Mono-Juice Feasting – Healing Journey Day 11

Journal:
I did not feel 100% this morning. I felt kind of like I was dehydrated and possibly on a “toxic overload”? It felt like things wanted to come out (felt a little nauseated) but alas everything stayed put. What I have noticed though is that when I have little spurts of not feeling good like that, it honestly does my body good to just not consume anything or to just simply have some water. I’m really beginning to understand that humans treat everything with food and sometimes our bodies simply need time to deal with whatever is ailing us and not have to worry about dealing with and spending more energy digesting food. I have definitely learned this: Do not be afraid of the feeling of hunger.

So what was today’s juice of choice? Grape. Now, I wasn’t really looking forward to grape. I like grapes and when I’m not juice feasting, I love grape juice. But I am going to be honest that I am really not looking forward to my juices anymore. The thought of veggies, nuts, breads, pretty much anything else seems better than another day of juice. Thankfully, I only have two days of juice feasting left and both of those days are slightly different than what I’ve had so far. Stay tuned to find out why! In the mean time, here is my juice for today:

I made it through the school day fairly well though the feeling of dehydration never left 100%. It at least wasn’t bad enough to interfere with anything.

After school, I had enough energy to go out to a closing scrapbook store to check out their sales with a few friends, to the dog park with my dog and my housemates, and then to the gym to do a 30-minute spinning session. I was planning to do more than that at the gym, but it was getting really late by the time I had done everything else and I decided that since work still comes early in the morning, I should go home and get some rest. Hopefully tomorrow I can do some more before cardio.

Towards the end of the day (or rather even half way through), I was getting really sick of drinking juice. In fact, I can tell my taste buds are changing because the juice gets sweeter and sweeter every day. I have never had a diabetic test done where you have to drink the super sweet liquid, but I can imagine that I’m getting just as sick of this as people do of that. It’s so sweet. Anything un-sweet sounds so good right now.

Once again, I ended the day only drinking 2L of juice with water on the side.

Review of Symptoms:
-Tongue not as white. I’m truly loving it!
-Elimination is little but I haven’t had any “food” so it is to be expected.
-Felt really good until the very end of the day when I had an overwhelming “hot flash” through my chest area a few times. It wasn’t the same as the heartburn/acid reflux feeling but literally like heat went through my body at one time in that one area. It was weird.
-Energy was great.
-Acne was… so-so. I really hope it’s just taking its time to clear up.

Weight at the end of the day = 177 lbs (down a total of 11.8 lbs since the beginning)

Total Calories = approx. 1230 (99% carbs, 0% fat, 1% protein)

Multi-Day Mono-Juice Feasting – Healing Journey Day 8

Journal:

I am really enjoying my mornings. I always wake up feeling so good and didn’t even wake up once last night. It’s so nice to feel “normal.”

Today is my last day to consume apple juice. Although I have found that it is much easier to survive off of juice than I thought, I am getting tired of apple juice. I’m ready to try something else. That being said, today I changed my apple juice. I officially begin my organic juices today. Here is a picture of what I drank today:

Now, let me pause and discuss my thoughts here for a moment. This juice was physically easier on my stomach than the Simply Apple. I’m telling you people, it pays to buy the organic, small-company, pressed juices. The best is to do it fresh yourself, but if you’re in a situation like I am and that just isn’t possible, then this is second best. Upon researching the full process that Simply Apple uses, they separate things in the apple juice then fuse them back together. Here is an article from the Chicagoist that explains the process they use in their orange juice for your personal consideration:

http://chicagoist.com/2013/02/10/simply_orange_is_anything_but.php

So today, I got up, got ready and went to church. Yes, the tongue needed scraped again. This is an unpleasant side effect; I’m not going to lie. Everyday having the same bad taste in your mouth is terrible. Luckily enough, it is easy to fix through scraping so I have to remember that it could be a lot worse.

Today’s church service was a dedication to our school and the staff within it; it was wonderful. It’s nice to be uplifted, prayed for, and appreciated.

After church, I knew there would be a potluck. I drove with my housemates and packed a bottle of apple juice just incase they wanted to stay. They did, which was absolutely fine (though the smell of amazing vegan meatballs and rice were tempting). I stuck with feeding the baby (he’s becoming an excellent time-filler) and drinking my apple juice. Honestly, I didn’t take enough apple juice (note that for future reference). But since hunger and I aren’t that distant of friends, I was able to hold off until we came home.

