Day 1 - Reboot Juice Fast

Yesterday was DAY ONE of mine and John's 15-day juice fast.  Why in the world would we attempt such a crazy thing you ask??  While yesterday was the first day that we only consumed fruits and veggies either in their raw form or as juice, this journey started for us well before now.  We're always looking for ways to be more mindful of what we eat, our diets, fitness, and overall health so we've watched many documentaries and read articles (mostly I read the articles and give John the nutshell versions of them).  They all have made a lot of sense to us but one documentary in particular got us moving on this journey toward reboosting ourselves from the inside out.  Thanks to a facebook post of a childhood friend, we were made aware of the documentary "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead".  Within two days the Amazon order was placed for our Breville juicer.

In anticipation of our juicing fast I bought a book about juice fasting and detoxification.   Good information there.  And I found a website that laid out the entire 15 day fast. http://jointhereboot.com/. I printed out the entire 15 days worth of recipes and put them in a binder.  Because John and I had to wait for the juicer to come in the mail AND we had all five of our kids last week AND we had a brunch to go to on Saturday AND we had a wedding to go to on Sunday we decided day one would be Monday, July 18, 2011.

This blog will be about our 15 days to reboot our bodies and prepare for an even healthier lifestyle.  They say the first three days are the hardest.  We have lots of daily routines that we'll have to adapt (like the nightly glass of vodka out on the porch as we sit and watch movies and smoke cigars).

Stocking Up on Supplies

John at the store.  Look at the cashier's face!

The first thing we had to do was make a grocery list based on the recipes.  I decided to only get enough for the first 3 days of recipes.  We made our way to the grocery store and spent our entire time in the produce department.  I did have to go down one aisle for coconut milk and seaweed(which turned out nasty and I will no longer include it on the shopping list).  The cashier thought we were nuts!  We spent $200 on fruits and veggies!!

The goods on the counter

The fridge stockpiled

 First Meal

Trying to crush up the apples.

The Reboot plan suggests a morning cup of herbal tea before you do anything else so on my drive in to work I sipped a cup of Green Tea.  My first meal consisted of 2 apples chopped up, 1 cup cherries, 3 TBL raisins mixed with cinnamon and nutmeg that I put in a dish and baked the night before.  It doesn't sound half bad, right?  Well, I'm not a big fan of baked apple peels so I struggled to eat it.  Then John said he mashed his up more and it was better.  I obviously was at work so I had to figure out how I was going to mash it up like he did.  My brilliant idea was to put it in a ziplock bag and use the tupperware container to mash it.  Let's just say at 10:12 a.m. I was STILL working on those damn apples and cherries!  I'm moving on to my mid-morning juice.

Mid-Morning Juice
Mid-morning juice is: Kale, spinach, celery, cucumber, 2 apples and some ginger.

Mid-morning juice

Well...it wasn't terrible.  The apples made it sweet with a cucumber, celery aftertaste. John's report was that he started out sipping it but then ended up just gulping it down as he told himself "this is 100% life food."  I started to do the same but the closer to the bottom I got the more it tasted like celery.  Oiy...14 more days.  Maybe I'll learn to love it!  Can I have a piece of gum??  John commented to me later that after he finished drinking our green juice he felt like he had revitalized his life from this inside (or something like that).


Let the Cleansing Begin!
Ok... 45 minutes after I drank the mid-morning juice and I found myself in the bathroom three times.  Oofda.  My tummy was rumbling and gurgling. Nice. I mentioned it to John and he did not have the same result...at that time.  He texted me about an hour later and it hit him too.  However, after that we both felt great.

Lunch
Carrot Ginger Soup and a salad with tomatoes, onions, avocado with a mustard vinaigrette. First, the carrot soup is super sweet!  I'm more of a savory type of person so I'm not sure I'm diggin' the soup that much.  And truthfully I'm missing my crackers in the soup.  The salad dressing was pretty darn tasty though!  It was apple cider vinegar with full grain mustard and then olive oil.

After lunch
Well, I didn't eat my soup but I ate most of my salad. Was I full??  No, not really.  I guess I wasn't that excited about my lunch.  The salad was pretty good but I missed the turkey and cheese I normally have on salad.  And I  wished the carrot soup had been  in a glass that I could have chugged down.  It has chunks of...I don't know...avocado pulp...it was my own doing.  The night when John was juicing the carrots for the soup I had the brilliant idea of putting the whole avocado into the juicer (even though ALL the juicing books say that they don't juice). So when nothing from the avocado came out I had another brilliant idea of taking the green pulp out of the juicer and adding it to the soup.  Not a great idea on my part.  John on the other hand said the soup is scrumptious!!  So it's all about personal taste buds/preference.

 
Mid-Afternoon...
As it neared the 3p.m. mark and I was getting bored at work so I was thinking about food.  I'm not talking big fat cheeseburger because I don't crave those.  I actually think I was hungry because I didn't eat my soup at lunch and I didn't eat all of the apples and cherry's for breakfast.  I continued to drink tons of water which is good,  but my guess is I was possibly needing calories??  Day 2 I will avoid this by making myself an additional juice drink for the afternoon. John on the other hand says he is feeling a little shaky which is typical for him because he tends to be a bit hypoglycemic.   Usually he gets shaky if he doesn't eat enough protein.  I told him to make another juice but he says he's not hungry. I settled on a cup of tea which helped a lot.

Evening
As soon as I got home I started working on Day 2 juices.  I also put the rest of our cherry apple bake stuff in the food processor and made it more like applesauce.  While it was much better than earlier, I'm still not a fan of peels in my baked apples.  I also doctored up the left over carrot soup.  I put it in the blender with more avocado, coconut meat, cilantro, salt and garlic.  Smelled fantastic and tasted better but it still didn't turn my crank that much.  Our dinner was another big salad with fruit and veggies on it, the rest of the doctored up carrot soup, and the rest of the apple cherry mash.  And more water, of course.

We took a walk down to our community beach and relaxed there for a bit before taking each other on in a mild game of ping pong before heading back up the steep hill home.  For those of you who know our neighborhood you all know that the walk from the beach home is a good hike uphill!
We did not participate in our usually nightly ritual on the porch last night.  John did have a cigar but no drinks for us.  We both sipped our herbal tea before going to bed.  Ready for day 2!!