This past weekend I went to the local farmers market and Whole Foods and loaded up on fresh, organic, and local (as much as possible) produce. And when I say loaded up, I mean loaded up! I came home with 22 apples, 16 pears, 4 heads of romaine lettuce, 25 carrots, 2 heads of cabbage, 3 extra large containers of spinach, 10 cucumbers, 5 bunches of kale, 2 bunches of chard, 10 lemons, 5 oranges, 2 nectarines, a lime, ginger, a fennel bulb, a thing of celery, a bunch of parsley, a pineapple, an orange pepper, 2 green peppers, beets and grapes. This was not cheap and was only meant to be for the first 5 days! I came home and separated it all into bags so that all I had to do was pull out a bag, wash it, cut it if needed and pop it in the juicer. By Sunday night, I was so excited to get started.
I woke up Monday morning and started on my first juice - a cold pressed juice I brought home from the farmers market. That one was pretty easy because it tasted fairly good. A few hours later, I made my first juice. The process was actually pretty simple and before long I was drinking my first homemade green drink! Yay, right? No. In all my research on it, the people seemed to love juice so I didn't even think about not liking it. Considering that I wouldn't eat 3/4 of the produce I brought home, I'm not sure why I thought I would love the juice that came from it, but I didn't. It wasn't awful - I wasn't forcing it down - but it wasn't tasty either. I got through that one and decided to try a different concoction thinking I just didn't have the right combination. The same thing happened with the second one though. I made it through 2-1/2 homemade juices, so 3-1/2 juices total by the end of the day. I had planned for 4-6 per day, 16oz. each. The good news is my 5-day-supply will last me a lot longer if I go at this rate. The bad news is I'm not getting all the nutrients I'm supposed to be getting.
As for how I felt... by mid afternoon I had a small headache which grew into a major headache by bedtime. I didn't have a ton of energy but I wasn't super sluggish either. I had no problem going about my day as usual, but wasn't really up for a workout. (Some of my research said that light workouts during a juice fast were ok as long as you didn't push yourself too hard; other research indicated that you shouldn't work out at all during the juice fast. I decided to wait until I got past the bad part before I added working out.) I also realized I wasn't physically hungry. My stomach didn't growl once all day. I didn't have any hunger pangs. But by bedtime I was feeling pretty nauseous. It had been a full 24 hours since I had eaten anything and since that had never happened before, I guess my body didn't like it. I finally fell asleep and thankfully I slept like a baby! I fell into a deep sleep and slept wonderfully all night long. I woke up this morning (Day 2) feeling refreshed and ready for the day. This is noticeable because usually I hit the snooze 5 times looking for just a little more sleep. My headache and the nausea were also gone when I woke up.
I did a lot of research before I started my juice fast, so I feel I came into it knowing what to expect. I knew the first few days to week were not going to be fun. It is literally detoxing your body so I expected side effects just as a drug addict would experience side effects after going into rehab. I was expecting the headache and the lack of energy; the nausea was unexpected but with a quick Google search I learned it wasn't atypical. I've also felt a little achy which was also expected.
At the end of the day, I'd call Day 1 a success.
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