three-day juice fast

Another goal from my 52 Things in 52 Weeks challenge is to do a three-day juice fast. Not a cranberry-juice-with-cayenne-pepper kind of juice fast. A raw-fruits-and-vegetables-juice kind of juice fast.

If you've ever seen the movie Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, you may be familiar with juicing and juice fasting. By consuming the juice of only raw fruits and vegetables (preferably heavy on the vegetables), you give your body plenty of the nutrients it needs without any crappy filler. Joe Cross, the man from the movie, lost over 80 pounds by juice fasting for two months.

Since I'm not that crazy, I figured three days would be a good length for my fast. And after a great spring break (i.e., lots of eating and zero exercise), I decided now was as good of a time as any. That's logical, right?

We bought our fancy juicer a few years ago, and since then, Andrew has done several juice fasts here and there. He's found that his chronic congestion (and, ahem, snoring) completely go away when he does juice fasts.

The Omega VRT350HD.

I would drink one or two juices with him, but I never really considered doing a fast myself. I'll be honest; I'm not a vegetable lover. And vegetable juices taste like vegetables. I know it's childish, but there you have it.

But with this new goal in mind, I knew I could do it! Even if the juices tasted nasty (and some did) and even if I really, really wanted a steak or a cheeseburger or even a salad (and I did). It was only three days, after all.

So here's how it went.

#36: Do a three-day juice fast.

We started on a fateful Wednesday. I felt pretty hungry all day, but I wasn't seriously tempted to quit.

My go-to juice: kale, apple, and grapes.

On Thursday, I tried to combat the hunger by putting lots of kale in my lunch juice.

The ingredients.

That's seven cups of kale, folks. (And way more fruit/sugar than you're supposed to have in one juice. But whatever.) Back to the kale--it has more iron than beef does, and it also has tons of vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K, and calcium. I was still pretty hungry on Thursday, but it wasn't as bad. I drank more water, and that helped too.

And then Andrew quit on me and had chili for dinner. No worries; I stayed strong. On Friday morning, I was still feeling pretty good and had a great juice for breakfast.

Ingredients for Friday morning's juice.

I started getting a headache mid-day on Friday (a common side effect of juice fasts), but I drank lots of water and powered through. Then I made a big juice, drank some for lunch, and saved the rest for dinner.

Mmm greens!

The Results

Overall, the main change I've noticed is that I feel less bloated. Too much information? Oh well. I also lost five pounds, so let's hope I can keep them off by being more healthy and juicing more often!