I think I can, I think I can...
Quite a few people have expressed an interest in doing their own juice fast and want me to let them know how our progress is, so I'm going to create a day-to-day journal of what we're going through! We weighed ourselves before starting, so at the very end I will post an update to show how much weight we lost. I will also post our grocery list, dollar amounts, recipes and juicing schedule for anyone who wants to start their own fast! This all started when we watched "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" on Netflix and were motivated enough to give it a go! If we make it through the 10 days, our "reward" will be buying a NutriBullet. Here's hoping!
Quite a few people have expressed an interest in doing their own juice fast and want me to let them know how our progress is, so I'm going to create a day-to-day journal of what we're going through! We weighed ourselves before starting, so at the very end I will post an update to show how much weight we lost. I will also post our grocery list, dollar amounts, recipes and juicing schedule for anyone who wants to start their own fast! This all started when we watched "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" on Netflix and were motivated enough to give it a go! If we make it through the 10 days, our "reward" will be buying a NutriBullet. Here's hoping!
Day 1: This morning when I was making and drinking my very first juice of the fast, I was excited and positive about what we were doing. Now five juices and several trips to the bathroom later, I'm a little less optimistic about what we've gotten ourselves into! Nick watched football all day and came upstairs to the kitchen multiple times looking for a snack out of sheer habit because that's what he does on Sundays. Not this time, buddy, no Cheez Its for you! I left the house for a few hours which was a good distraction from how hungry I was. We also learned today that juices don't always taste awesome. The lunch and dinner juices we had were so horrible I could barely choke them down. We ended our first day with a "dessert" shake that allowed us a pinch of cinnamon (woohoo!) and a few cups of herbal tea while we watched the Golden Globes and fell asleep to our grumbly tummies.
Day 2: Getting out of bed this morning was ROUGH! We set the alarm to go off an hour earlier so we'd
have enough time to prepare our breakfast juice, as well as the lunch and snack juices we'd take with us to work. Cleaning and peeling all of the fruits and vegetables for three meals / six juices took a lot longer than we anticipated. I keep waiting for the headaches to kick in from not eating real food, but they haven't started yet. Besides the constant hunger, I feel pretty good. The bathroom situation is also not as bad as I thought it would be, which I was nervous about when bringing the juices to work! I thought it would be a mad rush to the bathroom every time we finished a juice, but it's not that way at all. By mid-afternoon I started slowing down and getting tired, and by the time we got home from work, both Nick and I were ready to go to bed for the night. We made our supper juice (the lunch and supper juices are kind of tough for me to swallow) and then relaxed watching "Forks Over Knives," another food documentary on Netflix that I highly recommend and will hopefully influence our food choices after this fast is over. Dessert was fabulous, as was our nightly dose of herbal tea, and we are now all tucked into bed and it's not even 8:00 pm!
Day 3: So even though not all of the juices taste bad, it's becoming more and more difficult to swallow them, even if they're good. I'm just really sick of juice in general. And to think, we've only got 15 juices out of the way, 35 more to go! That makes the end seem so far away. But besides feeling sick at the mere thought of having another juice, we're still feeling good! I don't know if this has anything to do with the juice, but I am sleeping like a ROCK! They say sleep is very important during this juice fast, and they don't recommend intense exercise, so this might just be my favorite diet ever! ;-) We weighed ourselves this morning and Nick was down 3.4 lbs and I was down .8 -- no fair! Oh and FYI, beet juice stains. We learned this lesson the hard way by using white dish cloths and kitchen towels under our juicer. Now we use a towel we accidentally stole from a hotel in Mexico. Another note of caution is don't get dressed for work and THEN make your juice -- unless you actually want a tie-dye design of juice splatter all over your nice shirt.
