10 Day Fruit/Veggie Fast

What inspired us to go on this fast was the documentary, "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead."  If you have not seen it, rent it!  Or-if you have netflix, it's on there.  In a nutshell, this guy is overweight and has an auto-immune disease that causes him to take several doses of prednisone each day.  To get on the road to healing, he goes on a 60 day juice fast.

OUR BIG BOSS JUICER

So, after the 60 days, he is down something like 70lbs and is completely off his medication.  He had more energy than ever before.  After Christmas break, Daniel and I finally decided we wanted all of those things: weight loss, energy, etc.  I have pretty bad IBS, and I'm constantly getting sick after each meal.  Daniel is allergic to essentially everything.  So, what the heck.  Let's do this fast.  It's a new year, and we want to be new people!

I kept a journal during this whole experience.  Sounds kind of cheesy, but I've never been on a drastic diet like this, and I knew I was going to blog about it, so I didn't want to forget the different details.  Below, I will summarize our fruit/veggie fast.

JUICE CONTENTS

Days 1-2:  Headache galore!  I'm not someone who gets a lot of headaches, but I literally experienced migraines on the first two days of this fast.  I'm not sure if it was the lack of calories, which my body was not accustomed to, or the coffee withdrawal.  Either way, it was nasty.  I also experienced a skin flare up.  I have an unknown skin condition on my face.  The dermatologist thinks it might be rosacea, but it has not been healed with the four different medications she's put me on, and most people don't realize I even have it.  It actually acts as a nice blush ;-)  But man did it burn during these first two days!

Days 3-4: Felt human again!  We were quite hungry though, and fruits/veggies just weren't cutting it.  All of our favorite cravings (chinese, pizza, KFC) were rolling around in our minds.  But, we stuck it out.  We allowed ourselves to have five organic-raw-unsalted cashews for protein. Both Daniel and I are hypoglycemic and are bodies were telling us we needed protein.

OUR STOCKED FRIDGE

Day 5: I almost passed out!  Have you ever experienced tunnel vision before? Yea, that's what happened.  It was luckily a Saturday, and I was home with Daniel.  I was worried I was no longer going to be able to continue the fast, but Daniel researched and found that perhaps a multi-vitamin would help give my body the supplement balance that it needed, and wasn't getting from just fruits and veggies.  Luckily, it made me feel better, and I didn't experience that again the rest of the fast.

Day 6: This was the first time that we woke up super alert and cheerful.  We went to church, and finally saw our friends. When you do a fast, it takes you a while to get rid of being miserable, at least for Daniel and I it did.  We did not want to subject our friends to our attitudes, so we hadn't seen them in about a week.  It was kind of nice to get the compliment "your face looks great...like it's glowing!"  One of the perks of this diet = better complexion!

Days 7-10: No real drastic changes.  We've become used to our daily meals.  Eating fruits and veggies only everyday can become a little monotonous though.  On day 7-10, we started incorporating organic vegetable broth (low sodium) into our diet.  I cannot tell you how amazing having hot soup was!!  I don't think I've ever appreciated something so simple in my life!  All of our meals up to that point were either cold smoothies, or cold juice.  Mid-winter, you want warm meals.

GREEN SMOOTHIE

PRETTY JUICE

Let's get down to weight loss.  Both Daniel and I lost 12 lbs in 10 days!!  That is the biggest weight loss I've ever gone through in my life!  It has now been 12 days since we started the fast.  On day 11 we attempted to wean ourselves back onto 'real' food.  I made salmon and broccoli.

The taste was out of this world.  Unfortunately,  my body was not ready for it.  Daniel transitioned very well.  I got really sick.  So, I went back to the fruits and veggies only for now.  I'm going to try and get back into food a little slower.

What we learned from this:  We now crave fresh produce!  We are going to try and incorporate veggies & fruits into each dinner.  We knew this going in, but man are healthy foods expensive!  But-totally worth it.  No more tortilla chips!  That is our weakness.  We have instead turned to butter/salt free popcorn.  Tasty little snack that will do for our T.V. snack.  After losing 12lbs, we want to keep it gone!  Diet and exercise are obvious keys to this (Jillian Michael's 30 day shred)!  Oh-and we now know we LOVE avocados!

Avocado chunks, lime juice, and a little salt.  YUM!!!

If anyone has any questions about going on a fruit/veggies fast, or about juicing, please let us know.  We'd be willing to share our recipes, and insight!  Here's to a happy and healthy 2013!!