Juicing detox! Good or bad?

Juice fasting has become trendy, with whole offices undertaking group cleanses, and juice shops constantly posting photos of the latest celebrity to guzzle their drinks.

I don't know about you, but I like food. 

If you like the idea of detoxing, but can't fathom going a week without food, rest assured, in this case you can have your cake and eat it too. Figuratively, anyway.

Nature has created potent detoxifiers, in the way of certain fruits and vegetables, so all you need is a little knowledge on exactly what to eat (and not to eat) to effectively detox your body without pills or juice fasts. 

Why Detox?

Our bodies are naturally built to remove toxins every day. We detox by eliminating and neutralizing toxins through our colon, liver, kidneys, lungs, lymph and skin.

However, in this day and age we're exposed to a number of environmental pollutants in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. Furthermore, our chemical-laden diet — with its large amounts of animal protein, saturated and trans fats, caffeine, sugar, and alcohol — inhibit our bodies from properly performing their detoxification processes.

Detoxing through the diet is a great way to give your body a break and support its natural self-cleaning system.

Besides just helping your body get rid of toxins, doing a food-based detox can also help you:

• Flood your body with micronutrients.
  
• Drop a few pounds.
  
• Reduce inflammation.
  
• Curb your sugar cravings.
  
• Increase your energy and productivity by clarifying your mind.
  
• Bolster your immune system.
  
• Kick start a new healthy eating plan.
  
• And since you won't be starving yourself, there is really no downside. 
  

How to Detox through Your Diet

Detoxing through your diet is simple enough. Essentially, you just have to eliminate anything that doesn't grow from Mother Earth, including processed and packaged foods, animal products (including dairy and fish) and sugary drinks. Instead, replace them with whole fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains (think brown rice, not brown rice bread).

Choose 3-5 days during which you'll follow this clean eating plan in order to give your body a break and support its natural self-cleaning system. Of course, it's best to eat healthy all year long, but since life can sometimes get in the way, it's a great idea to get in the habit of doing periodic food detoxes to really nourish your body and give it a chance to naturally cleanse and repair itself. 

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

Daily juicing

Taste is better, still not perfected but again work in progress.

I do wonder how to create the red juices?

First juicing

Interesting taste, not very palatable but it's a learning curve

 

Ways to a good juicing life

by Dr Ben Kim

I'm often asked to name one thing that can be done right away to get healthier. With respect to food choices, the best suggestion I have is to begin drinking freshly pressed vegetable juices. Drinking just one freshly pressed juice each day is a reliable way of infusing your body with a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients that can protect your cells against premature aging and disease.

Almost everyone who has studied nutrition can agree that freshly pressed vegetable juices are highly beneficial to human health. But few people make time to prepare and drink them regularly.

Making time to drink vegetable juices isn’t a problem for most people. It’s the time that is needed to wash fresh vegetables, feed them through a good juicer, and clean the juicer afterward that prevents most people from making fresh juices a regular part of their lives.

So the first step to incorporating juicing into your life is to fully understand how good it is for your health and why making time to do it daily is one of the very best investments you can make.

The Right Ingredients

The key to making healthy vegetable juices is to make green vegetables the bulk of every serving. Green vegetables won’t spike your blood sugar and insulin level like fruits and sweet vegetables like carrots and red beets will.

This is not to say that you can’t juice fruits, carrots, and red beets. Fruits and sweet root vegetables can be healthy additions to your drinks, and they'll definitely add sweetness and flavor. You just want to make sure that they never make up more than one-third of each glass that you drink.

And if you have a problem controlling your blood sugar level, you’ll want to use a blood sugar monitor to determine how much is acceptable for you. I’ve worked with dozens of diabetics over the years who haven’t been able to handle even an ounce of fruit, carrot, or red beet juice in their drinks without negative health consequences, so please consider this point before you select your ingredients for juicing.

Romaine lettuce is one of the best green vegetables that you can juice. You can also juice other types of green, leafy lettuce like red or green leaf lettuce.

For variety, try adding large handfuls of kale, Swiss chard, collard greens, Bok Choy, and any other dark green vegetable that you might steam before eating.

For another layer of flavor, you can add a tiny slice of lemon (including the rind for its flavonoids) to your vegetable juices.

Some people enjoy adding a clove of raw garlic for even more bite.

Be creative and add any vegetables you crave. You really can’t go wrong as long as you make sure not to use too many carrots, red beets, or fruits.

Clearly, organic vegetables are better than non-organic vegetables. But my experiences have led me to believe that the health benefits of drinking juices made with well washed, non-organic vegetables far outweigh not juicing at all. If you are only able to juice non-organic vegetables due to financial or other life circumstances, it’s still well worth your while to do so.