I honestly did NOTHING the rest of the day. I stayed home, drank apple juice, rested, and at 8:00 pm (after Sabbath) watched The Olympia. It’s a tradition that my husband and I watch it every year.

So even though I did nothing, I do think I figured something important out. I think the bulk of my stomach discomfort is coming from the fact that I “think” I’m hungry and I drink more juice. I haven’t been drinking much water because I know there is water content in the juice. But I seriously think that even though I’m consuming very reasonable calories still, I need to break up my juice drinking. I don’t think my body is ready to digest all of those calories yet though I want to make sure I’m not consuming too little calories that I’m feeling weak again. The reason I am thinking this is simply because as the night went on, I had a determination to finish that jug of juice. I paid roughly $15 just for that jug and didn’t want to waste any of it. But the more I tried to finish in the evening, the more “blocked” my throat and stomach began to feel. The more I tried to finish, the more of that acid reflux/heartburn feeling I was getting. The more I tried to finish, the more unsettled my stomach was becoming. So sadly, I backed off and did not finish the whole thing. Slightly less than 2 cups of juice remained but I just wasn’t willing to suffer for it. So with my decision made, I went to bed.

Review of Symptoms:
– Tongue covered in white again; needed scraped.
– Acne slightly more subtle.
– Felt true hunger again today.
– Slept through the night last night.
– Figured out that I may be forcing myself to drink too much juice which is causing the upset in the evenings.

Weight at the end of the day = 181 lbs (up 1.2 lbs from yesterday)

Total Calories = 1856 (100% carbs, 0% fat, 0% protein)

Multi-Day Mono-Juice Feasting – Healing Journey Day 6

Journal:
Guys/Gals, I made it! I honestly can’t believe I made it through 5 days without any type of food. Oh my goodness. I was so scared of doing this journey, not sure how I would be able to bypass situations where food would be all around me, or with my students even opening their food for them. But I did it and never even once even picked up a piece of food. I am so proud of how far I’ve made it on this journey.

Now last night, I did manage to sleep pretty much through the night, only waking up once instead of multiple times like the night before. And once again, I woke up feeling like a normal human being. The stomach pain was gone and I was able to get out of bed with no problems this morning! I went straight upstairs and got my first apple juice. 🙂 Yes, for 3 days I will be drinking apple juice. I have always found apple juice easy on my stomach so I figured this would be a great beginning juice for my body.

I, of course, was still a little worried about how my body would react to the apple juice. Though after the first few sips and only a very minor uncomfortable feeling from my stomach, I knew it was going to do down well. Oh how happy I was! The taste of apple juice was so amazing, although I noticed there was a slight off-taste. Come to find out, my tongue was covered in white. I had heard about this happening from dry and water fasters but had not noticed it until today. Yuck. Thankfully, it does come off with either scraping or rigorous tongue brushing. I have a cleaning at the dentist tomorrow and I can only imagine what they would have said to me with a tongue like that!

A question I have been asked is what is the difference between juice “fasting” and “juice feasting.” Juice fasting is where you are on a specified amount of juices (specific calories). Juice feasting is where you are still limited to only juice, but you do not have to stick with a certain caloric guideline. Now of course, you do not want to turn it into juice binging where you are over consuming more than your body wants, but if you know your body well, you should be able to tell when you are really hungry or not. I am choosing to juice feast because I do not believe in limiting calories. Yes, I just spent 5 days eliminating calories from my diet, but that was to fast. If you make a decision to fast, then you are usually doing it for a specific reason outside of weight loss such as for religious reasons or body healing. Since I am spanning the healing spectrum, mine was to experience the healing aspects though I was also intrigued through my walk in Christianity to partake in such a journey because God calls us to take care of our bodies and this journey is hopefully going to help me see how to get my body to be the best that it can be. Plus, as I mentioned in my introduction to this journey, it was also an experiment to see if we can erase the hold that food has on us. Yes, in the long run we depend on food to live; we have to. But instead of not being able to pass by food that is not good for us and simply having intense cravings or even those that can’t help but binge on food because they can’t seem to stop, that is another part of my journey. And so far, I am beating all of those typical situations and for that reason, this journey has been good.

