Try Something New - 45-Day Juice Fast

Hello again!Raise your hand if you’re still carrying around the remnants of last year’s holiday feasting and parties on your backside or gut. (Don’t worry; you’re not alone.)As most people head into cooler weather and the holiday season, it is not uncommon to pack on a little weight. In fact, some people gain 5-10 pounds every year at this time and work throughout the spring and summer to take it off. It becomes a vicious cycle when we fail to lose those last few pounds before the next holiday season rolls around. Do this for a few years and you’ll end up with some serious junk in your trunk.

Today’s interview is with Rob Philip, who decided to detox and cleanse his body with a 45-day juice fast after watching a documentary about a man who did just that to lose weight and stave off diabetes. He’s gotten some considerable health benefits in addition to the weight loss, and it might inspire you to add some juicing into your diet. We’ve both tried juicing before as part of a detox plan with a nutritionist, and we loved the results even though we didn’t always love the process. But we’ve never tried it for as long as Rob, so we’re excited to share his experience with you.

This is the sentence that made us both sit up and pay attention:

Be sure to check out the resources to this week’s issue in the sidebar if you are interested in trying a juice fast. We’ve signed up for the newsletter ourselves because we want to learn more about what veggies can do for our long-term health. The healthier we are, the more New Things we can try!

Until next time, we hope you try something new.

*Please keep in mind that neither we nor Rob are medical professionals and before you undertake any kind of new diet program you should consult with your physician.

What exactly did you try, Rob?

I did a 45-day juice fast. This was 45 days of consuming only water and fresh fruit & vegetable juices. By “fresh,” I mean juices I made at home with a juicer.

What inspired you to do this?

I’ll differentiate between the inspiration and the final catalyst. Despite living in Boulder, the country’s healthiest city, the last 20 years have allowed me to creep into the ranks of the 65% of the country that is either overweight or obese. I wasn’t unaware of this, but was having a terrible time losing weight. My doctor was making noises about the risk of type two diabetes and I was annoyed with myself that it was once again summer and I wasn’t fit enough to do the things I love to do - hiking in the mountains and running being the major ones.

With all that in the background and a mild hangover from the 4th of July I found myself browsing Netflix and happened upon the documentary “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.” The title was amusing and so I started watching it. In short, the movie is about an Australian man who was all of the things in the title of the documentary and who cured all of those conditions with a 60-day juice fast. Thirty minutes into the documentary I said to myself, “I can do that,” and started the next day. So the inspiration was years of built-up frustration with the situation and the catalyst was the movie.

What did you expect to happen, and how did that compare with reality?

I’m not really sure what I expected. When you’re in your 50s, overweight and have “tried everything” to get it under control you get pretty pessimistic. On the other hand I watched Joe Cross lose 80 pounds in 60 days of juice fasting and wanted that same experience.

I was hopeful I’d see something close to the results that were portrayed in the documentary, and much to my amazement actually did. Over the first 35 days of juicing I lost nearly a pound a day - 30 pounds in 35 days. I felt absolutely amazing and it didn’t impact my life negatively at all. At about 35 days I noticed that I was getting tired at the gym and not feeling as good as I had. And my weight had plateaued. At 45 days I elected to go back to eating solid food as I wasn’t seeing any obvious benefits to continuing the fast. In my case solid food was a mostly raw, vegan diet. Returning to solid food made me feel better, although my weight was still plateaued.

How did you prepare for the juice fast?

A normal person would have tapered off their caffeine intake and “cleaned up” their diet a little before starting. But I just started the day after watching the film. I had ingredients for one final solid meal that I wasn’t willing to throw away, so day one involved one solid meal and 2 liters of juice, and from then on it was just juice.

Did you make any mistakes along the way? If so, how did you correct them?

I wouldn’t so much say I made mistakes as I learned things about myself. The first thing I learned was that I am psychologically and possibly physiologically attached to the act of chewing. The first week or so I found that while I was not hungry, I desperately wanted to chew something. Fortunately I had a garden filled with ripening peas so I would grab a pea pod or two and chew until there was nothing left but the fiber (which I’d spit out). I suppose on some level I was “cheating”, but since chewing those peas allowed me to keep with the juicing I arbitrarily declared it to be a non-problem.

