Juice Fast: 5 days, 10lbs, and a Shitload of Produce

Why a Juice Fast?
I first watched the film "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead" about a year ago and was intrigued by the concept of a juice fast. I highly recommend you watch the film. The Australian filmmaker decided to go 60 days drinking only fresh fruit and vegetable juice in an effort to hopefully rid himself of several ailments including obesity, an auto-immune disorder, etc. And he did the 60 days of juice while on a trip across the states resisting the temptation of our notoriously unhealthy American food.

Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead

His results were remarkable.  Massive weight loss and his auto-immune condition all but disappeared.  He was eventually able to go off all medications and had limitless energy, clearer thinking, healthier skin, and a majorly improved life.  All from drinking only juice for 60 days.  It really got me thinking.  I knew a detox would be good for my body and if I lost some weight in the process then hooray.

So, I bought a juicer after much research.  I settled on the Breville Multi-Speed Juice Fountain and I can vouch for its awesomeness.  The multi-speed feature is what it makes it so good at handling fruits and veggies of such widely varying hardness.  Once I got the juicer, I juiced occasionally but never as consistently as I'd need to see some real changes.  Recently I'd been toying with doing a real fast and the motivation to actually do it came in the form of a BzzAgent campaign.

BzzAgent is a site you can sign up for and, based on your demographic information and interests, they'll invite you to join campaigns for various products, services, and events.  As part of these campaigns you often get to try new things for free or at a deeply discounted price.  In this case, they provided me with the "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead Bundle" which included the DVD of the film, a produce shopping guide, and a companion booklet.  The campaign directed me to JoinTheReboot.com and it had a wealth of information including a variety of different plans that you can use for your "reboot".  

Based on the film, I had initially decided to do a 10 day fast based on the 3 day plan in the guide.  I figured that since 10 days is what he recommended to people in the film that I should do it, too! I did a good amount of planning.  I created a spreadsheet that combined the ingredients from all of the recipes for the 3 day plan and provided me with a shopping list.  I bought Ball jars to store the juice for easy transportation to work. And I cleaned out the fridge to make room for the massive amounts of produce I was about to buy.  

Then, to my amazement, after watching the film Tony decided he wanted to do the juice fast with me.  This is the guy that picks basil out of pasta sauce he's that "allergic" to vegetables or anything other than pizza.  I got him drinking Green Machine Naked juice to prep his body for what was to come. And he LOVES it!  Amazing.  We thought we might have to double the recipes to make enough for two, but we were wrong about that.  We probably would have been fine had we bought 1.5x the ingredients instead of 2x.  

The Fast

Then we went shopping. Good lord.  I've never had that much produce in my possession at one time. My kitchen looked like a produce department!  We bought three days worth of ingredients based on the plan recipes and I got to juicing.

This is where my plan fell apart.  I wasn't not prepared for how much time this would take!  Washing, prepping, juicing, cleaning the juicer between most juices, the kitchen disaster. I thought the hardest part of the fast would be cravings, but no.  I tried to do two days of juices at a time and it seemed to take me most of the evening.  

But as for the juice fast itself, it was easier than expected.  The recipes are designed in a way to make sure you get the right combination of vegetables and fruits to get all of the nutrients you need.  You don't want to have drinks that are mostly fruits or you'll be overdoing the sugar and not getting the nutritional value that you need.  I'm not going to lie, some juices were down right nasty.  Like this Gazpacho one, for example. I didn't like it at all and Tony was pretty sure he was going to die drinking it.  We both survived. :)

Every day's plan consisted of breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner.  The morning drinks tended to be the most juice heavy to give you a little sugar boost first thing in the morning.  This Carrot, Apple, Ginger juice was delicious! Another morning had a Purple Power drink that had concord grapes and blackberries in it and it was amazing.  I'd drink that any day!

Most of the midday drinks were very vegetable heavy, as expected.  Some were definitely better than others.  The Mean Green drink is the drink that is featured most in the film and is usually pretty palatable to most people.  It definitely wasn't bad and was loaded with good stuff from the Kale and other ingredients.

The final drinks of the day usually had a little bit more sweet to them as well.  Dessert, if you will.  From the moment I read the plan I was excited to try this Sunset Blend recipe.  It had sweet potato, red pepper, apples, carrots, oranges and beets.  It was pretty tasty!

