Juicing

PirateNinjaPirateNinja Icrontian
edited August 2011 in Fitness
Hi,
I gained some weight during the wedding and honeymoon. So I am going put nothing in my body but fresh home juiced veggie / fruit juices for five days. I started yesterday. I'll be having one "green" juice per day (the dark leaf type food), one berry juice, and one carrot based.

I'll be supplementing with a standard multi and omega acids. If I get really hungry between juices I'll drink water and eat some seaweed snack to calm the stomach cells.

My guess is I'll drop a pound or two, who knows. Regardless it seems like a healthy thing to do. Will report the results Saturday or Friday. If I'm feeling good about it I'll throw in some weight lifting and turkey slices and/or egg whites and continue on.

Anyone have any good juice recipe suggestions? I want this to be a tasty adventure along with healthy.

:buck:

Comments

  • pigflipperpigflipper The Forgotten Coast Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    I thought this was about steroids...
  • ButtersButters CA Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    pigflipper wrote:
    I thought this was about steroids...
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    Going on an all-liquid diet is not healthy, regardless of how good fruits and vegetables are for you. That's my advice; take it or leave it.
  • pragtasticpragtastic Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    Thrax wrote:
    Going on an all-liquid diet is not healthy, regardless of how good fruits and vegetables are for you. That's my advice; take it or leave it.

    This includes liquefied chicken? (yes|no)
    TiberiusLazarus
  • MAGICMAGIC Doot Doot Furniture City, Michigan Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    Why do you have to juice them?

    Just eat them, along with a moderate amount of lean meat and whole grains. Drink water.... exercise. Call me crazy but that's the way I would go about it.
  • PirateNinjaPirateNinja Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    MAGIC wrote:
    Why do you have to juice them?

    Just eat them, along with a moderate amount of lean meat and whole grains. Drink water.... exercise. Call me crazy but that's the way I would go about it.

    I think a lot of what I am consuming is too disgusting to chew-n-swallow. I'm fine drinking it though. That and I want to see how my body handles it. I'm 48 hours in now and I feel fine.

    I totally agree that anything more than a weak on a liquid only diet probably isn't good (or less if you aren't healthy or on meds). I'm just giving myself 5 days to see how my body takes it, like an experiment. Then I'll gradually bring back along solids starting with lean proteins. I don't really need to lose weight, I could just stand to toss out 10 pounds. This isn't my solution to that, just a jumping point. I need to "detox" after a lot of drinking and eating like crap. .. Yes I know there is no scientific backing of most detox diets, juicing included.

    I found some good juice recipes online and I'm excited to share the results of my mini-adventure. :thumbup
  • PirateNinjaPirateNinja Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    Results:
    After 3.5 days of nothing but veggie and little fruit juice .. home made ... I feel pretty good with the exception of two things:
    - I haven't pooped
    - My brain is just not it's normal self. I think denying it fat and protein is causing mental fatigue.

    That being said I am going to start the conversion early and swap out lunch juice for black beans and corn tortillas to get some protein and fiber. I miss my brain function and my pucker hole.

    The good news is my body feels great and I lost 6 pounds. I drank a ton of water this whole time, I'm guessing that isn't water weight. I don't think it's muscle, muscle does not erode that fast. So maybe I lost some fat :D

    On on comrades.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    You probably lost about 5.5 pounds of muscular sugar and water, and half a pound.
  • LazarusXeroLazarusXero Illinois Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    Any diet that makes you lose brain function doesn't sound like you should put much investment in.... I mean, I may be mis-guided, but if I read a diet plan with a disclaimer that said, "May result in loss of 6 to 90 lbs and 6 to 90 IQ points," I probably wouldn't go there.
  • BasilBasil Nubcaek England Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    If you're going to continue this a fybogel sachet in the juices wouldn't be a bad idea...
  • PirateNinjaPirateNinja Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    Thrax wrote:
    You probably lost about 5.5 pounds of muscular sugar and water, and half a pound.

