8AM: Train my client. This is a goodbye to her as she’s leaving for the next 12 weeks to work overseas.

9AM: My morning breakfast ritual. Oatmeal with blueberries and a dash of maple syrup. This time I make a steaming mug of green tea with honey to go along with it.  I have another client at 10, so I have some time to just veg out. I love Fridays because I don’t teach any classes and I only see clients all day so my body gets a bit of a rest, which is definitely much needed.

This morning my boyfriend said that he thinks he would have felt lighter last night after eating sushi rather than the meal we had at Fresh. I tend to agree. I think sauces and oil especially make up a huge part of the problem with diets. Often my clients will be so proud because they started eating more salads and vegetables, however, when I ask them if there was sauce included they say yes and I have to break the terrible news.  Here is a great blog post about the additives of salad dressings and sauces.

I love to make my own dressing with extra virgin olive oil or grapeseed oil/flax oil, high quality balsamic vinegar or lemon, some fresh herbs, salt and pepper. You should always be aware of what you are consuming and if you buy anything pre-packaged or pre-made then make sure to check out the ingredients. Not only are sauces and dressings loaded with empty calories and sugar, which can ruin your diet, but they can also contain harmful additives that you don’t want in your body. Be mindful!

1030AM: Training my client on the reformer. I also picked up a latte from Pusateris because I am so tired!

1130AM: Finished training, I head down to the mall to pick up some stuff. I hate malls, they make me anxious.

130PM: Finally home after a crazy mall adventure, and a trip to the grocery store to get some more blueberries, fruit, and arugula. Tonight were going to have chicken, asparagus, and brown rice. I am so hungry right now so I’m going to wolf down some fruit and possibly heat up some brown rice. I also am feeling like I should have another cup of green tea but I know that it puts me at a caffeine overload for today. I am just so tired!

2PM: Fruit is not enough. I head to Freshii to grab a salad with lots of veggies and edamame!

230PM: So full, but happy I ate because now I will definitely last until dinner time.

330PM: I told you guys I would tell you everything so I have to admit, I made another coffee. Is it just me or am I getting worse and worse at this cleanse? haha

4PM: Off to train a few clients and then I am done for the day!

430PM: One client cancels (they always cancel on Fridays) and so I do an ab workout while I wait for the next one. Still so tired right now.

7PM: Home and so hungry. I start to cook and make us huge plates. When you are eating super clean and not consuming empty calories or excess sugars, fats, and carbohydrates, then you can load up your plate and not worry about counting calories. This is one of the benefits of eating this way.

9PM: Finished eating and watching movies on the couch. TGIF. Tomorrow we start the juice part of this cleanse. Were only doing it for one day but I’m a little worried because I still have to teach. We’ll see what happens!

With the beginning of a New Year and a lot of resolutions many of my clients have been asking me about juice detox’s and whether or not they should try one.  In addition, after my previous article about Juicing in conjunction with a healthy diet, I have also received a lot of emails from people asking me whether or not  they should partake in a juice fast.  Having actually done a few juice cleanses myself I am still skeptical about the actual benefits versus the detrimental side effects. So, I decided to scour the internet for information. I came across a bunch of different articles, however, one in particular summed up the juice detox for me quite well. The reason being is that I have never really felt that great during or after a juice detox. So, after reading this article I decided to speak to various physicians, physiologists, naturopaths, and nutritionists. Along with their advice I decided against doing another juice detox this year. Of course, there is always the other side of the argument. So, I decided to post two different articles on either side of the juice detox debate.

Anti-Juice Detox Article

“Your Body On A Detox” by Laura Bell for Women’s Health Magazine, March 2012

Thinking of signing up for a fruit juice cleanse? You might first consider how your body reacts to a week with no protein or fat and fewer than 1,000 calories a day.

After the first sip

• Your brain’s hunger signals are answered with a dump of pure fruit-juice sugar. And don’t get any ideas—veggie-based cleanses aren’t any healthier.
• The sweet stuff prompts the pancreas to squirt out insulin, which moves the sugar—now in your blood in the form of glucose—into your cells.

After 30 minutes

• As your cells suck up the glucose, your blood sugar level can start to plummet and you may feel dizzy.
• Meanwhile, lacking enough calories, your body is operating off its supply of glycogen, a form of short-term energy stored in the liver and muscles

After two days

• With each shot of juice, your insulin levels skyrocket, then crash. Your glycogen stores are pretty much gone, leaving your tank on empty—and you feeling weak and listless
• Since you’re getting only about half the calories you need, your body draws on two-long term power sources: triglycerides, a type of energy stored in fat cells (woo-hoo!), and protein, taken straight from your muscles (oops!). You begin to lose muscle mass, even if you’re still exercising every day.

After three days

• Your brain is not happy. It enters into semi-starvation mode and gobbles ketones, fuel that comes from the breakdown of fat. Ketones work, but they’re like low-grade gasoline; as a result, you may feel unfocused or irritable. (Any “mental clarity” is likely due to a strong placebo effect.)
• Sans a fresh protein infusion, your brain is also lacking amino acids, the raw materials that neurotransmitters need to maintain your mood. If you’re prone to depression, you may start feeling blue.
• The proteins in your shrinking muscles break down into ammonia and uric acid, unwelcome chemicals that invade your bloodstream. Now your kidneys are busy detoxing your detox.
• Stay near the bathroom: The juice’s high carbohydrate load causes a surfeit of water to enter the intestines. That extra H2O in your gut means you’re apt to get diarrhea.
  

