Expanded Circle

10th October 2012

Question with 3 notes

dedicatedtolife10152011 asked: Good Morning-I have seen earlier today one of your older posts about a previous juice fast you were doing...I was just wondering if perhaps you had any advice for me...I have fasted before for a religious purpose but now I am doing it to try and lose 25-35 lbs. I am 19 years old, weigh 165 lbs and ideally would like to be 120-145 and I also want to get a flatter stomach after the weight loss. What did you find most helpful? Have you ever used the Naked Juice products? Finally, what are your opin

I do drink Naked Juice and other drinks like it (Bolthouse Farms, Odwalla, etc…) but those are very far from what one should be consuming on a juice fast. While they might be a good thing to hold you over in an emergency, they are not fresh, they are pasteurized and refrigerated and shipped and as such I would question the actual nutritional value of these drinks (not to mention they are very fruit heavy, during a juice fast you want to be consuming mostly veggie juice, with fruit juice used to make the veggies palatable).

So if you’re doing a juice fast, first get a quality juicer if you can afford it. I use an Omega VRT, highly recommended. If you’re buying new be prepared to spend $300+, so look around online for deals (craigs list, ebay, etc…) if that is out of your budget. If you go and spend $60 on something you’d get at target, it will not extract maximum nutrition but more importantly it will wear out and break sooner rather than later, esp on a juice fast where you use it every day (often several times a day). They also have less juice yield so you’ll be spending more on produce anyway.

So once you have a good juicer, make juice and drink a lot of it. I made all my juice in the morning and kept it refrigerated, though I suspect juicing a few times a day might be more ideal, I just didn’t have the time and cleaning juicers is a pain. You should aim to have 60-70% veggies and 40-30% fruits. Fruits often have a higher juice yield, but as long as the unjuiced materials equal roughly those percentages you’ll be good. The juice I made every day was 1 lb spinach, 1 lb carrots, 1 large sweet potato, 1 medium beet, 1/4 pineapple, 3 apples (red delicious have the highest nutritional density) and 1 lemon. Sometimes would use kale instead of spinach and add some berries for flavor. The most important thing is that you include dark leafy greens. Once you have juice, sip it throughout the day, don’t consume huge amounts all at once or else you’ll get hungry quickly. Just take a few sips every time you feel hungry. Also make sure to drink plenty of water as well.

The first three days are typically the worst as your appetite adjusts and your body detoxes, push through it, you’ll be fine and feel great. I might suggest preparing for a week beforehand cutting down on portion size and eating mostly unprocessed plant food (fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, beans).

Hope that helps!

Tagged: juice fastvegandietweight lossjuicing