    If you have time, what is muscular sugar and water? Insulin and water in the joints?

    For the record I did have some protein in the diet from copious amounts of broccoli and spinach. I realize this doesn't cover all my AAs, and I did not supplement for that. I did supplement fatty acids important to metabolism. I also drank water like a crazy person in between juices, I doubt I could have been dehydrated.

    I think I should try this one more time in the future but see a nutrition professional first to get my numbers, and again right after to see exactly where the weight loss occurred. Or maybe I can find a scale that measures this sort of thing. I'm really curious...but that is for another day.

    Let the more Icrontic Approved healthy lifestyle begin. I know how to do it, I've been in great shape in the past.
  • PirateNinjaPirateNinja Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    Basil wrote:
    If you're going to continue this a fybogel sachet in the juices wouldn't be a bad idea...

    I just looked up fybogel, it's plant fiber. I got a ton of that. I don't think I was constipated, I just think I don't have anything to release. I'm already empty. I'll slowly fill her back up and report in if you are really curious.
  • BasilBasil Nubcaek England Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    I don't think I was constipated
    Would be surprised if you weren't, it's typical of most fluid heavy diets.

    Anyone for who I dispense more than a couple of milkshake-meals would be getting ispaghula husk and/or another bulk forming laxative.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    If you have time, what is muscular sugar and water? Insulin and water in the joints?

    For the record I did have some protein in the diet from copious amounts of broccoli and spinach. I realize this doesn't cover all my AAs, and I did not supplement for that. I did supplement fatty acids important to metabolism. I also drank water like a crazy person in between juices, I doubt I could have been dehydrated.

    I think I should try this one more time in the future but see a nutrition professional first to get my numbers, and again right after to see exactly where the weight loss occurred. Or maybe I can find a scale that measures this sort of thing. I'm really curious...but that is for another day.

    Let the more Icrontic Approved healthy lifestyle begin. I know how to do it, I've been in great shape in the past.

    Muscles store a type of sugar, called glycogen, which is used for energy. It is formed from dextrose, and it's the only substance that muscles can use.

    Most researchers estimate that 1g of glyocgen in your body stores approximately 3g of water.

    There's also the matter of the material in your digestive track that was flushed out--and not replaced with new solid food--over the course of your experiment.

    Another mechanism probably in play is as follows: you actually store less water in the skin and elsewhere when you're well-hydrated. Most people are hydrated, but few go to lengths necessary to be well-hydrated.

    Long story short:
    -You dropped poop weight.
    -Increasing water intake shed water weight.
    -Your low-cal diet burned through glycogen.
    -Depleted glycogen released water that was shed as piss.

    And to make up the rest of the calorie deficit, you probably lost a little body fat.

    To provide you with an example, my true body weight is a touch over 180 pounds, but I can go as high as 189 through water/carbs/feces/piss/whatever, because I have a lot of muscle to fill with water and glycogen.

    //EDIT: As an aside, a pound of fat also stores about a pound of water.
  • PirateNinjaPirateNinja Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    I thought the body used glycogen as a result of low carb diets, not the result of a low calorie diet. I was getting plenty of carbs from all the fruit and veggies I was consuming. I was having an apple as part of every juice, so that is roughly 90 grams of carbs each day just from the apples.

    At the same time, my brain did feel somewhat dull in that I was having a hard time concentrating. That may imply that I was running out of glycogen stores in the liver. So maybe I wasn't getting enough carbs afterall.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    The body uses glycogen first, fat second. Which is why carb reduction is important for a fat-shedding diet, not just because it reduces insulin levels--a hormone that prevents fat burning--but because your body won't use fat for energy if it has glycogen to use.

    It'll burn muscle over fat in the long run if you don't refill your liver's stores every 7-10 days.
  • BobbyDigiBobbyDigi ? R U #Hats ! TX Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    ...I don't think I was constipated, I just think I don't have anything to release. I'm already empty. I'll slowly fill her back up and report in if you are really curious.

