December 2012 - Monthly fasting thread, join any time of the month!

[Gianni]

I modified Bill Harris' V4 juice a bit:

Gianni's V6 juice
4 large carrots
250g of cherry tomatoes (picked these from the garden, not exactly sure about the weight but it's thereabouts)
2 stalks of celery
1 small zucchini
1 handful of fresh spinach
¼ red bell pepper
1 small clove of garlic

This juice has a nice spicy flavor to it.

I left out the Red Star yeast because it's not available here, but feel free to add it in if you like. Bill Harris puts it in almost everything he makes because it is supplemented with B12 and that way he makes sure he isn't deficient in it.

[imaquillen]

I'm thinking about ending my fast this Friday, but I'll wait and see how I feel then. Things are going good but, like MysticTree I want to be entrenched in raw eating before the holidays. My dehydrator came yesterday and I made kale chips already. I will be making some banana bread tonight and gonna look for more to put in the D so it's not running at half capacity. I'm gonna get all stocked up on basics before I go back to WA for a month or so but that will mean I have food to come back to. Glad to see everyone is doing good.

[Gianni]

Imaquillen, it sounds like your fast is going well. Congrats! How many days is that now?

As to fasting before the holidays, I like the idea of being a little slimmer going into Christmas, especially when I meet relatives who haven't seen me for a while.

[imaquillen]

Gianni, today is day 19 for me so Friday will be 21 days. That gives me a bit of time to ease back into eating and I can get started on making some food for the holidays and being able to taste them. And it's looking like my honey may jsut make it home before Christmas, but we'll have to see....you can never tell with his job. He does not eat raw much and when he comes home he's having gastric bypass surgery so we'll be fasting quite a bit at that time.

[imaquillen]

Yesterday was the last day of my fast, 21 days. Wishing good luck to anyone continuing and Happy Holidays to all!

[janem]

Great job to the both of you! Amber WTG!! 21 days is quite an accomplishment! How do you feel now?
Gianni - must be wonderful to live in Brazil and have fruit trees! Keep up the great work - it funny - when one is not fasting how good a fast sounds!!

[Gianni]

@Imaquillen - 21 days fasting is a great accomplishment. Bravo!

@Janem - Yes, it is really enjoyable to eat or juice fruit off of your own trees. Just wish we had more because the few fruit trees we have don't give too much fruit. The problem is that ants and other pests attack the leaves, flowers, seedlings, etc. and it is hard to grow things here unless you use pesticides. However, we do manage to get great tasting bananas some times during the year. Those are easy to grow.

Our acerola tree gives fruit once or twice a year, but it's only a short period for a couple of weeks when the tree is full of fruit.


Acerola Juice

[Gianni]

Yesterday, I broke my juice fast after having completed a full 14 days on nothing but juice. It was more of a juice feast actually with most days consisting of something like 5½ liters of watermelon juice (with a bit of lime juice added in) and about 1 liter or so of vegetable juice consisting of Carrots, tomatoes, celery, spinach and/or parsley, zucchini, bell pepper, garlic.

Once in a while I would make orange juice or apple-pineapple-lime-ginger juice, but watermelon juice was the staple this time because it is now in season here, it is relatively cheap, and it's quick to make lots of juice by blending it, straining it, adding a little lime juice. You can freeze some of what you won't be drinking right away as well.

So yeah, 6 to 7 liters a day of mostly sweet fruit juice, and I still managed to drop 5 kg (11 pounds) in two weeks although 2 of those kilos (4.4 lbs) were lost after one day and were mostly due to my intestines emptying out and due to a loss of water weight from eating no salt. Undoubtedly I will put back on a couple of kilos over the next several days as I start eating solid foods again and start using salt again, albeit in limited quantity.

Energy levels were great throughout my juice feast. I would take daily brisk long walks and two or three times a week I would jog a couple of miles. Also, my sleep was more profound and refreshing.

If anyone else is fasting this time of year, I wish you the best of success this holiday season.