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Create your own juice recipe

Juicing can be so much fun. Here is a basic formula to make sure your juice will always taste delish.
For a balanced flavor, add veggies/fruits from each flavor profile

Sour: Orange, Kiwi, Starfruit, Amla, Tomato, Lemon (squeezed not juiced)

Sweet: Carrots, beets, yellow/orange bellpepper, sweet potato, apple, watermelon (any fruit pretty much)

Spicy: Green or red bell pepper, mustard greens, ginger, jalapeno (never tried, but sound interesting)

Salty: Celery, Kelp powder

Umami: Greens (kale/chard/collard/spinach), Asparagus

Other: Fennel (licorice flavor),

Herby: Keep water in jar and add any kind of herbs you like and store it for couple of hours. Then add this water to the juice. Or you can add the herb leaves directly to the juice but storing juice for a long time is not a good idea since it will oxidize. Here are my fav herbs:
- Basil (any kind)
- Mint
- Lavendar
- Parley
- Cilantro
- Dill
- Fennel
- Rosemary

Keep juicing!

Juice and salad fast

This time I tried fast for 5 days with Juice and salad. I added salad for couple of reasons
1. It will keep my guts working
2. It will keep me fuller
3. It will make it easier mentally since I was eating food

And yes it achieved all of this. Adding salad made juice fast very easy and yet achieved the same results.

My salad consisted of
- greens,  cucumber, tomatoes, brocolli, cauliflower, edmame beans, beets, carrots.

Basically I went to salad bar and picked up lil bit all raw vegetables. There was NO DRESSING, NO SALT, NO PEPPER, NO FRUITS, NO LEGUMES, NOTHING BUT raw vegetables.

So I added salad for lunch, dinner. And at 4 pm, I ate 5-6 walnuts.
and coninued my 8 oz of juice every 2 hours. See the previous blogpost for details on juice details.

Change the timing to your schedule and when you feel hungry.

9 am - wakeup
10 am - Breakfast Juice
12 pm (noon) - 1st 8oz juice intake
1 pm - LUNCH SALAD
2 pm - 2nd 8oz juice intake
4 pm - 3rd 8oz juice intake
4:30 PM - WALNUTS
6 pm - 4th 8oz juice intake
8 pm - 5th 8oz juice intake
8:30 PM -  DINNER SALAD
10 pm - 6th 8oz juice intake
12 am (midnight) - 7th 8oz juice intake
TIP: This time I prewashed my veggies at night, so in the morning it took me 15 mins to make my whole day's juice. I used empty salad containers to store washed veggies in the fridge night before. This will help ppl who are busy in the morning and don't have time of 1 hr to do the prep/juice.

Bigggest achievment: last day of my juicing was the that "day of the month". And for last 10 years, I have been living on pain killers for 3-4 days everytime during that time of the month. For the first time, this time, I did NOT take a single pain killer. First time in 10+ years!!!! That just shows the amazing power of plant based diet.

Juice fast and my experiences

I did juice fast for 7 days last year and am doing it again for 5 days this year. Here are all the info I collected and my experiences with  it. Enjoy!
===============================================
IMPORTANT:  If you have diabetes, or are on other medication, nursing, or pregnant, please talk to your doctor.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, this is just a personal experience shared.

If you can afford it, but all organic. Else buy green leafy stuff organic atleast.

Things to Buy from Costco
Spinach 2.5 lb bag
organic carrots 10 lb bag
box of heirloom large tomatoes
cucumbers
Celery
Box of oranges
Bag of pears
Box of apples - green or yellow not red
Romaine lettuce bag
Broccolli

Things to buy from Trader Joe's
Ginger - large
Sweet potatoes - 1 bag
3 or 4 bags of Kale

Morning Juice -  12oz to 16 oz
2 oranges
4 carrots
small piece of ginger
cup of spinach
big handful of Kale (2 big leaves if you buy a bunch)
1 apple or pear or beet
Recently I started adding 2 teaspoons of this in my juice and its really good for you.
Juice for the Day - 64 oz
8 cups spinach (or 1 whole bunch)
2 cups kale (4 big leaves of kale)  or 2 leaves kale and 2 leaves of chard
2 large tomatoes
4 pears or apples OR 3 pears or apples AND one sweet potato
12 carrots
1/2 stalk celery
1/3 of dark green lettuce head
2 small cucumbers
1.5 cups broccolli (1 medium broccolli head)
medium piece ginger

Other Things you can add to juices

- Bokchoy
- Bellpeppers
- parsley
- cilantro
- fennel (if you like licorice flavor)



How long to do it
- To see any benefits out of this, you should do it for atleast 5 days. Ideally 7 - 10 days.