Day 4: I'm reading the posts from the past few days and I don't know how I was so positive. Definitely singing a different tune today! I'm constipated, my breath stinks and the very idea of drinking another juice makes me gag. It's not that they ALL taste bad, I'm just so sick of juice. 20 down, 30 to go, almost halfway there. Kicking myself now for saying we'd do the 10-day fast instead of the five-day. Starting to think I don't need the NutriBullet prize THAT bad. If I wouldn't have made this commitment so public I'd probably quit today and eat a sandwich. Nick is more positive than I am today. Constipation isn't an issue for him, but he is also sick of drinking juice. We've been drinking coconut water every morning to help us stay hydrated, which also tastes awful, and I've been trying to do drink A TON of extra water now too to help with the cotton mouth / bad breath I've got going on. Every one we talked to and every review we read said that this fast would be difficult at first, and then get easier, but I think it's getting harder as time goes on. I can totally stand the hunger, I just can't take the juice anymore! Here's to a better day tomorrow!
Day 5: Saw a Schwann's truck today. Never ordered from the Schwann's man before in my life, but today I wanted to eat everything he had in his truck. Also, that Culvers fish sandwich commercial has never looked so good, and I've never even had a fish sandwich. I'M SO HUNGRY! Blahhhh, no more juice! On the bright side, today we are HALFWAY done. If we make it through to the end, will somebody bake us a cake to celebrate this stupid accomplishment? I don't know what we were thinking getting ourselves into this... Got a little too motivated watching life-changing documentaries on the Netflix! We went to Sam's Club tonight (and didn't snitch a single sample! [pats self on back]) to stock up on more fruits and veggies for round two, and on the way there we drove past a Chipotle. Ughhh torture. We'll be making a trip to Chipotle soon after we are done with this, but probably not within the first few days. A veggie burrito with peppers, onions, black beans and guac just sounds SOOOO GOOD to me! But let's be real, anything sounds good at this point.
Day 6: I told Nick that if I'm going to continue with this fast, I need to make some modifications. Maybe one less kale leaf and an extra apple here or there, just to make the juices more bearable. I'm still not sure why we're doing this, but whatever, might as well make it as tolerable as we can. On our last day, Nick and I are going to bring some Dixie cups and extra juice into work so our [un]lucky co-workers can sample the good, the bad and the ugly juices we've had to drink for what seems like forever.. Misery loves company! :-) Tonight we went on the hunt for some watermelon. -- In Minnesota. -- In the middle of winter. After calling around to different grocery stores, we finally found some at Byerly's. The local Legion has buy one drink, get the second for $.25 which we will not be participating in tonight. There's also a rib dinner there tomorrow night which we won't be participating in either, which is probably a good thing. Hoping next weekend we can be a little more exciting and social -- in a healthy way!
Day 7: So much for not getting headaches on this juice fast! Today I was in bed with a migraine all morning and afternoon because I wanted to try to sleep it off without taking any pills. That didn't work so by late afternoon I was forced to take some pills and was good as new a few hours later. We were invited to a friend's house that evening and of course we couldn't show up empty handed: we brought juice! It was fun to explain to the benefits of what we were doing to everyone there, and of course we had samples of three different kinds of juice. Everyone really enjoyed the different flavors, even a sweet little 3-year-old! We passed on spinach artichoke dip (our fave!) and reuben dip (another fave!), but they sure looked good! Really looking forward to sinking our teeth into some real food SOON!
Day 8: 40 juices down, only 10 to go! WOOOHOOOO! To keep me motivated and remind me of why we started this journey in the first place, I watched Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead again today. Seriously, WATCH IT! Doing a juice fast just makes sense, I'm so glad we are doing this, even though I had my doubts at first! Last night when we were explaining the fast we told a friend we also have to drink coconut water to stay hydrated, and neither of us are too partial to it. She then said that coconut water tastes like sweat, so now that's all I can think about when I drink it! So gross... but I learned today that using a straw helps because then it goes down faster and you don't have to taste it! We got the Target ad this morning and saw that the NutriBullet is on sale (you get back a $20 gift card after you buy it) so we prematurely went and bought our "prize" for completing the 10-day juice fast. Obviously we're not done with the fast and can't even use our NutriBullet yet, but it was fun to have that has our goal prize and know that we're SOOOO CLOSE to getting it (even if we already have it, haha).
