End of Juice Fasting Day 1

Juice fasting is one of those "your mileage may vary" kinda things. The more things that are wrong with you, the more side-effects and general sense of crappiness you will feel during the first few days. Luckily for me, since I eat pretty healthy already, I didn't experience many side-effects at all. I did feel a little tired with periodic light-headedness, but other than that, it went really well! No headaches or extreme fatigue.

I've heard a few accounts of people having to stay near a bathroom during their first couple days. According to the one lady from the Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead film, she had to poop for an hour. In someone else's blog they said, "You can't talk about juice fasting without talking about pooping. A lot of poop." It was funny, but in my case, not applicable. My digestive system already functions as it should, with at least 3 regular bowel movements a day. So after I excreted what food was left in my system, there wasn't a whole lot left to push out. I did have to pee a lot though.

I expected to feel pretty bad the first day, and maybe even the second, but my first day was fairly uneventful. I did feel hungry now and then, and certainly missed eating. Food is one of the great pleasures in life. It'll taste so good when I resume solid food again! But my will is strong and I was able to resist grabbing a bite of anything. I think I'll have no problems lasting a week.

Trying a Juice Fast

When I first heard of juice fasting so many years ago, I quickly dismissed it as a silly diet fad. I imagined the participant languishing away because they were malnourished from doing nothing but drinking fruit juice. How quick I was to judge.

Recently I saw the documentary, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. It follows the 60-day journey of an overweight, autoimmune disease-afflicted man as he stops his detrimental eating habits and embarks on a quest to turn his life around, starting with juicing. Equally inspiring is an obese, depressed trucker who follows in the main character's footsteps to turn his life around. It's available on Netflix streaming if you'd like to get inspired.

The important points that I took away from the movie:

• The juices produced in the juice fast are 80% vegetables and 20% fruits. The high vegetable intake is incredibly nutrient rich.
• Because the juice you make (as opposed to store-bought) is super-fresh, all the nutrients and enzymes are still there instead of being destroyed by oxidation, pasteurization, preservatives, and other processing.
• Because there is no solid food during a juice fast, your body can quickly absorb all the nutrients from the juice and go back to "housekeeping". Digestion is a very intensive process and takes away from the body's ability to heal itself.
• By the end of the two participants' 60-day juice fast (monitored by a physician), they both no longer suffered from autoimmune disease and dropped an incredible amount of weight. Another participant's inexplicable migrains disappeared after one week.
• After the initial 2-4 day "detoxing" period, juice fasters remarked at an increased sense of mental clarity and focus.
• The weight loss is seriously impressive, as is the body's ability to heal itself once it isn't being inundated with junk.

All this information has inspired me to give juice fasting a try. I'm going to see if I can do one week, and if it goes really well, I'll stretch it out to two weeks!