How to do it
Bottles

• buy 4 small 16 oz bottles  (= 64 oz total). I saved some "Naked Juice" bottles which are 16 oz each and I reuse them.
• make the juice in the morning for the whole day , fill up the bottles and refrigerate immediately
• if you are taking juice to work, make sure to put them in fridge in office or take a cooler box with ice. Juice ferments fast so you have to keep it tightly sealed and cooled.

Juicer

• I got the Jack La Lane juicer from Costco for $90. It works great. But any juicer will do. I have this one. Breville is a better company but more expensive. You can find the JackLaLane in bed bath n beyond also. They have a smaller model though for $100, which works too. You will just have empty the pulp more often.
• NOTE: You cannot use blender (like vitamix), it has to be a juicer. You don't want the fiber/pulp.

Prepping Vegetables

• Wash the produce well. If you are not buying organic then you should (if you have time) to wash them with the vegetable wash solution to remove pesticides etc from them.
• Use a vegetable brush to wash them well (I reuse the brush that came with my juicer).
• DON'T PEEL anything (except orange ofcourse). Just juice the whole vegetable (ofcourse cut the end of carrots etc)

Daily routine
8 am - Drink morning juice 12oz or 16 oz in the morning for breakfast.

You have 4 of the 16oz bottles of juice. Drink 8 oz (half the 16oz bottle) of juice every 2 hours.

12 pm (noon) - 1st 8oz juice intake
2 pm               - 2nd 8oz juice intake
4 pm               - 3rd 8oz juice intake
6 pm               - 4th 8oz juice intake
8 pm               - 5th 8oz juice intake
10 pm             - 6th 8oz juice intake
12 am (midnight) - 7th 8oz juice intake
Buffer                  - 8th 8oz juice intake

You still have 8oz of juice left that you can keep as a buffer incase you feel more hungry at certain times. If you never use this extra 8oz, then I would recommend to offer it to friend and convert them to juicing :)

NOTE: This is all how I do it. You can drink 16 oz of juice every 4 hrs, and have a bottle as big as 64 oz, it does not matter. These are just some things that I worked out and an sharing. 

FAQ

• Can I have tea/coffee?  No. You may have some caffiene free green tea. Try Yogi tea (detox or super antioxidant ones). Again if you have horrible headaches that continue 2nd or 3rd day try some regular green tea (green tea has some caffiene). But try to avoid black tea and coffee. 
• What else can I drink? Ideally nothing but the your homemade juice. But sometimes I had coconut water if I was feeling very tired and needed instant hydration and was out of my juice. I love "bluemonkey" or "CO2" brand. 
• Can I eat anything? No. Sometimes I chew gum if I missing chewing or need breath freshner. 
• Why not eat all the vegetables instead of throwing the pulp? Good question. Couple of reasons
•   You are giving your guts a break. So consuming fiber would not help with this goal.
•   You are on super nutrition diet i.e. juices. So you need to consume lot of nutrition. The amount of vegetables / fruits that you would have to juice to get 64 oz of juice would fill a big wok and more. There is no way your stomach, which is size of 2 fists can fit all the stuff inside.
•   Nutrition in juice will get consumed in your body the fastest.
•   Sometimes we forget that our body does not need food, it needs nutrition. 

• What about protiens? If you chart out the nutrition content of all the stuff you are consuming you will see there is enuff protien for the day. Broccolli  is a good source of protien too. See the nutrition of the daily juice below (does not include morning juice).  http://caloriecount.about.com/day-juice-recipe-r795429
• DISCLAIMER: I don't know the difference in nutrition between juicing a carrot and eating a carrot. Below is nutrition of vegetables in whole. And I am presuming that juicing them gets most of it too.

Here is image of all the stuff I would juice for one day. You cannot fit this in your stomach if you were to eat them.

