How to Cleanse
and Nourish Your Cells with Freshly Pressed Vegetable Juices
I'm
often asked to name one thing that can be done right away to get healthier. With
respect to food choices, the best suggestion I have is to begin drinking freshly
pressed vegetable juices. Drinking just one freshly pressed juice each day is
a reliable way of infusing your body with a wide variety of vitamins, minerals,
and phytonutrients that can protect your cells against premature aging and disease.
Almost
everyone who has studied nutrition can agree that freshly pressed vegetable juices
are highly beneficial to human health. But few people make time to prepare and
drink them regularly.
Making
time to drink vegetable juices isn’t a problem for most people. It’s
the time that is needed to wash fresh vegetables, feed them through a good juicer,
and clean the juicer afterward that prevents most people from making fresh juices
a regular part of their lives.
So
the first step to incorporating juicing into your life is to fully understand
how good it is for your health and why making time to do it daily is one of the
very best investments you can make.
The Right Ingredients
The
key to making healthy vegetable juices is to make green vegetables the bulk of
every serving. Green vegetables won’t spike your blood sugar and insulin
level like fruits and sweet vegetables like carrots and red beets will.
This
is not to say that you can’t juice fruits, carrots, and red beets. Fruits
and sweet root vegetables can be healthy additions to your drinks, and they'll
definitely add sweetness and flavor. You just want to make sure that they never
make up more than one-third of each glass that you drink.
And
if you have a problem controlling your blood sugar level, you’ll want to
use a blood sugar monitor to determine how much is acceptable for you. I’ve
worked with dozens of diabetics over the years who haven’t been able to handle
even an ounce of fruit, carrot, or red beet juice in their drinks without negative
health consequences, so please consider this point before you select your ingredients
for juicing.
Romaine
lettuce is one of the best green vegetables that you can juice. You can also juice
other types of green, leafy lettuce like red or green leaf lettuce.
For
variety, try adding large handfuls of kale, Swiss chard, collard greens, Bok Choy,
and any other dark green vegetable that you might steam before eating.
For
another layer of flavor, you can add a tiny slice of lemon (including the rind
for its flavonoids) to your vegetable juices.
Some
people enjoy adding a clove of raw garlic for even more bite.
Be
creative and add any vegetables you crave. You really can’t go wrong as long
as you make sure not to use too many carrots, red beets, or fruits.
Clearly,
organic vegetables are better than non-organic vegetables. But my experiences
have led me to believe that the health benefits of drinking juices made with well
washed, non-organic vegetables far outweigh not juicing at all. If you are only
able to juice non-organic vegetables due to financial or other life circumstances,
it’s still well worth your while to do so.
Preparing to Juice
We
like to fill up the kitchen sink with cold water and dunk all of our vegetables
for a good five minutes. Before we pull all the vegetables out to sit in a colander
to dry off a bit, we shake them around in the cold water to make sure that we’ve
removed any dirt or even bugs that may be hiding in the vegetables, particularly
in heads of celery and lettuce.
If
we know that we need to make a few gallons of vegetable juice over several days,
we store washed carrots and ribs of celery in containers full of water in the
refrigerator.
We
store leaves of lettuce spread out and stacked vertically in a container with
layers of paper towel in between each layer of lettuce to help absorb excess moisture.
Fresh lettuce can last a whole week or more when stored in this fashion.
If
you’re really pressed for time and want to make enough juice to last three
to four days, you can make a big batch and store it in an air-tight container
in the refrigerator - not as good as drinking right after pressing, but still
likely better than drinking store-bought fruit juices or even vegetable cocktails
like V8.
The
Art of Juicing
Juicing
is, for the most part, quite easy to do. You make sure that your vegetables are
small or crunch-able enough to fit through the feeding mechanism of your juicer,
and you push them in one at a time.
It's
best to juice soft vegetables like leafy greens first, as they are a bit harder
to push through the extraction mechanism than firmer vegetables like carrots and
celery. Firmer vegetables like carrots and celery can actually help to push any
bits of softer vegetables that are deep within the feeding tube of your juicer
but not yet
completely through the extraction mechanism.
