Regular Juicing - Amanda

Since my juicer arrived, I've slowly been trying to incorporate at least one juice a day into my diet. I haven't succeeded in doing so every day, because I juggle a full-time job, being a student 3/4 time, and I have a family and home to run. But I do what I can!

About a week ago, my husband I went on a huge produce shopping trip to Wegman's. They have a really huge produce selection and they're produce is always really fresh. Not to mention they have a large variety of organic and non-organic. Some things that I do not buy organic: bananas, grapefruit, oranges, lemons, limes, or anything else with a thick skin. I've read on multiple sites that pestitcides typically do not penetrate through thick skin. Anything you should buy organic is thin-skinned fruits & veggies or anything you consume the skin of: cucumbers, apples, grapes, peppers, celery, etc etc.

I haven't made any "funky" juices yet with ingredients that I haven't tried. A lot of recipes I've found include ginger root and I really am not a fan of the taste of ginger. It's very potent and tends to over power a lot of other flavors. The best juice I've made yet (taste wise) was this morning.

3 small carrots
2 small oranges
1/4 large grapefruit
1 small lemon
1 medium peach
1 cup pineapple chunks

Someone recommended a website to me, which has really helped me determine a more accurate nutritional count for my juices. If you haven't checked it out before, go to www.myphytos.com and "Build a Juice." After I build my juices, I go to My Fitness Pal and enter them as a meal. Sometimes I'm content with just a juice, despite how low calorie it usually is, and sometimes I eat something with it.

I have noticed a difference in my energy level just from 1 juice a day. Most times I drink 16 oz of juice in one sitting and my energy is usually higher for 2-5 hours afterwards depending on how physically active I stay. If I lay around afterwards, I feel myself getting more sluggish sooner as expected.

My husband has been loving the juices so far, but my son (who is almost 4) hasn't liked a single one. He doesn't like the 'foam' that is on top and even after drinking juice through a straw to bypass the foam, he still thinks they are gross. I've tried just oranges, so my next trial will be just apples. I'm determined to get him to drink my juices even if it means putting them in the blender with ice to make him think he's drinking a smoothie. I will get my baby healthier!

1st Juice - Amanda

Yesterday my juicer came in the mail from Amazon. I was really excited to use it, but I didn't get home until late and didn't want to risk waking my son. I decided to make my first juice for dinner and it wasn't the greatest tasting juice in the world, but it wasn't the worst. Here is what I used:

1 whole cucumber

5 stalks of celery

2 cups of kale

1 lemon

1 cup of raspberries

1 honey crisp apple

It made about 16 oz. I had just finished working out right before that and was thirsty, so I basically just chugged mine. I decided that I'm not going to do the juice cleanse until I grow accustomed to tweaking recipes and finding what I like and don't like. In the meantime, I'll juice once or twice a day while I experiment. I'll be sure to post every time I juice and what ingredients I used so that if you want to juice, you'll have some recommendations. I'm also waiting for Maria to get her juicer, so that we can cleanse together. My husband has also agreed to do the juice cleanse as well, which really excites me! So, I'll have two supporters: my husband and my best friend. I'm nervous, but excited! I've decided that I'm going to start growing some of my own vegetables and fruits. I don't know anything about growing either, but I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to use the pulp from my juices as fertilizer. One thing I do know about growing fruit and vegetables is that if your soil is lacking nutrients, your fruits/veggies will be lacking nutrients. I don't want to add chemicals to my plants if I can avoid it.

Back to the juicing. Clean up for my juicer was surprisingly quick. It only took me between 4-5 minutes to take apart the juicer and clean everything with the brush. It also took a few minutes to cut up the fruits and veggies, but all in all I'd say I don't think it will take as long as I anticipated. Most of the parts of the juicer can go in the dishwasher, but once I start using it more I'll be hand washing it. 

Pre-Juicing -- Amanda

After watching a few health documentaries, particularly Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead and Food Matters, Maria and I decided that we were going to do a 10 day juice cleanse together. The people in the documentary had support, except for Joe (who started the juicing revolution in FS&ND), so we both felt it was important to have someone who understood what we were going through, especially in the first few days of the cleanse. Although I'm not sure if Maria's plan is the same as mine, I plan on doing a complete juice cleanse for at least 10 days-- meaning I will not be consuming anything other than the juice I make and the residual "pulp" that is left in the juicer. The only "solids" I will be eating will be whatever I use to pulp for whether it be salsa or something else. Initially, the detox process seems to be difficult for the first 2-3 days, then the subject gets a burst of energy every day from there on out. A majority of people are ignorant to the benefits of plant-based diets despite that the resources and research are out there proving that animal-based products affect human health in a negative way. Before corporations that produced processed "food" were around, humans lived off of the land. Fruits, veggies, and minimal amounts of meat, dairy, etc. In the past two weeks, I've attempted to give up dairy completely and have been struggling. I'm hoping that this juice cleanse will make it easier, since I'll be going 10 days or longer with no dairy. Or meat! I haven't had any red meat in weeks, but I've still been eating minimal amounts of organic chicken. I've been eating a lot more fish to replace the poultry. My goal was to become a vegetarian, but I don't know if I'll give up fish in its entirety.
Now onto the juicing... I've been watching health documentaries, several of them, in the past few weeks and one general theme they all seem to share is the benefits of juicing. Liquifying your fruits and vegetables makes them easily more absorbed into the bloodstream. FS&ND pointed out that in order for your body to digest food, it must use masses amounts of energy to turn solids into liquid. I never really thought about that before. If you drink a juice completely composed of fruits, veggies, nuts, legumes (all organic preferred-- juicing pesticides is not recommended or healthy) you can absorb it's micro-nutrients as quickly as you would absorb alcohol into the blood stream. Think about how long it takes and how much energy your body must use to liquify an 8oz piece of steak: hours and a lot of energy from your cells. There are millions of chemical reactions happening in your body every minute. Your cells need healthy micro-nutrients to properly carry out their functions and stay healthy. Many of us don't even realize how infected and unhealthy our cells are. They are not functioning to their full capacity and cleaning the toxins from them will allow them to do so. 
I know that there are probably a lot of people who are going to read this and think I'm insane, so hopefully the results will show you that I am NOT crazy and that this is going to be a good thing. Beware that I will be posting the nitty gritty details meaning that if this makes me go to the bathroom a lot (which it probably will) I'll be sharing that. Don't worry-- I won't be going into THAT much detail, but you will know at least how many times I find myself in the bathroom to detox.