My Juice Fast Journey

[Kyle]

It's not really a juice fast, but I'm going on a "liquid" diet for three days. Background- my 22 year old son tried and failed to do a three day water fast last week. He made it 36 hours and had to quit. I told him this weekend, if he wanted, I'd do a "juice fast" with him. I told him that he needed to get calories during the day or he'd be too hungry and too exhausted. So we discussed the parameters and agreed on this:

Morning: Frozen fruit smoothie (homemade)- mine is store-bought frozen strawberries, bananas and grapes, with 2 cups of unsweetened coconut milk (from the dairy section, not full fat in the can), and a fresh banana. 345 calories.

Throughout the day: Banana, orange and strawberry juice. If I drink the whole thing it's 840 calories.

Dinner: Same frozen fruit smoothie as breakfast. 345 calories.

Caloric total: 1,530

So I'm not starving myself of calories, but everything is something you drink.

My experience with this type of stunt is that you feel great until the evening of the first day, when you just decide to go to bed early instead of sitting on your couch and thinking only of what you could be eating. Second day you feel pretty good and you think, "Hmmm. I bet I could stretch this out over five days! This is easy!" On the third day, you wake up feeling like the second day, and then as the end of day approaches, you again get obsessed about what you are going to eat for breakfast, and you feel like an idiot for buying two extra days of supplies earlier that morning. But you struggle through it and accomplish your goal. Then you wake up on the morning of the fourth and eat nine bagels.

[Kyle]

Day 1- 11:35 am.

Feeling pretty good about this. I'm not hungry and my nine o'clock smoothie is keeping me satisfied! I tried a glass of juice and it was good, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to drink the entire 59oz container today. I've got this y'all!

[Mike]

I'm interested to see how it goes. Keep posting. I'm on a drink-related journey of my own. We can compare notes.

[Kyle]

Day 2- 5:34 am.

This is going great! I'm debating extending it for a couple of days! I mean, my wife is camping at the beach with a bunch of homeschoolers until Saturday, so when's a better time than now? While I know this isn't realistic, it's the genuine mindset that I'm in right now.

Why all the optimism? Holy shit! I lost 5.6 pounds in one day! I slept great last night and feel great this morning! Why would I ever eat my calories again? If I maintain this rate, I'll lose over 80 pounds by the end of the month!

Now let's look at it. I must have peed 15-20 times yesterday. I went from regularly consuming 3k-4k mg of sodium a day to only consuming 250. Not only did I shed the "transition weight" of the food that was in my system, but shed a ton of water. So obviously I think my weight loss will go back to something normal. But I do feel pretty good- most likely because I don't feel bloated, water-logged and my blood pressure is probably loving the low sodium shift.

I think one of the keys to this was forcing myself to drink the juice. I knew the morning and evening smoothies would be satisfying, but I also knew that if I didn't get a reasonable amount of calories in my body through the day, then I'd dying of hunger and would give up and impulse eat. Again- I'm getting 1,500 calories a day. So as far as my body and metabolism know, while I'm calorie restricted, but I'm not starving and in need of going into survival mode.

What's interesting is that I thought I'd be super-hungry last night and unable to concentrate, but I wasn't. I thought I'd wake up this morning famished and watching the clock for when it was acceptable to run the blender for my morning smoothie. But I'm not. I'm guessing that keeping my calorie intake up is what's made the difference. All the same, I'm happy with how it's going so far.

[Kyle]

Day 2- Noon. Still feeling great and not hungry. But honestly, I've had an unexpected appointment and a new emergency case dropped on me this morning on a day where I had already planned out a bunch of stuff I needed to get done. So I might not be hungry just because I'm so busy.

[Kyle]

Day 3- 5 am. Lost 0.8 pounds. Last night was hard, but I maintained my liquid integrity. Around 8pm I started getting really hungry and thinking about the things I could eat if I broke the fast. This was complicated by the fact that my allergies are crazy right now and I feel a little crappy. This was further complicated by my son (who is also doing the fast) texting me about how hard it is and he doesn't think he's going to make it through the night.

But I did it! I feel fine right now, but it's 5am, so I'm not sure that says much.

[Mike]

Good on you, man! I'm proud of you for holding fast.

You did better than I did. I had an extra helping of scalloped potatoes last night, and that led to several handfuls of that spicy Chex mix my mother-in-law made, and I broke even this morning. Not the worst, but disappointing for me.

[Kyle]

I forgot to post up at the end (because it was the end). I did great! I stuck to it and lost 9 pounds! Now I'm eating reasonably and on a good track to eating healthier!

[Phoebe]

If doing things like this gives people a kick start and breaks up the routine in a good way, I'm for it. But overall... suspicious of tricky diets that place heavy restrictions on food that seems otherwise positive. I am happy with my nutrition plan which emphasizes GREEN VEGETABLES and other things... if I do it around 90% of the time the results are great and I feel good, but it's hard to maintain the level of commitment to GREEN VEGETABLES in a madcap world where people around you are eating other stuff you can grab and stuff in your face in thirty seconds. Luckily the corner pieces of someone else's pizza pass through your body without a trace because they were never meant to be yours in the first place. When your child doesn't finish all the food they order, it's the right and proper order of things that you finish the appetizing parts so as not to be wasteful. Things like this make it difficult to stick with the GREEN VEGETABLES that otherwise are the staple of my diet and inspiration to my entire digestive system.