So I managed to actually have a pretty good day at school. Though I seemed to have to talk to my class a little more than normal, one of my toughest students actually had one of his best days today so that alone was phenomenal. And how did the juice treat me? So good. I didn’t feel like falling asleep all the time; I actually did not plan my walks. I didn’t feel like sitting down all the time; I felt confident when I walked. I just felt so much better.

Do I still feel like eating food? You know, my thoughts towards food have decreased a lot. Sure, the nice croissant (I have a student that has been bringing croissants to school everyday) does sound nice, but just having some sweet, delicious, pure apple juice to sip on all day is absolutely amazing. My body can definitely tell that the energy is coming back.

Is my apple juice fresh pressed? Unfortunately no. In fact, the apple juice I have for today and tomorrow are not even organic. I did my best to find juices that were organic, but the price difference is astronomical. So you will see that most of my juices are organic, but today’s and tomorrow’s are not. The one qualification for my juices were that they had to only include one ingredient: the ingredient being whichever fruit whose juice I was drinking that day.

So, I’m going to hand out a TMI WARNING again because this next part is not so pretty. I will keep it to one paragraph. I don’t really enjoy sharing these parts because they can be considered “gross”, but incase someone does decide to embark on this journey or one similar, I want you to be prepared for things that can happen. If you read my day 5 entry, you will notice that I couldn’t “eliminate”. Well, to my horror/surprise, I don’t even have to try today. Lo’ and behold, it’s essentially a watery liquid. Yes, I know it’s graphic. It did go back to normal by the end of the day, but the first half of the day was the adjustment period. My stomach “gurgled” more than I think it has ever gurgled before with the adjustment of an “energy source” coming back into its system. It made today a little trickier since I’m obviously working but I managed to take a tiny break away from the classroom whenever I needed it so it worked out alright.

So after I came home, I actually did not feel tired at all! However, I did lay down to watch some YouTube again, and noticed the beginning of that awful acid reflux/heartburn feeling again. Thankfully, it didn’t really turn into anything.

I did get up and go to the gym, although I kind of wondered afterwards if I should have done the cardio or not. I did 30 minutes of easy stationary cycling. The reason being, remember that clenching of muscles feeling I described previously? I had that feeling bad tonight. The best way I can think to describe it is to imagine doing a crunch with all of your ab muscles straining, then someone punching you. But instead of being repetitious, it was a continuous state. Now that is a feeling for the books but one that I hope goes away soon. Yes, I did try bending backwards to stretch my abs and to see if my stomach muscles would pull, but they didn’t meaning they weren’t actually always engaged. For some reason that was just the feeling I was having.

For the first time all week, I actually felt tired. I tried to stay up past 11, but my eyes were fighting me. As much as I still wanted to do things, this actually made me happy because instead of me having to decide when I go to bed because I’m not “that tired”, my body actually was acting normal and demanded sleep. This I can appreciate.

Review of Symptoms:
Acne is worse and yet the same. The pimples are still more pale than before, but I have tiny bumps all over my face. I’m not appreciating it. But I have also heard of this happening as a detox byproduct. There is a reason why the saying goes: It will get worse before it gets better. My tongue was COVERED in a white substance. Again, this is something I’ve heard is associated with detox so tongue scraping is now something I have to do. I haven’t reported this in awhile, but my skin still stays red more easily than before. My hair is still less greasy than it normally would be by this point. Had more energy, feeling stronger. Internal “movement” was much easier today. Heartburn/acid reflux was only the most minimal while laying down this evening. I had a constant feeling of ab muscle clenching while a dull ache of a punch to the stomach at the same time that lasted throughout the evening. My body actually demanded sleep around 11:00 pm which is awesome!

Weight at the end of the day = 180.8 lbs (0 lbs down in 24 hours, total of 8 lbs down in 5 days)

Total Calories = 1811.2 (99% carbs, 1% protein, 0% fat)

Water Fasting w/ Lemon – Healing Journey Day 5

Journal:
Today was my final day of water fasting, but I did it with a twist: I added the slices of one lemon to my water. Why would I do this? I figured it would be a good transition between water fasting to juice feasting while also giving extra motivation the final day of no eating with a beautiful taste. Lemons also have the most minimal calories so it is almost like I’m consuming nothing anyways.

