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Well. It’s over. Tonight is the final night. All the juice is drank and the juicer has been cleaned for the last time.

For my last juice, I tried the Sunset Blend juice from jointhereboot.com. While I had sworn off the beet recipes, I thought I should have one last epic juice before this all came to an end. Let me just say, it was disgusting. It looked like movie blood and tasted like shoe.

I am glad I did all this though. It was a very interesting and thought provoking experience.

I wanted to try it, as an experiment. An experiment in what calorie deprivation would do to me (as an individual) and to see how much weight I would lose. More importantly I also wanted to reset my brain. I make a lot of bad choices when it comes to deciding what to eat. I will fully admit that I have often picked french fries when I should have had the carrots. I wanted to step back from that and take a break. I think I did that. Whether it translates into long term sustained change is something we’ll have to wait and see, but that is the plan.

As you might expect I did spend a certain amount of time thinking about food and eating. It got much less intense after the first two days. By day 8, it was old hat. It was just my diet and I had gotten used to it.

Weight loss as of this morning is 13 lbs. I thought it would be a bit higher, but that’s still a lot of weight in 9 days (since I weighed in on day 1).

If you are thinking of trying it, I say go for it. It was hard, but doable, and I enjoyed the challenge.

I will blog some follow up stuff over the next few days before I draw the curtains on this adventure.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for coming along for the ride!

90% done!

I don’t have a lot to say tonight. I will say today was a non-event. At this point it’s not even hard. When lunch time came I was sorry to not be heading out with co-workers to hang out, but other than that it was fine.

I am getting a little bored with making the juices. I started to make one tonight and after I had juiced the carrots and apples, I just stopped there. That’s what I am drinking as I write this.

On to day 10 and the conclusion.

Day 8!

Let me start by saying that I am really ready for this to be over. It was fun, but I have had it with all my meals being cold juice, and no coffee and no beer. I just want a hot meal and cup of coffee.

Having said that, I don’t want to discourage anyone. It’s going pretty well at this point, but I miss some of those things. The longer it goes on and closer to the end I get the easier it feels.

My juice menu is pretty static. I have found 3 or 4 juices I like and I have been sticking with them. I do tend to make slight adjustments to each one. Since apples and tomatoes and such are not a consistent size each time I make something it tastes a little different. I would highly recommend that you try a multitude of juices before you start a fast so you know what you like. Once you are in the midst of it, the time to experiment is very limited.

I feel pretty rested at this point. However my fitness is hurting. I ran 3 miles on the treadmill today at a 10 minute per mile pace. Normally this pace/distance would be a pretty easy run. When I finished my heart rate was 170. That’s way too high for this work out. Not that I thought calorie restriction would be good for fitness, but it’s amazing to me just how much it has impacted it. I really wish I had collected more data, like blood levels, blood pressure etc. I think that would be very interesting to see.

Tonight I made, what I hope is my last trip to the grocery store to pick up vegetables and fruit for the remaining 2 days.

See you suckers on day 9!

Day 7. I’m on a roll now. The days are ticking off and I feel pretty good.

The weight loss has slowed to a trickle, which is fine. Total weight loss at this point is 11 lbs. I had hoped for a gross weight loss of >= 15 lbs with a net weight loss of >= 7. I suspect I will lose a bit more yet and might hit those numbers.

I finally went running. I had not gone since day 1 and was jonesing it for some mileage. I went to the YMCA since it’s kind of hairy out there on the mean streets. I did 3 slow miles (~11:00 m/m). It was great to stretch the legs, but I was tired when I was done. I guess it’s the tiredness but I felt really relaxed afterward. I am guessing a lot of hippies confuse the weakness and general malaise as some sort of calming enlightenment. I don’t see how anyone could perform athletically at more than a basic level on such a restricted diet. I hope to run at least tomorrow, and possibly Wednesday as well. I will run this abbreviated distance.

Really missed having a beer today. Watching football with water just isn’t the same. :)

3 days to go. I am working from home 2 of them so that will make life pretty easy. Really looking forward to Thursday.

Good night, and good luck.

Here we are, on the downhill side of the fast. 4 days to go after today (a mere 12 juices).

I have been avoiding juices that contain beets as I don’t like the flavor in a drink. I think I might continue to do so. Beets are one of my favorite foods, and I don’t want to ruin them by drinking them. This fast is transient. Beets are forever.

We got about 3″ of snow last night, and I was dreading shoveling/snow blowing but I had plenty of energy for it. I felt so good today that I think I’ll hit the gym tomorrow and try a short run.

For breakfast I went with 2 pears, pineapple slices and an orange (~20oz). I would drink this even if I weren’t fasting. In fact my plan is to have some combination of pears/pineapple/orange in the morning for the rest of the fast (frickin’ yum man).

Lunch and dinner were repeats so I’ll leave that out.

I am sick to death of washing that juicer. While I think it’s a perfectly nice juicer, and I also think it’s not that difficult to clean I am still over it. 3 times a day, every day. I plan to do a review post on the juicer when this is all over, so I’ll stop there.

Time for herbal tea (no caffeine/no sugar) and then bed.

Later.

Half way.

I felt about the same as yesterday. Food cravings weren’t awful, and I am feeling like I can make it the whole ten days. I was another pound lighter this morning bringing the total to 10 lbs in 4 days.

No new recipes today, so I will skip that part of the post.

I am definitely tired. Fasting certainly hasn’t left me with a ton of excess energy. A lot of the anecdotal posts I have read often talk about a burst of energy after about 3 or 4 days. So far, I have not found that to be true. I was able to be productive at work, but certainly do not feel very sharp mentally.