With
leafy greens, we find that it is best to roll them up into small balls before
feeding them through the juicer. This helps prevent a single leaf from getting
stuck between the feeding tube of your juicer and the plunger that you use to
push the vegetables down.
Fruits,
like firmer vegetables, can be added near the end, as you are unlikely to have
a problem with pushing them down and through the extraction mechanism with the
plunger.
Healthy Juice Recipes
Vegetable-based
juices:
2
carrots
2 ribs of celery
8 leaves of romaine lettuce
2
carrots
Handful of parsley
6 leaves of romaine lettuce
Squeeze of lemon
2
tomatoes
3 ribs of celery
1 carrot
Squeeze of lemon
6
leaves of romaine lettuce
1 tomato
1 rib of celery
1 carrot
Big
bunch of kale
2 carrots
2 ribs of celery
Big
bunch of Swiss chard
2 carrots
2 ribs of celery
6
leaves of romaine lettuce
2 cups of green cabbage
2 carrots
6
leaves of romaine lettuce
2 ribs of celery
1 apple, whatever is in season
4
ribs of celery
2 carrots
1 apple
Fruit-based
Juices (only
for special occasions and if you don’t have high blood glucose levels):
3
ribs of celery
2 apples
Small
handful of strawberries
Watermelon (cut into strips, rind included if you wash
it well before cutting)
Honeydew
(cut into strips)
Squeeze of lemon
1
apple
1 pear
3 ribs of celery
2
apples
8-10 strawberries
1
cup of pineapple
1 cup of grapes
Small handful of strawberries
How To
Carry Out An Effective Juice Fast
Now
that we've reviewed the fundamentals of how to make healthy vegetable-based juices,
let’s take a look at how to carry out an effective juice fast.
Some
people would call juice fasting juice dieting, preferring to reserve the word
"fasting" for cases of water-only fasting. Juice fasting and juice dieting
are the same for all practical purposes.
Why
consider doing a juice fast?
Drinking
only freshly pressed vegetable-based juices for a day or two or even a week at
a time can give your body much needed rest and time to heal itself of chronic
health problems.
Because
vegetable juices are extremely easy to digest, your body can spend much of its
resources on healing damaged or exhausted tissues instead of spending its energy
on digesting big, heavy meals.
You
should only do a juice fast after consulting with your health care provider and
confirming that your current health status should allow for a safe and effective
juice fast.
A
properly conducted juice fast may help you experience:
- More energy
- Healthier skin
- Better quality sleep
- Improved
cardiovascular health
- Reduction or elimination of aches and pains in muscles
and joints
- Decrease or elimination of headaches
- Stabilization
of blood pressure
- More efficient digestion
- Stabilization of bowel
movements
- Loss of excess weight
- Elimination of stored toxins
- Improvement
with a wide variety of chronic degenerative health conditions, including autoimmune
disorders
What’s
the difference between a juice fast and a water fast?
People
detoxify and heal more quickly with a water fast than with a juice fast. This
is because with a water fast, your digestive passageway and organs are able to
rest completely, which allows almost all of your energy to be used for cleansing
and repair of damaged tissues.
With
a juice fast or a cleansing diet of fruits and vegetables, your body must use
energy (a minimal amount compared to when you are eating heavier meals) to digest
nutrients, leaving less available energy for detoxification and healing.
Another
significant difference is that more fat tissue is burned during a water fast,
as your body must rely exclusively on fat reserves to supply its energy needs
after the first one to three days of water fasting. Your body stores the bulk
of incoming toxins in your fat reserves. As these reserves are burned for energy
during a fast, any stored toxins will be released into your circulation, to be
eliminated from your body through channels like your urine and respiratory tract.
This mechanism of detoxification also occurs with juice fasting, but at a slower
pace.
All
of this considered, both types of fasting can be helpful to your health. The choice
you make should take into consideration your circumstances and goals.
Generally,
juice fasting allows for more gentle detoxification than water fasting. Juice
fasting also allows you to have enough energy to keep up with most of your activities
of daily living while you detoxify your tissues, whereas an effective water fast
requires almost complete physical rest.
Another
significant difference is that juice fasting is much easier for most people to
stick with. Water fasting is best carried out in a supervised setting while juice
fasting is relatively easy to do from your own home.
