Tropical Sunrise...
Allright, this one I got out of Edwin's book of juice recipes, here's what it has in it:
2 red
delicious apples
1 papaya
1 mango
1 kiwi
1/2 pineapple
1/2 pint
of raspberries
2 cups crushed ice
Ok with these fruits it gets a little tricky...with the Papaya and Kiwi I went ahead and quartered them and then used a filet knife to separate the fruit from the skin. The mango is a tricky son of a gun...once you start cutting into it, it starts to fall apart so you end up wasting a lot of juice on your cutting board and not the juicer...so here's what I did. Get a potato peeler and use it to remove the skin from the mango, don't cut it up quite yet just treat it like you would a potato. Then use the same filet knife to cut the fruit away from the seed...its ok if you skin the seed a little, the juicer will be able to handle it. Keep cutting off chunks of fruit until you're left with just the seed. This is the way i've been doing it and it works pretty good so far. You can also put it in the freezer JUST FOR A LITTLE BIT, enough to firm it up..that way the juice is somewhat frozen and won't go all over the place when you cut into it...just dont forget you have it in the freezer. The pineapple is pretty straight forward, just slice it up the same way you would if you were just going to eat it...and the raspberries just rinse them off and throw them in the juicer...hope you like it!!! Even though this is all fruit you can add a few vegetables to it to make it a little healthier...
Berries!!!
Ok this is the first juice made on my own, well not totally on my own. I got this from a bottle of Naked Juice, they put their ingredients on the side of their bottles, I went and got some from the store and juiced it up myself. The only difference is I juiced everything except the berries, I blended those in because I wanted to keep the skin from the berries in there...supposed to be really good for you...that's what you're seeing in the pic. Here's what it has in it:
30
Blueberries
3 Blackberries
3 1/4 Green Apples
1 Banana
2 cups crushed ice
Remember that green apples are a bit more tart than the red ones. So when you're making your juices, if its not as sweet as you'd like replace the green apples with red ones...same thing goes for grapes. Oh and bananas don't juice very well, you CAN do it but it comes out more like paste :) So if you want a thicker "juice" just blend the banana in instead of juicing it. It'll also make you feel fuller because its going to thicken up the juice. The only thing about bananas is that, from what I've read, the juice won't keep very long afterwards. I juiced mine and drank it the next day and it was fine...I just wouldn't chance letting it sit there for three or four days myself. My wife really liked this one a lot...said it didn't taste like ANY of the other ones I made...which I didn't know if that was supposed to be a compliment or what. So if yall try this one out let me know what you think of it!!!
Green Juice!!!
Ok so here is the green juice I drank for my 10 days. I tweaked the original recipe a little bit for my liking. Here's what it consisted of:
1/2 head of cabbage
1 cucumber
2 stalks celery
1 1/2 cup spinach
1 thumb size of ginger
3 green apples
I did this for a few days then I would add a fruit to it just to change it up a bit. Edwin liked to add lemon to his and give it a citrus type kick, which knocked the veg taste back quite a bit so if you like lemons add half a lemon to the above recipe. I'm more into the fruit stuff so i would add half a watermelon or cantaloupe or red grapes or red apples or pineapple. Just play around with it if you want and find something that tastes good to you. Just make sure you don't put TOO much fruit in it...the objective isn't to drown out the veg taste but to just give it a hint of fruit. The juicer that yall have been asking me about is the one in the pic above. Its a GE wide mouth juice extractor sold at Walmart for like $49. One thing I'm doing now that I didn't before is straining my juice after I juice it. Juicers don't remove 100% of the pulp, and I've never been a fan of pulpy juices...lol, is that a word, so I'd run it through a strainer twice and its a lot better to me. There is nothing wrong with the way it came out of the juicer, it was just more of a personal preference for me. As far as the green juice, I promise you it tastes a lot better than it looks, and after a couple of days your body will start to like it. If you want to thin it down more without adding water, throw in a couple more green apples or cucumbers. They have a LOT of water content and don't change it much in the way of flavor. And remember the colder the better, if you try to do this and your juice is semi-cold or room temperature you're not going to like it...if i'm going to drink it right then and there after juicing, i'll add 1-2 cups of crushed ice to it and it'll be good to go. Otherwise just put it in the fridge overnight and keep it refrigerated when you get to work...hope that helps!!!
A little introduction...
Ok so lets start out how I got into juicing. I would always see one of my co-workers (Edwin) drinking a glass jar with green juice in it. I always thought it looked kinda gross and one day asked him about it. Then came a flood of information, I could tell immediately he was very passionate about juicing. I later on found out he himself did a 45 day juice fast and lost well over 30lbs doing so. Me being the curious type asked question after question after question. I had been wanting to lose weight for a long time but with my schedule I hardly had time for myself. Most if not all of my time outside of work was spent on the kids or the house...let alone time to go work out or go running/walking. So for me I needed something that would enable me to lose the weight without having to exercise much, if at all. Another condition I had was that I didn't wanna change my eating habits because once I came off the diet I'd just put it back on. Then I realized I was the way I was BECAUSE of my eating habits. I watched the movie Edwin recommended...Fat, Ugly, and Nearly Dead. You can find it on Netflix. It is a story about a guy that does a 60 day juice fast and loses TONS of weight, and it practically saved his life. Very inspiring and very informative. If you're really looking into juicing I suggest you watch this movie first, it'll answer a lot of your questions and answer some you may not have had.
