The Power of Juice

This little health revelation began with a documentary called “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead” (on Netflix or you can watch it for free from their website)… it was eye-opening to say the least. In a nut shell, it’s about this guy who was 100 lbs overweight and had multiple health problems including an autoimmune disease. Doctors had him loaded down with medicines & steroids, but he only continued to get worse. (They were clearly only helping his symptoms, and not curing the problem.. like most docs. Anyway, that’s a whole other soapbox.) He decided that his only option left was to attempt to let the body heal itself through a healthy lifestyle.

He vowed to go 60 days consuming nothing but fresh vegetable and fruit juice. Why juice? Why not just eat them? I wondered the same thing… The truth is, juicing an apple isn’t any better for you than eating the apple. You’re actually losing the fiber when you juice. But the idea is that when you juice, you are consuming much more than you would if you were just eating. Think about it… you’ve got a plate in front of you that looks like this….

The average person will probably make it about 1/4 of the way through it, become bored with it, stop eating, and reach for a cheeseburger. When you juice, you are cramming a large amount of vegetables and/or fruit into one cup… which in liquid form is easily consumed. It’s a powerhouse of nutrients and antioxidants in a glass. There are many different juice combinations and recipes, but I decided to just feature my favorite for now. Cucumber-apple-spinach! YUM. Of course the apple juice is delicious, the cucumber is mostly water so it just mellows the apple a bit so it’s not too sweet… and as for the spinach, you can’t taste it. It’s just there to add an extra boost of nutrients.

FYI: If you aren’t buying organic, (which these weren’t) then it’s best to peel the cucumber & apples. I never realized how much wax they put on these things until I got a knife & started scraping it off. Gross. The wax also clogs up your juicer over time.

Remember when juicing, keep a good balance of fruits & veggies, too much fruit will lead to an overload of sugar. It’s best to use superfoods, which I plan on covering in my next post. So stay tuned 😉 ha.

My initial juice cleanse/fast lasted 3 days… and once I got past the caffeine withdrawals, I felt great. I’ll be honest, I don’t do it nearly as much as I want to or should. The juicer is a PAIN to clean. BUT I am making it a point to replace at least a couple of meals a week with juice.

Yeah yeah, it’s green, yeah it looks gross if you aren’t used to seeing it… It’s not a black soda. It’s green. It comes from fresh food in its purest form. Once you get past the color/texture, you realize it actually does taste good. And when you think about the fact that you’re doing your body a lot of favors by drinking it, that makes it even better.

Once in a while I do drink diet soda & the whole time I can’t stop thinking about how bad it is… how my body is reacting to it, what effects it’s having on my insides. I can picture a million little cells in my kidneys giving me the finger. I wonder what the crazy lab-created chemicals that form a “zero calorie” sweetener are doing once they enter my body…. Maybe I sound obsessed, maybe I am, but I think everyone should have a healthy level of concern about what they’re putting in their mouth.

Oh & as for the guy in the documentary… He shed an unbelievable amount of weight in just 60 days, and was able to come off a lot of his meds. His goal was to continue his new lifestyle & his journey to health. You can follow his blog at JointheReboot.com/blog.

Food for thought 🙂