On Saturday, January 11, I decided I was going to do a 3 day juice feast.
I’d been in Jamaica with Don that week before, and the time away gave me some time to see how unhealthy I’d gotten.
A big factor in the lack of health was because I’d been diagnosed with something called PCOS. That condition makes it VERY difficult to lose weight. Like… wildly wildly difficult. And the (overwhelming) odds are you gain weight.
Even while eating healthfully, I’d gained 30 pounds from 2008-2012.
That was VERY frustrating.
To show how powerless I felt – right before I moved to NYC, Don and I had a month where we were pretty gung-ho healthy. We were working out every day, eating well, doing all the right things.
At the end of the month, Don lost 12 pounds. I lost maybe a pound, depending on when I weighed myself.
So when we moved to NYC, I was a little bit in victim mentality. I figured if I couldn’t change my weight anyway, screw it. I may as well not deprive myself and eat what I want.
That meant we ate at the best steakhouses and restaurants throughout the city – usually ordering an appetizer or dessert in addition to dinner, sometimes even both.
I was eating gluten, dairy, refined sugar… all things I know aren’t for my highest good. But I figured, like I said, why bother?
That’s not usually the way I think, but the thing is… I had lost 100 pounds before. I always had this attitude that I could change anything in my life if I wanted to. And to feel like the PCOS made that impossible (and seeing pictures of heavy personal trainers with PCOS, read about people who had been dieting for ages and losing nothing, etc)… was absolutely demoralizing.
Anyway, on and off, and definitely for a while, I’d been feeling led to juice feasting again. I did a lot of juicing 5 years ago and now different signs/people were pushing me to do it again.
After I started doing more research, I read how some people have cured (or put “in remission”, for the cynics) their PCOS with juice feasting.
So I talked to Don about all this, and he reminded me how I’ve been talking about juicing for a LONG time. He challenged me to do a 3 day juice feast, which I accepted.
(I say “feast” instead of “fast” because I let myself drink as much juice as I want.)
I know people have different opinions about juice fasting, just like with anything. But the way I see it is that when you juice feast, you give your body a break from digesting. It’s able to take time and repair things that it hadn’t had time to do before.
Often when people juice, old injuries heal, diseases go away (there are SO MANY incidences of cancer being healed with juicing), their skin clears up, eyesight becomes better, memory gets better, they have more energy, and on and on and on.
So I decided to do it. And I am so glad I did.
Day 1 was rough – probably the roughest. I felt really dizzy during a lot of the day, which is a common detox symptom.
My brother visited me from out of town and ordered delicious Chinese food.
Actually… I ordered it for him.
Not easy. :)
Day 2 I felt pretty dizzy too, but I just laid down for most of the day and read.
On days 3-5 I’ve had tons of energy in the morning, periods of dizziness, and some exhaustion when I exert myself physically. My mental state is always really high in the mornings, and then at night I feel worse and hungrier. My stomach has still been growling. Most people say that goes away in 1-2 days, but not for me.
Every night, days 1-5, I’ve had these lightning bolts of pain in my stomach. They feel unbearable, and then they go away in a couple minutes.
There are cravings too. Don has been ordering food that smells SO GOOD!! And even if I don’t logically want it (especially the fried stuff which makes me nauseous to even think about eating), it still makes me hungry for something.
Mostly I’ve been craving avocado. I can’t wait to break the feast and have an avocado sprinkled with sea salt. That sounds so, so good to me.
Measurement wise, I’ve lost a few inches and pounds. I hadn’t been weighing myself but finally got a scale on day 5. I don’t know what my beginning weight was, but 5 days in on the feast, I was the heaviest weight I can remember in the past 6 years.
I think I’d gained another 15 pounds in the past 9 months, so now I’m erasing that. (I don’t know how I missed that I was gaining so much weight, but I guess when you don’t have a scale and it’s a slow 1-2 pounds every month, it just creeps on.)
I weighed myself again today, but I realized that my scale gave me 4 different weights depending on where I put it. So I’m going to start with the lowest weight (of course ;)) and track starting Day 6.
I know I’m losing weight a lot slower than normal people would because of the PCOS, but that’s OK. It would’ve taken months to lose what I’ve lost so far anyway. And ultimately this is about health – not weight (though I’d love to lose weight. My BMI has me in the obese category right now, which is absolutely crazy. 3 pounds until I’m out of that).
I also know I’ll gain some back as there’s some water weight being lost. But I know from past experience I won’t gain all of it back, and if I continue on the healthy route, which I am going to, it will be a fabulous jumpstart.
My mental state right now is great. It’s still morning time, and that has consistently been my high period, so we’ll see if this continues to nighttime.
My goal is to complete a 21 day juice feast now. That’s the number that a lot of people said it took to get their PCOS cured, and it also coincides with my trip to Italy. Don and I are going to Italy on Feb 10, so I’d like to take a few days after the juice feast to transition out with lots of raw food, then be OK to eat what I want in Italy.
(That doesn’t mean I will sabotage myself… but I do want the option to splurge while I am in Europe if I desire. It’s about balance.)
Living in NYC while feasting is very awesome. I can get organic juice delivered right to my door, and I have been.
I used to make my own juice, and I still might later on in the feast, but when I used to do it, I’d get super dizzy after standing up for over an hour. Right now I want to maximize my energy.
I also got really lucky because on day 4 I posted on Facebook about my cleanse. A friend named Ruchi posted. By very very random odds, she was also on day 4 of her first cleanse (we’d never talked about it), was doing it to help with PCOS that I didn’t know she had, we weigh pretty much the same exact amount, she has to end the same day as me because we both have travel engagements… very weird, but also very awesome, because now I have an accountability partner.
I’m looking to see where this takes me. I’ll keep posting… I’ve been craving writing a lot more lately. :)
