Friday, January 6, 2012

Cycle 1 of Juice Fast Completed (10 days)

Well we finished the first 10 days cycle of the juice fast.  Now we are taking a 3 day break and will resume on Monday with another 10 days (Cycle 2).

It took all of this to make 1 glass of juice
Jerry ended up losing 11 pounds and I lost about half that.  We did not exercise except for our weekend walks around the lake with the dogs,

My results should have been better, but I had too many smoothies made with high sugar fruits and not enough veggies.  I ended up with my sugar too high and my sodium levels too low.  Most people do not have to worry about their sodium levels, but I take an anti-convulsive that causes sodium levels to plummet, so I have to make sure I get enough sodium.  I ended up having a little dizzy spell and took to eating crackers at night.

Altogether the fast was not as difficult as we though it was going to be.  It worked out especially well for Jerry and he is eager to start again once he gets a big, juicy burger and a piece of pizza in his belly.  We both juiced about twice a day and I had smoothies also.

The act of juicing was not bad, but the cleanup gets old pretty quick, especially in the morning trying to get out the door for work, which is why I had smoothies more often than Jerry.  My Cuisinart blends smoothies right in a to-go cup leaving only a blade assembly for clean up.

Every time you use a juicer, you have to disassemble and clean.  When you are juicing 4 times a day, it is very tedious. (If you can afford, I would by the masticating juicer instead of the centrifugal juicer, more juice, less cleanup).

Then there was the PILES of pulp.  Different veggies produce different amounts of juice naturally, but they are all pretty low on juice production.  For example:  juicing an entire bag of Kale only yields about a quarter cup of juice; to get an entire glass of carrot juice, you need to juice about 8 large carrots.  Cucumbers are great juice producers and leave little pulp.  This leaves a lot of pulp to dispose of and it seems very wasteful.  Our garbage disposal got clogged once and overheated twice.

This next cycle we are going to try a different strategy not using the juicer (only using the blender) and then compare the results.