Old Friends and New Juice Fasts

I've been perusing an old friend.   Steve Meyerowitz's book Juice Fasting and Detoxification, was hugely inspiring to me on my weight loss journey, and I regularly refer back to it. 

After I read this book, I bought my first juicer and started to juicing.   

Since then, I've bought several other books on juice fasting, but Meyerwitz's book always seems to be the one I go back to.  

I did, however, recently find a new website that has a lot of great information on detoxing and juice fasting.  It's called "Greenlemonade" and you can find it here.    It's a real good source of information if you just want to learn about juice fasting, or want to refresh your memory (something it seems I need to do more and more frequently as I age).

You can find good information on the basics of juice fasting here  at the Greenlemonade website..    If you've never juice fasted before, or just want to learn a bit more about it, I recommend checking out some of the links including what to eat to prepare for a juice fast.

Now for my experience.   I have to admit that I did not dive head first into juice fasting.    I was more of a toe in the water kind of gal.  I was so addicted to food and eating that I did not think it was possible for me to go even a day without eating. 

I first experimented with just doing juice for breakfast or lunch, then breakfast and lunch and finally breakfast, lunch and dinner.   

It turns out that I might have done myself a favor going it slow.   If you leap into cleansing too fast, you can have some pretty ugly detoxing symptoms.  

I also have to admit that I've never been able to do more than a three day juice fast.  Not because I don't want to go longer, but with my life, it's a tough thing to do.   You pretty much need a somewhat stress free period of time fast, and stress free periods don't come often around here.

In fact, when I have been able to accomplish my longer fasts it was because I started early, then headed up to the New Age Health spa to complete it.  It's a wonderful spa in New York state with a fantastic juice fasting program.   Generally, I'd prepare to fast the week before and actually start the fast on Thursday night.   I head up to the spa Friday, fast until Sunday and then come home.   While up there I relax (my husband takes the kids for the weekend), use the Sauna, have a colonic and come back feeling fantastic.  I'd love to go up and stay longer (and fast longer), but that just isn't in the cards any time soon.

So, at home I'm generally only doing one or two day fasts.

I also like to just juice until dinner for up to a week at a time.   I have juice for breakfast and lunch, then have a vegan (preferably as raw as possible) meal for dinner.   This is also a fantastic way to ease yourself into more hard core juice fasting.   I've also done fasts were I start out juicing until dinner then do a full scale juice fast for a day or two.

I'm writing about juice fasting now because it's Summer and hot as hell outside.   I find that juice fasting (and reducing food consumption in general) is just easier when it's hot outside.  I'm usually just to hot to feel hungry.

Time to start juice fasting.