Anyone here ever done a juice diet?

[USAFGopherMike]

Wife does the juice thing on and off with a juicer, but only in 5-7 day increments. As mentioned. That's a lot of weight in a short period of time. Not healthy nor a good idea. Congrats on your progress so far. I recommend supplementing with actual fruits and veg.

[DaveGoBang!]

I do a 5-10 day detox every couple of months depending on my travel schedule. The key is to cut out caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and all the other bad shit you get from eating regular processed foods. I go all organic fruits and veggies, and yes you have to juice them yourself. I lose a couple of pounds, but unless I am exercising regularly it usually comes back after resuming a solid food diet. I think the mistake people make is thinking of it as a diet, that will get them into a smaller pair of jeans, which it can, if you are aggressive, but you generally gain most of the wait back. I just view it as a time to clean my body, colon, build my immune system, etc. But to each their own, there are a million strategies out there, probably something that works for you.

[spyder]

Can you do this juice diet with meat being the only other food you eat? Or does that ruin the point of the diet? I get shaky if I don't have protein.

You can supplement with bee pollen, you can get it from the Vitamin Cottage/Natural Grocers and a few other places. If you weight lift, bee pollen is the best thing for you also.... Like I said, it's the easiest protein for your body to break down, and use. The last three weeks I did the diet, I couldn't stand not eating, so, I ate only meat... Still lost an average of a pound a day till I stopped juicing. I didn't gain any back for a long time, even after I started eating out and everything again. It took over a year to gain anything back, and it's my fault for going back to my old ways. If I would have stayed healthy, I would still have it off.

Wife does the juice thing on and off with a juicer, but only in 5-7 day increments. As mentioned. That's a lot of weight in a short period of time. Not healthy nor a good idea. Congrats on your progress so far. I recommend supplementing with actual fruits and veg.

You don't know what your talking about. Where do you get the information that your body processing body fat is unhealthy for it? You are not starving your body of anything that it needs to survive other than the nutrients you can give it through juicing. Eating fruits and vegies is not better for you either.... You don't gain anything from eating it, compared to juicing it. You do however gain more by juicing. You can fit 4 or 5 apples by size into a cup, as equally as one. In the juice form, you body can easily break it down and doesn't have to deal with the fiberous material from eating the actual fruit, so it can use the energy more efficiently to break down the items in your stomach (juice). As long as you are smart with it and supplement a couple items that vegetables can account for like B12, and protein (which I've already discussed), juicing is perfectly healthy for you, even in long stints. It will be the most healthy thing (food wise) anyone can do (as long as you have body fat to supplement your calorie needs).

[spyder]

Also, if you do this for a long stint, it will reset your metabolism. The week, or two things that people do, are not long enough for your body to get into a natural order.

[Irving]

What if you only need to lose 20lbs?

[blacklabel]

It looks like I'm getting a juicer. I've watched Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead before and the wife and I are watching it again now. Time to make a change.

[rondog]

Reading this with interest! I need to print this thread out and study it. I'm about 150lbs. overweight and really sick of hauling it around. I think of it as having three (!) 50lb. bags of Quikcrete mix attached to me all the time. Every move I make, all that Quikcrete goes with me. It's really quite depressing and demoralizing.

[Jer]

Day 6 update and then I will address the posts individually since they're rather long so multi-quote will make for the worlds longest reply I think.

I'm now down 13.8lbs since Monday. Now I'm noticing that I'm swimming in my shirts that fit me last week. That's just crazy to think of. I've had my first round of negative experiences but it's all been due to things I could have controlled. Background: I've been on prescription heartburn meds for about a decade now. This started when I started putting on weight and rather than tell me to lose weight the doctor put me on a medication. The only one I'm on in fact. A lot of people don't realize that when you put on fat and grow out.. you're growing in too. This means that your stomach is constantly being restricted and also why you don't see too many fat competitive eaters at the top level. You can expand more when you don't have fat pressing inward. This is most likely what has caused my heartburn all this time rather than some medical condition that needed treated with medications. One of the goals was to get off of the dependency for this medication and so I stopped it last week after the first day.

Things went fine for a few days but my guess is that it took that long for the medicine to get out of my system and my stomach to start producing acid at the levels it once had and probably even more. On top of that I think my stomach is shrinking it a more rapid rate than I had anticipated. This means that I was drinking too much water & juice (which is also acidic) and all of this made a perfect storm where I had some of the worst heartburn I've had in my life. On a hunch I quit drinking juice and water last night and it did get better so I'm thinking now I'm just learning to find that line which will continue to move as my stomach shrinks. You get full with liquid but it's not the same 'full' feeling that you're used to with food so you have to re-learn when to stop. I've also started my heartburn medication again and once I get further down in weight or possibly once I'm done and able to take in less acidic items I will try to ween off once again. I don't see getting off of medications being a problem once I've cut the weight. As I was lowering my uptake I was noticing some shortness of breath. I've usually been pretty strong and pretty good cardio even given my weight and make-up so this was pretty noticeable to my immediately. Fast forward to this morning which was Saturday and when I get up to mow my lawn and my neighbor's lawn. I got winded half way through her lawn and didn't think I was going to finish both. The problem was when I got up I was afraid of getting heartburn so I just drank the smallest amount of water before I started. The heartburn wasn't there but I also didn't have any fuel for the fire which is what lead to the shortness of breath. The weird thing is I would sit for a minute and still not catch my breath like you do when you're doing cardio or playing sports. It just kept going. So I started adding in water and juice slowly and once I finished I'm now relaxing and taking in juice and water again. I'm slowly coming back to somewhat normal but it's pretty clear this is going to be a balancing game as my stomach shrinks and my needs vary.

