I do alot of reading, researching and writing. I have a couple writing sites I work on. I run a Yahoo Groups mailing list for women friends who are interested in living a healthy, happy life. (Sounds a bit altruistic because in the end we're all human regardless of our lofty dreams... but we strive all the same.) So, my body is less active than my mind is. My mind is sleek and buff, toned, very athletic, has won a few Silvers and a Bronze or two and a couple few Golds in its time. But my body has won nothing in the last 15 years. Well, that's not quite true, but you get the gist.

But why a 30 day juice fast? Well, as I mentioned above, I have done this before, so I know what the results are going to be. In the time frame of 30 days, I will lose upwards to 30 pounds or so, which is really all I need to lose. I will have cleaned out my body of toxins, dead cells, cysts, tumors, parasites, bad bacteria and the body will have healed, balanced and fine tuned the organs and systems. Any problems will have corrected themselves. Any imbalances will be rebalanced (hopefully the smoking addiction will stay gone this time).

The years will drop off my face and body, my skin will tighten and glow, my eyes will literally sparkle, my mind will be more alert and clear, I will sleep much deeper and wake rested and refreshed with a smile on my face, my perspective on people, situations, beliefs, and my life will alter and progress to a higher level of perceiving. All of this in a short time span of 30 days. A month. To achieve all of this without juice fasting would take much longer than 30 days.

The first time I did a 30 day juice fast was about five years ago when I was in my mid-30s and it was the first regulated fast I had ever done. But I had been reading up and studying fasting techniques including juicing. I had been considering trying it out when I fell ill with bronchitis that borderlined pneumonia and when Don, my doctor friend, began talking hospital, I knew I had to do something radical.

In addition to the bronchitis, a sabaceous cyst on the right side of my face became infected and grew, OMG, to the size of a Florida navel orange, I kid you not. Needless to say, I was mortified. And very sick. It was the first time in my adult life that I was sick enough to be bedridden. This is not to say, I have never had the flu or cold, because I have. They've just never pulled me down low enough to where I felt I needed to stay in bed to ride it out.

But here I was sick enough to concern Dr Don, with a monstrous growth on the side of my face. I decided to try the 30 day juice fast after I finished the antibiotics Don prescribed to knock some of the umph out of the bronchitis and to allow the cyst to drain as much as possible. Doing a juice fast with this much poison wrecking havoc with my body scared me. I'd never done one of these before and I didn't want to do more harm than good.

So I did the prescriiption of antibiotics first. And let me tell you now, I do not believe in anti-biotics except for once-in-a-while-serious-conditions, because they suppress the immune system, thereby not allowing the immune system to do its job. I know people who run to the doc for every sniffle and sneeze and ache and pain they get and they're always popping an anti-biotic. My heart bleeds for these silly fools. So, anyway, as soon as I finished the anti-biotics I began the fast in earnest.

The fast was not really difficult for me to endure. Yes, the first three days were terrible. I was hungry the whole time. By Day 3 I was concerned and worried that I may not be able to ride this out the way I'd planned. But I woke up on Day 4 and knew I was over the hump.

From Day 4 on, the fast was quite easy to do. With no hunger pangs twisting my guts into knots, I had no more real discomforts. Yes, I had what's called Healing Crisises where the toxins in my blood are being filtered out of my body and headaches would form, zits would appear, sniffles and sneezes would dog me, but these things came and went that fast, so I was never pulled down.

By the end of the first week, the energy I had went through the roof. They say on fasts you need to lay low, rest, blah blah blah... I say, there was no chance in hell the energy my body found was going to allow me to sit on my keester.

So, I drove around my neighborhood to map out on the odometer three miles. And I proceeded to walk that three mile route twice a day for a total of six miles a day. In addition, I dug up with a shovel a 20 x 15 foot flower bed and planted three trees, two bushes and a medley of flowers. Every room in my house was spotless, you could eat off the floors. I did some of my most creative writing during that time as well. The energy was flabbergasting and I most definitely enjoyed and used it while it lasted. Yeah... right... while it lasted.

I drank three or four 16oz glasses of undiluted juice daily for the first two weeks of the fast. This was supplemented with herbal teas, lemon and lime-pepper teas, lots of water with and without lemon, hot fresh-veggie broths. The last two weeks of the fast I knocked two juices off the menu and only did two 16oz glasses a day or four 8oz glasses. On day 31, I did my regular juices but I also ate a banana. Day 32 I still drank my juices, ate my banana and added a grapefruit and cantaloupe melon slices in the morning and for lunch and then ate steamed brocolli/caulifower for dinner. Day 33 I added grain.

I took it slowly back into the world of mastication. It was a couple months before 'regular' food began to taste 'right' again. Living for nearly 40 days on fresh fruit and veggie juices and then raw fruits and steamed veggies and bland grains had cleaned my palate and regular foods, foods I'd been eating forever, were not to my liking anymore. The foods were too salty, too sweet, too lardy tasting. Too fake, too oily-greasy, too bitter, too strong to tolerate. I preferred the simple yet complex but definitely luscious juices of carrots and apples and spinach over cheesy eggs and toast, Subway roastbeef, a salad drenched in Ranch dressing.

By the end of the fast, I'd lost some 30 pounds. The bronchitis was but a bad dream in the past. The infected sabaceous cyst was history (my body gobbled it up during the process called autolysis), I looked ten years younger than my age, I felt on top of the world, content, at peace, a feeling I have only ever achieved on a 30 day juice fast.

I've done a few more 30 day juice fasts since then and several two week juice fasts. I can't do the three day fasts, they're too bloody painful. I mean, it takes about three days for my digestive system to shut down before the full blast of detox is triggered, and the hunger pain can be monstrous at times. It's Day 4 that the pain subsides, so why would I want to go on a 3 Day fast, endure that pain FOR NOTHING !! So the shortest fast I can tolerate is a two week fast. This 30 day fast I am about to embark on will be my fifth one in about five years. The experts say one should do a 30 day juice fast once a year with a shorter fast at the six month mark.

I hope I can inspire someone to try juicing, if not an actual two week juice fast to start. If you're not ready to do an actual fast, then you can drink the juices and eat what you usually eat. Even if someone doesn't stop eating their three or four Big Macs per day and they add the juices to that, their health will still improve in many ways. Of course, cutting down on the Big Macs would go along way hand-in-hand with the juices. But the powerful impact of those concentrated juices on the body simply cannot be ignored.

So, I need a tune up. My metabolism needs to catch up with my brain. The only way I can achieve that in a short amount of time, with the least amount of effort and the greatest amount of reward is to journey on a 30 day juice fast. Wish me bon voyage and I will share with you each day of the journey.

~ Dazzle

January 16, 2006

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