Tips

• print the recipe sheet and keep it handy so it helps save time in the morning
• start the fast on Monday, so you can setup over the weekend. And if you are doing 5 day, then by the weekend your fast will be over and you get to show off new you to friends :)
• avoid too much socializing, since most of it revolves around food and alcohol/coffee
• try to keep busy, coz idle mind just thinks about food. You will have plenty of extra time now that you don't have to cook/clean/eat. So use it to do catch up on some phone calls, emails, reading a book, or getting a new hobby.
• must exercise atleast 30 minutes a day, simple walk would do too. That will accelerate weightloss. I think of it like this, I am not eating and not working out, my body might just goto hibernate. So to avoid that, I need to workout atleast 30 mins.
• drink water too. Just becoz you are drinking juice does not mean you don't need water anymore.
• Also keep myself feeling full I drink a lot green tea or warm water. Warm / hot water just makes me feel like I am having a soup / hot meal.
• I start my day everyday for last 15 years with a warm glass of water with some lemon juice drops (from fresh lemon not the squeezee bottle).
• Make sure to get atleast 8 hrs of sleep at the same time everyday. Body is detoxing and healing and sleep will play a very important part in this process.

Things to expect:

• Caffiene withdrawal headaches for 1st day atleast
• Allocate 1 hour in the morning to make juice.
• Since you have not consumed any fiber there is nothing for your guts to churn, so some ppl might feel constipated. Overall its fine. You would know if you need to do something about it or not. Listen to your body.
• Don't be surprised at how well you are doing. Body adapts faster then mind.
• Don't make weightloss your goal, but make your goal to be healthy and weightloss will come automatically. 
• If you put all the pulp in trash it will stink within a day. If you have yard waste or composting please use that.
• Somehow I have noticed I yawn a lot on fast, am not really sleepy but just yawn more than usual.

My personal experience

• If I can do it, so can you: For me I love eating. I eat more than most of the people at the dinner table. If there is a half of my lunch sandwich on my desk left, I will eat it, instead of saving it for dinner. So to me it was a "lets see if I can do it" thing. And I was surprised that I did it successfully.
• Simple rules: The fact that there are no complicated rules i.e. you can eat this but not that and that but not this, really helped. Simple rule: Juice Only. So my brain just stopped looking for food, thinking about food and I just got into a robotic routine of juice every 2 hrs. Some days I could not even finish my juice and had left overs !!
• Body over mind: Body adapted faster. My mind still kept questioning, "can you do it". So just listen to you body, it does not play tricks like mind does.
• Changing habits: After the fast I still continue to juice every morning and have replaced my morning caffiene with juice. This is something I never thought I could do i.e. give up my morning cup of tea. But after 7 days of juicing my body does not crave it, I don't have headaches, and now juicing is become a habit.  Good things about habits are that they stick. So form good habits and they will do wonders.
• Weight Loss: Sometimes I get stuck at certain weight and have to do something drastic to move the scale. This juice fast did that for me. Last time I fasted for 7 days and lost 4.5 lbs. Every body type is different, so different ppl will loose different amounts.
• Guilt free days: Generally I get tempted to eat bad foods and then feel guilty. The whole time my mind is busy evaluating the food choices and my conscience is engaged in making me feel guilty. During the fast there you experience guilt free days and feel good days, where the critique inside you goes to sleep. Its a new kind of freedom, that everyone should experience.
• Other unexpected benefits: With all the probiotics craze out there, what I did not know was raw food is the best probiotic. And drinking raw vege/fruit juice really benefits your digestive system. You will notice the difference in 1-2 weeks. In general you would crave good food, and your body/mind rejects bad food. You learn to listen to your body more too. Ofcourse you gain the confidence that you can do this again if needed, so huge confidence boost! 

Inspirations (shout out to Kabir Kumar for inspiring me and doing it for 60 days)
- Watch this movie on netflix : Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. This is the original inspiration for Juice fasting. The person who inspired me to do this, got his inspiration from this movie. And he did it for 60 days like the movie.
- Really interesting small articles on this site that answers a lot of questions about fasting. http://www.freedomyou.com/fasting_book/Vegetable_Juice_Guide.htm

Breaking the Fast

• Generally there are no specific requirements for breaking a juice fast like the ones you have for breaking a water fast.
• Some guidelines would be to avoid dairy if possible for 1 week
• Avoid processed / oily food.
• Try to eat homecooked fresh meals
• Continue drinking morning glass of juice if you can and hopefully make it a habit
• continue drinking water and getting enough sleep
• make sure that you incorporate raw vegetables/fruits in your diet. Like salad with one meal. Raw food does wonders for your body and helps stop fat accumulation.

Have fun and share your experience.

Remember When in doubt, just breath!

Namaste