Preparing to Juice

We like to fill up the kitchen sink with cold water and dunk all of our vegetables for a good five minutes. Before we pull all the vegetables out to sit in a colander to dry off a bit, we shake them around in the cold water to make sure that we’ve removed any dirt or even bugs that may be hiding in the vegetables, particularly in heads of celery and lettuce.

If we know that we need to make a few gallons of vegetable juice over several days, we store washed carrots and ribs of celery in containers full of water in the refrigerator.

We store leaves of lettuce spread out and stacked vertically in a container with layers of paper towel in between each layer of lettuce to help absorb excess moisture. Fresh lettuce can last a whole week or more when stored in this fashion.

If you’re really pressed for time and want to make enough juice to last three to four days, you can make a big batch and store it in an air-tight container in the refrigerator - not as good as drinking right after pressing, but still likely better than drinking store-bought fruit juices or even vegetable cocktails like V8.

The Art of Juicing

Juicing is, for the most part, quite easy to do. You make sure that your vegetables are small or crunch-able enough to fit through the feeding mechanism of your juicer, and you push them in one at a time.

It's best to juice soft vegetables like leafy greens first, as they are a bit harder to push through the extraction mechanism than firmer vegetables like carrots and celery. Firmer vegetables like carrots and celery can actually help to push any bits of softer vegetables that are deep within the feeding tube of your juicer but not yet
completely through the extraction mechanism.

With leafy greens, we find that it is best to roll them up into small balls before feeding them through the juicer. This helps prevent a single leaf from getting stuck between the feeding tube of your juicer and the plunger that you use to push the vegetables down.

Fruits, like firmer vegetables, can be added near the end, as you are unlikely to have a problem with pushing them down and through the extraction mechanism with the plunger.

Healthy Juice Recipes

Vegetable-based juices:

• 2 carrots
• 2 ribs of celery
• 8 leaves of romaine lettuce

• 2 carrots
• Handful of parsley
• 6 leaves of romaine lettuce
• Squeeze of lemon

• 2 tomatoes
• 3 ribs of celery
• 1 carrot
• Squeeze of lemon

• 6 leaves of romaine lettuce
• 1 tomato
• 1 rib of celery
• 1 carrot

• Big bunch of kale
• 2 carrots
• 2 ribs of celery

• Big bunch of Swiss chard
• 2 carrots
• 2 ribs of celery

• 6 leaves of romaine lettuce
• 2 cups of green cabbage
• 2 carrots

• 6 leaves of romaine lettuce
• 2 ribs of celery
• 1 apple, whatever is in season

• 4 ribs of celery
• 2 carrots
• 1 apple

Fruit-based Juices (only for special occasions and if you don’t have high blood glucose levels):

• 3 ribs of celery
• 2 apples

• Small handful of strawberries
• Watermelon (cut into strips, rind included if you wash it well before cutting)

• Honeydew (cut into strips)
• Squeeze of lemon

• 1 apple
• 1 pear
• 3 ribs of celery

• 2 apples
• 8-10 strawberries

• 1 cup of pineapple
• 1 cup of grapes
• Small handful of strawberries

This is some serious, life-sustaining stuff, so drink with gratitude and enjoy knowing that you're taking great care of yourself. 

Source: www.drbenkim.com

5 TIPS FOR JUICING GREENS!

By Drew Canole

Juicing vegetables is tasty, easy and beneficial for your health. Juicing vegetables is a great way to reward your body with nutrient dense vegetables, vitamins, minerals and powerful nutrients. 

Many of my clients who first come to me, complain about feeling sluggish, tired, no energy, lack of sleep and often times they want to get into shape. One of the first things I recommend is a simple juice fast.

When you first start juicing greens, you might be confused on what greens to juice and how to get a good tasty juice. You don't want the juice to be bitter or unbearable. For these reasons I came up with 5 tips for juicing greens.

1. Start with a Base

Before you add any leafy greens like kale, add a base. A base includes vegetables like romaine lettuce, celery, or cucumber. You want to add high water content vegetables. 

Adding celery, cucumber or romaine lettuce also makes you green juices taste better.

2. Add Leafy Greens

Next you want to add some leafy greens. I love to add kale to most of my juices.

3. Add Some Herbs

Add a handful of cilantro, parsley or basil to your juices. Herbs like cilantro and parsley are great for helping you detox.

4. Add a Little Zing

Add some GINGER. Ginger has great anti-inflammatory properties.

5. Add Lemon or Lime!

Lemon is rich in vitamin C, which helps boost your immune system, helps remove toxins from your body and also helps keep your body's pH in an alkaline state.

6. Bonus!

Add a pear or apple to sweeten it up!

What's your favorite green juice recipe? Tell us in the the comments section below!

Stay tuned next week! We have some super exciting news to share with you!

