How to Do a Three-Day Juice Fast

by Chet Day

An update from an article from Chet's H&B Weekly

(Note from Chet: An updated version of this article, which includes the details on how to do a juice fast, is available in my Detox Bible, a fabulous collection of outstanding detoxification routines. Click here for details.)

If you're like most folks, you're probably reading these words with a few more pounds on your bones than you carried last year. Last Christmas season, for example, I managed to acquire three pounds in two weeks, which I felt pretty good about considering the constant temptations that people waved past my nose and taste buds practically 18 hours of every day. In fact, if it hadn't been for that incredible raspberry fudge that one of the mothers made at the school where I used to teach English, I might have made it through the 1996 holiday season without gaining a pound.

But, NOOOO, after hearing four teachers raving about "this fabulous fudge" and watching them drooling all over their ties and blouses in the faculty lounge as they munched down on piece after piece of it, and realizing that if I didn't get my hand in there to try a little bite there wouldn't be any left, I broke down, scolded myself mentally for lack of will power, and grabbed a square and popped it into the ole mouth.

Good Grief, Charlie Brown, it WAS the best fudge that anyone on earth had ever made. Elbowing my colleagues out of the way, I plowed into that fudge like Hannibal tearing through the Alps, and in a matter of minutes had cleared the plate.

"That's the last time we talk about how good something is when he's around," I heard one of the teachers mutter as I walked out of the room, cheeks extended with fudge like a chipmunk scavenging for a long winter.

Okay, that gets my confession out of the way, and I'll spare you the details on the other indulgences of Christmas 1996 that put me further and further from dietary sainthood. But I did like the fact that, with the exception of the fudge, last year I managed to handle all the holiday goodies a bite or two at a time instead of by the handful. So progress continues in comparison to 1995.

As an interesting aside, I read on one of the news groups not too long ago that the average American gains somewhere between five and seven pounds during the period between Thanksgiving and New Years, and I can believe it.

Have you also noticed how so many people are catching the usual holiday colds and flu? Have you noted the connection between over-eating and sickness? If not, here's an idea to ponder. This idea went right over my head for 44 of my 49 years, but once I started thinking about the over-eating and disease connection, it really started to make sense to me. And once I recognized a cause and effect relationship, I took one of my first steps in learning to really listen to my body's signals.

During the 1996-1997 school year, for example, I didn’t miss a single day of work as a result of a cold or flu. And this is the first time that’s happened in more than a decade. I attribute my strength and health to a variety of factors, including that I am much more in tune with the portions of food that I eat these days, I exercise regularly, I keep my stress level down, I drink only pure water and stay away from sodas and coffee and teas, and I've been supplementing my predominately uncooked, vegan diet with one of the so-called "super green foods."

But mainly, I think, I've gotten sensitive enough to my body's signals that I know when to stop eating or when to slow down or when to cut back. After pigging out on the fudge last Christmas, to give an example, that evening I had a bit of a stomach ache, woke up twice that night with sweating, was quite thirsty, and rose from my bed with that congested, "Oh oh, I feel a cold coming on" feeling.

I knew at that waking moment that I would pay the piper with a few days in the rack if I didn't immediately cut back on my eating and/or on what I ate. So, instead of going to school and chowing down on that day's goodies in the faculty lounge (homemade butter cookies), I consumed juicy fruits (and I don't mean the gum!) and pure water. By that evening, having only a blended salad and a spoonful of a super green drink, I felt better; and the next morning, having had very little to eat the day before, I felt great again.

[Note from Chet: Dr. Ben Kim's Greens is my super green drink of choice. Click here for details.]

The cliché, garbage in--garbage out, takes on new significance when one considers it in light of the way too many of us eat too much of the time... stuff until we can't stuff anymore. I'm not trying to moralize or sound superior here because it's taken me close to five years of hard work and self-discipline to get to the point where I can most of the time do what I know is good for me. After all, few find it easy to change the habits of a life time in regards to what we eat and how much we eat, particularly when so much of the time eating takes on all kinds of other meanings not even relevant to basic sustenance of the human organism. But I'll save all the emotional connections to food for another article.

Okay, okay, you're right, I'm babbling. Time to get to the how-to information on what to do during the holiday season when you feel yourself bloating up and sickening down, filled with mucus, walking around with a headache, holding an upset stomach, cringing from constipation, and the whole host of other symptoms that keep the over the counter drug business rolling in the dough.

Well, happily, you have at your disposal a solution so much better for you than the aforementioned "cures" that cost money and leave Lord only knows what kinds of residues in the cellular structure as they pass through your body. We call this solution the juice diet. And, strictly speaking, it isn't a cure or a solution -- it's a method to give the body some rest from the energy-sapping processes of almost constant digestion.

The natural health model that I follow holds that no cures exist, that only the body can "cure" itself, and it'll most efficiently do that only when we give it the materials that it needs to activate its self-healing nature: proper foods, proper rest, pure water, exposure to sunlight, exercise, and so on.

Some alternative health teacher tell us to fast when we're sick. To stop eating completely and to go to bed and to consume nothing but distilled water until we once again feel well. This technique works for many people, but I personally find it difficult to do because I rarely have time to go to bed and stay there until I feel great, so I attain similar good results by going on a juice diet when I know my body needs a period of physiological rest -- when I get too many of the symptoms listed earlier or when I just feel "too full" and I hear my body telling me to "Hey, ease up on the food, dude."

How does one go on a juice diet? Well, you can find as many juice diet (some call it a juice fast) plans as you can find advocates, but, in general, they all agree on a few important steps, which I'll list below.

Before doing so, I should remind you that I have no qualifications whatsoever as a medical expert and consequently you should check with your family physician or health professional should you choose to use any of the information that follows on juice dieting. But find someone who knows something about alternative health models, please!

Diabetics in particular are generally told to avoid fasting and/or juice dieting because of blood sugar problems. Severely underweight individuals should also not go on diets such as this. People who fear not eating should avoid fasting and/or juice dieting. People on drugs, either prescribed or recreational, should check with their physician before trying the techniques that follow. I would encourage individuals who fall into any of the above categories to associate with a physician in tune with fasting and/or juice dieting, however.

You will, first off, of course, need a quality juicer, like the Champion displayed below.

The Champion Juicer Dr. Ben Kim is offering the fantastic and extremely versatile Champion juicer for a very low price. Click here to discover the Champion.

Okay, here are the main steps:

• (Note from Chet: The complete "how to" details for a juice fast are available in my Detox Bible, a fabulous collection of outstanding detoxification routines. Click here for details.)
  

We haven't touched on the extended juice diet, which is a whole topic in itself. Maybe we'll do that one somewhere down the line.

Of everything I've learned the past five years in my on-going search for superior health, I currently hold dearest the juice diet information I've just shared with you. Juice dieting represents a remarkably easy and simple way to improve health.

It doesn't cost a cent, it's easy enough to do, and it works.

Who could ask for more?

[Note from Chet: Dr. Ben Kim's Greens is my super green food of choice. Click here for details.]