Juice Fasting for Mental Clarity at work and more great benefits

The benefits of juice fasting can be many. I recently came off a 9 day fast from food. Yes. Nine days without eating solid food!

Juice. Why?

Why would you do that you might ask. Well, I would have thought that in the past too. Over the last 5 years I’ve completed 10 extended periods without eating food. Some as little as 4 days, and some up to 9 days.

Energy & Healing

For me, a prime reason I fast is to give my digestive system a big long break. Think about it. It’s constantly working for most people. Their entire lives. They eat (often big heavy meals. Perhaps processed) and the digestive system has to work. Then once it’s done its job. We stuff our faces again. Poor thing!

Your digestion takes up a huge amount of your body’s energy. When you allow that part to rest, all the energy that would have been used by the body to digest the food can be diverted to healing the body.

I’ve noticed in the past that injuries and aches, pains that I’ve had for months might vanish completely sometimes in just a few days! That’s impressive.

Reset & Kick-start

It can help reset the system. From your insulin production to your general sense of wellbeing. It can also help kick-start a healthier eating regime or remover from a binge worthy holiday of indulgence. If you are addicted to something (like sugar) and you undertake an extended fast, you might be able to shift your taste away from it, as well as the physical dependence.

Mental Clarity & Focus

What you notice is that you tend to have a sharper mind. Especially if you have been used to vices such as coffee to get you through things. Yes, no coffee on this juice fast!

Super Nutrition

Also, because you are consuming freshly made vegetable juices (I don’t do fruit juices – way too much sugar), you get super nutrition. Lots of antioxidants and vitamins flooding your system.

Challenges

You might think it’s hunger. In fact, I rarely get hunger and if I do, it passes relatively quickly. It’s quite amazing.

The main challenge for most people is the detoxing period. After about 2 or 3 days, for most people, there can be detoxification period. This is because the body, realising that it now has an opportunity to heal and get rid of some of the toxins being stored in your fat cells (so as to protect you), sees its chance to get rid of them, via the blood. This usually results in headaches and worse for some people.

It really depends on how bad your diet has been before. If there’s been lots of processed food and drinks, coffee, cigarettes, dairy, meat, soda, pastries and so on, it’s likely going to be a little rough. This passes though.

This time however, I didn’t get any headaches. Normally I get one for about an hour or so on day 2 or 3. This time, I think it’s because the first two days I eased into the juice fast by incorporating smoothies first. And then on the final two days I eased out with smoothies again. So effectively it was days 1 & 2 – smoothies and juices, days 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 – just juices and then days 8 & 9 smoothies and juices again. My last meal was on a Friday night (homemade gluten free vegan veggie pizza, in case you were wondering!) and then my first meal on Sunday evening was steamed broccoli and quinoa (nothing too heavy advised for the first meal).

I wouldn’t recommend doing a two or three day fast. You could do one day. That’s great. Or go beyond 3 days. If you can do 5-7 days. That would be awesome.

Beware, you’ll need a decent juicer and invest quite a bit on vegetables. I estimate that my weekly vegetable shop would last me about 2 days on a juice fast.

This time, for the middle 5 days I had PRESS juice company in London deliver me juices. I’m one of their ambassadors, which I love, because they have the best juices and smoothies (IMO) in London.

If you want to know what I might typically juice, then check out this blog post for my daily juice recipe, and this one for my daily smoothie recipe (although they do change a bit from day to day).

And if you’re doing this to lose weight…Well, you might do. I did. But it comes back just as quickly. It can be useful to start a healthier eating regime, but don’t rely on it for weight loss. Please.

Mental

The hardest thing really is the psychological aspect. And social. You suddenly realise how much food plays into your social life, your reward system and relaxation. And how you might eat mindlessly even when not in need. For example, I love eating a bit of junk in front of a movie on a Friday night. It feels wrong to be there with a cup of herbal tea! You get over it and by fasting you really understand the mental interplay between food, your unconscious actions and how you feel. It’s quite amazing.

Protocol

In general my protocol usually was:

1. Morning warm water (1/3 hot, 2/3 cold) – 400 ml
2. Morning warm water lemon – 400 ml
3. Activated charcoal – 400 ml
4. Green juice – 5 x 500ml
5. Cucumber lemonade – 400 ml
6. Vanilla Leche (nut milk) – 330ml
7. Herbal teas (non-caffeinated) – 6-10 x 400ml
8. Clean water – as required

As you can see, it’s quite a lot of liquid. I’m probably drinking around 6 – 10 litres of liquid a day!

When I do the juice fasts totally on my own (without the help of PRESS), then I don’t have all the fancy (and lovely tasting) things like activated charcoal, cucumber lemonade and leches. I typically make about 2 – 3 litres of juice and then have lots of herbal teas and water.

Anyway, what are you waiting for? Give it a go. I would recommend, at least for your first one, to do it in an environment that supports you. On a retreat is great. With a friend who’s done it before. An online community doing it all together. You can still go to work while on it. If you start on a Friday (so Thursday evening), by the Monday you should be through the worst of it. I also continue my normally exercise routine. I’ve done fasts before and been to Cross-Fit sessions throughout the week. I wouldn’t recommend doing that if you’ve not got experience with fasting before. I would stick to walking and light yoga or stretching only.

Best of luck and let me know how you get on, or your experiences with juice fasts.

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