The last 5 days of my juice feast

I’m a little overdue in making this post, but I figured I’d also blog about how the juicing played out.

I ended up staying on the juice feast for 9 3/4 days.

The last 4 3/4 days were up and down.

Some of the positives were that I had tons of energy in the morning. At one point I posted on Facebook that I had so much energy pulsing through me that I had to get up and dance it out. I couldn’t sit still if I wanted to.

I also knew that I’d been releasing a lot of stored emotions, which I was happy about.

(Side note – you release a lot of emotions on a juice fast. That’s because most people have emotions still locked in their body. Emotion = “energy in motion”, and when you do something like emotionally eat, you’re not allowing the emotions you’re feeling to move through you. They get stuffed right back in with food.

During a detox (and sometimes an intense massage or workout) when your body is purging, random emotions like sadness, anger, frustration, etc… start coming out.)

Given that I grew up emotionally eating with a highly turbulent childhood, I had a lot of emotions to let go of. I’d start randomly recalling things that happened to me when I was younger as they passed through me.

On this feast, I was hungry the entire time. Even 9 days in, my stomach was growling. I would be absolutely ravenous every night. For most people, and in my past experiences, hunger stops after 2-3 days as the body adjusts to stopping digestion for a while. This was so not the case for me.

I didn’t really crave a ton of food while juicing, though I had been cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner the whole time for Don. I made some delicious things (cornish hens with roasted potatoes, yummy slow cooker recipes that smelled up the apartment, etc). Mostly I was OK, though there was a couple times I got BBQ sauce on my finger and so wanted to lick it off. ;)

I was also excited that after a few days into the feast, my measurements were the same as they were 10 months ago. I felt like I time traveled back to then in just a few days of juicing. :)

It’s now 10 days after the feast. I’m not sure how much weight I lost, as I didn’t weigh myself from the beginning, but I know I’m 2.4 pounds heavier than my day 6 weight. My measurements got smaller in my thigh and hips, and I gained half an inch on my waist.

Considering I’ve been traveling and haven’t 100% clean (I’d say 80-90% though as I’ve been naturally favoring salads and healthy options), I’ll take it.

I went off of the juicing for a few reasons.

First, I went to get a colonic and talked to the practitioner. She told me she’d worked with a lot of people who were cleansing and that if my stomach was still growling, it was probably time to end the feast.

I’m not sure, in retrospect, if she was right, but we’ll see.

Second, I was getting very very low energy at some points. Don said I didn’t look good.

Third, I was reading on some forums about people who gained a ton of weight back, despite eating clean after. I didn’t do the feast for weight loss, but I certainly enjoyed the benefits and didn’t want to lose them. I was beginning to think short fasts would be the best for weight loss, especially considering my next point:

I read about someone else who got PCOS out of her system by fasting for 7 days and then eating extremely well for a while, which I’d already committed to doing again, so I figured I didn’t need to keep juicing to get my desired result.

Going off the juice, I did my best to transition well. My first food was half an avocado with sea salt, which to be honest, was a little anticlimactic. I’d been craving it so much during the 9 3/4 days, but it just ended up tasting “meh”.

Don told me that after I ate it, color had been restored to my face.

In the 10 days that have followed, I’ve had juice most days. It was a little tough while traveling, but I think I only missed it one day. I rented a car in both San Diego and Maui (where I went after the fast) and drove to Whole Foods and/or places I found on Yelp.

Getting off the feast help reset my eating too. Any time I smell food that’s highly processed or fried, I get nauseous. Don had a Reese’s bar shortly after I broke the fast and I felt like I’d throw up smelling it. It just smelled so much of chemicals. We had a BBQ in San Diego and as I opened up 4 bags of chips for our guests, each bag made me feel more and more nauseous.

My friend Ruchi who I ended up feasting with broke it the same time that I did. She lost 9 pounds, kept 8 off for 5 days, and decided to go back on juicing. She’s lost a few more pounds since then.

I am craving doing more of the juicing, actually :), so we’ll see what happens. I leave for Italy in 8 days, but I might do a 1-day or 3-day, or even “juicing till dinner”. I’ll see how I feel. Today I’m actually a little under the weather, so I’m mostly just drinking juice and soup anyway. :)