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| 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.
1 comment:
I've been tempted by this idea, but never enough to actually go through all the work of actually doing it! I'm excited to read about your experience! Good luck!
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