Let me tell you, that first taste of lemon water was absolutely divine! I have never had better tasting lemon water. It was so satisfying and just simply amazing.

When I woke up this morning, I actually felt like a fairly normal human being for once! I cannot describe how nice it was to wake up not feeling absolutely worn out and tired already. I actually slept off and on all night, waking up every couple of hours. I was expecting to be extremely tired this morning. However, my stomach was not burning and didn’t start burning until later though much milder than the previous day. My limbs were not cold even though I didn’t have the heater on and I was not as tired as I thought I would be; I was fairly wide awake. It was honestly the most amazing feeling after days of not feeling good at all. I hadn’t had any lemon water by this point so I’m not sure why the change happened, but I will honestly say that I have never been so thankful to feel good.

So as mentioned, the stomach burning did happen shortly after I got out of bed. It wasn’t near as bad as before, but still something noticeable. Honestly, it was so mild I barely noticed it throughout the day. But in the very first part of the morning, not only did my stomach begin to burn a little (again probably from my body metabolizing fat stores), but I felt a little weak walking around. What fixed that? The blessed lemon water. Again, I cannot tell you what the little flavour and tiny calories of lemon in my water is doing for my body. I did not even squeeze the lemon into it. I simply sliced up a lemon, put it in my water bottle, and kept refilling with water as I ran out. I feel more stable and stronger when I walk though I can still tell I’m looking for opportunities to sit when possible and my energy is not back to where it should be. Still, the improvement is huge!

I got through my work day fairly well, though once again, about half way through the day, I was still looking for any opportunity to sit down and limit my walking. Of course, as the day went on, the lemon began to lose its strength of flavour. But something is still better than nothing!

After I got home, I had energy enough to actually sit upstairs and have a conversation with my housemates which was awesome. I did end up coming downstairs to my part of the house and decided just to lay down and watch some YouTube. Partly to rest my body, and partly because it was a hot day and I wanted to wait for the heat to die down before I ran any errands. I probably laid down for about an hour watching YouTube videos and then somehow fell asleep.

I did not feel so good when I woke up. My stomach was hurting again and almost felt like my stomach muscles were cinching just not to the level of being “pinched”. It was a dull but constant pain and not a sharp pain. I got a touch of the same acid reflux/heartburn feeling that I had yesterday and though I tried to use the washroom with the same proper posture I used yesterday, there was no success. My energy literally felt like it was drained from my body while I slept although I continued to drink lemon water after I woke up.

I made myself get changed for the gym and made it out to my car. I was taking many deep breaths for the rest of the night. I had to go to the store to buy a cable to tie my dog outside as he chewed through his soft leash and there are gaps in the fence that he can easily fit through. The cable is 15 feet long and he’s a miniature dachshund so that is tons of room for him to go through almost the whole backyard. But after I was done going through the store, I felt winded and awful. Still, I made myself drive to the gym.

After I got to the gym parking lot, I knew I had to make a choice. I could either force myself to go in and do a small cardio workout and risk the chance of feeling even worse than I did, or just go home and see if I could sleep it off. I decided to go home and try to sleep it off.

I think today has truly been the weakest and most uncomfortable I have felt yet. It is not pleasant though I think it is so weird how good I felt in the morning to how awful I felt towards the evening.

At this point, I’m kind of nervous about how my body will react to the introduction of juice tomorrow. I am excited that it’s the closest to “food” that I will have consumed in 6 days, but at the same time, with the way I feel, I’m not sure what my body’s reaction will be. I only pray that it is a good reaction and that it will help my energy come back.

In total, though it felt like I drank more, I only had about 2L of water today. I did savour the lemon flavour.

Review of Symptoms:
Acne is noticeably better today. No new pimples again and instead of being a brighter red, they are starting to pale-down. That is something to celebrate. Stomach burning has gone down significantly becoming almost unnoticeable. Waking up feeling refreshed and “normal” was a treat. Sleep was lacking as I woke up every couple hours throughout the night. Something odd that I noticed was the veins in my hands are much more visible. I have pale skin to begin with, but I can see many more veins than usual. Stomach cramping in the evening. Energy zapped in the evening.

