Road Blocks Along the Juicing Journey
In January we started on our juicing journey. I first started juicing not to lose weight but for health reasons as you can read here in An Unexpected Journey. The great side effect was that just by juicing for breakfast and for lunch each day I lost 15 pounds in January.
At the end of January we decided to do a juice fast for weight loss since it had been working so well up to that point. We joined a health challenge which you can read about here.
I did a lot of research on juicing, bought our juicer and then decided to help inspire others to take this journey with us by producing a YouTube playlist on our juicing journey.
So last week we chose to follow the guy that did the documentary: Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead which you can watch here. His name is Joe. I wanted to make sure I was meeting nutritional values during the juice fast and that is why I chose his reboot your life 15 day menu plan. I wanted to see if I could go an entire day with just juice and no foods. The 15 day plan was to get you ready for 5 days straight of juicing after 5 days of juice mixed with raw and cooked veggies. There are not grains, beans, meat, fish, starches etc during the entire 15 days.
After the first 4 days of trying to eat ALL the food on this menu I had gained a pound. I was not feeling the same energy that I felt when I was juicing all day and having one meal at night.
After thinking about his 15 day plan this is my critique on it: The recipes are delicious but way too much food. This plan is for someone who eats a lot. Most people who are as overweight as I am eat a lot. I don't and never have. So having too much food even great veggies was not a great experience for me. It was TOO much cooked veggies, not enough raw foods and too many blender smoothies. For years I had a blended fruit smoothie every single morning and it never did anything to help me lose weight.
I believe that Joe has two intentions from his 15 day menu plan; to get people who overeat and eat a lot of junk and fast foods to get used to a yummy and delicious vegetarian diet and to help those with a sweet tooth and of course, to limit any liability of a straight juice fast for a long period of time. Joe did a long juice fast but it was under the supervision of a doctor. He is not going to promote those long juice fasts on his website because that would open him up to law suits by people who get sick from doing a juice fast. I get all that. I am fine with all that. I am just not in that place. It was not a good fit for me.
The second part that did not sit well with me was this menu is way too sweet. This is great for a person who has a sweet tooth. I don't. I like salty foods. There are a lot of cooked sweet potatoes in this menu plan which is great for a sweet tooth but I like my sweet potatoes juiced now, not cooked. That way I am getting raw sweet potatoes which is much more nutritional with the live enzymes.
So by the 4th day of this 15 day menu plan I went back to juicing for breakfast and lunch and today I feel so much better! I know a lot of about nutritional values from using the cronometer for a year. I know my daily requirements for vitamins and minerals and which veggies and fruits have them.
I have not missed meat at all. I don't miss white potatoes. I don't miss candy or sweets as those were never my downfall anyhow. I do miss rice and sushi and salmon which I will of course put back into my menus after I lose this weight.
Today is our shopping day for all the yummy and colorful fruits and veggies. My body is saying Thank You! Back to strict juicing again!!! For snacks I will go back to juices and raw veggies like sweet red peppers which are in season here in Florida right now. They are such a power packed veggie. A farmer at our farmers market sells them right now for 50 cents each!!! YUMMY and a great buy!!!!
Update!!! I lost the pound I gained plus one more pound by switching back to juicing all day til dinner!!!!