A week ago today, I started the next phase in my cleanse, a juice fast.  This is something that I try to do, at least once a year, to help me break food addictions, enhance my self discipline, change dietary habits and maybe even clean out my body a bit.  This year I’ve been integrating frozen, antioxidant rich smoothies as well, as a way of transitioning to lower calorie diet more gradually.

Its going really well so far.  I’m feeling great and don’t miss the typical foods that much.  I’d like to keep it going for as long as it feels right, maybe another week.  Then I’d like to spend a few days water fasting.

I’m about a week into a pre-fast “detox” diet. So I’ve eliminated many of my relatively non-productive dietary vices like coffee, alcohol and for the most-part, processed sugar & flour. I’ve been eating mostly various vegetables, sprouts, microgreens, fruit, nuts,  raw cheeses and fermented food; this often includes really densely packed wraps full of sprouts, avocado, sauerkraut, etc and wrapped in a sprouted wrap.

This has me feeling pretty good. I think just getting away from the caffeine, alcohol and sugar has helped tremendously. I am more aware of my environment, the subtleties in things and I’m thinking more broadly, rather than the more constrained perspective, which many of these chemicals encourage.  I guess you could say, it helps the body to regulate itself, rather than forcing it with food-based chemicals.

Also of interest, I find that I still have plenty of energy and vitality even without the constant caffeine boosts I usually have, while I’m also able to wind down in the evening without the glass of wine, I still manage to stay motivated and feel great.

So I’m going to be eating the rest of this big cauldron of vegetable soup I cooked, which features some really tasty Japanese Sweet Potatoes and various peppers and other soup-friendly veggies. By the time that’s all gone and I’ve used up most of the cookable perishables, it will be time to switch to exclusively juice/smoothies for perhaps a week or so.  Maybe a water fast for a few days at the end.

Since the beginning of the month of March, I’ve been working on an in-depth cleanse. This cleanse started with a detox diet for the first two weeks, consisting of loads of organic vegetables as soups and stir fries as well as nuts, fruit and dried fruit. This was followed by a week of juice fasting, consisting of fresh raw fruit and vegetable juice diluted 50% with water; this is the stage I am at now. A water-only fast will be beginning this weekend and should last for at least one week, perhaps longer if things work out well.

So far this week, I’ve primarily been drinking juices with some combination of the following (citrus is always taken separately as the guidelines of trophology suggest):

• carrot
• bok choy
• celery
• cabbage
• italian parsley
• ginger
• garlic
• kale
• oranges
• grapefruit

So-far, I’m feeling good, I have loads of energy and I don’t feel much in the way of withdrawal symptoms from coffee, dairy, bread, etc. In the past I had a hard time getting through the day without a few coffees, it was quite an addiction. Now I am able to get through the day without feeling the need for coffee. I’ll still have some caffiene in the form of a green tea, perhaps, but the overall dosage is much lower than before.

I’ve been able to go about my life with more sustainable energy than before and aside from missing out on the enjoyment of food, I am feeling better than ever. I think this opportunity I’m giving my body to really rest and repair, is really helping a great deal. So I’ll keep a good attitude, which has a huge influence on the results of this kind of endeavor, I’ll be mindful of the effects of whatever I am engaged in and I’ll push forth doing my best to maintain and improve my life as I go.

I went to a Yoga class followed by a Tai Chi class on Tuesday, which turned out to be an above average class in terms of difficulty. Despite having less energy to burn, I did well and I pushed myself in ways that I had not previously pushed myself. I was able to hold difficult poses like scale pose for 30 seconds on each side, which is a record for me and I was able to do poses like half bound lotus forward bend with less difficulty. Overall, I was stronger, more flexible, more disciplined and motivated than I had been in previous experiences.

One of the great things about these kinds of experiences, is they help you to apply the discipline that it takes to engage in fasting/detox, to other parts of your life. It really gets you thinking and introspecting, so you have the potential to really weed out toxic habits and motivational issues that you might have otherwise been complacent with, had you not done a fast/detox.

I did an hour long video podcast, which goes off on alot of tangents; but touches many areas that I felt inspired to discuss. I hope those of you who have the time will check it out and share your thoughts if you are so inclined.

Before and After Seven Days Fast

For the month of March, I am engaging in a truly transformative experience, a fast and a detox, phased in a week at a time and starting today.  

This experience is going to be a thorough cleanse of my entire body/mind/spirit through fasting, detoxification and meditation (Tai Chi, Yoga, Sitting Meditation, Breathing Exercises). I am using a phased approach, so I can gradually work my way into an eventual water-only fast, over the course of a a month; so the overall experience will produce the greatest benefits, in terms of bodily detoxification, spiritual development, and dietary improvement.