How
long should you juice fast for?
It
really depends on your health status and goals. If you’re looking to give
your body a short but beneficial break, it can be helpful to do a juice fast for
48-72 hours over a weekend.
If
you’re looking to experience significant detoxification and some big changes
with your health, you might consider doing a longer juice fast, somewhere in the
ball park of one to two weeks.
Although
it’s optimal for prepare for a juice fast by eating raw fruits and vegetables
for 24 hours prior to beginning with juices only, most people do just fine in
starting with juices without a pre-fasting routine.
You
can drink however many juices your appetite calls for throughout the day. I have
found that most people do well with an average of five freshly squeezed juices
per day.
You
can use any of the juice recipes that are listed above, or any similar recipes
that you create following your tastes and instincts.
While
I generally recommend that people use fruit-based juices early on in the day and
turn to vegetable-based juices as the day goes on, there’s really no requirement
to stick to a specific order of juices.
A
typical day of juice fasting might look like this:
Honeydew
(cut into strips)
Lemon wedge
2
carrots
2 ribs of celery
8 leaves of romaine lettuce
3
ribs of celery
2 apples
Small handful of strawberries
2
tomatoes
3 ribs of celery
1 carrot
Lemon wedge
Large
bunch of kale
2 carrots
2 ribs of celery
If
necessary, it’s fine to make all of your juices for the day in the morning
and to carry a few with you to work in air-tight bottles.
If
you take a green food supplement, it would be an added bonus to include a tablespoon
of such a product to one of your vegetable-based juices. The only caveat is that
your green food product should not contain any fillers like lecithin, apple pectin,
whole grains, or ground flax seeds. Any green food powder that is used during
a juice fast should be composed of 100 percent green vegetables if you are looking
for optimal results.
I
have found that it is best not to take supplements that provide concentrated amounts
of high quality fat during a juice fast, such as fish oil, cod liver oil, or flax
seed oil.
The
key guiding principle with juice fasting is to follow your instincts. Your body
will tell you how many drinks you need per day and what types of vegetables and
fruits you need to incorporate into your juices.
Ending
Your Juice Fast
You
should end your juice fast by eating whole fruits and vegetables. Good examples
include:
- Small
bowl of watermelon
- Small
bowl of honeydew
- 1
apple
- 1
pear
- Handful
of grapes
- Cucumber
- Tomato
- Celery
sticks
Be sure
to chew your food until liquid. This is critical to maintaining the positive changes
that you will have created in your GI tract with your juice fast.
You
can have another similar meal about two hours after the first one, and continue
to eat small portions of fruits or vegetables for the rest of the day.
The
second day of eating whole foods can include some steamed vegetables along
with raw fruits and vegetables.
On
the third day, you can add a cooked starch, such as a steamed potato or sweet
potato. You can also add a grain dish if your appetite calls for it.
Beginning
on the fourth day of re-feeding, you can add legumes, such as chickpeas
or black beans.
Beginning
on day five, you can add small portions of clean animal foods, such as
organic eggs or wild salmon.
Beginning
on day six, you can return to eating a well balanced diet that includes
any healthy plant and animal foods that your body craves.
Over
the long term, I've found that it is best for most people to follow a diet that
consists of approximately 80 percent plant-based foods and 20 percent animal-based
foods. But again, I always recommend listening to your own instincts and cravings.
Please
keep in mind that this re-feeding schedule should take into account the length
of your juice fast.
If
you do a three-day juice fast, you probably won’t have any problems following
this re-feeding schedule.
If
you fast for more than a week, you may find that you won’t want to add cooked
foods or animal foods back to your regimen until after you spend a few weeks eating
raw fruits and vegetables.
One
last time, the guiding principle is to follow your instincts.
If
you don’t do a juice fast, you can still experience significant health benefits
by including vegetables juices in your daily routine on top of your regular food
choices.
Enough
reading about the benefits of drinking freshly pressed vegetable juices.
Give
it a go and experience some of the benefits yourself! And if you'd like to share
your experience with others, please feel free to use our comments section below.
If
you don't have a juicer, two that I can recommend are:
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