Day 3: The 7 Day Juice Cleanse

What's up everyone? This juice cleanse is starting to get really difficult. At the moment Darcie and I are obsessed with food. We watch cooking shows, talk about what we're gonna eat when this is over and just fantasize about food.

It's proving to be very mentally draining. I keep wanting to cut the fast short (maybe to 5 days) but I'm sure once I'm over hump day I'll be able to keep on going.

Today I have noticed that I am feeling a little bit light headed and I'm taking more of an objective view on the world. In a work meeting today (beside it being really boring) I noticed that I was playing the observer while every else was interacting. It was like I was in a meditative state and I felt as if that is a direct result of me juicing/fasting. Aside from that my energy levels seem to be lower, however this could partially be due to the fact that I didn't sleep well last night.

I said to my brother, Gabriel, that this is the hardest thing that I have ever done. the thing that separates this from running an Ultra and other forms of physical challenges, is that this is sustained. For me anyway, any form of physical stress I put on my body will last 6 hours at an absolute extreme maximum. This juice cleanse is going to last 168 hours!

Today's ingredients

 Last night I got asked to include some information on whether I have been maintain exercise. Yesterday, I put a short workout I did in my post but on top of that Darcie and I went for about a 2km run last night with our dog Snoop. This was fairly late at night but it felt good to exercise and did a rhythm running, although I did notice that I was getting stitches easier. It felt weird not replenishing straight after exercise. Basically, I am going to keep exercise light and devise programs according to how my body is feeling.

Darcie and I found a way to bend the rules last night as we were sick of plain old cold juice. I'm going to share with you a nice juice/broth we made to warm us up through the cold weather. It felt awesome to slurp on something like this. Unfortunately it is not raw but keeping this cleanse 100% raw was never a goal of ours.

Winter Lovin'

4 Corn Cobs

Darcie smashing some broth

6 Carrots

Boil corn cobs

Cut of the kernels and then add in the juicer with 6 carrots

Pour the juice into a saucepan and heat up

This recipe will feed two.

The reason why we are consuming a lot of green leafy vegetables with these juices (and in our everyday diet) is because they are superfoods! They are a great replacement (when combined with other things) for meat and animal based food. 

Here is a trick though, to maximize your body absorbing iron from green leafy vegetables, make sure you consume Vitamin C when you eat them. These are some cool ways to do it (chuck lemon in a juice, use lemon in a salad dressing, drink a cup of orange juice with a meal). On top of that, the malic acid found in pumpkin and plums has also been proven to help with iron absorption.

Another thing to be wary of when trying to maximize iron absorption is drinking tea. Drinking too much tea or drinking tea with a meal reduces the amount of iron your body absorbs due to the tannins found in tea. Tannins forms an insoluble bond with some of the non-heme iron molecules found in plants. This then makes it impossible for your body to digest these molecules. It is advised that you should drink tea an hour before or an hour after eating. For example, if you are eating at 7pm, don't have any tea before 6pm of after 8pm.

Magical Juice

Tonight, Darcie and I are going to watch The Temper Trap so it will be interesting to see how we respond to the energy of the concert. Also, that's why this blog is going up earlier. 

Tomorrow I'll give you a couple of cool recipes we have used for today (try some watermelon) and talk about how Darcie and I are going to apply some of what we have learnt from juicing into our everyday life.

Peace out,

Matt

**Some people have voiced concerns about the risk of fruit oxidizing as we are making our juices a night before. I am completely aware of this but this is something that, for me anyway, is unavoidable. Ideally we'd be consuming juices straight after juicing them but it is hard to carry around a juicer with you throughout the day (haha). To compensate for this we juice every night for 'dinner,' otherwise we take bottles of juice with us to work. Thanks for looking out for me guys ;)