My previous experience...
I tried different kinds of diets in the past, one's I've heard about and ones i made up...and none of them seemed to work. I guess I needed someone to be able to relate to, that inspired me to achieve the same kind of results THEY did. I've tried the magic pills that are supposed to up your metabolism and help you burn fat but they seemed to only get rid of excess water and not really the fat. I always seem to have gone through phases...where i can see myself putting on the weight and didn't care, then eventually I'd get to the point where I would see myself in the mirror and not like what i saw. And I would attempt to lose it but it would come back and the cycle would repeat itself again. Well after seeing what Edwin accomplished and seeing as how I HATE vegs and this would probably be my only chance at getting the vitamins and nutrients my body needed, i decided to give it a shot!
Juicing 101...
I'm sure you can google juice diets and fasts and get the real background on what they are what they do but this is what I my interpretation of it is. It's strictly my opinion and may or may not agree with what others say. I feel that we live in a society where everything is processed and has tons of fats and carbs in it that we don't necessarily need. I was a straight up meat and potatoes kinda guy and my veg intake at its best consisted mainly lettuce, potatoes, corn, stuff like that...I never liked anything that you'd truly consider a veg. Before your body can start to burn up its "fat reserves" one of two things need to happen, either you need to up your metabolism which tells your body it needs to start using up its reserves, or you can force your body to do it by limiting the amount of food you are taking in. And forcing is a strong word, your not really forcing your body to do anything, its gonna do what its supposed to do which is store it and use it as needed. This is not like a liquid diet where you just drink broths and clear liquids of different sorts, when you do that, you're body is not getting the stuff it needs to function, that's why they don't work. By eliminating solid foods all together and replacing it with 100% natural, vitamin and nutrient filled juice, you're telling your body..."ok here are all the things i need to function, anything else in excess of this you're going to have to get from wherever you stored it". This in my opinion, is why the juice fast works. You're replacing all the nasty junk food, fast food with fruits and vegetables...so your body WILL go through a bit of a shock when you start...which leads me to my next topic...
What to expect...when you're juicing... :)
Ok so you've decided to juice, you're determined to do it and hopefully I've inspired you somewhat to get into it, because if i can do it...I promise you can. Now keep in mind not everyone is going to lose the same amount of weight. But then too remember that you have nothing to lose, if anything you're eating a healthier diet and your body can only thank you for it. Don't expect to see huge results overnight, although you will be seeing them daily. For the first couple of days, usually 3-4 days your body will go into shock because you're changing EVERYTHING that your body has been used to, which is a good thing. You may experience a few side effects of juicing in the beginning but i can assure you they will go away. From what I've heard, these are the side effects you may experience in the first few days...hunger pains, headaches, diarrhea, and drowsiness. Not this may not be a full list but these are the things I've heard people personally having that have tried it. If i haven't scared you away yet let me first say none of these side effects are as bad as they sound. The diarrhea you MAY experience isn't the kind of explosive-i need to make a fast break for the restroom- kind you sometimes get, you'll feel the urge to go just like normal. The headaches I experienced were slight headaches, not head pounding ones. If you've ever worked on your yard when the sun was out and came in and got a headache, this is the kind i had...it wasn't unbearable, but you could kinda feel it. The drowsiness comes into play because your body is starting to use a lot more energy because it now realizes its going to have to work harder to get the energy it needs by converting the fat into usable energy instead of getting the ready made-unhealthy kind its used to. And the hunger pains you get are just the normal ones you get when your body needs to eat. The whole purpose of the diet is to ONLY drink the juice and water, and an occastional coffee or two (we've tested this and it doesn't seem to have a huge affect on the juice fast). No matter how tempted you may be to eat something solid, don't do it...not even a sunflower seed!!! Just remember and keep saying to yourself, "If I cheat...even a little, I'll only be cheating myself...and I deserve better than that!" Once you get past the first couple of days you'll be fine. You can be around food, see food and smell it and WANT it but you won't crave it like you did before...so be strong no matter what and you'll get through those ten days. Shoot i feel like i've been rambling on forever, sorry but i've never felt so passionatly about something before and i truly want to share this with others so that THEY can have that same feeling about themselves and hopefully pass it on to others. So feel free to share my experiences, and your own with everyone you know, and if you want to share my blog site with others, by all means do so. I'll be posting more details on my Juice Fast here in the next day or so, so please check back often...thanks!!!
OK I tried another blog hosting website earlier and I didn't like it one bit. So I'm off to the second one, hoping it'll work better. I figured it would be more beneficial to have a page dedicated to those that are interested in reading all about my Juicing experience without having to filter through all my FB posts, because yea i know they can be a bit lengthy :)
If any of you have any questions what so ever about what I'm doing or what I've done please don't hesitate to ask, I'll answer all questions 100%, it may take a day or two but I promise I'll get to it. I'll post what I've gone through, where I plan to go and any juice recipe's i run across or make along the way...I'll start off with some background tomorrow because its a bit late right now, please feel free to post any questions or whatever you may have here...good night all!
