Juice Cleanse - Day 1

plan and grocery list

produce for juicing

Day one of Juice Cleanse starts off hectic. Need to return my daughter’s class rats back in the morning.  Luckily, My husband was helping out.  He was meet us at the school to carry them in their cage (which is a former aquarium tank) to the classroom while I kicked the kids off on the curb-side drop off.

Off I went to Whole Food to pick up all my juicing produce and milk for the baby (we get milk delivery, so having to BUY milk at the grocery store is an event. )  For those who don’t know, there is a local farm, Calder Dairy.  They deliver milk, butter, ice cream right to your doorstep.  You just need to set out a cooler.  The milk comes in glass bottles.  Not like the nostalgic bottles, but rectangle shaped ones.  It’s a $3 delivery charge and the cost of dairy.  We get 5 half-gallons of whole milk, quart of skim and monthly salted butter.  Today we left our milkman treats—Lindt chocolates from Easter.

Back to my juicing..

here's the ready-made juices

Before I went for my morning workout, I went to Whole Foods for all my juicing produce and to buy a couple of prepackaged juices because I wouldn’t have time to clean, prep and juice my morning Mean Green. 

They didn’t have one of the juices, I specifically set out to buy,  SUJA Vanilla Cloud.  Since I was heading directly to workout, I bought SUJA’s GLOW, which is their suggested breakfast juice.  I also picked up coconut water for my workout recovery drink.

I wasn’t hydrated enough from being sick on Saturday so I didn’t do a worthwhile cardio workout.  On those moments, I like to tell myself, at least I’m there making a concerted effort.

I wanted to make sure I was getting enough protein so I ate chia seeds about ½ tablespoon dry  then added another half tablespoon seeds to half cup of water.    Chia seed origins are from South America during the Mayan and Aztec civilizations.  It’s a power food - high in Omega-3, dietary fiber and a complete protein. 

produce for juicing

pulp on one side & pure juice on the other

For lunch I made a fruit juice consisting of: 4 long carrots; 2 Granny Smith apples; ½ pineapple; 1 orange, ¼ lemon.   You cannot juice the skins of oranges—it’s not good for you.  I just cut the skin and pith off.  I don’t want to say it’s toxic, but it’s not healthy.  You can leave the skin on lemons.  I core my apples and I take the tops off the carrots.  I think those things can be bitter so I just remove them.    All that fruit made 22-oz of juice!  I save 16-oz for my run at 3:30pm.  After drinking 6-oz of pure fruit juice, the sugar was kicking in.

 

22-oz of pure fruit juice!

bottled for later

After my 2-mile run with my Run Club and my 3 children, I gulped down the juice.  You’re suppose to drink fresh juices quickly, but not gulp it down.  It’s suggested you swish the juices around your mouth (think fine wine tasting or even mouthwash) so your saliva will aid in the digestion.  Since there is no chewing, you need the help the juice to “obtain” more saliva.   I don’t do this as often or as long as I should.

I did get headaches after drinking the sweet juices.  Not to say, I don’t get my fair share of sweets, but with juicing, it’s sugar without much fiber (if any).  It hits your stomach and it ready and available.  This was good for my post-run.

If it weren’t for a crying girl running next to me, I think I could have run better.  I mean that it wasn’t my previous stomach virus or doing the juice cleanse keeping me from a good performance.  Lottie is hilarious in that she’s complaining the WHOLE time how we need to stop, she can’t run, we need to walk, etc.  but she’s running along side of me for 2-miles.  I did have to stop a couple of times because she broke down on the middle of the pathway.   If she focused more on the running and less complaining, she could be a serious runner.

produce for "Beet This Juice"

finished!

I came home to juice myself dinner—which is what I call the red juice.  That’s something that contains beets.  I use the recipe “Beet This”  from http://juicerecipes.com  My husband says it tastes like one of our local food favorite’s beet juice (That’s Hut-K).  I tell him that’s because it has lime and ginger, which makes most beet juices taste similar.  Ginger adds zing and a peppery note.  Lime helps cut the earthy-taste (some people say the dirt taste) of beets and brings out the sweetness more.

I only could drink 4-oz because I was having a headache, from what I consider a sugar head rush from my 100% fruit juice. 

After a day of juicing, I’m still feeling good.  I did enjoy 8-oz of the Suja’s Cloud Vanilla.  I did get another headache after that.   I didn’t drink all the juices I should have today, but I really didn’t want to drink anymore.    One of the problems with the juice cleanse for me is all that sugar going into my system and there is nothing to counter that.  All the juices have a sweet taste. 

My family ate all-beef hot dogs, baked beans and potato chips.   While I enjoy that type of food at a BBQ, I wasn’t sad I was missing it.

Hooray for a successful Day One of juice cleanse!  I wonder if I’ll be saying the same thing tomorrow?