My First Juice Fast (4 days) & My Favorite Juicing Recipes

**Disclaimer: let me start out by saying that I am, BY NO MEANS, an expert in juice fasting. This is simply an account of my own experience & some of my favorite recipes. Thank you :) **

My husband and I did a juice fast recently (or a juice feast as my Uncle so lovingly calls it). I've wanted to do one for years, before I got pregnant with our son (& he's 2 1/2 years old now so add nine months & I've wanted to do one for longer than that). One of my husbands co-workers was inspired by the documentary "Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead" & did his own juice fast & that's what triggered my husband.

Our goal was 10 days, although from the beginning we said we'll go as far as we wanted. No killing ourselves to get to 10 days just to say we did. In retrospect doing a juice fast in the winter was probably not the best idea. However I wanted to jump-start my post-holiday weight loss & cleanse my body of all of the toxins I'd allowed in over the previous months. Halloween through New Years is a time I allow myself to indulge a bit, put on a little winter insulation, although this year I grossly overdid it & my weight suffered.

My husband lasted two days. I lasted four. I know myself & I'm stubborn as anything. I could have juiced for longer, however I'm also in the process of trying to get our house ready to put on the market as well as potty-training our son, so I decided to save my stubbornness for those items & try a juice fast again in the Spring or Summer.

I didn't miss chewing quite as much as I thought I would. And once I got past the first 2 days I was fine (it got significantly easier after day 1). Although I'll admit, having company for days 3 & 4 & having to put out food for them was, well, annoying. Not the fact that I couldn't eat it. But the fact that I'd spend an hour, hour & a half juicing my juices for the day first thing in the morning, then clean the juicer, then prepare food for everyone else, clean those food prep dishes, wait until everyone was done eating, then clean their dirty dishes - it was just a LOT of dishes. By the end of day 4, I found myself weeping over the ridiculous amount of dirty dishes I'd had to do & I decided to end the fast on the following day. Weeping over dirty dishes?? Yeah. Not worth it. ;-)

Getting ready, I cut out the following items for the 3 days before beginning the fast (I'm vegetarian so I already don't eat meat but I'm not vegan so I do eat dairy & fish):

• alcohol
• caffeine (except for the scant amount in green tea - basically I just gave up coffee)
• carbs (potatoes, bread, & pasta items)
• tortilla chips
• rice
• cheese
• sweets

When you're coming down off of the cleanse, it's important reintroduce your digestive track to food slowly, just as you prepped your body for the juice fast.

Some tips I found helpful for myself & will remember for the next time I do it:

• Juicing requires a huge amount of fruits & veggies. Use this as an excuse to clean your fridge & make room for everything you'll need. Do your shopping ahead of time. If you think you'll need one of something, buy two. Trust me. I shopped strictly for juicing on the day before we started, on day 2, and again on day 4 (I spent about $35 each trip).
• Print out 30+ recipes ahead of time. Variety is key. You won't be chewing anything for days & if you're bored with your juice varieties, it'll make it difficult. At the beginning of each day, make a note next to each recipe you want to make for the day & lay them out on your counter. Take out all of the ingredients from the fridge. Wash everything. Make all of your juices in the morning. I stored mine in glass canning jars, labeled them, & put them in the fridge. Make an extra for the following morning so you don't have to wait to have your first juice.
• When you first get up in the morning, take your breakfast juice out of the fridge. I found that drinking them closer to room temperature was easier. Something fridge-temperature hitting my stomach only make me feel wildly hungry. "Chew" your juice to release saliva which begins the digestive process. While you're drinking one juice, have a second waiting for you on the counter. It'll be room temperature by the time you're done with the one you're drinking & won't have to wait for it to warm up.
• Sip your juice throughout the day. Don't guzzle it like you might guzzle water on a hot day. I found I felt more full by carrying a jar of juice around with me & sipping on it every 5-10 minutes. Once I got past days 1 & 2, I didn't experience any hunger pains at all.
• Make a variety of juices. Try something you're not sure you'll like. I thought for sure I'd like ginger in my juices since I love to eat it in my food, but I was not a fan. And I wasn't sure about beets in my juices, but it turns out I like them juiced more than cooked. Go figure! So it's worth it to give it a try. The worst that could happen is you don't like it.
• You'll pee constantly. If you have to be in the car for a significant length of time (an hour+) make sure you stop sipping juice 20-30 minutes before you leave unless you want to have to stop at a public rest room or be wildly uncomfortable with a full bladder. I only made this mistake once.
• Don't be alarmed if your BM's become irregular. I only pooped twice in 4 days.

Here they are, my favorite juice recipes:

(I peeled my oranges, lemons, & pineapples - & cored - removed the watermelon rinds, & cored my apples & pears prior to juicing, FYI)

Organic items marked with an *

Carrot-Spinach Juice

• 2 handfuls of baby *spinach leaves
• 5 carrots
• 1 handful of parsley
• 3 sticks of *celery

Carrot, Celery, Cabbage Juice

• 4 carrots
• 2 stalks of *celery
• 1 small (1.5-2 in.) wedge of green cabbage

Carrot Lemonade

• 5 carrots
• 1 lemon
• 1 *apple
• 1 small (1.5-2 in.) wedge of red cabbage

Watermelon-Pineapple Punch

• 1/4 watermelon
• 1 lemon
• 5 oranges
• 1/2 pineapple

Pineapple Cocktail

• 1/2 pineapple
• 1/2 cup radishes
• 2 stalks *celery

Carrot Cocktail

• 2 *apples
• 2 small *beets
• 1 orange
• 3 carrots

Green Apple Juice

• 1 *apple
• 3 carrots
• 1 handful of parsley
• 2 handfuls of baby *spinach leaves

Morning Juice

• 4 carrots
• 2 oranges

Carrot & Apple OJ

• 3 carrots
• 1 *apple
• 1 orange

Liver Cleanser

• 1 small *beet
• 3 *apples

"Flower" Juice

• 1 cup cauliflower
• 1 cup broccoli
• 1 *apple

One thing my husband had read was that your stomach uses different enzymes to digest fruits than it does to digest veggies. Apples are supposed to be the only "acceptable" fruit you can add to veggie juice. I'm not sure how much truth there is to this statement, but clearly I did not follow it 100%. I figured hey, it's enough that I'm doing a juice fast at all without getting terribly picky about what I'm putting into each one. ;)

Enjoy! :)