juicechallenge – My Muddlings

So it seems I lost track of time. 😉 I’m only a week and a half late but here are my final thoughts on my Juice Challenge with Reboot with Joe.

This challenge was really well done on the part of the Reboot team. Each email was clear, with links and extra information. If you’re interested in trying a juice cleanse, I would definitely recommend them as the place to keep an eye on for their next one or signing up for their personalised Guided Reboots if you’ve got the funds and you’re interested.

As for my physical feelings, and changes I’m not so sold.

As I detailed in my last post here, I had a very hard time for the first three days even though I had been very conscientious in my preparation before the cleanse. The bloating was intense and extremely uncomfortable and I was tired. That was really the only symptoms I had however, no headaches or hunger. By Thursday night, the day I wrote that post, the bloating had returned and I was in tears by the time bed-time came around. I said to Si that I just wanted to quit, that I’d done four days and that was fantastic and I was proud of what I’d achieved. He gently pushed that it was only one extra day. And I decided he was right.

Friday was great. I felt light, no bloating, my skin was clear and I was alert. This was the feeling I was seeking the whole week. But damn did I want to eat something!!! I broke my ‘fast’ on Friday night with a celebratory square of Lindt dark chocolate. Not the best thing to break a juice cleanse with but I was happy, and there are certainly worse things I could have had.

I weighed myself on Saturday morning and I had lost a further 1.4kg (3.1lbs) for a total of 3.8kg (8.4lbs) lost on the cleanse. Not too shabby.

And Saturday is where things just went wrong. It started with a hot cross bun for breakfast, CC’s for lunch then restaurant pasta for dinner. Two out of three were what I’d been craving through the cleanse. I couldn’t face another juice. Or to cut up more produce. I think partially the carb overload is from the carb deprivation from the previous 5 days. I am a carb craver by nature so that’s what I went for. 😦 I didn’t eat all the pasta so I’m grateful for small mercies.

As I said, I’m a week and a half out from the end of my juice cleanse. My consumption of a plant-based diet has been minimal. Other than the odd juice, regular banana & avocado smoothies, and vegetarian dinners, the rest of my diet has been fairly abysmal. Cheese toasties, home-baked bread and butter. You know, crap. As such, my weight had gone up again by 1.8kg (4lbs) in last week’s weigh in, which has held steady this week thankfully. I am still 3.3kg (7.3lbs) down from the start of the year so I’m still happy with progress.

So now that the long weekend is over, I walked the dog this morning, made a green juice for breakfast, and have planned a healthy lunch and a vegetarian dinner. So fingers crossed this week is the return to healthy living. Wish me luck!

So if you follow me on Instagram, (and if you don’t, why not?!! 😉 My handle is anneofjulie! Lots of yarny/doggy/foodie goodness to be had!) you’ll be aware that I’ve been on a juice cleanse since Monday.

If you’ve been a long time reader of this blog, you’ll know that about this time last year I was talking about a plant-based diet and wanting to get rid of my excess weight. Well, obviously I did nothing about it most of the year last year. In December I really decided I’d had enough, I couldn’t fit in my size 20 jeans. Something had to be done so my new year’s resolution was set: Become healthy, fit, actually have that plant-based diet and lose weight!

It just so happened that in December I received an email from Reboot with Joe about a 5-day juice cleanse happening in January 2016. I signed up immediately. You might know Joe (ha I rhyme!) from his documentary ‘Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead’ and its sequel that you can catch on Netflix. It is about his journey to cure himself of auto-immune disease and lose his excess weight. He spent two months in the US drinking nothing but juice. Yep, you read right, two months of only juice. And now on my fourth day of my cleanse, I really have NO IDEA how he went for so long without chewing!!!

I meant to do a write up of each day as I went along but obviously that didn’t happen! 😉 So I thought I’d do a quick rundown now.

Sunday my hubby, Si and I went out and we purchased everything I’d need for my 5-day juice cleanse. Surprisingly it wasn’t as expensive as I expected. I’d say all together it was just over $100 to get everything I needed. We laid it all out and I took a selfie with all my produce. As you do.

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And here’s what it looked like without my mug in front of it:

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Hubs did a fabulous job of rearranging and packing the fridge for me. Grouping everything together in easy to find places. What a gem! I had spent the previous week and a half beginning the detox by avoiding processed food, gluten containing foods, meat and dairy. It was advised that this could help to reduce detox symptoms once the cleanse began.

Monday I’d made plans to go to my mother-in-law’s house to start work on some bunting that I’m sewing for her birthday party. So my morning was making up three lots of juice to take with me as we were staying for dinner. Well, hubs was having dinner, I was having juice. By the afternoon, my stomach began to get bloaty and I was feeling a bit uncomfortable. I was a little tired and because of that, grumpy. Thankfully I wasn’t very hungry. I was devastated that I missed out on a home cooked, Chinese meal by one of the MIL’s Chinese boarding students but I had made a commitment so I stuck to it. The other student said she felt sorry for me that all I had to drink was juice when her friend had made such excellent food. At that point she was dead to me. Lol, not really but YA DIDN’T NEED TO KICK ME WHEN I WAS ALREADY DOWN!!! STOP RUBBING IT IN THAT YOU’RE HAVING A FABULOUS DINNER! 😉

Monday’s breakfast

Tuesday was a very hot day so I mostly just sat around the house, monitoring the dog to ensure he wasn’t too hot. The bloating hadn’t stopped and I was getting increasingly uncomfortable. Thank goodness I didn’t have any headaches or I would have been not nice to be around. I didn’t particularly like my lunch juice, it had capsicum in it and although it didn’t taste too bad, the smell of the capsicum was really off putting.

Wednesday was my worst day. If you do follow on Instagram, you would have seen my selfie for the day was a very demotivated, very sad little panda. I was SO uncomfortable with multiple IBS symptoms though I do not have IBS. I was tired, teary and just over it. I wanted to CHEW something; the craving for a cold, crunchy salad was overwhelming. Si got me to pick him up some hot cross buns and CC’s (corn chips) while I was out running errands and they practically taunted me from the kitchen. You have no idea the amount of self control it took to not rip open and devour a packet of CC’s. To have the cheesy, crunchy chips masticating in my mouth (alliteration anyone?). And the smell of the hot cross buns was almost too much. But I didn’t break. Si suggested chewing some celery and spitting it out just to chew but I couldn’t. I looked towards Saturday when I can eat again, Si put on an Indiana Jones film and I just tuned out how crappy I was feeling. The very small amount of consolation I had was that both the breakfast and lunch juices for the day were lovely.

So, now we reach today. The IBS symptoms are gone! Hoorah! And I’m feeling bright and positively cheerful! My lovely friend S told me that the third day is the “resolution” day and it seems that has been accurate for me. My breakfast juice today was revolting so I drank most of one serve and threw the rest away. It was a large part silverbeet (chard) with just cucumber and carrot and it just tasted like eating straight silverbeet. Yuck. The remainder was supposed to be for afternoon tea but I feared I might vomit if I tried to drink it. So I’ll just have some coconut water instead.

I’m very glad tomorrow is the last day. There’s no way I could last two months doing this. That being said, I think the results speak for themselves. After only two days of juice-only, I’d lost 2.4kg (5.3lbs) which takes my weight loss this year to 5.1kg (11.2lb). My skin is bright and clear and I feel very alert today. And guess what, I tried on my jeans today AND THEY FIT!!! YAY!!! I’ll try and post again on Saturday with my final weight results from the cleanse and final thoughts.

Would you do a juice cleanse? Have you done one and would you do it again? How did it go?