—Post 40 Days of Fasting.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this whole Juice Fasting experience and have come to some conclusions about it:
One never really knows how the fast will affect them health-wise. I had a few issues, but what really opened up for me was my breathing. I can now breathe better than I have in 25 years. The liver lines on my fingernails have completely gone (signifying a very healthy liver), but all those green veggies and increased oxygenation made no difference in the appearance of the lunulae on my fingernails. I’m still missing some. Maybe Oriental medicine is wrong about the theory that if you don’t have 8 lunulae you will have cancer. Who knows?
It takes longer to come off a long fast than I thought. I guess I’d have to mentally commit to knowing that, and adapt for that by continuing to juice for a week or two after I stop the next fast while incorporating solid foods in. Also, I really wanted to get back to eating carbs/bread/grains way too soon. I think the gut needs more time to re-adapt its flora to these kinds of foods. Fasting is a good way to cut way back on those things in your diet.
Coffee is much harder to give up than anything else. Going cold turkey is not fun. I guess finding a balance with that is the best thing to do (at least for me.) As my mom taught us when we were growing up, “Everything in moderation.” The thing is . . . if you can’t be moderate about it . . . it’s better to cut it out of your life until you can—or find out why you can’t be moderate about it.
Cutting back on supplements: By doing a fast like this, it appears you can accomplish about a 50% reduction of the supplements you need. For us, that is a savings of about $60/month. Now, I haven’t added up the food bills yet, but it looks like we spent less money doing the fast (even using some organic vegetables) than we spent on food the previous 40 days. I’ll add that up later.
Adding Lactobacillus to the juices in theory makes sense to get your gut flora healthy, but it just seemed to produce gas in our guts. The thought of adding it via an enema was just not that appealing AND it seemed like neither of us could hold the enema in for the full 20 minutes anyway.
Food takes on a whole new meaning after doing a fast like this. Those foods that are bad for you don’t have nearly as much power over me now. It was two weeks before I wanted a piece of chocolate. Even then, when I couldn’t get the high-quality one that I wanted, I waited until the next day. I then cut it up into tiny pieces and took about 20 minutes to eat it enjoying every luscious taste.
Doing a fast this long is really difficult while working a full-time job. Your brain needs some fat and protein. I probably shouldn’t have eaten anything and just had more juice, but even with drinking 20+ servings of fruits and vegetables each and every day, it didn’t seem to give me the energy I needed to keep going. I slept just fine though, even though I had to get up sometimes three times each night to go to the bathroom.
I still have some of the health concerns I was hoping would go away like my spider veins and lymphatic rosary, but it does seem that my eyesight is a little better after having eaten over 50 pounds of carrots in the form of juice in 40 days.
Timing: I think I would have done better had I had a shorter fasting period and it had not been timed when the tomatoes would be fully ripe on the vine. I found that juicing tomatoes was definitely not the same experience as enjoying them fresh off the vine with a little salad dressing on them. Also, we went right through nectarine season. It was hard not to bite into a big juicy nectarine. It might be harder to find great produce in the wintertime in some parts of the world, but I’d think about doing another fast in the winter months when business is slower. It was suggested in several resources to incorporate a 3-day juice fast once a month and a 10-day juice fast twice a year to keep up with the health benefits. I think that is totally do-able.
Satori: I didn’t have a Spiritual awakening of any kind (sure was hoping for that) and I still feel somewhat negative when stressed or hormonally fluctuating even after the fast.
I do need some meat I think to keep up with the need to be totally productive as a blood Type O person, but I did not have any hair loss from the lack of protein during this 40-day fast. And my craving for meat definitely subsided around day 30. So did the chocolate cravings. I noticed that when I reincorporated some meat back into my diet that the bruising went away. There must have been some nutrient missing with just raw foods to cause that bruising.
Food quality: It kind of amazed me how much of our ionic minerals and liquid vitamins we tested we needed with all those fruits and vegetables. I guess we really have depleted our soils of all the minerals. We will definitely not be without those two things in our future health program.
