proud n00b

I did a #juicefast. The results & why I’ll do it again.

Two weeks ago I watched Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. The gist is an overweight guy juiced himself back to health after an extensive juicefast.  While I was not overweight (210 lbs), I have gained a few pounds since my rowing days when I was 195lbs. My goal was to go for an entire week - but after 3 days I decided to stop.

From my crew days -

More recently after filling out a bit-

An overview of my fast was : drink lots of water, and drank a juice for each meal. I didn’t really follow any recipes on the juices - just mixed what I had in the fridge. 

• Carrots
• Green & red apples
• Celery
• Kale
• Spinach
• Parsley
• Pear
• Lemon
• Ginger

Saturday, Day 0: For dinner, I made a test juice to eat with a normal meal. Shockingly, the juices taste much better than I thought. The idea they taste like ‘grass’ or ‘disgusting’ is just wrong. After that drink, I knew this was doable.

Sunday, Day 1: Starting Weight: 210lbs.

This was my hardest day. In the afternoon I was hungry, but I was in for the long haul.  

Monday, Day 2: Dropped 4 lbs. Weight: 206lbs.

 In reading about fasts, it seems people get headaches, a lack of energy, or dizziness. I didn’t get any of these. I did find it harder to focus though. Mentally I felt distracted. At night, this was really bad - it was impossible to fall asleep.  I also started getting the sore throat & odd feeling on my tongue. This seem like normal symptoms - but they are unpleasant.

Tuesday, Day 3: Dropped another 3.4 lbs. Weight: 202.6lbs.

Physically I felt great. Lighter, more alert, generally just more healthy. However I also began to get concerned about the amount of weight loss. Most articles I read about juice fasting had people losing that amount of weight over their entire fast- I lost over 7lbs in 2 days. I was staying hydrated so it is a bit tough to believe all of that was water weight. Because you aren’t consuming salt, you should drop a lot of water weight. How much- I have no idea. 7lbs of water seems like A LOT to me. If you know more about this, please leave a comment. 

I continued the fast for Tuesday’s Breakfast & Lunch but stopped at that. Final weight: 203.4lbs. 

Lessons

As far as fasting is concerned - I now know you will lose a good amount of water weight. How much, I’m not sure, but I do want to look into this further to better understand where the weight loss is coming from. At my pace, I was going to lose about 10+ lbs in 3 days. Even when I was wrestling (maintained weight of 160lbs throughout 4 years of high school), I wouldn’t cut weight that much, that fast. On the surface, it seems very unhealthy - but I could be wrong.  Maybe I should have drank more juice throughout the day? 

For my first meal Tuesday night, I went back to my old ways. Mainly it was to test how I would feel vs the juice diet. I was shocked how quickly my body had adjusted to the juice, and how bad I felt after eating the usual. For that meal, I had leftover celery plus mushroom ravioli, cheese pizza, and red wine. I told you I went back to the usual…

Quickly I learned, I eat/ate way too much sodium. As I write this post nearly 12+ hours later, I can still taste the sodium in my mouth. It is kind of disgusting. That is the first thing I will be changing - eating less salt. It isn’t necessary. 

Also, how much food is enough to make you full? After Day 1, I really never felt hungry. That surprised me. Last night during my gorge fest, it became obvious the body needs much less than I ate. I hit the full wall, but kept going. Why, I’m not sure. When I was rowing, I couldn’t eat enough. I would eat more food than most people eat in 2 days, but I was also burning it off with our multiple practices a day.  Those days are behind me so recognizing ” What is Full?” is a new mission. 

Overall Thoughts

As far as juicing, I am definitely going to keep it up. It is a great way to get veggies & fruits into your diet quickly and easily. I am still trying to figure out how to juice leafy greens, but apart from that, it really is nice. Before I do another juice fast, I will do more research on it and the effects on your body. I wasn’t prepared for that much weight loss that quickly. However I do feel great, and it was an interesting body hack/experiment.