Raw and Green Challenge: Juicing

I started a Raw and Green Challenge for myself earlier this month.  In the course of one week, I got sick and my husband had to take a trip out of town for 5 days.  Needless to say, I didn’t meet my goals for several days during that period.  I was only able to eat one meal a day of cooked, easy to digest foods for several days.

This week, I watched Sick, Fat and Nearly Dead on Netflix.  The movie follows two men who do a juice fast to improve their health before moving to a “balanced diet.”  Both men make great strides in improving their health, cutting out or down on their medications and ending bothersome symptoms.

While vegans have wonderful gains when they first change their diet, we know that most of them begin to suffer various nutrient deficiencies once they have been on the diet long-term.  This movie seems to do well at striking a balance in helping people move towards better health by encouraging only a short-term juice fast or adding juicing into their daily diet.  Juicing and going vegan or vegetarian can help the body release stored toxins when the diet switch is first made, and it is easier to move onto a clean diet with nutrient-dense foods when you aren’t constantly battling cravings for garbage food.

Returning to a diet that includes clean animal products will ensure that your long-term health is maintained, especially with the nutrients in grass-fed animal products.  At the end of the movie, one of the men states that he juice fasts for 15 days every three months and tries to eat a balanced diet the rest of the time.  For those trying to heal health problems, I think that a periodic juice fast might be a workable approach.  I think every three months might be too often if your gut is in poor health, as you might not be able to store up enough nutrients to carry you through that time period without beginning to see some long-term issues.

I see a definite benefit to juicing daily while maintaining a nutrient-dense diet.  The movie mentioned a juice combination of carrot, apple, ginger and beet.  That sounded good to me.  So today I pulled out my juicer when I got home from errands and ran two carrots, a 1/2″ slice of ginger, 1 apple and 1/2 of a huge beet through the juicer.  I thought it was really good.  Next time, I’ll add more ginger since I love spicy foods.  I will also add more beet, to try to get more of a cleansing effect since beets are a blood purifier.

Watching that movie reminded me that juicing can be a way to get more raw and green food into me.  Over the next few weeks, I’m going to give some different juicing recipes a go for my afternoon snack or in place of my morning green smoothie.  My goal is to juice at least every other day to see if it makes any difference in how I feel.

Meanwhile, I still try to maintain at least 50% of my intake being either raw or green.  I’m doing a green smoothie every day, a big salad at dinner, nettle and red raspberry leaf tea, plus plenty of veggies and raw coconut oil at meals.  I’m still finding that I don’t do well without meat at lunch and dinner and my need for fat hasn’t changed much, either.

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