Enemas aren’t as bad as I thought they were. They can definitely give you a better attitude and coffee enemas are definitely the best to use. Very effective.
Surprises: I found it totally fascinating that a juice fast can get rid of a Morton’s neuroma, but that’s exactly what it did for my husband. After only three weeks on the fast, he showed me his hand—which had a neuroma on it for over two years, and it was totally gone! You just never know what will happen.
Yeast and fruit: I think one can safely fast with fruits and vegetable juices without having problems with yeast. The benefits you get from the fruit are way more than the yeast overgrowth. I may re-evaluate that with cancer cases having yeast as one of the major core causes.
There will definitely be bad days during your fast. We all had them. The interesting thing was that we supported each other as we didn’t have our bad days on the same day. Also, it was a bad day, not a bad week or a bad run of days. The next day was always brighter. It was like our minds were doing housecleaning and the cleaning was done within 24 hours each time it happened. Enemas definitely helped shorten the difficult times where we were irritable, negative, or hungry for certain foods.
Physical Results: During this last 40 days I’ve lost 12 inches, 5 ½ % body fat and 16 solid pounds.
New Habits: Since our stomachs are now shrunken down to about half the size as before the fast (and our guts have increased in tone and gotten smaller as well), it will be important to remember to eat about half of what we were used to eating. Using the fist rule, we’ve decided not to eat more than the size of our fist at a meal and to eat to overcome hunger, not desire. Our eyes have not shrunken I’ve noticed and our habits still want that same amount of food serving as before the fast. Must work on this.
More Awareness: As our bodies clean out of toxins, chemicals and food additives you can really notice a difference when you re-expose yourself after you break your fast. I went shopping and got several new varieties of baked chips, pretzels and rice snacks that were all low in fat. Well, we had about a tablespoon of those pretzels and found we both had lots of phlegm build up within minutes of trying them. Of course we then went back to read the ingredients on the bag and found foods not on the beneficial list for blood type O people. For instance, whey almost always causes phlegm in people and it sure doesn’t do well with my body. Who needs to eat pig food anyway? Those will be tossed out. I liked the baked rice chips though. We spread on a bit of Hummus on each chip and used them as a snack a few days after going off the fast.
You are not alone: There are more people around that do juice fasting and fasting than you can imagine. When we shared our experience with the people around us, we got lots of stories about how others had done fasting and how they liked it. We haven’t heard a bad experience yet.
It feels good to have an empty gut.
We don’t need nearly the volumes of food we’ve been eating to function at 100%.
Food Combining: I think we experience lots of health problems because we mix our foods together and don’t allow our guts to fully empty before the next meal. I like the “eat like a monk” technique where you just eat fruit for one meal, just eat veggies for another, just eat bread for another and at the same time give thanks for what you have, be present with the food and chew it fully and thoughtfully in the presence of wonderful company. I think the digestive track likes that method as well. I don’t think it’s healthy to eat when you are stressed or upset.
It’s hard to chew your food more than you have your entire life, but I’m finding it easier to eat more slowly and put my fork down between bites. I can easily take smaller bites now and seem to enjoy the simple flavors more.
I love being thin. I feel so healthy!
Smoking Cessation: My client, Donna, is convinced this is THE WAY to stop smoking. She hasn’t smoked since day one and the people in her office are telling her they are amazed she has quit. Apparently the last time she tried it she was really bitchy at work. She has her days, but is really doing great and is resisting well. I sent her home on a homeopathic to get rid of the addictive behavior associated with the smoking. I hope that works for her. She had some chronic life-long eczema on the outside of her thighs that went away and has not come back. Nice benefit of fasting. I didn’t know she had that problem, but enemas and alkalizing are a really great way to overcome this challenge.
Helpful Links and References on the Juice Fast Musings:
Fasting information by Dr. Herbert Shelton : https://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.toc.htm