Day One

Day one starting stats: Weight: 176 lbs, waist 38" (at widest point, not my pant size), pasty, soft and generally cranky.  Shaved my head again  for the first time in a long while.

I've been watching my health, and physique slowly go down the tubes.  I've been gettng sicker, and sadder. Gradually feeling like just about any challenge was more than I was up to. Then I watched "Fat Sick and Nearly Dead", and juicing semed like a great way to tackle the situation. We used to juice daily at home until our old juicer died on us, so we knew recipes, and what to expect from the experience. After doing more research I decided that although it might be uncomfortable at first, it would be worth it.

I am an autoworker, and last Friday we were given notice that because of a part shortage each shift would be laid off for a week.  Being on midnights, my shift was first. With a week off, and nothing to do I decided that it was a perfect time to start the juice fast. Any adverse effects I experienced should happen during the first few days, so I would be fine by the time I have to go back to work.

Our old juicer has been busted for quite a while, so we needed to get a new one. We chose a Breville Juice Fountain Elite, and picked it up this morning. After our stop at William's Food Equipment we took a run out to the Superstore and filled up a cart with fruits and vegetables. We got enough to completely fill our fridge for $99. We've never gone shopping for just juicing ingredients before.  It wasn't as expensive as I was expecting.

Once home we washed everything, took some pictures, and got started. I've been reading up at Reboot Your Life to get inspiration, recipes, and read the forums for info. They have a tonne of juice recipes, but we decided to start with one called Green Lemonade.

Green Lemonade

1 Green Apple

3 handfuls Spinach, 1.5 cup

6-8 Kale leaves, 2 cups

1/2 Cucumber

4 Celery Stalks

1/2 Lemon

Calories: 210
Protein: 10 g
Fiber: 1 g

(We doubled the recipe since there were two of us.)

I was really surprised how much less pulpy the juice was compared to the juice we used to get from our old Jack LaLanne's Power Juicer. There was also a lot less pulp in the hopper, and what was there, was very fine. All together the ingredients made almost 3 pints of juice (I drank almost 2) I can't say it was my favourite juice ever, but it's been a while since we juiced, and I was really excited about starting.

It didn't take long to start my stomach doing somersaults, but I knew what I was getting into, so it looks like the journey has officially begun.

Crystal went out birding for a while. (That's gonna have to be an entirely different blog)  When she got back it was only for a short time, so we decided to juice again before she left. (our first one was at about 1:00pm.) It was about 4:45pm, and we decided to go with one of the recipes that we used all the time with our old Juicer.

4 Apples

4 Beets (stems and all)

6 Carrots

2 pieces of Ginger (each about the size of 2 sugar cubes)

The result is a sweet spicy juice with a mellow earthy taste.  Really good stuff.  I made sure to rinse the juicer immediately since the beets stain like crazy.

My body was already starting to have issues with the juice.  I had been craving pretzels since about a half hour after my first juice.  I also started experiencing significant intestinal distress (had to make several trips to the bathroom), and felt a headache building.  Crystal wasn't experiencing as much physical distress, but she eats a primarily vegetarian diet already.  Crystal won't be joining me fully in the juice fast until November 1st.  Chances are she'll be juicing with me, but still eating food, and drinking alcohol until then. 

I kept thinking about snacks.  It's not that I was really hungry, or that I'd gone longer than usual without a snack.  It seemed to be my mind knowing that this was the beginning of a long haul without food.  Every time I got up to go do something I got a momentary idea to go downstairs and get a snack.  There weren't even any snacks in the house.  It was absolutely silly.  I figured this kind of thing would get worse the first few days.  It reminded me a little of when I first quit smoking long ago. 

Part Four

It was just after 9:00pm when I made my last juice of the day. It didn't taste great, but I wanted to used mostly vegetable that I hadn't yet used so that our ingredient supply didn't get too out of balance.

2 stalks of dandelion
3 carrots
1/2 cucumber
5 leaves of Swiss chard
1 red pepper

After drinking it my body definitely started to rebel.  I don't really think it was from the glass of juice, so much as from my last meal being more juice.  I started to feel sick to my stomach, my head was pounding, and felt like I had the flu coming on. I couldn't concentrate, and went from a normal mood to full on depression in a matter of a half hour.  Luckily I was expecting this, so as bad as it was I was able to wrap my mind around it. by about 10:45 I decided to go to bed, and once I was in bed and warm (which took a little while with some shivering involved) I fell asleep almost right away.