Juice Feasting – Day 4

Today was considerably better than yesterday, so hopefully I’m through the worst of the detox. I still felt a bit below par, but overall it wasn’t a bad day.

Nuclear Waste in a Glass

Today’s juice intake was one quart each of:

  1. celery, cucumber, romaine, parsley, apple, grape, kiwi, fennel, red pepper, ginger, lime
  2. carrot, cucumber, celery, apple, beet, kale, spinach, arugula, parsley, sunchoke, ginger
  3. orange, spinach
  4. carrot, cucumber, celery, apple, beet, kale, spinach, arugula, parsley, sunchoke, ginger

This was about 1.0 gallons total.

The first batch was left over from last night. I didn’t particularly like it, but I got it down.

Juice#2 was so-so, still a bit strong with the greens. That was the first time I juiced arugula and sunchokes, so one or both of those likely had a stronger flavor than I expected. Juice #4 was made at the same time as Juice #2.

Juice #3 was delicious — easy to make and easy to drink.

I think I overbought the produce a little. I aimed to buy enough for 5 days, but it looks like I bought enough for 7 days. I’ll run out of some items tomorrow as expected though, so I’ll still need to do another shop soon. It may take me a few weeks before I calibrate my shopping for the right amount of produce. On the bright side, I shouldn’t have to throw anything away.

Appetite

I didn’t have much of an appetite today and felt mildly nauseous for the first half of the day. I just didn’t want anything to eat, and the thought of drinking lots of juice wasn’t very appealing. By 4pm I’d only had 1.5 quarts of juice.

Around 6pm my appetite began to rebound, and the nausea went away, so I was still able to get in my gallon of juice.

Colonic

I had a colonic this afternoon, and since then my bowels have been making strange rumbling noises. I feel pretty good, but it’s rather noisy down there.

Dreams

I had the most amazing dreams last night. They were so rich, vivid, and detailed. Like the previous night, last night’s dreams seemed much longer than usual, like I’m spending as much as a day or two in an alternate universe. I feel like my dream-world imagination received a massive upgrade.

In one dream I was a Ghostbuster on a mission to de-ghost a haunted hotel. While searching the hotel, Ray and I stumbled upon a tray of lemon cake, but there were too many ghosts nearby. So we called Peter Venkman on the walkie talkie to create a diversion and distract the ghosts. The diversion was effective, but it backfired on Venkman. It was funny hearing him running around screaming outside as the ghosts pursued him, while Ray and I scarfed down the cake as fast as we could. I suppose the lesson is that even while juice feasting, I can still have my cake and eat it too. 🙂

In another dream I visited with old friends I hadn’t seen in almost 20 years, and we spent hours catching up while playing poker together. It was fun to see how everyone had aged and how their lives had evolved. I was trying to decide how to play my hand of three 9s in a heads-up game of 7-stud when I woke up. I’m pretty sure I’d have won the hand.

I’m actually looking forward to going to sleep tonight because the dreams I’m having are so incredibly rich. I’d hate to lose this ability after the juice feast.

Weight Loss

My weight went up 0.2 pounds from yesterday to 178.2 for a net loss of 0.8 pounds in 3 days.

JuiceFeasting.com

I have a membership to juicefeasting.com where there are daily videos to watch throughout the 92-day juice feast. It was taking me a while to watch them each day because some have been as long as 50 minutes. But today I put my laptop computer in the kitchen and played the videos while I made my morning juice. That was a great way to start the day. I listened to the video of the day while washing produce, making juice, and cleaning up.

Salt Water

David Rainoshek suggested I swish my mouth with a little saltwater after drinking each quart of juice. Apparently this cuts down on the fuzzy teeth and helps prevent overgrowth of oral bacteria. I did that today, and it does seem to help.

Cravings

I had some strange but temporary food cravings today, such as for a veggie burger with french fries. In the months before the juice feast, I was eating 100% raw and found most cooked food unappealing, so it’s strange to see those old cravings resurface now.

Self-Discipline

I find that the more I conduct these personal experiments, the more disciplined I become, and the easier it is to take on new challenges. Knowing that I still have 88 days to go before eating solid food again can feel overwhelming at times, so it’s nice to have many reference experiences of previous successes to draw upon, like becoming an early riser, adapting to polyphasic sleep, and eating an all raw diet. I just take a deep breath and say to myself, “Only 88 days to go. It’s temporary and will eventually end. When it’s all over, I’ll be glad I did it. I can do this.”

The more you train your discipline muscles, the stronger they become. If you don’t train them regularly, however, they atrophy. Start small with easy 30-day trials or challenging 3-day trials, and build up from there. Focus on what you can do, and don’t compare your capabilities to someone else’s. Sharing your results publicly in some form is a great way to increase your accountability.

Daily Logs

I’ll keep posting juice feasting updates every day or two as long as I have something new to report, but once I get through the initial adjustment period and settle in for the long haul, I won’t be posting as frequently, so I can write about other topics instead.