After I made all of the juices for day one and two in the same day, I was already burned out.  Like I mentioned before, the time involved in making the juices was much more than I expected.  It would have helped had I had a kitchen buddy, but Tony's useless in there so I was on my own.  Also, my kitchen was a disaster.  I'm a pretty neat person, and having lots of clutter drives me nuts.  I literally had a 2x1' space in my kitchen to do the actual juicing.  The rest was covered in jars, produce, cutting board, etc.  And the apple seeds I kept finding on the floor with my bare feet were super annoying.  I think if I had a larger kitchen and a spare beer...er...produce fridge it would have been better.  But the time combined with the mess made me decide that 10 days was too long.  So, I decided we'd use the 3 days worth of produce and call it good.  After all, the plan on the website was only three days and I had opted to increase it.

People assumed that I switch my plan from 10 days to 3 days because it was unbearable when in fact it was the work involved.  I was never hungry or bitchy or riddled with cravings.  It was kind of remarkable.  Tony had one bad day where he wanted to eat a mashup of every carb loaded food item on the planet, but he was never hungry.  He was shocked.  He'd tried counting calories before but that amounted to eating half of a pizza instead of a whole one in one sitting.  His aversion to anything healthy made it hard for him to lose weight.  This made it easy. He decided it's the texture of veggies that bother him, not the taste.  The juice removed texture from the equation.  I still think it's just a stubbornness thing, but whatever. :)  Tony wasn't happy when I asked to stop at three days because he'd lost 3lbs in 2 days and was feeling great.  But he understood after I explained my situation.  But we did have a bunch of produce left.  We had doubled the ingredients assuming we'd need twice as much for two people.  We were wrong.  So, we decided to go for 5 days to use up what we had left.  

I was feeling great at the end of the third day and I weighed myself on the morning of the fourth day.  I'd lost 7.5lbs but felt like I'd lost more. I think I was chronically bloated or puffy and not only did I lose weight but any of that inflammation seems to have gone away.  I'm able to fit into a pair of skinny jeans that have been on the shelf for several months and I don't even have a muffin top! 

Also, my energy levels have been pretty damn good.  On the fifth day I was pretty much bouncing off the walls at work.  Even my coworkers noticed.  Imagine that, no sugary snacks or caffeine to try and wake me up.  Just pure, nutritious energy to power me along.  

Tony started to notice some changes that I didn't because I already had a pretty "clean" diet.  The morning drink on the 4th day was too sweet for him!  He eats sweetened condensed milk straight from the can, so he's no stranger to sweets.  I'm interested to see how things taste to him now that he's done some detoxing.

As for the, um, bodily function impacts.  Don't worry about being super gassy or in the bathroom all day.  By juicing, you're removing the bulk of the fiber that usually causes the gas and stool issues.  I guess you do still spend all day in the bathroom because you're having to pee all the damn time, but I'm okay with that.

Results

In the end, I lost 10lbs.  I'm good with that!  I think had I stayed on it another 5 days I would have seen some pretty remarkable changes.  I would definitely do the fast again.  I think I'd rather shoot for winter when my schedule isn't as busy and the juicing task won't be getting in the way of having a life, but not sure how the produce would be during that time of year.  

Tony is really impressed as well with the 8lbs he lost.  He'll likely buy a juicer of his own when he moves to Columbus, OH and will hopefully stick with the Naked juices and juice bar juices as a vessel for getting fruits and veggies in his diet.  He discovered that his trusty Starbucks sells Naked juices so he can still hang out there and have a non Frappuccino option!  I suggested he try half the packet of brown sugar in his oatmeal from there this morning and he agreed that he didn't need the whole packet anymore.  Getting all of the processed sugars out for 5 days has changed the way things taste for him in a big way.  Even if he ends up going back to the same diet he had, at least he'll be adding healthy stuff in a way he enjoys.  It's a really easy way to "eat your colors" and mostly enjoy it!

I had a poached egg for breakfast and I didn't even need to put salt and pepper on it! I'm looking forward to my lunch at Proof, but I'm not dying for anything in particular.  I never once had crazy cravings and I'm not going to dive face first into a pizza.  I'm looking forward to trying to eat better and incorporate more juice into my life.  

