Juicing: 2 Months In

Today is June 1st and I have not missed a day of juicing and drinking fresh juice since April 1st.
I've actually been a little disappointed with the result of all this juicing... like most new things I try I had very large expectations; I expected that all this extra fruit and veg in my life was going to create big changes! Well low and behold I was wrong, nothing seems to have changed, to a noticable degree anyways.  I may have had more energy but it is hard to judge because I had been training for a half marathon since mid March and ran the race last weekend. And now we are preparing for our Europe vacation in July so the training regime will go into to overdrive for the next 5 weeks (we plan to over indulge and do not want to come back looking like total hippos). It will be interesting to see what happens when the juicing stops when we're away. Maybe we'll turn into trolls??

Shades of Orange

First, Happy Easter!
We had carrot-pear juice today.

Second, yesterday was all about orange coloured juice...
A dark orange carrot-celery-parsley-red pepper juice and a bright almost yellow orange-ginger jucie, yummy!

Juice Day 3

Don't worry, I didn't miss a day. Yesterday I made lemon-orange-ginger juice, it was super yummy. And then a concoction of celery-carrot-parsely-red pepper. And that was just in the morning. I started feeling a bit of a sore throat coming on throughout the day so I juice more oranges in the evening for a hit of straight-up Vitamin C.
This morning I again had the vegetable combo as above and more orange-lemon but this time with pear added.
I've got a full on cold now and am kind of disappointed all this juicing hasn't prevented it. We'll see how long it lasts before we pass any judgement though :)

Juice Day 1

This morning I woke up with a killer hangover and needed some juice to sort myself out. I altered one of the recipes in the juice book I'm currently reading (more on that later) in hopes that it'd relieve my hangover, but unfortunately it didn't quite do the trick. Anyways, I juiced ginger, pear, celery, and carrots and it came out a nice bright orange colour. It wasn't too gingery but you could definitely feel the ginger tickle in your nose afterwards and it did clear my sinuses a little.

So the book I'm reading is The Juiceman's Power of Juicing by Jay The Juiceman Kordich. It's pretty well, hokey, and a lot old school, but I like the recipes and that he explains each fruit and vegetable's benefits and why, e.g. carrot juice is good for your skin because it contains beta carotene. Yesterday I had an annoying headache (probably due to not re-hydrating very well throughout the day after my morning run) so i tried one of the jucie recipes that were supposed to relieve headaches, a combination of apple and celery. Sure enough after finishing the glass my heachache was gone. Wild.

Breaking News!

NEWS FLASH!

As sad or out dated as this may sound today I discovered that the 'new' (have owned for over 11 months) laptop did not contait ANY Sugar Ray!
AND
Here is the newsflash part- the old holding-on-by-mere-threads laptop turned on on the FIRST TRY! That is something special folks.
We now have Sugar Ray on our main, active, 'new' laptop. No worries. Lifeisgood. hash tag.

PS After turning off the old laptop it is now trying to install 33 new updates... yikes.

The Year of Juice: An Experiment

For my birthday a few weeks ago Andy bought me a juicer. I had asked for one because I'd watched the first half of that doco Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead... about a very unhealthy Aussie guy who goes to the USA and drinks only juice for 60 days (or is it 100?). Anyway, I don't think I could drink just juice for that long but something about that film struck a cord and got me thinking. I liked the idea of getting more from and consuming more fruits and vegetables without having to prepare or do lots things to them. I've always struggled with getting enough, i.e. more than zero, fruit and veg in my diet and juicing seemed like a viable solution to end the not enough strife! I have also bought fresh, juiced-in-front-of-you juice from Adelaide Central Market in the past and it is always delious but at the same time expensive, a 250ml cup is like $3.50.

So now I have the juicer and since receiving it I have juiced everyday. Thus far I have been throwing whatever produce we have into the juicer and all the combinations have been loverly, well except the one with grapefruit, it was to tart for me. But that is besides the point... the point is that starting tomorrow, April 1, 2012 I am going to try to juice everyday for one year. (Now try is the optimal word here because we're planning a holiday in July and I am not bringing the juicer with me, but that break in itself will be helpful in seeing the effects of quitting juice for a week or two.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to just drink juice and only juice for a year because that is 1. crazy and 2. you can't juice chocolate, or cheese, or avocado, etc. But I do plan to replace breakfast with juice, or make juice my breakfast I mean. And a glass of juice will make a nice weekend snack... AND if I can find the right information I might do a 48-72 hour juice fast as like a detox or something just to see what that does to me.
Mainly it will be a little, well long I suppose, experiment to see if all the extra nutrients and minerals and good things that come out of fruit and veg when juiced make a difference.  I will mostly be tracking my energy/fatigue levels (especially since winter is approaching and I tend to go into hibernation mode), the appearence of my skin, hair, and nails, oh and teeth, and lastly general wellbeing- how do I feel? I'm thinking things like headaches, cold, upset stomachs, BMs, aches and pains and muscle soreness- will they be less frequent or stay the same?
My year of juice starts tomorrow folks, so stay tuned for regular updates!

Note to Self...

Just because you made a ton of coffee doesn't mean you have to drink ALL of it.
(After 3 large cups of coffee Saturday morning)