Juice Fasting

Learning how to juice fast is an effective way to accomplish several things, but juice fasting with a purpose will target the best attributes of a juice fast and give you the results you are looking for. One might consider a juice fast for weight loss- perhaps you have tried different diets and failed, or maybe you are looking to drop a little bit of weight and begin to eat healthier and need a quick solution.

Regardless of the reasoning behind a juice fast, the goal is to understand your body, attenuate your physiology to your psychology (get your body connected to your mind), and work towards the goals you have set for yourself.

*Important note: A juice fast is potentially dangerous if taken to the extreme, or not done in a prudent manner.  Read the safety of juice fasting first. The human body has minimum requirements, and your health may be compromised if you don’t pay attention to the signals your body is giving you and respond accordingly.  You know your body better than anyone: if you are sensing that it isn’t functioning properly during a prolonged juice fast, and simple changes aren’t making a difference, do be afraid to stop the fast, or talk with a trusted medical advisor.

Implementing the proper ways on how to juice fast can be an incredible detoxification and weight loss tool, which will supercharge your metabolism, and cleanse more than just your body.

The Science Behind: Understanding Hunger

Appetite is controlled by the brain in a specialized area called the satiety center located in the hypothalamus.

The hypothalamus affects hunger by:

• Using the light of day to determine your normal body rhythms, and determine when you should be hungry physiologically.
• Olfactory stimuli: Smell freshly baked bread and you want some. Smell rotting garbage, however and you will not be as enticed to eat it.
• Natural Steroidal activity within the body: In general steroids are catabolic meaning they encourage growth, so it makes sense they would stimulate you to crave the nutrients required to build new cells. This is the underlying link between stress and obesity.
• Neurally transmitted information: originating in places like the heart and stomach which tell the brain that you are ready to eat, the interconnected system from your senses will help to determine by inputs from your eyes, ears, mouth and nose, that you need to start preparing your body to eat (i.e. making enzymes to digest food, etc.)
• Blood-borne chemicals including insulin and leptin, also glucose: bio-regulation or homeostasis keeps us running regularly but when we are out of sync for any reason, the entire area of your brain which determines whether you have been satiated is affected.
• Stress: Back to the hormonal steroids effects again. And learned reactions to anxiety, the “nervous eater.”

As you can see there are many ways your body stimulates appetite. Once these pathways are established, they are strengthened repeatedly throughout your life. Is it any wonder that past attempts to diet by starvation, counting calories, and altering portion size have failed? Simply put, it is because none of the physiological or psychological variables that effect appetite have been addressed.

The Fasting- Getting the most out of your healthy choice.

A juice fast for weight loss is an essential first step and can be used intermittently to regain control later on. The concept is the same in any addiction: You must break the patterns you have created in your lifetime, reset the hypothalamus thus reestablishing healthier habits to maintain. Do you know anyone that has quit smoking FOREVER by simply cutting back?  It’s rarely if ever a result.  One must quit “cold turkey” and have a plan to stay off cigarettes or in this case your normal food intake.

Doing a juice fast for weight loss severs inappropriate appetite stimulation and detoxifies your body in preparation for better habits and choices. A healthy juice fast should be the initial step in any lifestyle and diet program. In drug addiction, detoxification programs do the same thing, as juice fasts can do. A juice fast cleanses your body of the undesired chemicals and breaks the cycle of habitual use. A juice fast cleanses you gastrointestinal tract of the residue accumulated from years of bad diet, cleanses the hypothalamus of learned chemical mediators that can increase appetite, and breaks the cycle of eating habits that led to the weight gain.

At the same time that a juice fast does all the work to decrease your weight quickly due to decreased caloric intake, and healthier caloric source, it does so on a timeline that allows you the time to consider what your lifestyle will be, where you will shop, and it gives you the time to become involved with like minded people for support when you break your fast.

The Details – A step by step how to approach.
Please note the following is for beginners; seasoned veterans of juice fasting should be able to modify the information to suit their needs.

*Important note: Lemon and lime juice can counter the bitter vegetables like kale and mustard greens, combinations of fresh juices can work in harmony to increases beneficial effects, and combine multiple effects.  A healthier choice is to use lemon juice or lime juice rather than the sweeter juices of things like apples, which have fructose in higher concentrations than lemons/limes.  The sweet (carrots, beets, apples) may also intensify the bitter in many cases, where as the sour will neutralize it.

Look for a good quality juicer if you are planning of learning how to juice fast for the long term, the time it takes to juice an adequate amount of juice by hand can make the process a turn off and make it difficult to justify the process in your mind.

Simple easy to digest vegetables including celery, fennel stalk, and juicy cucumbers can provide excellent starting points. You won’t get the same density of nutrients as you do with the leafy greens, but the shock to the system isn’t nearly as bad. After you are tolerant of the above juices you should begin to incorporate the more nutrient rich veggies. Generally speaking this can be 1-4 days after the start of your fast.

*Important note: With any major change to a lifestyle or habit, there will be some natural response by your body to the change.  For instance, you can expect some minor headaches at the start of the first few days, and certainly some hunger pangs, as you adjust to the situation. Even if you are getting enough calories your body will not be able to process the changes for a short time.