Day 9: Shout out to my awesome husband who got up an hour early with me this morning to make six juices even though he had the day off. While I was at work, Nick went grocery shopping to stock up on normal food again. Instead of going nuts in the cereal aisle like he normally would, he bought a ton of fruits and vegetables that we will soon be able to EAT! It's kind of crazy that we're not craving tacos, pizza or spaghetti like we normally eat every week (although they do still sound delicious!) -- we more so just want things that are clean and fresh. Nick can't wait to have an onion and green pepper omelet on Wednesday morning and I can't wait to have a loaded Greek salad. And the day after tomorrow we'll finally be able to bite into that apple instead of pushing it through the juicer! Hopefully we remember how to chew! :-) See how positive I am compared to a few days ago?! Some of the juices are still tasting absolutely awful to me, but I get through it knowing we're almost done and thinking about all the yummy things we can eat SOON!
Day 10: I get to eat food...tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow...I'm going to Chipotle. (Hopefully you sang that in your head, Annie-style.) Needless to say we're a little excited to on the last day of our juice fast. We'll be laying in bed at night and Nick will ask me "How many times a day do you think about Chipotle?" and then we drive ourselves nuts by talking about food. But to be honest, we feel really good! We've gotten used to the hunger and I barely even notice it anymore. We've both been sleeping incredibly well and wake up in the morning with tons of energy. We've even lost some weight on this fast, which we expected a little bit but it wasn't the reason we did this. While I miss eating food, I don't actually miss food. It's weird, I know. I never wanted to break the fast because of food temptation or cravings. When I wanted to quit, it was because I was so sick of the juice and some of them taste awful. I shared some of my last juices at work today and one of my co-workers said it "has layers...like a fine wine." I don't know about that, tastes pretty nasty to me! Tomorrow, tomorrow, I get to eat food, tomorrow - you're only a day away!
Day 2: Getting out of bed this morning was ROUGH! We set the alarm to go off an hour earlier so we'd
have enough time to prepare our breakfast juice, as well as the lunch and snack juices we'd take with us to work. Cleaning and peeling all of the fruits and vegetables for three meals / six juices took a lot longer than we anticipated. I keep waiting for the headaches to kick in from not eating real food, but they haven't started yet. Besides the constant hunger, I feel pretty good. The bathroom situation is also not as bad as I thought it would be, which I was nervous about when bringing the juices to work! I thought it would be a mad rush to the bathroom every time we finished a juice, but it's not that way at all. By mid-afternoon I started slowing down and getting tired, and by the time we got home from work, both Nick and I were ready to go to bed for the night. We made our supper juice (the lunch and supper juices are kind of tough for me to swallow) and then relaxed watching "Forks Over Knives," another food documentary on Netflix that I highly recommend and will hopefully influence our food choices after this fast is over. Dessert was fabulous, as was our nightly dose of herbal tea, and we are now all tucked into bed and it's not even 8:00 pm!
Day 3: So even though not all of the juices taste bad, it's becoming more and more difficult to swallow them, even if they're good. I'm just really sick of juice in general. And to think, we've only got 15 juices out of the way, 35 more to go! That makes the end seem so far away. But besides feeling sick at the mere thought of having another juice, we're still feeling good! I don't know if this has anything to do with the juice, but I am sleeping like a ROCK! They say sleep is very important during this juice fast, and they don't recommend intense exercise, so this might just be my favorite diet ever! ;-) We weighed ourselves this morning and Nick was down 3.4 lbs and I was down .8 -- no fair! Oh and FYI, beet juice stains. We learned this lesson the hard way by using white dish cloths and kitchen towels under our juicer. Now we use a towel we accidentally stole from a hotel in Mexico. Another note of caution is don't get dressed for work and THEN make your juice -- unless you actually want a tie-dye design of juice splatter all over your nice shirt.
