Juicing

Today marks the first day of my experiment in Juicing. No, not that kind of juicing. No steroids here, just crushed, pulped and liquified veggies and fruits.

I'm not going all out and doing a juice fast right off the bat. I think that would require me taking time off from work to deal with the caffeine withdrawal at the very least. Instead I'm starting by replacing one meal a day, at this point breakfast, with juice. Since I'm not a big breakfast person ( I usually don't really get hungry until around 10 or 11 when I wake up at 7) I figure having a juice in the morning will be an easy transition.

Part of my plan is to wean myself off of caffeine, I'm going down to one cup of coffee a day this week, I will switch to decaf next week. Hopefully this will avoid the worst of the withdrawal symptoms, since it would be very difficult to deal with the migraines and lethargy while working and dealing with the munchkin.

I taste tested two juice blends from Wegmans last week, and while I found one of them completely undrinkable, I found I actually quite liked the "Green Glory" juice. I've gotten myself a large bottle of that, and a smaller bottle of the "Triple berry" juice. I'm not sure if it will be enough to get me through the week of breakfasts. I can always make a run to grab another bottle if I need it.

The bottles are kind of expensive, the large quart bottle I bought ran me $8, so if this works and I decide to continue replacing meals with juice (or even supplementing them), I'm going to have to look into buying an actual juicer.

I'm hoping that I tolerate this well, and can eventually plan to do a 10 day Juice "fast", to really give my weight loss efforts a boost. I'm really nervous about this. My weakness, diet wise, is carbs. I usually crave something bread-y with every meal, and most snacks. I use crackers, bread, oatmeal, and cookies to "settle my stomach" whenever it's feeling off, so the idea of having liquid meals scares me.

I'm going to try to be as honest as possible here about my experience with this, so it might get a little TMI at times.

So far (yes day one is not very far into it but still,) it's going alright. I've got my large cup of "Green Glory" juice that I'm sipping. I did start the day with (most of) a cup of coffee. I left some of that in the cup so I can have another hit of caffeine later in the morning. I had a moment, before I started drinking my juice that I wanted to just skip it today. My stomach wasn't feeling awesome, and I got that queasy feeling when I thought about actually starting to drink the juice. I really just wanted to open up my lunch bag and chow down on some of the snacks I brought for lunch.  I did not want to give up before I started, though, so I took that first sip. I'm feeling better now, more optimistic about being able to sustain this.

The other complication I'm going to be dealing with is health related. Right as I was planning this change, I came down with a nasty cold. It's still hanging on, causing a lot of stuffiness, a sore throat from post-nasal drip, and a lot of coughing. We'll see if the juice helps me fight it off, or if the cold will win.