I'd definitely recommend this for anyone that needs a quick reset of their body.  Hell, at the very least I've found a way to drop a quick few pounds before vacations or special occasions. :)

Feel free to hit me up with questions!  Lots of people have asked me about it and I promised a lot of info. I know this post got long, but I could ramble on forever so I'll stop here and if you want to know more just send me a note!

A Gift from the Greek (yogurt) Gods

I don't have an addictive personality which is good because if I did I'd probably eat Chobani Greek Yogurt for every meal.

I recently won a sampler pack of the new Chobani flavors (mango, lemon, black cherry) by commenting on their website. We had to tell them where we'd be taken as we tasted the new flavors. I, of course, said that they would take me away to Costa Rica! The mango and lemon just scream warm weather and beaches to me and since I'm planning a trip there it only seemed natural. Anyway, I won! I never win anything, but it doesn't stop me from trying! It paid off in spades this time for sure.

Yesterday an insulated box arrived on my front step. I wasn't sure if I'd get one of each flavor or if it'd be a 12 pack or something. It was a 12 pack. Woot! I got 4 of each flavor and I had to photograph the box of deliciousness. :) I did a little dance in my living room I was so happy. The packing peanuts made the kitties happy, too, so I guess we all win!

So far, I've only tried the mango and it was quite good. It reminded me a smidge of the peach but maybe that's because it's orange. I don't know. But I did like it more than the peach for sure. Peach has always been that flavor that comes in my Club pack from Costco that I wish would be replaced with something else. The other flavors are strawberry and blueberry. If they'd throw pomegranate in there I'd be thrilled!

I brought the black cherry to eat with lunch today and I'm so excited to try it!

If you haven't tried Greek yogurt, you should. It's loaded with protein and is so versatile. Not just for breakfast anymore! Heck, just check out the recipes on the Chobani site. So many things you can do with it! I do recommend the Chobani though if you're new to Greek yogurt. The texture of Greek yogurt is a bit...different. Chobani is the one that I like the best for both texture and flavor.

Phase II

Well, I survived Phase I! And you know, it really wasn't so terrible. Sure, the gluten free bit was quite the challenge and I wanted my customary glass (bottle) of wine with my blizzards but I survived! And I lost a total of 8.5 pounds out of the deal, too! Considering I was a pretty health conscious eater before this I think that's doing pretty well! 5-ll pounds is the expected for the first phase so I'm square in the middle of that. Also, I feel significantly less "puffy" now. My stomach is flatter, my arms leaner, and my legs are losing that nice padding I had around my yoga muscles! I posted my weight loss totals online today for the world to see and I had a great response! A couple of friends have ordered the books for themselves and are hoping to have similar results. My results aren't shocking by any means, but they're healthy and sustainable and that's what's important.

The next phase I get to reintroduce eggs, diary, and gluten as well as a whole bunch of other stuff in order to "rebalance" my metabolism. I'm intrigued that I'm still supposed to lose another 5-10 pounds in this second 4 week period despite adding back sugars and stuff but I guess if you're eating things your body knows how to process there's no reason it's not doable. I have to continue to stay away from the refined flours and fake crap and that's fine by me. Except for the fact that very few pizza places offer whole wheat pizza crust and I would really like a pizza!

Hmm, today was my "reintroduce eggs" day and I've had no eggs. Perhaps tonight is a breakfast for dinner night!

Phase I

I'm on day three of my three week Ultra Metabolism Phase I. What have I learned so far? Gluten free is expensive. In addition to my previous limitations, I now also must eliminate gluten, dairy and eggs. Those three things are common food allergens, so by eliminating them I will be able to do a little self test for sensitivity when I add them back. The eggs and dairy, while missed, aren't that difficult. Gluten is another story. I think I spent 45 minutes at the store staring at grains trying to decide what to buy that was within my rules. I had a list of items I wanted that were part of the shopping list in my book, but I wanted a few other options as well. Gluten free items must be a cash cow. I can't imagine it's that much more expensive to produce them in the long run, but they have a captive audience so they can charge out the ass apparently.

Other than the initial shock of shopping for Phase I and trying to decide what to cook, it's going okay so far. But then I got my bottom braces on yesterday and I'm in pain. When you can't chew and you have a very limited diet, eating becomes rather complicated. Lucky for me my Google Reader food blog addiction paid off again yesterday and dropped in my lap an delicious winter soup that fit all my rules and didn't require chewing. Thank goodness.