Day 4: I'm reading the posts from the past few days and I don't know how I was so positive. Definitely singing a different tune today! I'm constipated, my breath stinks and the very idea of drinking another juice makes me gag. It's not that they ALL taste bad, I'm just so sick of juice. 20 down, 30 to go, almost halfway there. Kicking myself now for saying we'd do the 10-day fast instead of the five-day. Starting to think I don't need the NutriBullet prize THAT bad. If I wouldn't have made this commitment so public I'd probably quit today and eat a sandwich. Nick is more positive than I am today. Constipation isn't an issue for him, but he is also sick of drinking juice. We've been drinking coconut water every morning to help us stay hydrated, which also tastes awful, and I've been trying to do drink A TON of extra water now too to help with the cotton mouth / bad breath I've got going on. Every one we talked to and every review we read said that this fast would be difficult at first, and then get easier, but I think it's getting harder as time goes on. I can totally stand the hunger, I just can't take the juice anymore! Here's to a better day tomorrow!
Day 5: Saw a Schwann's truck today. Never ordered from the Schwann's man before in my life, but today I wanted to eat everything he had in his truck. Also, that Culvers fish sandwich commercial has never looked so good, and I've never even had a fish sandwich. I'M SO HUNGRY! Blahhhh, no more juice! On the bright side, today we are HALFWAY done. If we make it through to the end, will somebody bake us a cake to celebrate this stupid accomplishment? I don't know what we were thinking getting ourselves into this... Got a little too motivated watching life-changing documentaries on the Netflix! We went to Sam's Club tonight (and didn't snitch a single sample! [pats self on back]) to stock up on more fruits and veggies for round two, and on the way there we drove past a Chipotle. Ughhh torture. We'll be making a trip to Chipotle soon after we are done with this, but probably not within the first few days. A veggie burrito with peppers, onions, black beans and guac just sounds SOOOO GOOD to me! But let's be real, anything sounds good at this point.
Day 6: I told Nick that if I'm going to continue with this fast, I need to make some modifications. Maybe one less kale leaf and an extra apple here or there, just to make the juices more bearable. I'm still not sure why we're doing this, but whatever, might as well make it as tolerable as we can. On our last day, Nick and I are going to bring some Dixie cups and extra juice into work so our [un]lucky co-workers can sample the good, the bad and the ugly juices we've had to drink for what seems like forever.. Misery loves company! :-) Tonight we went on the hunt for some watermelon. -- In Minnesota. -- In the middle of winter. After calling around to different grocery stores, we finally found some at Byerly's. The local Legion has buy one drink, get the second for $.25 which we will not be participating in tonight. There's also a rib dinner there tomorrow night which we won't be participating in either, which is probably a good thing. Hoping next weekend we can be a little more exciting and social -- in a healthy way!
Day 7: So much for not getting headaches on this juice fast! Today I was in bed with a migraine all morning and afternoon because I wanted to try to sleep it off without taking any pills. That didn't work so by late afternoon I was forced to take some pills and was good as new a few hours later. We were invited to a friend's house that evening and of course we couldn't show up empty handed: we brought juice! It was fun to explain to the benefits of what we were doing to everyone there, and of course we had samples of three different kinds of juice. Everyone really enjoyed the different flavors, even a sweet little 3-year-old! We passed on spinach artichoke dip (our fave!) and reuben dip (another fave!), but they sure looked good! Really looking forward to sinking our teeth into some real food SOON!
Day 8: 40 juices down, only 10 to go! WOOOHOOOO! To keep me motivated and remind me of why we started this journey in the first place, I watched Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead again today. Seriously, WATCH IT! Doing a juice fast just makes sense, I'm so glad we are doing this, even though I had my doubts at first! Last night when we were explaining the fast we told a friend we also have to drink coconut water to stay hydrated, and neither of us are too partial to it. She then said that coconut water tastes like sweat, so now that's all I can think about when I drink it! So gross... but I learned today that using a straw helps because then it goes down faster and you don't have to taste it! We got the Target ad this morning and saw that the NutriBullet is on sale (you get back a $20 gift card after you buy it) so we prematurely went and bought our "prize" for completing the 10-day juice fast. Obviously we're not done with the fast and can't even use our NutriBullet yet, but it was fun to have that has our goal prize and know that we're SOOOO CLOSE to getting it (even if we already have it, haha).
