Our 5-Day Juice Cleanse/Fast/Re-Boot

This week, my husband and I took a Juice Reboot Challenge to cleanse our bodies before starting a more clean eating lifestyle.

What do I hope to accomplish this week? Well, lose weight, obviously, but in addition to that, I have a couple of goals for myself and my family.

1. Eliminate all artificial flavors and dyes from our diet. I know my husband will continue to drink Monster Energy drinks and cheap Chinese, but for myself and the kiddos, I’ll be much more diligent about what’s going in our bodies.
2. Increase our awareness of GMO’s and Organic foods. A great deal of the produce we purchased at Costco was organic and I’m super excited about that.
3. Round out our diet with more fruits and vegetables.
4. Cut down on the gluten we take in. Alden has a SUPER active personality and I am completely okay with that, but I want to make sure it’s her and not what I’m putting into her causing her to lack focus.
5. Cut out processed foods and sugars. Again, I can’t control what my husband eats or drinks, but I can control what gets eaten in our house. I’m going to be limiting what we buy in a box, but when we do purchase pre-made foods, I’m going to be reading labels and not buying things I cannot pronounce.

Here are our thoughts over the course of the 5-days:

Day 1

• My weight: 208.4. My thoughts: I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate juice. Juice is gross. This was a terrible decision and I’m regretting spending $200 on fresh produce.
• His weight: 200.4. His thoughts: Give me a real dinner at night and I’m fine with drinking this for a week. I can’t wait to see purple pee.
• So we started doing a clean dinner after a day of juice.
• What we “ate”: Carrot/Apple, Coconut water, Green juice, Venison Steak Squash for dinner.

Day 2

• My weight: 206.4. My thoughts: I have a headache. I have to have coffee. (I had some coffee). I guess I lost 2 pounds so I won’t cheat. I also had a lap band adjustment so I really didn’t eat any this day.
• His weight: 198.4lb. His thoughts: PURPLE PEE IS AWESOME! And scary.
• What we “ate”: Beet juice, more carrot, more green. Venison tenderloin squash for dinner (if you can’t tell we got a large amount of venison).

Day 3

• My weight: 205.6. My thoughts: Less weight lost, but I really didn’t get but about 75 calories yesterday, and I didn’t drink much water so I retained a bit. Finally found a juice I can stomach, so I’ll probably make this over and over until we run out of ingredients. Still HATE coconut water, but Naked makes a juice that is Guava Peach Coconut Water
• His weight: 196.4. His thoughts: This will be easy if I can get my wife to like it…

Day 4

• My weight: 204.6. My thoughts: Getting much easier to do this, which is good because we’ve still got quite a bit of product left to run through. I’ve finally found juices I like. None of them include spinach or kale. I’m loving that I’m still losing weight.
• His weight: 196.4. His thoughts: This made going to the bathroom too much fun. I will definitely do this the week before my first colonoscopy if beets are allowed. Still sleeping great, I just want to feel full of food (not liquids) and I still have cravings for dairy (cheese specifically). My teeth are beginning to think about moving to a new mouth.

Day 5

• My weight: 204. My thoughts: Less weight loss today, but still a little, so I’m pleased. This is the last official day of cleansing and I feel great. I’m really liking carrot/apple/ginger, my friend Jenny was right. I may keep juicing a breakfast each day, since with LAP BAND, I can’t eat usually before at least 10am. Sleep is amazing. I don’t whether it’s having enough nutrients in my body, or not having gluten or grains or processed junk, but Rial and I agree we are sleeping like logs.
• His weight: 196.4. His thoughts: Weight has plateau’d, it was cool losing some weight, though. My teeth don’t like being ignored.

Overall thoughts:

• Mine: I went into this reboot super eager, then once we started, I hated every moment of it. Around Day 3, I started to find juices I enjoyed and it became easier. I also added a cup of coffee each morning to keep away the migraines. I know I got my band adjusted this week, but I know the juicing contributed to some of the loss I experienced this week. I’m loving seeing the 4lb drop in just 5 days. This reboot has definitely prepared me to clean out what we eat as a family.
• For folks with low base metabolic rates, it probably does well. For ME, it required supplement with real calories (at dinnertime) to not be miserable. I felt like my sleep/wake energy levels were much better. I stopped taking my MSM, so without exercise my joints weren’t quite as friendly after a day sitting at a desk. Overall it was enjoyable just to see the adjustments my body made to the change in diet.

Results:

Overall we felt bette, slept better, and had more energy. AND our weight changed. My final weight was 204, a loss of 4.4lbs. His final weight was 194.8, a loss of 5.6lbs!

Tonight we are doing our fit test for P90X! I’ll update tomorrow with our “before” pictures and our fit test results!