Turns out this juice fasting thing isn't so simple. I didn't expect it to be easy in some ways. The hunger and such was expected. But I didn't expect to dislike the juice so much. Now, there are things you can do. You can add apples and pears to anything and try to make anything taste at least drinkable. But after experiencing it and doing a lot more reading, we've decided we did things a bit wrong.
When I decide to do something, I want to do it RIGHT NOW. Whether it's buying nail polish or a new house, I want it when I want it. If I decide to change my life, there's no time like the present, right? Well, perhaps not with juice fasting. We should have taken our time. A phase in period is recommended, where you eat a totally or mostly plant based diet for a week or more before starting your fast. P'shaw, I don't need it. Uh, wrong. John ended up with a severe headache that wouldn't quit and I could barely drink the juice without vomiting. It seems our systems were so used to processed crap and sugars that our bodies freaked out a little. Nothing horrible, mind you, we didn't need medical attention or anything. We did decide, however, to take a step back and reevaluate.
We did fast for 36 hours, during which I lost 4 pounds. Four pounds in a day is crazy, even for someone my size, and I'm a big girl. We also found an amazing breakfast drink, which I'll share now because even if you have no interest in juice fasting it's a delicious and super nutritious breakfast alternative.
6 carrots
1 large red pepper
1 lemon
2 large navel oranges
Holy yumminess! I'm drinking it right now and mmmmmMMM! It's the most beautiful bright orange and inspite of being mostly veggie juice, it tastes like fruit juice. I'm not kidding, start drinking this for breakfast!
After a few hours of hashing it out, we decided to break our fast and to instead replace one meal a day with juice and totally change our diet otherwise. We aren't going totally plant based as neither of us has any desire to be vegetarian or vegan, but we're done eating crap. We also realized that juice fasting in the dead of winter in Kentucky is extremely expensive. We intend to do at least a 3 day if not longer once the farmers markets open later this year.
We went through our pantry and threw away everything that was white or processed. We kept a few things simply because we thought they "weren't that bad" and we aren't in the financial position to just throw away perfectly good food. And don't worry, we're not throwing away good food, we're donating it.
I want to talk about one thing specifically. Now, we only fasted for a little over one day, right? You would think that nothing would have changed. That's what we thought. Wrong. Last night we were hungry and one of the things we kept was some Ragu pasta sauce. The ingredients weren't great but we only had one jar and figured we'd just never buy it again. Holy crap. It was revolting. Just one day without refined sugars and that sauce tasted like someone had poured sugar on our spaghetti. It was so gross I can't tell you. It was all the proof I needed that the shit they are forcing down our throats is awful, deadly and criminal. A bit later I walked into our bedroom and John was sitting there with a box of wheat thins and told me to eat one. It tasted like a cookie, I kid you not. We simply do not realize the amount of sugars that are contained in nearly everything we eat. It's infuriating.
Good god I'm long winded. Ok well I'm done for now. The TL;DR is this. We broke our fast but are changing our lives. And between the calorie counting I was doing prior and this overhaul I weigh less than I have in years. We have a long way to go but we're moving in the right direction! I encourage anyone who stumbles on this to go through your cupboards and fridge and get rid of the garbage. It shocking how little remains, but real food tastes so much better! (Except for Kale, screw that mess.)