Day 9: Shout out to my awesome husband who got up an hour early with me this morning to make six juices even though he had the day off. While I was at work, Nick went grocery shopping to stock up on normal food again. Instead of going nuts in the cereal aisle like he normally would, he bought a ton of fruits and vegetables that we will soon be able to EAT! It's kind of crazy that we're not craving tacos, pizza or spaghetti like we normally eat every week (although they do still sound delicious!) -- we more so just want things that are clean and fresh. Nick can't wait to have an onion and green pepper omelet on Wednesday morning and I can't wait to have a loaded Greek salad. And the day after tomorrow we'll finally be able to bite into that apple instead of pushing it through the juicer! Hopefully we remember how to chew! :-) See how positive I am compared to a few days ago?! Some of the juices are still tasting absolutely awful to me, but I get through it knowing we're almost done and thinking about all the yummy things we can eat SOON!
Day 10: I get to eat food...tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow...I'm going to Chipotle. (Hopefully you sang that in your head, Annie-style.) Needless to say we're a little excited to on the last day of our juice fast. We'll be laying in bed at night and Nick will ask me "How many times a day do you think about Chipotle?" and then we drive ourselves nuts by talking about food. But to be honest, we feel really good! We've gotten used to the hunger and I barely even notice it anymore. We've both been sleeping incredibly well and wake up in the morning with tons of energy. We've even lost some weight on this fast, which we expected a little bit but it wasn't the reason we did this. While I miss eating food, I don't actually miss food. It's weird, I know. I never wanted to break the fast because of food temptation or cravings. When I wanted to quit, it was because I was so sick of the juice and some of them taste awful. I shared some of my last juices at work today and one of my co-workers said it "has layers...like a fine wine." I don't know about that, tastes pretty nasty to me! Tomorrow, tomorrow, I get to eat food, tomorrow - you're only a day away!
DONE!: Breakfast was awesome this morning! Nick made scrambled eggs with onions and green peppers, and I had oatmeal with a banana and blueberries. We packed Greek salads for lunch, and tonight we're making stuffed peppers for supper. We're so happy to be done with the juice fast, but we're also very happy we did it. Two weeks ago, I could count on three fingers the number of times we'd used our juicer, now it's become a staple appliance in our kitchen! Hopefully we can keep juicing as a supplement to our diet in the future and maybe have juice as an after-work snack instead of breaking open the cheese and crackers. This fast taught us discipline and to not let food control us. From now on, we will try to do a salad for lunch and dinner several days a week, and that at least half of our plates should consist of fruits and vegetables. Feel free to get in touch with me if you want more information about what we did, or the spreadsheet of our schedule. And if you haven't watched it yet, WATCH FAT, SICK AND NEARLY DEAD!
Totals:
Nick weightloss: 11.4 lbs
Katie weightloss: 7.4 lbs
Cost for 2 weeks: $300
Juices drank: 50!
Apples used: 45
Oranges used: 20
Kale leaves used: 96
Cucumbers used: 18
Lemons used: 14
Beets used: 16
Carrots used: 68
Times we talked about Chipotle: 36
Nick weightloss: 11.4 lbs
Katie weightloss: 7.4 lbs
Cost for 2 weeks: $300
Juices drank: 50!
Apples used: 45
Oranges used: 20
Kale leaves used: 96
Cucumbers used: 18
Lemons used: 14
Beets used: 16
Carrots used: 68
Times we talked about Chipotle: 36
That's a wrap!
{OMG I want a wrap so bad!...}
{OMG I want a wrap so bad!...}