.

Lean and Green (makes about 8 C)

1 head romaine
8 dinosaur kale leaves
6 stalks celery
1 large cucumber
8 carrots
1 lemon
(plus I added 1 gala apple)

I also really liked this one.  Partially, I think, because I had really gotten used to drinking green juices yesterday.   And also probably because I could only detect a hint of celery.  The lemon gave it a really nice fresh flavor too.  I added the gala apple because I was remembering yesterday's juice and wanted to make sure I could swallow this all.  I loved the addition and think I would do it every time.  This is a really great green juice.


And as a side note, I thought I would add a little bit more about why I have decided to try juicing.

Juicing vs. Bending (VitaMix Style)

A few of my family members have asked me why I have chosen to use a juicer as opposed to my VitaMix.  This is a really good question.  And to be honest, the first time I head about juicing I asked the same question, and actually thought it would be better to use the VitaMix or another high powered blender because then you wouldn't be missing out on all of the fiber!  But the more I learned about it and the more interested I got, I discovered that there are wonderful benefits to doing it both ways.

A lot of the women in my family suffer from IBS (irritable bowl syndrom), and sometimes I am one of them.  It isn't as extreme for me as it is for a lot of people who have been diagnosed, but when it hits me, it is horrible.  Durring those times, the best advice I have heard is to avoid high amounts of fiber.  If you think about fiber like an exfoliating mask for your skin it might make more sense.  Exfoliation is a wonderful way to keep your skin fresh, clean and smooth.  Fiber does the same thing to your intestines, keeping everything moving along the way that it should.  Now imagine if you had a cut, a rash, or any other sore on your skin.  Exfoliation is not a good idea until it has healed.  And so that's how fiber is on your gut when you have an irritated or inflamed bowl.  And sometimes even if you aren't having an episode, but you do have extra sensitive bowls, too much fiber can greatly irritate it.

So, if you consider the amount of nutrients and fiber in the ingredients in these recipes that I am using for my cleanse, the idea of being able to get the nutrients with out the fiber is mostly why I want to juice.  I honestly don't know if my gut could handle all of that fiber.   There are sometimes where my morning green smoothies irritate my tummy a little and that is only a fraction of what I am consuming through my juicing cleanse.

juicing: Day 1

If any of you follow me on Instagram  you may have seen that today marked the beginning of a juicing journey for me.  Now, I am not one of those who has decided to do this because I want to lose weight or to cure cancer or anything too extreme.  I have just really wanted to try it for a while and decided I might as well do it sooner or later.

Thanks to my good friends Reg and Jes for loaning me the juicer for a few days!

Mostly the thing about juicing that intrigues me is the idea of filing yourself with a ton of natural vitamins and nutrients easily and quickly.  To actually eat the amount of produce that I put into my juice today, for example, I really think it would have taken me a few weeks (at my regular pace of eating produce--which I do feel like is pretty good, but not the best.)  Juicing also has a remarkable effect of cleaning your system of processed and refined foods and the cravings that come along with them.

So, just for the sake of trying it, and also seeing how I like it, I have started a juice cleanse.  I plan to drink freshly juiced veggies and fruits only for the first 3 days.  After that, I plan to juice for breakfast and lunch and then eat a plant based, heathy, balanced dinner--while still avoiding processed and highly refined foods (I think I am giving myself this as a little as a reward to look forward to towards the end...chewing!).  I am not really following a certain program from anywhere, just kinda winging it.  But I did get my recipes from this wonderful blogger who writes about nutrition and healthy lifestyles.  She did a 5 day juicing cleanse of her own earlier this year.

After it is all said and done we will see how I feel.  Ideally, after the cleanse, I would love to incorporate juices similar to what I will be drinking throughout the cleanse into my normal life.  Like a kick-start each morning.  But we will see.  It is very possible that by the end of this I may never want to see another leaf of kale or stock of celery again.  So for now, all I am committing to is to drinking a whole lotta juice for the next 5 days.  And at the end of each day, letting you all know how it went.

Day 1:  The Green Machine
Cue scary music.  No really, I'm just kidding, but if you were Dane it would totally be appropriate.  Here is the recipe I drank today:

3 green apples
15 carrots
15 leafs dinosaur kale
3 cup spinach (packed)
1 cucumber
23 stalk celery
15 sprigs Italian parsley (except I forgot to add this)

Dane helped me juice this all this morning, and I was totally shocked at both the amount of produce we were dealing with as well as the amount of juice that I was staring at by the end.  All in all it made about 14 C of juice.  That is 112 oz, people!  Almost 1 gallon.  Yikes.  I put it in the refrigerator for a bit so I could drink it cold.  And let me tell you it is a good thing I did.  My first go at this one was a tall glass, slightly chilled and harder to swallow that I expected.  To be honest, after my breakfast glass, I had no idea how I was going to make it through the day.  The flavor was pretty much taken over by the celery (I think I might do a lot less next time).  But I was committed, and so I tried not to think about it too much until lunch time.  I knew I needed to drink about 16 oz every 2-3 hours to get it all down before bed time.  (And to be honest it did become a lot more palatable through out the day....I wouldn't go so far to say I 'liked' it, but I didn't hate it anymore, which I see as major progress!)

Through out the day I was really surprised that I wasn't battling hunger pains all day. I stayed full all day, and by the time my last ounce went down my throat, I felt like I was going to burst.  So much juice!  But it was a mini victory for me.  No solid foods.  I was sure that I could do it last night at the grocery store purchasing everything, but not as sure after I had dug myself deep into a hole filled with green machine.  I am happy to say one day is down, and I know I can do it again.  

So until tomorrow, where the recipes look a lot more promising than today's.