How To Go on A Juice Fast

Juice fasting has been a curiousity of mine for several years. They’re frequently practiced by people who share my health ethos, but I’ve never gotten around to doing one myself.

Until now.

I’ve been a frequent juicer for 5 years, but never felt the need to go 100% juice because I’ve always been in good health.

The benefits of juice fasting mostly are mostly due to the benefits of a nutrient-dense period of caloric restriction, which has widely been proven to be very beneficial to your health.

I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea to juice fast for more than a few days, and had a few reservations about doing it for 7. But my sister and I like a good challenge.

Useful Tips

What are the key elements to a good juice fast?

• Only use fresh squeezed juices, preferably from your own juicer
• If you’re active, it’s important to keep your calories up
• If you’re new to this style of eating, it might be a good idea to do it over the weekend to accomodate any gastrointestinal discomfort

For me I’m using the following equipment:

• Black and Decker JE2200B juicer
• Incredible Greens to fill in the nutritional gaps
• A lot of produce!

Getting Enough Calories

I’m very physically active, and typically play volleyball and do total body cardio for about 1-3 hours a day. For this reason I’m supplementing my eating routine with a high calorie cocoa shake with the following ingredients:

• chocolate almond milk
• raw cocoa
• flaxseed oil
• crushed fruit
• natural peanut butter
• smashed avocado

For me this makes a LARGE difference in how I feel in the middle of the day and would definitely recommend such an intervention if you lead an active lifestyle.

Good Habits and Grocery Shopping

Getting all your calories from juicing is very labor intensive, and a tad bit expensive depending on what ingredients you buy.

For this reason, it’s a good idea to do most of your juicing in the morning and keep it for the rest of the day. Juicing at scale more than two times a day is a big  hassle. I make about 6-7 cups in the morning, and from beginning to end (including cleanup) it probably takes about 1 hour. Ditto at night.

All the produce you buy also adds up.

To keep costs down I’d recommend using apples and carrots as the base for most of your drinks, and adding more expensive or less juicy veggies and fruits as add ons. Apples and carrots are also easy to prepare.

The idea of grocery shopping for a juice fast might seem daunting, but it’s actually quite simple.

Buy lots of different produce. That’s it. Avoid overly soft fruits and vegetables like bananas and avocado’s, but just about anything else is fair game, and most of it tastes good when juiced.

Shopping on a juice fast should be fun, not complicated. You don’t need any additional supplements, unless you’re going on one for more than 3-4 days.

If you’re doing an extended fast, I’d recommend a superfoods powder to fill in the gaps in your diet.  I’ve written about these at length before, but VitaMineral  Green, Incredible Greens, and Amazing Grass are all decent options if you want to go down this route.

The fast will be finished in a few more days, and a more detailed update will be available then on best practices and mistakes to avoid.

Until then, have a great day!