After four days

• With no food to digest, your small intestine feels ignored. Its villi—the rows of tiny fibers that move food elements into the blood—start to atrophy. Your diarrhea may get worse, leading to dehydration… and there goes your rosy glow.

On the eighth day

• Solid food! But uh-oh! you’ve lost muscle. Even if you go back to your regular eating habits, you now have less muscle mass to burn those calories; instead, the calories are more likely to be turned into fat. (Hence one reason why yo-yo dieting makes it harder to lose weight: Your reduced muscle-to-fat ratio messes up your metabolism and makes calories much harder to work off.)

Pro-Juice Detox

The typical diet of the average American can make a toxic wasteland out of your body. It’s just true, and we all know it when we’re honest with ourselves. There’s such a vast and massive array of fun, decadent food for us to choose from day in and day out. We love junk food. We love easy food. We love food that is quick to get in our hungry bellies, and the idea of juice detoxification can be the furthest thing from our minds.

But this reality has led to a very harsh reality. The more convenient our food, often, the lower the nutritional content. Often, we end up filling up our daily caloric intake with nutritionally devoid comfort food that spikes the blood sugar, retains fat, and impairs the mind and keeps the immune system struggling for survival.

This is where the miracle of using fresh vegetables and fruits for juice detoxification comes in. It’s truly amazing what a mere week or more of juicing can do for the body. It’s often so amazing, that most don’t believe it until they actually experience it.

Consider it this way. If you’re like most, your body has been trying to extract hard to digest nutrients out of processed food for years and years. Most likely, you’re in your adult years, and this means that there are decades, yes, decades of toxins sitting inside of your fat cells and floating around in your blood stream daily. It’s not a pretty picture.

Here’s a simple explanation of how juice detoxification can work. Juicing gives the digestive system a break. Of course, with a juice fast there’s the obvious fact that you’re not eating solid foods, at least not regularly. This will give your body a chance to use up what’s there, instead of trying to keep up with what’s coming in, and backing up on it’s work as the days go by.

After a few days your body will have used up or eliminated what was sitting in your digestive tract, and will begin to move on to repair and cleansing. But here’s what’s great about detoxification with juice; while your body was getting rid of the last remnants of food in your system, you’ve been inundating it with nutrients. Your body, by this time, will now be excited and expecting to use those nutrients to not just survive, but to make you more fully alive.

This short and few first days can be difficult. As you continue to load your body with more nutrition than you’ve likely had in years, your body floods it throughout muscles and fat cells. All of the power of those veggies and fruits is now aiding your immune system and blood cells to search out and eliminate toxins, as well as to build you a better and stronger body.

Juice detoxification is truly unlike any other form of detoxification. This is for the simple fact that it’s alive. All of those juices are filled to the brim with living enzymes that will go to work to give you the life that they carry. It’s an experience that you won’t soon forget, and once you’ve experienced the effects, will most likely learn to repeat on a regular basis.

Source: Juice Detox Info

My take on the articles and my research

Basically, after searching the internet for quite a while and doing some research I did find a lot of articles that argued both sides.  However, in every article that was pro-juice detox there was always some sort of warning.  Obviously, the juice detox isn’t something that is safe for everyone and like I explained in my other juice article, you should always consult a physician before you begin changing your diet in any way. Detoxes are also not suitable for those who may be pregnant, those with a heart condition, or those who are on any type of long term or even short term medication. Furthermore, I’m not sure how great anything can be that isn’t an entirely natural way of eating. I know that juice is coming from fresh organic fruits and vegetables, however, juicing is not something that has been practiced for very long in modern society. Whenever I think of healthy ways to approach ones diet I always go back to the basics. Juicing is not really the basics. You need to consume protein, carbohydrates, and fat, all for various reasons. In order to maintain your muscle profile as well as keep your blood sugar stable you should not be starving yourself. The foods you consume are all meant to help support your body to function and work properly; therefore, I am not sure if subsisting on juice is really necessary or beneficial, whether it be for three days or fifteen. I think if you would like to detox your body then you should stop eating the foods you know are bad and do not give you any sort of nutritional value. This includes pre-made and pre-packaged foods, “junk” food, sweets, anything with preservatives, and anything with an ingredient list you cannot pronounce let alone begin to understand.  I recommend starting out with simply cleaning out your daily diet and taking baby steps so that you can keep moving forward with no set backs. There is no reason to rush the process and end up bingeing on ice cream one night. One healthy “detox” book that I can recommend is Dr. Joshi’s Holistic Detox, which provides recipes and a diet that  helps you maintain a healthy, normalized way of eating real foods.  This will give your body the nourishment that you need and the detox that you want.

If you have any questions or comments or would like to speak about diet or nutrition, please visit my Contact page.