In past fasting and detoxification experiences, I’ve had profound revelations on many different levels of significance.  Since I am taking the time to go through preparatory pre-fasting stages, over several weeks, I expect the benefits to be far greater than in previous experiences, where I only pre-fasted for a few days prior to the fast.

In all of my 30 years, I have encountered few experiences that are as powerful and transformative, in such a short period of time, as these fasting experiences. I want to make this one the best fasting experience yet, so I can feel more alive, more aware and more in touch with my spiritual and experiential reality.

Here is the plan for this experience, as it stands right now:

• March 1 – March 8 – Begin a detox diet, eliminate meat, bread, (most) dairy and sweets.  Diet consisting mostly of stir fried veggies, sprouts and fresh raw vegetable juice.
• March 9 – March 16 – Similar diet to the first week; but more emphasis on vegetable juice.
• March 17 – March 22 – Juice only diluted 50% with filtered water, also coconut water at times.
• March 23 – ??? – Water only with some tea.

I’m leaving the duration of the water fast open ended, but the goal is to listen to my body and go for somewhere between 5 and 14 days.  I’ll be updating with future journals, possibly with videos, whenever time permits. I am looking forward to documenting this transformation as it progresses. I’d like to document this in a much more significant way than I have during past experiences. I really want to take the lessons learned during past experiences and apply them for this ordeal, so I can again be astonished by what may transpire.

For those of you who are curious, I ended up doing the last juice fast for 7 1/2 days, starting on the evening of October 4th and ending on the afternoon of the 12th. My friend Alex, who was also fasting, went about 5 days on this fast; pretty good for her first major fast 🙂

The experience was a powerful one, as you might imagine, I feel much more connected to everything now. These sorts of experiences have the potential to alter the very core of your being and call into a critical light the habits that we rarely expend any effort to contemplate during the normal course of our day.
Read the rest of this entry »

Went out to the store and bought enough Celery, Bok Choy and Carrots to last about a week. A friend and I started this fast on Friday we plan on doing this for as long as each of us feels we are capable. I think it would be great if I can keep the juice fast going for at least 10 days, which would put the ending at about October 15. If I’m still able to function reasonably well by then, there’s no reason to limit the experience, but 10 days seems like a reasonable goal to start with.

While most people that I’ve talked to seem to think that Juice fasts are very difficult, I firmly believe the difficulty lies in the mental aspects of such an endeavor. This kind of fasting still allows your body to have calories, depending on the juices selected, as well as many of the essential nutrients and vitamins.

My research indicates that juice fasts have the potential to get our bodies more nutrients than eating “normally.” The reason being, when we eat whole foods that are in liquid form, they are very easily assimilated into the body with very little strain on digestive system. Read the rest of this entry »

I decided this Wednesday to do a water-only fast that, I hope, will last for a total of seven full days. I have a variety of reasons for doing this; the primary reason is the detox benefits that go along with starving the body of caloric intake for a prolonged period of time.

I can feel that my body has reached the end of the Liver’s glycogen stores and is now resorting to ketosis (the burning of fats) for energy. This is signified by sluggishness due to the body’s inability to obtain energy from stored glycogen. This process begins on the second day of the fast and will last for the remainder of this third day.

What the body is unable to obtain by ketosis it obtains by catabolizing, which is the process of breaking down muscle tissue and utilizing the amino acids therin. On day 2 of the fast, between 2 and 3 ounces of muscle tissue are utilized; after this the body begins to conserve the muscle fibers to such an extent that the body could go for a full month without food and only lose 1/4 pound of muscle.

If I can make it through the weekend without breaking the fast, I plan on doing an extensive detoxification regimen next week involving a colonic irrigation. Colonic irrigation is essential for the detoxification to continue unhindered, since the toxins of the colon block the exit of the toxins released by the ketosis process.

If this fast is anything like previous fasts, then I expect to have more energy and feel younger when all is said and done. There is no other process, that I know of, that is as effective as a water fast at accomplishing the cleansing, detoxification and renewal of the body.

For more information, please check out The Health Benefits of Water Fasting, an article which explains the specifics of what occurs during a fast and the benefits.

The fast was broken on Tuesday night. After seeing that my body temperature seemed to be dropping I decided to end earlier than planned. Four days is, however, not a bad length of time for a fast. This is, undoubtedly, one of the most powerful life changing experiences I’ve ever had.

The fasting experience has taught me a variety of lessons about human nature as well as the workings of the physical body. After such an experience, one cannot help but be attuned to the needs of their body; I have no doubt that cellular detoxification and digestive cleansing are the keys to living a long and healthy life in a youthful state. Read the rest of this entry »