In terms of the actual juicing, early in the fast I decided to “finish” the spinach, baby kale, etc. that I had in the fridge and so ran them all through the juicer at once. For good measure I mixed a little spirulina into the juice to make it more “green”. I promise you that that was the nastiest green liquid I have ever tried to drink. After the first gag I mixed in more water, pinched my nose and chugged it. Outside on my lawn, in case there might be some involuntary & uncontrollable rejection of it by my stomach. After that I was more careful to stick to “known good” recipes. An apple juiced into the mix does wonders to make it more palatable.

The other “mistake” I made was being more active than the subjects of the documentary. I have an annoying habit of going “all in” and so in addition to completely revamping my intake I ramped up my workouts in both duration and intensity. I believe this was the cause of my plateauing at 35 days. I didn’t actually “correct” this while doing the fast, but have plans for how to do the fast again and make sure I have all the nutrients I need for active gym time too.

What are the most important things you did?

I think the most important thing was to treat it seriously and be willing to accept any negative or unexpected results. I knew there would be “detox” symptoms (headache, tiredness, grumpiness) and was willing to accept them. Also, I know myself well enough to know that a month of willpower is hard, and didn’t beat myself up over the occasional well-masticated carrot in addition to my daily juices. I also didn’t tell more than 2-3 people I was doing it until I’d finished a month. It seems counter intuitive that keeping something like this a secret is better, but apparently it is: http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself.html

Are you glad you did it, and would you try it again?

It was an awesome experience, and I’m pleased to say that as of October 30th I’ve started a second juice fast. In the two months since I finished the first one I have kept my weight stable, but it’s still not where I want it to be. Having gone through an intense work period in September and a vacation in early October I’m now back to a more normal life and am embracing the challenge to see how much more weight I can drop. The ultimate goal is to once again achieve the weight I was when I last ran a marathon, and that goal is 55 pounds from here.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to try a juice fast?

Do some reading first, to get an idea what it is you’re getting into. Watch the movie.

Take a week or 10 days to taper off your caffeine, meat & dairy intake and increase you veggie intake. Plan the start of your fast to be a Thursday, or two days before you’re going to have a couple of days off from work. There will probably be some annoying detox symptoms (headache, sleep problems, serious grumpiness) that you’ll better be able to deal with if you don’t have to be nice to co-workers, and those symptoms typically occur on days 3-5. I found that the third day all I wanted to do was sleep, and so I did. By day 5 I was feeling awesome.

Plan your juice recipes in advance and make sure you have the ingredients in the fridge and ready to go. Write the recipes down (I used sticky notes above my prep area) so that you are consistent.

Plan for it to be a little boring, and don’t worry about it. I spent 45 days drinking pretty much the same juice every day, with the very occasional variation. Your time juice fasting isn’t about being a gourmet or being a person who lives for taste sensations. It’s a time of cleansing, detoxing and recalibrating your body for the days after the fast is finished.

Can you share some of your favorite resources?

For inspiration, you won’t beat the movie “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead”. Available on Netflix to watch or you can buy it on Amazon. I recommend getting the DVD rather than streaming the movie, as the extra features are interesting.

For *lots* of information on “rebooting” I recommend the website www.jointhereboot.com, a site started by the producer of the documentary as a way to help people give this a try themselves. For reasons to do with lawyers the website itself won’t ever talk about anything more than a 15-day juice fast, but the recipes and advice are applicable to longer fasts. There’s a community forum for touching base with other people, and an “expert blog” where you’ll see input from a nutritionist.

What are you final thoughts on the 45-day juicing experiment?

I highly recommend the concept of re-booting your life by means of a juice fast. 65% of us are overweight and a juice fast will help. I can’t properly express to you how amazing it feels to step on the scale every day and find yourself down another pound. I was literally teary-eyed two weeks into it and down 15 pounds. I hadn’t been able to lose 15 pounds, never mind that quickly, in years. Two weeks and another 15 pounds down I was ecstatic. 10 years of weight gain gone in one month. But more importantly I felt awesome.

Psychologically I felt like I had managed to regain control over my out-of-control body, and physically I felt like a 30-pound weight had been removed from my shoulders.

What do you think? Is this something you’d try to reboot from all the years of holiday overconsumption?

Trying Something New on a regular basis is key to living the life you crave. If you want to know how to create the action plan to try something *really* big that you’ve always dreamed of, then this is the book for you.