Juiced Up

As part of this months Six Months of Resolutions challenge Tessa and I were to complete a 10 day juice cleanse at some point throughout the month.

Last Tuesday Tessa texted me to let me know she had started and I figured "hey, might as well have a partner in my misery" and started up the day after her.

The rules were that you had to do 10 consecutive days of juicing. If you quit on the 4th day then you would get 6 points against you (and so on…you get the point). If you still had time in the month and wanted to try for 10 days again then you could with no points against you if you completed it. Knowing what I know now, no one would EVER do this twice.

Truthfully, I felt little to no joy during my juicing experience.

Here are a couple photos. I didn't get many because of my sheer lack of a will to live, or do anything at all.

What I Juiced
My favourite vegetables to juice were spinach, kale and carrots. Spinach is high in protein, carrots have a sweetness to them so they blended in wonderfully, and kale is apparently some kind of superfood.

I was initially a big fan of the combination of apples and oranges in my juices, but that was before I discovered pineapple and strawberries. Unfortunately too much acidity made my tongue feel a bit raw by the end of it.

I tried to do a 1:1 ratio of fruit to vegetables. This helped mask the vegetables and left my juice tasting yummy!

Note: never, EVER, juice beets. They are the worst. Don't even try. It's a waste of time and tastebuds.

How I Felt
During the cleanse I felt very strong (mentally…definitely not physically).

I had low energy throughout but I felt incredibly alert mentally. I'm usually exhausted at night when I'm watching tv but I was always feeling very focused and awake.

Physically, I was a different story. I didn't work out during the cleanse because I knew that burning calories when I was probably not taking in enough already was not a good idea. I was really subdued during this. Usually I'm jumping around like a crazy person and talking a mile a minute. On the cleanse I was more quiet, less compelled to be talking all the time, and more likely to be sitting down and conserving my energy. People found this really weird and always assumed I was dying. I told them to enjoy it while it lasted.

This is another annoying side effect: everyone will assume you're either close to passing out, not feeling well, or have taken up an eating disorder. While cleanses are generally a healthy idea, especially when done right, most people can't wrap their head around not eating. I heard a lot of grief from my family but had no energy to listen to it.

The Much Anticipated End of the Cleanse
Tessa and I both tapped out on our 7th days of juicing. When she quit I knew that my motivation would drop, the next day I was picking something up from the mall and said "Ah to hell with it" and grabbed myself a slice of pizza (apparently that's not what you're supposed to eat after a cleanse but it was so worth it).

My stomach definitely shrank because yesterday all I had was a juice at 10am, pizza at 2:30pm and by 8pm I knew I would't be needing dinner. I also lost 6 pounds which I assume will be easy to find since my weight loss was definitely attributed to probably being a tad dehydrated/ having nothing in my stomach at generally all times.

When I ate food I noticed 1) that I could barely fit anything in this dang stomach anymore (which is both a good thing, and a bad thing depending on how you look at it) 2) my energy came back pretty fast. Last night I was back to my old self. Jordan said that it was as if everything that I was too lazy to say in the last 7 days had been stored up and was coming out now that I was fuelled with food again.

In Conclusion...
I would not recommend a juice cleanse because:

1. They are generally pretty miserable
2. You can't workout
3. Some of my weight loss was probably due to muscle loss because I barely moved in those 7 days
4. Not eating food is the worst
5. You tend to crave things you never would have before and when the cleanse is over you'll probably eat them (ex. my trip to Pizza Pizza).

These are just my opinions of course, so do with them what you will. I'd definitely recommend buying a juicer so you can get all of your fruits and vegetables in as part of a healthy, balanced diet, but do so once daily, not for 7 days straight.

Now Tessa and I are back to making sure we run 10k a week next week (we decided not to run this week because as I said, burning calories when you're already consuming less than normal is not a good idea). As far as we stand in the challenge right now I have 8 marks against me and she has 7. Don't worry, I've got big plans for a comeback before this is all over.

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown
Functioning Member of Society Once Again