You rolls your dice and takes your chances

I just decided to start another two-week juice fast. I sort of screwed up the exit plan of my last fast, and I'd like to get back to a healthier place again.

Of the various juices I make, the green is the most unpredictable. The carrot and beet juices tend to taste the same from batch to batch, but the green juice... you just never know. Sometimes it's an unparalleled taste paradise that entices you with subtle undertones and delicious savory-sweet flavor. At other times, it's like drinking lawn clippings.

This was one of those days when I had to keep telling myself "the green is good for me... the green is good for me..."

Three kinds of juice

I was posting a bit on Reddit and wrote this post. And then edited it. And edited it. And edited it. And got it "just so." Then I decided I may as well post it to my blog, so here it is:

You have three kinds of juice drinks...

1) The "Aww Yiss" juices
Proof that there is a God, and he loves us. These are the fresh oranges/apples/mango juices... or anything with a little style, like carrot and tangerine and a touch of ginger. You'll be like "Where have you BEEN all my life?" Trust me: Nothing any grocery store has ever sold in a bottle since the dawn of time has ever tasted this good.

How often do you have to drink this? You can drink it as often as you want, but you will need to take it easy because an excess of fruit juice can actually hurt you if you overdo it (due to the incredibly, stratospherically high sugar content).

2) The "I'll Learn To Love It" juices
The first time you try lettuce/kale/cucumber/celery/spinach/bok choy/green pepper/zucchini juice, you're going to make a "who farted?" face and shake your head violently while it goes warm in your mouth because you refuse to swallow. But no matter how hard it may seem, keep drinking it: Your initial reaction is probably because you're used to drinking Jolt Cola and coffee with eight creams and a quarter-pound of refined sugar. As your palette begins to change, you'll find you're not only enjoying the green juice, but actually craving it. After a little time and some experimentation with the recipes, you will grow to love it. That's a promise.

How often do you have to drink this? Often. This makes up the backbone of juicing and you really should be knocking back about a liter a day of this stuff. More if you can. Every other juice you drink on your fast is negotiable except this one.

3) The "Oh God Make It Stop" juices
To be fair, few people actually make these on purpose. They're usually stumbled upon by tragic accident. My first experience with this kind of thing was when I thought "I'll add an onion to this juice and then it'll be extra tasty!" And let me tell you: It's the only time I've almost literally thrown up after a glass of juice. Another example was when I grossly overestimated the intensity of some jalapeños I added, and I ended up drinking what I can only call "pure hate in a glass." The point: Really, really disgusting juices aren't part of the fast as a matter of course. There's nothing about this diet which requires you to drink something truly nasty.

How often do you have to drink this? You don't, unless you're actively experimenting to try and find something unusual, or you have a very specific health issue you're trying to address with very specific combinations of nutrition. Life's too short to drink disgusting juice.

And with the first sip...

I knew this was a good idea.

Post-juice remorse

I spent roughly two months juicing. The main staples of my diet were a very robust green juice, a carrot & orange juice, and a beet juice that sometimes had blueberries mixed in. The chronicle can be found in this blog.

I stopped juicing about two months ago. Ish.

If you do a juice fast, you eventually need to ask yourself: What comes after? It's the only part I didn't really think through. I returned to eating in a similar (though not identical) way that I had before I started the juice fast. I kept drinking juice, just less of it. Pressures from within (such as laziness, force of habit, cravings for junk, etc) and without (other people pressuring me to compromise, nagging me about cost and hassle, telling me it's not healthy to continue, etc) basically led me to eat like everyone else does again. What I need to be clear about is that we're not talking about an all-junk diet here: Basic meat, vegetables, grains/wheat, a bit of coffee now and then, a bit of soda now and then. Certainly not an Olympic athlete's diet, but no worse than the average Canadian.

So... since I stopped my juice fast, I've experienced these things:

- Exhaustion. I have to take a nap every single afternoon.
- Irritability. I'm like 200% more of a bitch.
- I wake up feeling crappy every single day.
- Weight gain. And I mean a lot of it.
- Depression.
- Impotence*.
- Disorientation and "foggy-headedness."

The moral of the story is: I can only go by how I feel, and that's always the final authority and decider. And how do I feel? Terrible. Fat, dull, lazy, and stupid. And when I was juicing, I felt great. I felt like I was relaxed and clear-minded. I felt happy. I felt like I was finally healthy and balanced. And when I stopped, I did it wrong. I didn't have a really solid exit plan and I let other people convince me I was doing something bad to myself that needed correcting with a "normal" diet of sugar, fat, salt, wheat, dairy, and caffeine. And the lion's share of blame is on me, because I know better.

So I'm going back to it for a month or so while I figure out my post-fast diet (I appreciate suggestions, but please be aware that I probably won't follow them as I'm conducting my own research at the moment. :)). The bottom line is that, even though lots of people keep telling me how I "need" to be eating and not just juicing, I feel like crap when I'm not juicing. People who told me I "have to" go back to the "normal" way of eating to be healthy were wrong. I shouldn't have stopped juicing. It worked. I have a lot of friends who sermonize about how I'm supposed to be "living," but my juice diet is the only lifestyle change I adopted which actually delivered on its promise.

I'll keep those of you who are interested updated right here.

*Not that you really need to hear this, but there are people reading this blog who are looking for frank and blunt explanations of what happens, so I felt I should be honest

I love a good juice pun

I have learned

If you mix beet and blueberry juice together and spill it on something, don't bother wiping or trying to wash it. It's gone, man.

Pics of green and orange

So I got a bunch of groceries and here's what I came up with.

Start with this: Two heads of romaine lettuce, two apples, a lime and a half (I had a leftover), two cucumbers, a big bunch of cilantro, five stalks of celery. There's a bunch of spinach too, but it wouldn't fit in the bowl.

This was an unusually big batch, but that's fine. I usually don't make enough. Anyhow, that pile (without spinach) turned into this. Roughly 8-9 cups.

The problem with my juicer is it tends to shred spinach and spit it out in the pulp hopper instead of really juicing it. So for that I take the juice and mix it up in the blender with the spinach.

And when the spinach was sufficiently shredded, I ended up with this much juice/smoothie/whatever you wanna call it:

Those of you who follow this blog will know how crazy I am for carrot juice, so I couldn't deny myself a batch of that.

Underneath those carrots are two peeled oranges (here they are without the carrot canopy).

And that ended with this much carrot juice (with a tiny bit of ginger added).

On a side note, the green juice was the best I've ever made. I went through 2/3 of it tonight just because I couldn't get enough (the lime and cilantro made it irresistible). I've finally perfected that recipe and I'm going to keep using it, though I may alternate spinach with kale and bok choy. There's actually a danger of something bad happening (I forget what it is) if you just keep drinking the same green leafy stuff over and over and over, so I mix it up a bit. Never the less, I think the green juice is the hardest to get "just so" and now I think I've hit the perfect balance. I'm pleased. And full of juice.