Juice Fast Day 4...

Iron Builder Juice

Thursday was my fourth day of juice fasting, - I know, I’m behind, I’d hoped to catch up over the weekend but things were a bit hectic.

8:30am - Woke up, felt positive, happy, full, and energized for the day.

10:30am - Made breakfast. I made the same Green Juice I’d been making the previous two days - the Bitter Detox juice - but this time added some collard green stems and a mango as well. I also followed with the same strawberry kiwi juice I’d been enjoying.

12pm - Went for a walk.

2-2:30pm - Enjoyed Kombucha, herbal tea and water

4pm - On hearing the results of my final exam for my Anatomy and Physiology Class I was pretty bummed out, and started feeling really depressed. I passed the final with a more then acceptable grade, a low A but I had hoped to do better. - Yes, I am a bit of an overachiever. - I started feeling frustrated and fed-up and didn’t want to do the fast anymore. I was upset about the test and wanted to eat - or more accurately ‘junk-out.’

5:30pm - Instead of giving into negative feelings and breaking my fast I decided to take a nap.

6pm - I was still feeling depressed, but also hungry so I made myself a juice. The Iron Builder Juice from Douglas McNish’s book “Eat Raw, Eat Well’ it contains beets, carrots, apple, and lemon. It tasted better then I thought it might although 32oz was a lot of it to drink. After drinking it and feeling full again I felt a little better, slightly more positive. I decided to take some time to relax and clear my mind. So I read.

9pm - I was feeling much better. I wasn’t hungry so instead I just had the same coconut water - wheatgrass - spirulina mix from the day before with a glass of water.

1:30am - Went to bed.

Overall Thoughts for the Day -

Par usual I felt great in the morning and as it drew nearer to the afternoon I started to come down, and began feeling depressed. The news of my final didn’t help matters and that just made my frustration and negative feelings worse. I really wanted to break the fast and quit, but by 9:30-10pm I was feeling good again. I’d taken some time out to relax and clear my mind and rethink why I was doing the fast in the first place. I forced myself to look on the positive side and reminded myself not to get so bogged down in silly details.

As far as ‘Detox’ symptoms go I still had the vegetable breath, and vegetable taste in my mouth, along with the milky coating on my tongue. However I started to notice other positive changes. The itchy skin and pimples had long since vanished already, but now I began noticing other things improving. Things that ad never even occurred to me. For starters, every morning I wake up and have a lot of mucous in my throat. I have to clear my throat a lot in the morning and it’s very annoying to me. This has been going on for years now, and it started after I moved to Chicago. I don’t have any diagnosed or confirmed allergies but I know this morning mucous has to do with the level of pollution in Chicago, as well as the climate.  Both of which were very extreme changes to me when I first moved out here from Vancouver, and both of them are things I still am not - and can not get - used to. When I travel I notice the morning mucous either goes away completely or lessens depending on where I am in the world.  Yet while on this juice fast the morning mucus went away. I also sneeze frequently, not all day long or anything and not always everyday but I sneeze enough to realize that while on the juice fast I hadn’t sneezed even once. Which I found notable.

Little realizations like this reminded me in my most desperate moments why I was doing the juice fast, what I was trying to achieve and what else I might be able to achieve. These things kept me strong, and I ended the day looking forward to the next, and what it might bring.

PS: Sorry, I only have one new picture for you today, since the other juices I drank are all stuff you’ve already seen.