Hey folks- there's a lot of ground covered in this one, so it shaped up to be sort of a long post. I won't always drone on like this...
Like I mentioned in my first post, I began the process of losing weight thinking that I would do a 60 day juice fast. I want to talk a little bit about what motivated me to try the fast, and how it worked out for me.
My first encounter with a juice fast was a few years ago. Juice fasts are a relatively new phenomenon in the US, but they have been done for several decades in Europe, particularly in Northern European countries like Finland, Sweden, Germany, and others. My first exposure to the idea was from my now ex-wife (and current dear friend) Riikka, who is a Finn. Not long after we first met in 1999, I remember having a conversation with her about juice fasting. I thought it sounded like one of the craziest things I had ever heard, and not at all like something that would be healthy, and most CERTAINLY not something I'd want to try. She reassured me that she had done it more than once, and that you felt really amazing during the process and after.
Fast-forward to 2008. I decided that I wanted to give it a try. Looking at several resources (including research by the now somewhat controversial Dr. Paavo Airola), I figured I'd give it a go. I say that Airola's research is in some dispute not because of the WAY he advised people to fast, but more in the promises he made. Like many zealots, I think he believed so strongly in what he was advocating that he may have been a little generous with claims. At any rate, I followed the regimen for 12 days, and felt great. Airola's system (similar to many of his European colleagues) advised a low daily calorie intake of juices, clear broths, and fast-supporting teas and herbal supplements. Coupled with the intake of liquids is a careful cleansing of the bowel through daily enemas (a process I REALLY am not fond of.) The idea behind this is that during a juice fast, your body is throwing off a lot of toxins. Since the lower GI is the route of elimination for many of these, the Airola-types insist that the enemas are essential, since there's not enough bulk going through your system to trigger normal peristalsis (in other words, the muscle action that tells you it's #2-time). The cleanse ensures that you are eliminating these toxins, which is important to the functioning of the liver and kidneys.
Fair enough, I thought, and bravely subjected myself to what I've heard euphemistically described as "irrigating." Yes, irrigating. As if you were going to harvest carrots or a crop of clover as a result of the process. Additionally, I drank my less-than 460 calories worth of juice per day, drank copious quantities of water and fast-supporting teas (one of which had a distinctly dirt-like quality), and lost about 8 pounds. I felt great, and had tons of energy.
So, this year, as I mentioned in my first post, Mathew and I decided to go for a much longer 60 day regime as done in "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead." We ramped down from an omnivorous diet (or, in Mathew's case, a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet) for a week, going vegetarian a few days, then vegan, then raw, and finally onto juice. Mathew bought a new masticating juicer, recommended because it extracts juice more efficiently than the centrifugal juicers, and at a lower speed, thus keeping the juices from oxidizing. I was looking forward to the process, and bought a ton of vegetables, with an eye toward making my own V-8-style veggie cocktail.
Lesson 1 for anyone considering a juice fast; follow a recipe. Let me repeat that: FOR GOD'S SAKE, FOLLOW A RECIPE. I assumed that I could make something akin to the tomato-y wonderfulness of V-8 by juicing the same vegetables as V-8 has as ingredients. Wrong. WRONG. I ended up making this horrid concoction that I had to pour down the drain. I mean, this shit was vile. This brings me to another realization that I came to in the first few days of the fast. I like most vegetables. Almost all of them in fact (with the notable exception of raw celery, and turnips, which I think taste like moldy tile smells.) But, just because I like a vegetable does not in any way mean I like the juice. So often, the flavors of the juice are intense in a green, grassy, and... well, vegetal way that really put me off. Some of the concoctions I made, even when following a "delicious recipe" reminded me of yard debris. I wasn't pleased about that, but figured I could be diligent and find combinations that worked for me. Incidentally, in case you're wondering, the fast I did in '08 was all from store-bought bottled juices, so this juicing and consuming of raw vegetable and fruit juices was a new game for me.
Anyone having gone through a juice fast will tell you that almost always, you feel hungry the first day, listless and lifeless the second day, often with a headache, and then feel a surge of energy from the third day on. I followed this pattern, dropped a few pounds a day for several days, and felt great until about day 8. Then, I noticed that my energy was slipping away, and I felt terrible. I should point out that at no point did I feel hungry. You lose that urge after about the second day. In fact, I had to push myself to drink enough juice to get through a day. What worried me is that by about this point, I had stopped losing weight, and felt utterly miserable. I had this overarching feeling of doom and was pretty depressed. By about day 12, I was on the edge of tears all the time. Not at all because I missed food or anything like that. That was the damnable thing; I couldn't explain WHY I felt so terrible.
After a medical consultation on day 13, I determined that it was time to call it quits. My resting heart rate was 35-40, and I was told that my metabolism had essentially slowed to a hibernation pace (again with the bear references! :p ). I was advised to transition gradually, over a few days, back to solid foods. I was also told that if I increased my caloric intake to 1000-1200, or even as much as 1500 calories a day, that my weight loss would likely resume as my body no longer thought that it was starving, needing to hold on to all reserves (more about that in the next post.)
The take-away from this post may make it sound like I'm an opponent of juice fasting. I most certainly am not. I would recommend that anyone in good health, who ok's it with their medical person, give it a go. I can't be sure if I did it incorrectly, or if my system isn't geared to have a good experience with a long juice fast, or some combination of both. My hunch is the latter. So if you want to try it, definitely RESEARCH it, know what you're letting yourself in for, and go for it. Just listen closely to your body, and know that you're not a failure if it ends up not working for you. The way I look at it, I got an amazing almost 2 weeks of detoxification, and a jump-start on the new life I'm trying to start. I'll likely even do much shorter fasts in the future as a way to periodically purge the crud out of my system.
Next time, the new eating plan, exercise, and how I feel fantastic these days. Thanks for reading!
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