Oh! I forgot to mention, I'm down 4 pounds! I hope it's the eating and not a fluke. :)

On a mission for pizza

All I wanted was pizza. Finding pizza that fit my current eating rules was not an easy thing to find on short notice, however. I've actually been doing really well in my prep week for my Ultra Metabolism prescription. The caffeine, alcohol, HFCS, hydrogenated oils, and bad-for-you processed foods have pretty much been a breeze to eliminate. I wasn't even having a hard time with the white and wheat flour limitations. Sugar is the hardest. I'm not craving cookies or sweets at all, it's just that sugar is in EVERYTHING. So, while I haven't been able to fully eliminate sugar from my diet simply because I haven't prepared all of my food from scratch myself, I am keeping the sugar amounts down to what I feel is acceptable. A gram here or there is better than a Coke and a piece of chocolate layer cake, I figure.

Anyway, like I said, eliminating the stuff I had to for my prep week wasn't hard. Until I wanted a pizza. I have a couple of Trader Joe's pizzas in my freezer and I adore them. Best frozen pizza out there, I swear. The wood fired crust is to die for. But, alas, it has wheat flour. Not whole wheat flour. Just wheat flour. That's a no-no at the moment. I scoured the internet for delivery places that sell whole wheat crust pizzas to no avail. Did you know Papa John's used to have a whole wheat crust and they discontinued it? Sad. So, I decided I'd have to go and find me a pizza some way, some how. Thing is, starting Monday I won't be getting a pizza for like 5 weeks so I figured I had to take care of my cravings or else my cravings would win the war later. Off to Trader Joe's Tony and I go to read all of the labels on the frozen pizza there. All organic wheat flour, which is great, but not something I could eat at the moment. Luckily, they do sell pre-made dough that you bake at home. They have regular and whole wheat versions and they're cheap. Only $.99 for a package that you could use to make 2 small pizza crusts. I also picked up some of their refrigerated pizza sauce despite its sugar contents. It really wasn't too bad as far as sugar content goes, especially since I didn't use an entire serving on my pizza. I'm allowing myself a few grams of sugar to save my sanity in this whole plan, it's worth it. Again, not because of an addiction to sweets but instead because I haven't had time to make my own sauces. I planned to top off my pizza with cheese so I decided to go big or go home and got some Swiss and Gruyère shredded cheese as well. I also decided I needed more of the Fiberful Fruit Leather and some other dried fruit options without added sugar. Pitted prunes to the rescue! This bag is substantial and the prunes sweet, soft, and delicious. A perfect "pop anytime" snack to tide me over if I ever do crave sweets.

At home, the pizza took just a few minutes to put together including time to stretch out the dough. 12 minutes in the oven and I had a meal mostly within my rules (darn sugar) that satisfied my very intense pizza craving. I'm planning on making this again for myself on Saturday at a friend's house in Kansas City. She's having a birthday get together and I'm fairly certain very little will be available for me to eat that fits the rules. To make it easier on myself I'm making that pizza and I'm also making some Guacamole from the Ultra Metabolism Cookbook. I'll let you know how that goes and maybe even have some pictures. This blog needs more photos!

This way of eating is actually kind of refreshing. Sure, it has limitations that make things somewhat difficult and it'll get even more difficult next week, but overall it's pretty easy. I don't have to calorie count and worry about fat or any of that. When I read the label I look at the ingredients list first and foremost. I'll glance at the sugar and sodium content as well, especially since I'm salt-sensitive. But in total, it's a pretty easy thing to do. I'm a little scared of the next 3 weeks in particular but even longer since I don't get to add stuff back all at once. I just need to get better at planning/preparing my meals ahead and I think I'll be fine. The recipes in the book and the cookbook actually look really delicious and I'm excited to try them! Now if only I could get my anti-veg, super picky boyfriend to eat this well! It'd be much easier if he wasn't snacking on Chilean 1000 Layer Cake that he brought back from Costa Rica while I'm avoiding sugar, but he's supportive and holds me accountable and that's all that matters! I appreciate it a great deal!