Until tomorrow, happy fasting.

Day 4.

I lost another 2 lbs by this morning and generally woke up feeling relaxed, but weak. After some remarks on IRC I decided that maybe I wasn’t consuming enough juice. Yesterday I was averaging about 16oz per meal. This morning I upped my intake to 24oz for breakfast and felt very full afterward. It was so delicious that I gulped it down.

Pears and pineapple:

For lunch, I finally got around to trying the Gazpacho Juice from jointhereboot.com. Again I added some sea salt and ground pepper. I also substituted spinach for the parsley and only used half a lime. It was also pretty great. Very filling.

I managed another 3 mile walk, but I was pretty tired after that.

For dinner I made the Apple-Cabbage-Carrot-Swiss Chard-Ginger-Lemon juice from jointhereboot.com. I forgot to add the ginger, but didn’t end up missing it. My palate has finally come around and I really enjoyed that juice. I am also now easily feeling full. After 16oz, I put the rest down and couldn’t finish it. Amazing really. After only having 48oz of liquid sustenance today, I could only manage to drink another 16oz for dinner.

As the day has progressed I have felt better and better. I don’t feel slow any more, I am also not craving food nearly as badly. Don’t get me wrong, I see pictures of pizza, or remember Frites from Cafe Bruges and I strongly want them. But it’s not nearly as jarring as it was at first. Which is great, that’s part of the reason I did this.

Tomorrow I am working in the office, so I have already washed all the vegetables for breakfast and lunch to make life easier in the morning.

Until then.

Day three. Whew. 7 to go.

I had trouble getting out of bed this morning. The fast, coupled with the baby not sleeping well, and Shelly coughing all night have made for some pretty restless nights. This morning I was out of energy.

I finally got out of bed at 6:50 am, and helped get everyone else out the door. I worked from home, so that was a nice respite from having to make breakfast and lunch before leaving the house. While I think the juicer I have is somewhat easy to clean, getting out all the stuff, juicing and cleaning, are time consuming tasks.

For breakfast I juiced 2 oranges and 2 pears. It was like a feast. The flavor was perfect and it filled me right up. At this point my stomach doesn’t expect to be filled with tons of food, so a pint glass of juice is all it takes. I think I’ll have the same thing tomorrow (nom!).

For lunch I found a recipe online and adapted it to this:

5 Roma Tomatoes
1 Celery Stalk with the leaves
1 Large Carrot
1 Cup of Spinach
1/2 a peeled lemon

I added some sea salt and ground pepper to this. It was freakin’ magic. I ended up having the same thing for dinner it was so good. I am not sure if I am just so deprived at this point that it tasted good, or it was actually good.

While I didn’t quite feel up to running today I did go for a 3 mile walk over lunch. I didn’t push the pace or anything, but it was good to stretch my legs. I am going to at least walk again tomorrow, possibly run (but I won’t decide that till it happens).

I think today was a bit easier, but certainly not effortless. I still crave food, and sometimes I will forget I am fasting, and for just a second think “I am hungry, I should eat”. That stings. It’s very similar to the urge to smoke when you forgot you quit.

On the upside, I look at these vegetables before I put them in the juicer and I think “Sweet mercy, I would eat that raw right here”. Which I like. I wanted to reset my ideas about food, and that’s a good first step. It shouldn’t take a cookie covered in mayo with fries on it to make you hungry.

Also on the upside I have lost a bunch of weight. Sunday I was boardgaming and drinking beer all day. I was also plowing through food and snacks. As a result my weight was artificially high on Monday when I began fasting. I lost 5 lbs in the first 24 hours, and then another 2 by this morning. Not all of that is fat, that’s not possible, but it is a pretty drastic shift in weight. I am interested to see my weight change.

Day 2 has been a little smoother, but still has had it’s trials.

I managed to oversleep this morning and had to hustle to get my breakfast juice and my lunch juice prepared and get out the door at a reasonable time. I ended up taking both juices with me and consuming them there.

The breakfast juice was 4 oranges and a cup and half of raspberries. It tasted OK, but was very strong, so I cut it with water. I had about 24oz of juice and added another 8oz of water. After consuming 32oz of juice over the course of the morning I wasn’t really “hungry” for the Green Juice (substituting chard for the kale). The flavor was not great, and since I was already full, I only drank 4oz of it.

I have felt mentally very slow today. I am certain this is from the diet. I was having trouble coming up with words and at one point I was giggling for no reason.

Tonight was difficult. I had to endure Shelly cooking dinner for the kids, and a grocery trip where I bought food for every one else here.

For dinner I had the Carrot-Kale Combo (s/kale/chard/). Honestly, it wasn’t bad. At first I didn’t want to drink it, but I knew that I needed to consume some calories tonight so I started to force it down. After about 2 or 3 gulps, I decided that it wasn’t that bad and happily drank the rest.

A couple of times today I was struck by some of the similarities between fasting and quitting smoking. While I thought quitting smoking was more difficult, this has some of the same elements. The most striking is the perseveration on the task. You are abstaining from something, so there is nothing to do except sit around and think about what you are not doing.

Right now, I have my zen on. I am sitting in the basement office with the headphones on listening to Chris Issak, Wicked Games and relaxing. I feel pretty good.

Tips for day 2:

• Drink plenty of water
• Don’t be afraid to hate some of the juices
• Read some of the literature from the bead sucking hippies that do this, it’s comical
• Ginger spices up the juices, get some
• I wish I had tried more juices before I started
• When you go to bed on day 2 of 10, you’re 20% done