    We has GroupMe for that, do keep us posted, we've had movement updates from all over the country. :tongue2:

    -Digi
  • PirateNinjaPirateNinja Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    BobbyDigi wrote:
    We has GroupMe for that, do keep us posted, we've had movement updates from all over the country. :tongue2:

    -Digi

    Groupme crashes my blackberry, I took it off =/. So I'll let you know now, earlier today I took care of biz.

    ----
    OK if I understand everything Thrax says correctly:
    I burned off a lot of glycogen, and at times ran out completely and burned small amounts of fat. But if I had another juice, the glycogen was temporarily replaced. Essentially I was running low on glycogen throughout the diet, and occasionally running out completely which is why I perhaps lost a pound of fat. The rest of the lost weight was stored glycogen and the accompanying water.

    If that's the case, perhaps the positive of a 3-5 day juice diet like this is that it probably reduces insulin levels and maybe even shrinks the stomach a bit for when one returns to a normal diet. Plus a little bit of fat loss.

    The negatives would be whatever is bad about an all liquid diet.
  • BasilBasil Nubcaek England Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    Sorry, but this is just bugging my sad, sad pedantic self.
    Thrax wrote:
    Muscles store a type of sugar, called glycogen, which is used for energy. It is formed from dextrose, and it's the only substance that muscles can use.

    Glycogen is not really a sugar, it's a big ol' storage polysaccharide and it's not the sole substrate for muscles (skeletal and cardiac will happily burn fatty acids directly or use phosphocreatine produced with ATP from fatty acid fueled beta oxidation/TCA cycles).
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    I was simplifying for our dear readers.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    Thrax wrote:
    Muscles store a type of sugar, called glycogen, which is used for energy. It is formed from dextrose, and it's the only substance that muscles can use.

    Most researchers estimate that 1g of glyocgen in your body stores approximately 3g of water.

    There's also the matter of the material in your digestive track that was flushed out--and not replaced with new solid food--over the course of your experiment.

    Another mechanism probably in play is as follows: you actually store less water in the skin and elsewhere when you're well-hydrated. Most people are hydrated, but few go to lengths necessary to be well-hydrated.

    Long story short:
    -You dropped poop weight.
    -Increasing water intake shed water weight.
    -Your low-cal diet burned through glycogen.
    -Depleted glycogen released water that was shed as piss.

    And to make up the rest of the calorie deficit, you probably lost a little body fat.

    To provide you with an example, my true body weight is a touch over 180 pounds, but I can go as high as 189 through water/carbs/feces/piss/whatever, because I have a lot of muscle to fill with water and glycogen.

    //EDIT: As an aside, a pound of fat also stores about a pound of water.

    This I can attest to through experience succeeding and failing dieting. A balanced diet with enough protein, and little resistance training a few times a week and some light cardiovascular exercise daily is all you need.
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    BY GOD MAN, YOU JUST GOT MARRIED!
    My recomendation would be to eat a healthy sustainable diet that would be a positive lifesyle change. Then act like the newlywed that you are and have hours of good old sex every single day! It worked for me a while back and I wasn't even a newlywed. 24 hrs a week or so should work. (I ain't the 'ol goat fer nothing!)
    primesuspect
  • AnnesAnnes Tripped Up by Libidos and Hubris Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited August 2011
    Mt_Goat wrote:
    BY GOD MAN, YOU JUST GOT MARRIED!
    My recomendation would be to eat a healthy sustainable diet that would be a positive lifesyle change. Then act like the newlywed that you are and have hours of good old sex every single day! It worked for me a while back and I wasn't even a newlywed. 24 hrs a week or so should work. (I ain't the 'ol goat fer nothing!)

    By god, you might just be my new favorite ICer.
    primesuspect
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