New Juice Fast, New Year (almost)
Day 1 of my juice fast
Date: 12/28/2008 9:23:05 PM ( 16 y ) ... viewed 2471 times I am dedicated to get back into the swing of things with the new year. Although it's not quite January 1st yet, I started my juice fast yesterday (since I have next week off work) so I figured I would start today by documenting how my juice fast is going. What better way can I start off the new year?
I've been wanting to do a juice fast for a long time but never really had a whole week or more where I wasn't working and/or traveling and/or busy with something else. I think this will be the first time since I was a child that I've had that opportunity! So I'm taking advantage of it and doing the juice fast. This way if I have some bad detox effects I can just stay in bed all day if I need to. It's the perfect way to end this year and start the next one. I want next year to be life-changing, and juice fasting is a good way to kick that off.
My reasons for juice-fasting are many: I want to detox, I want to try to break my obsession with food (I think it will take more than a week to do that, lol!), I want to get some nutrients back into my system, clear up my skin, brighten my eyes, and maybe kick off a bit of weight loss (although that one isn't quite as important). I know that all of this is possible with juice fasting, although maybe 9/10 days in total isn't quite long enough. If I am enjoying it it would be nice to continue longer, but I know that I won't be able to keep it up if I'm in a frigid school all day (I'm teaching in South Korea right now) - I need warm food to keep me warm! I'm thinking I'll need to buy a juicer (I'm borrowing one from a friend right now) so that I can continue to drink juice every day and maybe fast one day a week.
Yesterday was my first juice day. My morning juice had 2 carrots (the carrots here are HUGE), 2 apples (the apples here are huge as well, monstrous!), 2 cucumbers (strangely enough, the cucumbers are quite small here), the juice from a lemon and some fresh ginger juice. It was absolutely delicious - it felt like I was drinking liquid energy. There was sweetness from the carrots and apple, that fresh feeling from the cucumber, and a little bit of a kick from the lemon and ginger. I think I'll make it for breakfast again today. It made me smile just drinking it! That amount of vegetables made almost 1 litre of juice. Quite a lot! I drank a little over a cup right away for breakfast (diluted 50% with water), took about a cup with me for the store shopping, then drank a cup when I got back from the store. By the time I got back from the store I was starving, so i was glad to make some more juice because that amount just wasn't quite enough.
My friend who is doing the juice fast with me came over and we made some juice mid-afternoon. She has never made juice before and was a bit leery of making one that was majorly green, so we made one out of a quart of strawberries, half a pineapple, some spinach and a bit of celery. The colour wasn't that great, kind of brown, but who cares about the colour! She had just bought a juicer that day so we tried it out. It didn't do that great of a job and made the process a bit laborious - I like the juicer I have here this week a lot better. Anyway, the juice was okay, but pretty sweet of course from the pineapple and strawberry. I have to say I liked my breakfast juice better, which weird because who wouldn't prefer pineapple and strawberry??? Maybe the spinach and celery diluted the yummy flavours too much, I don't know. It only made about a cup of juice each so we drank that and then we went to the sauna.
Korea has a huge long tradition of saunas. These are more like public bath facilities. You go in, strip naked, take a shower, then you can go into pools of varying temperatures, some are bubbly like hot tubs, there are tap stations wehre you can sit and exfoliate or shave your legs, etc, and there are two actual sauna/steam rooms. I had been to one only once before, there is one about 2 minutes from my apartment. But the best thing about it is that there is this service you can get that lasts about half an hour where they give you a full body scrub. It's major exfoliation for every bit of skin! We each had it done yesterday and when I came out I felt as fresh as a little baby. You couldn't be modest if you have this done - you are basically spreadingn your legs for this woman to scrub your inner thighs! But it felt so fantastic and I saw a LOT of skin coming off. And then afterwards she gives you a bit of a massage, a bit of a facial, she washes your hair and then puts this delicious oil all over your body. So fantastic for only $15! I wanted to get my dead skin cells all brushed off so that my detoxing process would be easier - now all my toxins can come out through my fresh skin. I'd like to go back every week, it's so nice.
Last night when we got back from the sauna we were starving, so we made up another batch of juice - this time with a bunch of spinach, two stalks of celery (these stalks are like 3 feet long including the leaves), 2 cucumbers, 1 huge asian pear, 3 kiwis, juice from a lemon, and a bit of cayenne. It was okay but still not my favorite. That made a liter again so my friend and I split it, although I drank much more than she did. I was so hungry that it didn't do the job at first but after continuing to drink my hunger went away. It was so green and foamy! lol
I haven't noticed any detoxing yet although it's early on yet. All day yesterday my teeth have felt fuzzy but I think that may be from the sugars in the juice. And I woke up this morning with a headache but I think I'm dehydrated a bit because my pee was pretty yellow.
Well that's all for now, I need to get going and make breakfast for day 2!
Add This Entry To Your CureZone Favorites! Print this page
Email this page
Alert Webmaster
|