So, for those that asked about exercising while doing a juice fast... I wouldn't recommend it. I mowed our lawn Wednesday morning (yeah, three days ago because I just feed it last week) and practically sprinted through it and didn't even notice anything. I'm guessing it was because I was taking in a lot more juice at the time and now it's a pretty big difference. So had I been exercising hard this whole time the balance act would have been even more difficult. I don't think you want to stress your body that much because it is a shock to the system from what it's used to.

Sorry for the long-winded update but for those interested I actually had something to report finally since all along it's been a lot easier than I had expected. This is more what I expected and it looks like it will require a little bit of effort to complete. But I'm already nearly at 14lbs lost and when I got off to such a good start I changed my goal from 1lb a day for the first week to 2lbs a day for the first week. Since I'm basically there I'm not hoping to see 20lbs by Monday morning. That's about 3lbs a day which is more than I had been losing recently but that's what goals are for, right? The nice thing about this diet is that I'm not going to strain myself to get to that goal. I'm just living life and letting the weight do what it does so it's pretty low stress.

Edit: Forgot to address those who were saying this is unhealthy and I should just change my diet...

Some people call it starving myself and I'm really not. The weird part is I come from a long line of addicts and yet I've never been addicted to anything... so I thought. I think I've determined that food and eating is my habit. I was talking about this topic from this angle with a close friend and she said that it was the hardest 'addiction' to overcome since you HAVE to eat. Alcohol & drugs your body doesn't need (save for a few hormonal things that can be corrected long-term) so you can quit. Now, I realize it's harder than that but the point is when you quit you can cut it out of your life and avoid even seeing it and the temptation. You can't do that with food. You must eat food to survive. Well.... this is my cold turkey. For those that ask why and say it's not healthy and yadda yadda... this is the healthiest way I can quit cold turkey. Once it no longer controls me the way it did I can do better at controlling what I take in. I now realize that my poor health had become my 'habit' and the desire to eat nothing but crap was obviously out of my control. So telling me to just control my diet and count carbs and blah blah blah is like seeing a heroin addict curled up on the street and walking up to them and telling them 'Hey, you should stop doing heroin' No shit. It's a little bit more difficult than that for me. If this is what I needed to break that addiction then so be it. I don't see myself being anywhere near as unhealthy as I had been moving forward so how can it be bad?

[hurley842002]

I had a huge in depth response typed out, and somehow this POS tapatalk erased it. I may still type it out later (headed to the gym now lol).

Part of the response was good on you Jer, for doing what YOU need to do, to become healthier. I know what works for me, but what works for me, may not work for others. Good luck man, and stay focused!

[Jer]

I've done it and had great results. I did juice only for the first 7 days and then incorporated salads, fruits, nuts and such along with my juice. Basically stating to a raw diet. It can be very difficult and you have to plan well as if you are out and about and need to eat there's no raw fast food joint. I will also point out that you will become sensitive to regular food and it will make you feel like shit if you eat it. You'll want to supplement with vitamins and such. You will feel much better, begin to regain energy, and your food (if you are eating raw) wont affect you like regular food does.

I got off of it and really need to get back to it.

Thanks for the support. Fortunately my life has worked well this diet so for the most part I have been able to meet the needs. It's also pretty easy to find juice just about anywhere. I get what you're saying about regular food because I tried a trial run Thursday and Friday of last week and eating a small meal at dinner made me feel not so good. In fact, I considered not doing it based on that water testing (pun intended) and I'm glad I didn't. Once you get that crud out of your mind it's a smoother transition.

Let me know how the diet goes.
I gained too much weight after taking some hydrophilic medication plus arthritis.

Meanwhile, I will do the diet called "no money diet"
$1 side salad.

I've been there but it seems that I eat worse when I'm broke. Only in America will you find overweight homeless & unemployed. There's a reason for that man.

Have you tried just counting calories vs exercising?

If you are going to do it anyway, why not just do it now? A lifestyle change is the only way this works, if you're going to do it little by little, why not just start there?

Anyway, yeah, we have a juicer. My wife never met a kitchen appliance she doesn't like.
I've invented some pretty cool juices, but I sure don't use it very often. It is a great way to turn a lot of fruit into a little fruit and a ton of servings into 1 serving, but they taste great and are healthier than store bought juices. IMHO, only.
Vitamix = better, you can do more with it like make soups, smoothies, dips, shakes, etc.

Yeah, I've been there man. In a past life (15yrs ago) was pretty serious about being athletic and working out, sports and cardio was what consumed my time when I wasn't working or sleeping. I ate amazing and did everything you're supposed to do when you do that sort of thing and while I was stronger and had better cardio that my workout partners they were always leaner. I was always what I would consider 'fat' and I really think that my thyroid is out of whack and causing this. We actually have two dogs that have hypothyroidism and the symptoms they had were pretty similar to my symptoms. As of late I was just tired of failing at trying to change my eating habits and working out habits after so many years of failing. You eventually get to a point where you just can't muster the motivation to fail again. That's where I am only I wasn't willing to do just nothing about it. This is what I'm doing about it.

As for the Vitamix.. I've heard wonderful things about them from all the videos I've been watching and I'm going to start saving my allowance to hopefully get one at some point. Seems this is a vital item to have for those who plan to incorporate this as part of their lifestyle moving forward.