Oh, one quick note. On Wednesday night I wasn't terribly hungry so I decided to have a slice of whole wheat bread with some hummus for dinner. I know, not balanced...but it worked. I hadn't really had any wheat products in almost 2 weeks until that piece of bread. At 3am I woke up with the worst sinus headache! I'm prone to those, but I thought it was interesting that I got one the night after I ate something with gluten. Sinus congestion is a common symptom of food allergy apparently. So, I'm going to keep an eye on that and see if I have fewer sinus headaches without gluten and if I get them more when I reintroduce it. I'll be heartbroken if I have a gluten sensitivity given my love affair with all things bread, but I'll manage I'm sure.

Let the fun begin!

Okay, so "fun" may not be the right word. Let the test of willpower and dedication begin!

Today I start my Ultra Metabolism prescription. The title sounds gimmicky, but it's really pretty simple and not full of hooey. Essentially, it's getting back to a real foods diet and getting rid of all the fake crap that our bodies don't know how to process. So why do I need an eating plan to do that? Well, the elimination of fake foods is only part of it. Lots of people have undiagnosed food allergies to things like gluten, eggs, dairy, etc and the plan gives you a way to do an at-home check for those sensitivities.

Today I began week 1, which is a prep week for the plan. Last night I made sure to do it up right and eat a bunch of stuff I won't be able to have for a few weeks. :)

Things I can't eat in week 1:

• Caffeine - Shouldn't be too bad as I don't really drink it often anyway.
• Processed and refined carbs (white or wheat flour) and sugar - I eat mostly whole wheat stuff when possible so this will just mean I need to be more diligent about that. The sugar thing will be tough tho. It's amazing how many things have added sugar in them! My freaking cranberries for my salad have extra sugar for crying out loud! I'm going to do my best to eliminate it completely for as long as I'm told, but I have no doubts a bit will slip in there despite my best efforts.
• High-fructose corn syrup - No problem. Despite this shit being in nearly everything we buy I've managed to avoid it for the most part. I found I had very little purging to do in my fridge and pantry due to my earlier efforts to avoid buying stuff with HFCS.
• Hydrogenated fats and oils - Same as HFCS. I've done a pretty good job of avoiding it up to now, but there are a few items still lingering in my house with these in them. Mostly related to baking. I'll just not do that for a while.
• Processed and packaged foods - This all depends on the types of processed and packaged foods. The goal is to get as close to the natural form of the food as possible. Often the packaged stuff has bonus badness added to the ingredient list so that is what I intend to avoid. By shopping at Trader Joe's I should be able to still get some processed and packaged stuff without an extra negative ingredients. Of course, another reason to avoid it is that your body has to work harder to break down food in its whole form so processed stuff is burned faster. For this reason I will try to stick with as much whole stuff as possible, but give myself a bit of leeway by buying good stuff from Trader Joe's. I wish I could find the rumored three page, single spaced, list of ingredients that Trader Joe's won't allow in food with the TJ's label but my searches have been futile. I'll post the link if I ever find it!
• Alcohol - I don't drink very often, but as soon as I'm told I can't (antibiotics, this plan...) I want a glass of wine. I especially enjoy wine with a nice dinner so this may be tough. Oh, and during days when I'm snowed in which I may be this evening. *sigh* At least I get to reintroduce that in week 5 as long as I don't determine I have a sensitivity to it!

Last night I tried to prepare by putting things together for my lunch way ahead of time instead of the morning of. This is when I discovered that my champagne vinaigrette dressing and dried cranberries for my salad even had added sugar. Grr. I figured the amount was mostly negligible so I used it anyway. I also made some baked oatmeal with dried apricots (no added sugar!) and pecans that I could reheat in the morning. And then this morning I prepared some wild Alaskan salmon for my lunch and for upcoming dinners. I portioned a 1lb frozen package into 4 individual servings. Not bad for ~$8 worth of good salmon! I think I'm doing pretty well so far for my plan for today.

Breakfast: Baked oatmeal with dried apricots and pecans. Protein shake.

Snack: Trader Joe's Fiberful Fruit Leather (all real ingredients!).

Lunch: Salmon fillet and a mixed green salad with champagne vinaigrette dressing, dried Cranberries and walnuts inspired by the magical salads at Proof and Flour here in Des Moines. I dream of those salads for real.

I'm not sure what I'll do for dinner tonight yet, maybe more of that delicious salmon I prepared this morning. We'll see! I plan to keep lots of almonds and other nuts around for snacking throughout the day as well.

Wish me luck!