An Exploration in Juice Fasting: An Epic Fail

Yes, you read it right.  We’re doing a 10 day juice fast.  Why?  Because we’re crazy people who apparently like to torture and starve ourselves.  Okay, no not really but it feels that way at times.  A lot of the time actually.  Here is what’s going on…

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine told me I should watch a documentary titled Fresh.  She knows that Justin and I don’t eat any processed foods and she thought we’d really like this film.  And we did!  We liked  it so much that we kept our butts on the couch for several hours that weekend.  {This doesn’t happen very often as we no longer have cable.}  We continued watching documentaries and followed up Fresh with Food, Inc., Forks Over Knives, and Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead.  Not surprisingly, all four documentaries basically promote the same message: Eat local and organic, eat more fruits and veggies, eat less meat, and stop eating processed foods.  Done, done, done, and done.  {Well the last one is a continuous work in progress.}  But this message is something that Justin and I have been trying to follow since March.  Honestly, it’s done wonderful things for our bodies and our lifestyle.  But even with eating better and exercising more {I totally kick Justin’s ass at tennis}, when we saw Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead we knew that we wanted to try a juice fast and see what kind of results we could get from that too.  The documentary made me realize that I am way too young to have all of the health issues that I do and it gave me a lot of motivation to do something about it.  Along with having an interest in the health benefits of juicing, one of my best girlfriends asked me to be in her wedding next March down in Florida and a huge desire to get into shape welled up inside me.  So, last Friday, the juice fast began.

Martin Barraud / Getty Images stock

How has it been going you ask?  Horrible.  Yeah I will not beat around the bush.  I hate, hate, hate doing this juice fast.  Everyone said that days 2 and 3 are the hardest and if you get over those, then you’ll be fine.  Well, that was not true for me at all.  Around 5pm, day 1 became the worst for me.  That is the time that I usually start to prepare to make dinner and I love, love, love cooking and I love eating what I cook even more.  So it was hard for me to slurp down some juice that tastes nothing like stuffed flank steak and roasted Brussels sprouts and more like ca-ca.  Yeah, I just said ca-ca.  Poop.  Crap.  Nastiness.  I am sad to say, as much as I love vegetables and fruits, I cannot stomach drinking them juiced.  We tried about 12 recipes {juice combinations} and I was only able to easily drink 2 of them.  And those still took me over an hour to finish each one.  One juice actually made it’s way back up and others just make me feel nauseous at the smell of them.  I’m only getting about a third of the recommended juice into my system.  At this point, I can feel myself suffering from malnourishment and I don’t know if I will make the full 10 days.  We will most likely cut it short at 7 days.  Or even sooner if I pass out or something by Thursday.  It’s really just so sad because I wanted to experience the amazing health benefits that so many others have raved about.  And Justin just chugs his juice and would probably be able to keep going on the fast for another 30 days if he wanted.  This was an epic fail for me and I am so sad that I am not doing better at juicing.  But with all this being said, I still highly recommend that you check out the documentaries I mentioned and even try your own juice fast.  I seem to be part of a small percentage who hated it so maybe it will work out wonderfully for you.