Source Link: http://fitlife.tv/5-tips-for-juicing-greens/

First week detox

In January (2012), I embarked on another 5-dayjuice fast with my friend and partner in crime, Arvind Devalia. In this blog post, I recount the highlights of my fast, and how it was so different from my first 5-day juice fast recounted here. Then I will tell you about my decision to bring a juicing intensive program to my beloved green juicing community and how you can participate.

FYI: This is a long, epic and massive blog post with pictures, video, and a LOT of information around juice fasting and green juicing. Let’s get to it!

If you want to get my FREE and Juicy Tips on ALL things Green Juicing, sign up here, baby:

Before we get started, I want to remind you that you MUST HAVE a juicer if you want to make green juices. My recommendation is the Green Star Elite juicer by Tribest. It is a phenomenal machine and gives you 25% more juice than other machines because it has a system that extracts all the juice from the fruits and vegetables. You will be happy to make an investment in a high quality juicer and you will also be getting your money back a thousand times over in what you save yourself in terms of health costs down the road!

Why Do a juice fast?

Why take it to such extremes as to fast and withhold from food? That’s the question that raises the most eyebrows and rolls the most eyes, mainly inside my own family and close friends circle but perhaps for you too, so let’s talk about it. First, I generally like the discipline, the intensity and the extremity of the experience you have when you really immerse yourself in it. Whether it’s yoga, indoor cycling, raw foods and vegan diets, or even writing and working, immersion is the way to get the true taste of experience.

Immersion usually comes in the form of a challenge and leaves you better than it found you. I like to take a minute here to praise my dear friend, Chris Harris, who has taken the ultimate challenge by fasting on few liquids and mainly water for over a week so far and still going strong. Chris is doing this to reset the button on his body, and re-start the healthy cycles again. Way to go, Chris! It is only during the intense period of immersion that you can learn a lot about the process and can decide whether this is right for you or not – and in the end, it always comes down to your smart decisions and choices about your unique body and what is right for it. Never forget that. Whatever you read or learn or hear, you alone know best what is right for your body so be listening all the time.

What were the benefits of this 5-day juice fast?

Now aside from the fun of immersion, juice fasts have been known to shower us with countless benefits, from detoxing the body to cleansing your intestines and giving your digestive system a rest and from helping you lose some stubborn weight to clearing the skin and bringing inner peace and quiet to the mind. But here’s the thing about the benefits of anything – you experience a different version than the next person. As you can see, Arvind had a completely different experience. And in fact, if you do a juice fast twice, you will very likely have two different experiences.

So it’s more apt for me to talk about the benefits of this juice fast and how it was different from my first one in 2009. Here were the best benefits, most of which have been beckoning me to return to fasting since then:

Best benefits of fasting:

- Lots of energy – Mind clear as a bell – Highly productive – Intensely focused on work – Peaceful and relaxed – Quiet meditations

Interesting side-effects of the Juice Fast

- Very cold and shivering during the mornings and evenings – Sleeping in 2-4 hour chunks – Sleeping less on average than when eating – Slightly emotional, especially when I heard about my old dog, Brandy, dying of cancer.

The very best part of the juice fast:

I thought a lot about this one because I loved this juice fast, I had very little hunger pangs compared to last juice fast where I really struggled with hunger for the first 2 days. This time, I just eased into it like you ease into a nice spring day, and I got a lot out more of it too. Still, I have to say that the number one benefit was not having to think or worry about what I am going to eat next!!! Even though I was preparing my juices, I was doing so according to a recipe. I still did not have to THINK about my next meal or snack and this alone gave me such freedom and space to think, and so much more time back. Good heavens, should I outsource all my food preparations now or what?

How did I prepare for the fast?

As you may guess, juice fasting takes preparation, time and an investment. You gotta be committed or it won’t work and there is no such thing as cheating on a fast, as there is on diets. You either do it all the way or you don’t.  ! Two benefits to my first first juice fast: One was that I used 2 of my juicers, a Breville juicer and an Omega juicer. This way, I was not constantly washing and cleaning the same juicer over and over. All I was lacking was one of these beautiful Fitted Kitchens. Second was that I bought some nice tight-lid glass containers in which to store my juicers, and the freshness lasted for up to 2 days for some juices. This surpassed my plastic containers by leaps and bounds. You should really not store juices very long but for practicality sake, I did make more than I could drink right away. I also had the luxury of being home alone. My husband and chef was gone, and so there was no temptation, there was no smell of food in my kitchen and I cut off all social life for 5 days to go completely quiet with my mind and my stomach. This alone helped tremendously in making my fast a very successful one. I bought groceries either from Whole Foods or the Fresh Market stores or Trader Joe’s and planned out my recipes just roughly, because I am really used to many different combinations of juices, and I did well innot running to the store frequently – this is a big one and planning helps with this.

