Juice Fasting: The Journey That Allows Your Body to Heal Itself

If you haven't seen "Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead," I suggest looking it up on Netflix and watching it right now. One lazy Saturday afternoon my husband, Ian, and I stayed in bed and decided to watch this documentary. Prior to this we had been on a two week whirlwind vacation on the east coast and enjoyed more food than our tummies can handle. Pizza and Polish food from NYC? Check. Whoopie pies from Lancaster? Check. Philly cheesesteaks from Philly, soft-shell crab sandwiches from Chesapeake Bay, Hershey candy in Hershey, PA, and a week's worth of all-inclusive meals at a Georgian Bay fishing club in Canada? Check, check, check, and mate. Oh yes, it was all very delicious but I felt sluggish when we returned home.

While watching Joe Cross's documentary, Ian surprised me by suggesting we do a two-week juice fast after a raft trip. I stared at him like he just just told me he was pregnant. "Are you kidding me? I don't think you can last that long," I recall saying to him.

"No, I'll be fine. You, on the other hand, have a severe dependency on protein so I don't think you can do this."

"Well, you can't have any beer on the juice fast. That's cheating."

"What? Beer is juice! I should be able to have one beer a day if I wanted....or how about 2 beers the entire time?"

Haha...yes, this is kind of how this conversation went between us. So we both agreed to do the juice fast for 11 days. The 12th day is Ian's company picnic and he didn't want to miss out on all the good times with his bosses and coworkers. On August 8th we borrowed a juicer from Ian's mom, and began our 11-day juice fast.

I've facebooked the journey and included a couple of pictures of the large bowls of fruits and veggies it takes to make a just a couple of glasses of juice. Below is a picture of just breakfast and lunch for me only.
Impressive, eh?

The juice fast we followed included NO coffee, and just tea and water. Here's a quick break down of each day:

Day 1- Ian brought 2 metal bottles worth to work this day. When he got home he decided 3 bottles would be better as he was really tired and lacked energy. Later that evening to keep our minds off of food we walked to Kure on 42nd and Hawthorne for a juice dinner. They create fresh juice from scratch. It was very hard walking past people at Por Que No? and the other food carts nearby. My stomach whined and asked me to feed the belly and I only responded by feeding it more juice.

Day 2 - Tired and hungry. I tortured myself by reading my favorite food blogs and watching Anthony Bourdain. You can probably say my food porn addiction has risen a bit. In the evening we did a small walk around the neighborhood and went to bed early that night. I found myself having a bit of trouble sleeping so I went in the living room to read and try to relax. The headaches were getting worse throughout the night and I drank a lot of tea/water to combat this. No Aspirin, no Alieve (my go-to pain reliever of choice). This, after-all, was the body doing work detoxing itself.

Day 3/4- For me, these two days were pretty tough while working. Many of my emails had improper spelling and grammar, and the normal work-stress levels felt a bit more elevated to the point where I shed a couple of tears at the end of the day. We went to the gym but kept it slow and steady.

"Why are we doing this?"

"Because it would be good to see if we can discipline and reboot our eating habits ."

"Oh...ok."

Ian's mom called and gave us good advice to take some olive oil to help our gall bladder manage the influx of toxins in the body and to do some dry brushing for circulation. I think this whole time I've only had 1 teaspoon of coconut oil and Ian did only 1 of olive oil. It was gross but it felt kind of nice to eating something from a spoon.

Day 5/6- Oh curse that metallic flavor in my mouth! I felt like I had been sucking on 20 pennies. Yuck! Our breath was kicking and our body odor got worse. Our pee stank (sorry TMI) and the farts were horrid. No amount of brushing, flossing, tongue scraping could get rid of it. And your tongue is really gross and white like a wet white sock. Probably smelled like it, too.

On day 6, we had agreed to babysit Thalia and Clio, Ian's cousin's kids, for the afternoon. I emailed Becky and stated, "We don't have any solid food like bread to give them. Is this ok?" She said it was fine to feed them some of our juice.

When they came over we took them over to Kruger Farms fruit stand on Hawthorne and let them pick out fruits and veggies to make their own juice. It turned out to be a really fun activity. They girls really loved playing with the juicer and smelling their own fresh juice recipe. After that we bottled some of it up and went to the Avalon, a five cent arcade space on Belmont. There was a dirt bike game I tried to play and you actually have to pedal and turn the handle to maneuver the course. Although it only lasted 3 minutes, it felt like an eternity and I ended up in 4th place....out of 4 bikers. Walking home, I felt a bit spacey and light-headed then proceeded to drank the rest of the juice and pretty much stayed in one spot the whole night.

Day 7 - Our friend Shannon invited us on a hike on Sunday morning. I remember asking Ian, "Can you look up the level of difficulty of this hike?" Dog Mountain in the Gorge is marked as "Difficult." All of a sudden, I got nervous. I had a traumatic experience with one of our friends, Erik Hansen, picking an "EASY" hike and it turned out to be the most difficult hike I've EVER been on. To make matters worse, my back was sore from camping/sleeping on the ground, and our friend Marilyn was 6 month pregnant at the time and the first one of our group to make it to the top. Boy, was I out of shape! The only reason why I even bothered to finish that hike to the top was because there was a beer with my name on it chilling in snow at the top of the ridge.

"Don't worry," Ian said. " If you don't feel good we can stop and turn around. It would be good to try this."

When we got to Dog Mountain we saw that it was marked "Most Difficult." Uhoh....here we go! Talk about steep! Wow, my butt is still hurting today from the hike. We ended up only making it less than half way before wanting to pass out. The light headed dealio was bothering me and needed to get down quickly to risk falling down a steep hill.

Anytime we've ever gone a hike we always follow it up with a beer at a local town bar or brewery. This time we stopped at Dead Man Walking in Stevenson, WA. No beer, just ice tea for us. Ian had a small sip of Shannon's beer, and I recall staring at people eating delicious looking fries and pizza. We are definitely coming back in the future for that pear and Steelhead pizza!

Day 8 - Juicing per usual. Gym time. Kept it slow and steady again. We are both feeling really tired and kind of bored of this juice fast. Ian weighed himself and lost 12 pounds!!!! I'm so jealous! He's looking slim and that beer gut is nearly gone. My wedding band is too loose for my ring finger! It's probably the lack of salt in the diet.

Day 9: Today. Tired and stressed from work. Bored of juice fast. Ian is meeting Ben for a beer. I did tell him he's allowed 2 beers. He said he will probably only drink half. We will see. Hopefully I will not need to come get him and drive him home.

Day 10: Wednesday tomorrow. I'm sooo done....Just keep juicing.

Day 11: Fast in morning, lunch: Solid food dinner.

Going to make spaghetti from zucchini and a cashew Alfredo sauce and some soup and vegan meatballs from mushrooms and black beans/lentils. Something light. Hope that goes well. I've been reading a lot and many fasting resources recommend to go slowly and ease back into a normal eating cycle. Breaking the fast appears to be harder than the fasting part itself. It's kind of like the weight loss journey. "Ok, I did it, now what?" But we have a plan to ease back into regular eating slowly. Smaller meals mostly cooked from home. Less protein (Gasp!) and lots more veggies. We want to continue to juice periodically. I'm even considering continuing the juicing but incorporating more cultured foods and probiotics to aid in digestion with very small meals.

Throughout this journey, I have to say I've been really happy that Ian is doing this with me. Having support from within the home really helps motivate me to get through many of these hungry days. Thank you Ian for being a wonderful, loving, and supportive husband. If you had never suggested this, I would never go through this kind of torture as I love food too darn much. But I love you more. =)