Click here to view the embedded video.

This recipe basically contains the same ingredients you’d use to make guacamole. Its just in solid burrito form

The first day was much easier than I expected. The hunger wasn’t too bad and was cured every time I drank a tea or juice. The fresh fruit juices are excellent. I had no idea how good fresh juice was until now…especially carrot juice. It sounded gross to me but its actually quite sweet and tasty. Mixing carrots with fruits like apples, grapes, pares, and watermelon makes an excellent tasting drink. I mixed what I ended up calling a “black n tan” juice…because when i mixed grapes with watermelon, the juices separated in the glass giving you two separate drinks in one.

The last juice on the first day was an experimental vegetable green drink. It was horrible! I cringe when I think about it. I basically mixed celery, spinach, garlic, ginger, wheat grass, lemon, and tomatoes. The garlic and ginger were overpowering. It was seriously gross.
On day two I felt groggy most of the day with a few mild headaches…which is normal from what I’ve read. My veggie drink that night was MUCH better…I mixed carrots, a beat, a green pepper, and half a cucumber. It tasted quite good actually. I think the sweetness of the carrots is key for a good tasting veggie drink.

Day three is going great…my grogginess is pretty much gone, and I don’t have a headache anymore. I even played an intense match of volleyball this morning and though I was feeling the lack of energy in my playing and got hungry after the first 2 games, it wasn’t too bad.

Eliminating food from my diet for a few days has really made me notice how much I’m attached to it mentally. Its really an addiction of our culture. All the fast food/restaurant commercials showing me delicious close-ups of food just oozing with flavor…it really sparks my taste buds! I’d really like to detach my addiction to taste so that I can control what I eat a little better…its not that easy to do however because its all I’ve ever known since I was born. I think the fast is a good start though.
In general I’ve noticed that my sinuses have cleared up and day-to-day allergies I’ve struggled with over the years have pretty much gone away. Its a good feeling to know that you can cure such a common and annoying thing simply by changing your diet.

It looks like I’ll be continuing my fast for the next few days now that I’m “over the hump”.

Juice Fasting and Detoxification: Use the Healing Power of Fresh Juice to Feel Young and Look Great : The Fastest Way to Restore Your Health (Paperback) by Steve Meyerowitz, Michael Parman, Beth Robbins

It was an excellent source of knowledge, confidence, and preparation for the juice fast. I’ll recap some interesting points from the book:

Your body has to deal with the foods you eat twice: Once on the way in, and once on the way out. On the way in, your liver determines what is a toxin (then stores it), and what is nourishing (and releases it). Your liver can store vast amounts of toxins and hold on to them for a long time. A large build-up of toxins in your system cripples it when it has to fight off even the smallest irritations.

I believe it to be the source of my allergies, my asthma, my constant stuffy nose, and my tiredness during the day. I also believe it to be the source of all health, disease, and healing.

When you fast, your body converts from working/processing mode, to clean house mode. Your liver begins to release all those toxins it has been storing into your bloodstream…which means that your body has to deal with it and flush it out. This can cause symptoms of the flu, head-aches, and other side-effects. Sounds crappy huh? Well once your body releases these toxins it has been storing for you, it begins to balance the PH of your stomach, will give you an immune system stronger than anything that challenges it, change the way you feel, change the way you think, and the list goes on.

Not a bad price to pay in my opinion. After all we did this to ourselves right? You can pay the price now and reap the rewards of a clean healthy body, or pay the price later in the form of sickness, disease, or maybe even death.

I certainly hope all of this holds true, and will document my experience.

Here we go!

I suspect that this is partly because there is not a lot of scientific study around fasting, and partly because people fast for very different reasons.

From what I can tell, people fast because:

• It is part of their religion, and doing so brings them closer to their God.
• It is a quick-fix for loosing a lot of weight in a short amount of time (don’t get me started on quick-fix anything)
• It detoxes the body of the build-up of crap (for lack of a scientific word) that processed foods leave behind

I am fasting because of the detoxification effect and to help me segway into my new diet.

Through that research I found some books (and authors) that people recommended…

A few Authors of fasting literature:
Arnold Ehret
Dr. Paavo Airola
Paul Bragg
Alan Cot

A couple of recommended books (by others) :

I have checked out #1 from my local library and will be picking it up tonight. I have also bought a “Jack Lalanne’s Power Juicer” (i bought it at Super Target for $75 after the instant rebate)…it seemed to be the best balance of price and quality I could find.

I know that what I put in my body is the very source of my energy, my health, my emotional state, and my clarity. I know that when I feel tired during the day, when I’m sick, when I’m unfocused, when I’m moody…its all a product of what I initially put in my body.

Right now I’m in pretty good health by most standards. I’m 29 years old, 6′ tall, weigh 163 pounds, and physically fit. Thats pretty impressive considering that about 80% of what I put in my body is crap that my body has to “deal with” rather than nurture it. This does explain however why I have a low energy level, get sick often, under perform in sports, have anxiety, and have a hard time focusing.

I will be documenting my progress with my new diet and how it affects every aspect of my life in hopes that it will help others make similar changes in their life.

I still have some more research to do, but I will likely start out with a 5-7 day juice fast to detox my body of all the crap…which will help me segway into consuming only what my body needs. I expect this to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.

Right now I drink coffee every morning since before i can remember (I’m sipping coffee as I wright this), I absolutely love most foods that are horrible for me, and I like to drink alcohol at least 3 times a week. I would say that right now I eat reasonably healthy and am conscious of what I put in my body…but even with that its nowhere near giving my body all that it needs.

I will learn to applicate and love foods that my body needs…those vegies will taste as good if not better than pizza ever did because of the effect it will have on my body and my mind. I expect it to be similar to working out…at first very very hard, but once you feel and know the positive effects, you start to crave it.