After you have become sufficiently comfortable with the above juices, and are ready to start moving into the powerhouses, consider adding a bit at a time or the nutrient rich versions of lettuce (like red and green leaf, romaine and other leafy varieties).  Avoid iceberg and butter leaf as they are either not useful or overly expensive.  As well, you can consider adding some of the mild bitters, like endive, but certainly introduce spinach and cabbages, including the bok choy family and Napa, which is sweet, and has an interesting flavor profile, red cabbage is also a good candidate, GERD/acid reflux and ulcers are all reported to be calmed with cabbage extracts, so consider getting that vegetable into the mix if you have those issues.

Adding herbs for their nutrients and flavor profiles are an interesting choice, but make sure you incorporate a little at a time, to make sure your body can handle it, and your taste buds will similarly approve.

If you have made it to this point, somewhere around the ten day mark, you could consider moving into the next level of vegetables, the true bitters, like red and green kale.  Essentially when it comes to vegetables, the more vivid and bright the vegetable, the better the concentration of their nutrients (each color of the rainbow has an association with a nutrient family-orange and yellow fruits and vegetables might indicate beta carotene and vitamin c, while reds will indicate lycopene and other heart healthy nutrients, etc.), so choose your vegetables based on the vividness and the concentration of colors as a rule of thumb.  The best color for most fasts will be green.

Use the following in moderation to improve flavors in your juice drinks: Lemon, Lime, ginger-in moderation, and cactus apple or cranberry.  The sourer they are, the better they will cut the bitterness of dark greens, and as a rule of thumb the sourer, the less bad sugars they contain relative to their peers.  Try not to overdo it though; a high concentration of acid will make for a less enjoyable fast, so go with a moderate hand.

Juicing Tidbits

• Fruit juices are higher in fructose, a sugar that stimulates and raises blood insulin levels. This will make you hungry an hour after drinking and could make you feel weak, dizzy and nauseous.
• Vegetable juice has no fat and very little protein.
• Most commercially made vegetable juices are flavored with tomato and are high in sugar and sodium.
• Juice is better absorbed providing more of the vitamins and nutrients than whole vegetables and fruits.
• After a little while on your juice fast for weight loss you will stop feeling hunger as you reprogram your hypothalamus.
• Do an organic juice fast whenever possible. The residual pesticides and fertilizers act like the chemical appetite stimulators you’re trying to minimize.

How to Break a Cleansing Juice Fast

You may be surprised that breaking a juice fast is more difficult than starting. Keep in mind that your body has reverted back to a healthier state and likes its new state of being. It is important to realize that breaking a juice fast for weight loss is as important as the fast itself. The last thing you want to do is jump back into the bad diet that led you to want to do a juice fast in the first place. Since you have used the time you were on the juice fast to consider what your new dietary habits will be, and where to shop for better foods, here are some important things to remember when returning to your new regular diet when you break your juice fast. Remember that your brain (hypothalamus), stomach and intestines are back to where they were when you were a baby (theoretically, though with some, this may not be the case entirely).  A general concept is to start introducing solid foods gently and progressively like you would in a baby. Remember that during your juice fast for weight loss your intestinal tract was at rest and under repair. Overloading the system too quickly could be disastrous.

In general try to avoid heavier foods, and certainly don’t introduce gas producing or complex foods which require the body to work extra hard to extract nutrients, before you are ready for that.  The process of breaking the juice fast after, perhaps thirty days, may take an addition 6-10 days to bring you back to normal capabilities-certainly avoid that blue cheese topped porterhouse with French fries.

Ending a juice fast is essentially a way to reintroduce your body to the things which you want it to be craving, and to ensure that you don’t undo the good things you have done throughout the fast.

• Stay raw for a bit-introduce whole fruits and vegetables to mimic the fruits and vegetables you had in juice form.  Cucumbers, but also consider tomatoes at this point, their elevated sodium relative to other fruits and veggies may actually help in the reestablishment process.

• Try eating salads of various make up to determine your body’s tolerance of the foods, and try not to use heavier dressings, instead try a bit of red wine or apple cider vinegar or some lemon juice as a topper, to keep your taste buds dancing, but your intestinal tract in harmony.

• Introduce dairy and other animal products very slowly to ensure the lactase levels come back at a natural and sustainable pace.  Try goat milk products or yogurts when you do introduce dairy, as the levels of lactose are lower.

• You may consider taking detailed notes including your feelings, thoughts, and physical changes, for when you return to a juice fast in the future or for helping others who may be interested in obtaining results like you.

Important notes to consider:

• Get a quality juicing setup: Juicers which heat the juice too much can kill the live enzymes in the juice, and render the juice much less effective, similarly, those that oxidize the juice due to inefficient blades or poor performance, can also make the juice less effective.  A juicing machine which can efficiently separate pulp from juice will be important.

What started as a weight loss program may change your mind about many of your current lifestyle choices.  The fresh real, and raw flavors and feelings that are associated with juice fasting may be just what your body, mind and soul need to get back to where you want to be.  The fast itself is a small price to pay for the benefits it can yield, so as you go through the process, remember how much good you are doing for your body, surely you will feel the positive impact in your body from very early on.  You’re doing a wonderful thing.