Weight at the end of the day = 180.8 lbs (down 1.8 lbs in 24 hours, down a total of 8 lbs in 96 hours)

Total Calories = ~15-20 calories

Water Fasting – Healing Journey Day 4

Journal:
My stomach officially hurts. I did sleep better last night, waking up at 6:00 instead of 4:00 for which I’m grateful for. But I can’t deny that I feel my stomach so much today. Today marks 4 days without food, and only 2 days of drinking water. I have not had any issues drinking water right away this morning so my adjustment period was definitely yesterday.

**TMI Warning: I think my stomach pain may also be related to the need to use the washroom but the inability to do so for the past two days. I’m assuming that because my digestion has been shut down – essentially – for the past 4 days that it is causing the lack of movement. However, later in the day (towards the end of the day), I was finally able to have some elimination with the assistance of proper washroom posture. In case you are not aware, proper posture involves propping your feet on a stool or bench that allows your body to enter a 35 degree angle. Here is a great video to watch by a company that creates a stool specifically for this purpose:

https://youtu.be/pYcv6odWfTM

Some people have complained about headaches when doing any kind of fasting. Thankfully, I’m not a person who regularly gets headaches  and so I have not experienced any kind of headache.

I also think I have figured out what is going on with the temperature reactions in my body. My stomach is ON FIRE!! I can only assume this is from my body metabolizing my fat stores for food/energy. But the burning in my stomach is causing my limbs to become cold much more quickly. And when I turn the heat on, it amplifies the heat coming from my stomach making me way too warm. I’m not going to say the experience is miserable, but it’s definitely not my favourite. Either way, I managed to go to work this morning and somehow make it through the day.

How am I feeling about food right now? Oh my goodness… would I love to have anything; bread, vegan pizza (though not craving cheese of any kind), vegan croissants, baguettes, etc. Oddly enough, it’s mostly bread products but I’m almost thinking more than the taste, it is the texture of sinking my teeth into something soft and cushy. Texture often plays a big part in our food desires, and the thought of something so nice and cushy that almost melts in your mouth sounds absolutely amazing. But in reality, almost anything vegan would do. I’m starting to think about food more often, though it’s still fairly easy to bypass food, especially when the students are eating and microwaving their food, and the stash that is ever beside me on the floor. My NewsFeed on Facebook is also still full of people making different delicious vegan foods that look so appetizing, and yet somehow I’m still going strong. That being said, I am so looking forward to having lemon in my water tomorrow and especially to starting my juice feast on Thursday. I am currently just counting down the days to having some type of calories in my body. The time is actually going by fairly quickly though I look forward to feeling stronger again.

I did not go to the gym tonight. I didn’t make this decision based on energy stores, but simply because I don’t want to kill myself when I’m only in the middle of the work week. Work has been particularly stressful and unfortunately, the lack of calories in my body has caused my brain not to function at 100% capacity causing things to wear me out more than normal. Instead of being on my feet all day, I take more opportunities to sit down and I choose my walking trips a little more carefully. I also noticed that while I’m walking, I also feel almost like my legs are a little more jelly-like than normal. This is something I more than look forward to going away.

I drank approximately 3L today which is an improvement from yesterday’s 1.25-1.5L.

Review of Symptoms:
Face has no changes. Not really any new acne, but still a lot of room for improvement. Stomach pain is more prevalent. Body feels weak though somehow continues to do everything I need it to do. Mentality is not as strong as it could be, though it does seem to be stronger when I’m not physically active and draining my body that way. Stomach almost felt a little bloated today which is an interesting thing to consider. Thoughts are going towards food more often and counting down the days to lemon water tomorrow and my juice feast starting Thursday. Still experiencing temperature extremes though for the most part, I have been very warm in my midsection (stomach on fire) and very cold in my limbs. Very minimal shaking in the morning today though very weak. I also experienced some – at least what feels like – heartburn or acid reflux in the later part of the evening. I am not sure why this is occurring, but this is also not a pleasant experience.

Weight at the end of the day = 182.6 lbs (down 2.8 lbs in 24 hours, down 6.2 lbs in 72 hours).

Total Calories = 0