How much Green Juice to Drink?

So my rules for this juice fast were similar to the last one: I was not going to limit my green juice intake; if I wanted to drink a gallon or two a day, so be it. Instead, what I tried to limit is the intake of my fruit juices. It’s very important to watch the sugar level so juices such as watermelon juice (yum, my favorite), cantaloupe juice, or citrus fruits, without the greens, and naturally without the pulp, have a lot of sugar and even though fructose is a natural sugar, it is best to limit that. So I limited the intake of my pure fruit juices while drinking as much of the green juices (which contained some fruit in them). I also did not give up my Oolong tea. And I also added hot water with raw honey, as well as hot water with lemon to my daily intake. Since I did the fast in the winter, I needed some hot liquids to keep me warm. My husband says I need somefat on me but I still prefer the liquids. That argument continues on! I would highly encourage you to give up coffee though, if that is your hot beverage. Tea and especially Oolong tea are inherently detox-inducing but coffee may have some other adverse effects.

Tips for Breaking the Juice Fast

I had a very difficult time both times in breaking my fast. I know that Arvind also struggled with this one. The problems were on two levels: emotional, physical. Emotionally, I did not even desire to come off the fast. It had been 5 days and 5 hours, and I wanted to keep going but a bout of nausea got the better of me. I should have just slept through it but I gave in and had some fruit. The next 2 days were highly emotional – I was sensitive to food, I was not happy or satisfied, I fussed a lot, and I could not get back into a nice sleeping rhythm for at least a week. Physically, I did not do well in terms of digestion. My body did not seem to want to wake up from the fast, and even though I was hungry deep beneath the quiet stomach, I did not know what I craved in terms of food. I had already broken the fast so I needed to start eating again. This is what I learned from breaking the fast: You need to have a plan on precisely what you will be eating for the first few hours and then for the first day, second day, all the way up to a week after breaking the fast. Your mental state is not in a place of deciding and going through options, it just wants to know what it needs to do. So next time, I will plan on having some raw fruit and vegetables for the first day of the fast in several small portions. I will add to that some nuts and dates for the following day and introduce very simple vegetarian hot foods for dinner. I will also include vegetable broth daily after breaking the fast. This is very strange, as I’ve never just had vegetable broth but it was one of the few things that my body enjoyed after the fast.

Join the Green Juicing Intensive Clinic

Over the last few months, I feel blessed to say that my book – Your Comprehensive Guide to Green Juicing – has helped many people get started with green juicing and find answers to their questions and concerns about juicing. It has also enjoyed great exposure, with so many interviews including this one from my dear friend, Zeenat.

The green juicing community here has been asking more and more green juicing programs so I am thrilled to offer you the Green Juicing Intensive Clinic.

This is not a juice fast program per se, although you can choose to fast if you are already an intermediate or advanced juicer. This is a program that helps the new beginners and intermediate juicing enthusiast to build green juicing as a smart habit into their life through 21 lessons (video, audio and text for fun variety), homework, daily commitments, and fabulous recipes of the day and a thriving community that has already built around it.

A Penny for Your Juicy Thoughts

So have you ever done a juice fast? How would you react to giving up food and sustaining yourself with green juices and water? If you could have one thing to make your green juicing easier, what would it be? Share your thoughts in the comments and let’s talk juicing, baby!

http://www.prolificliving.com/blog/2012/03/19/my-5-day-juice-fast-experience-plus-a-green-juicing-intensive-program/

Trying to decide on what

Trying to decide where to start with juicing. I have been given all these recipes and read loads of material but its all very expensive

In a few months this wont be a problem but for now cost effective juicing is important. In a way I suppose I am looking for the easy route which their are none. So a set menu of cost effective juicing three times a day is an important start.

I need a 7 day plan that alternates week by week that keeps the cost low. 

Dieting makes for little change

So here's the problem, I have a problem with food. I look in the mirror and have this image of myself that is an illusion based on a me of 14 years ago.

I attempt my latest fad eating in my eyes healthy, buying all the green stuff I can muster. But some will rot and some will be consumed neither will make me slimmer! Why? Because I offset the good intention with chocolate. My only sin but my greatest enemy.

So what do I weigh? It's irrelevant but if you must ask I weight just under 17 stone
My weight will flicker between a few pound either side. No sooner do I make in roads into my target of 16 stone I fuck up by eating chocolate again. My brain seems to think I have a daily requirement of survival related to chocolate. Wether it's boredom with daily work routine a feeling of unachieving I don't know. I need to change I'm hungry for change.

changing me

Changing me for the better, this is exactly what this blog is about. Posting my journey to a better way of living. Food, health, fitness, mental awareness.