Works Cited

Works Cited

"Can a Juice Diet Cause Weight Loss?" Fast Weight Loss, 2012. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.

"Juice Diet Cleanse." Juice Fasting. Juice Fasting, 2007. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.

"The Juice Diet Story." Juice Diets. Juice Diets, 2012. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.

Lerche-Davis, Jeanie. "Detox Diets: Juice Up Your Health?" WebMD Feature. Web MD, 2004. Web. 20 Feb. 2012

Wong, Cathy. "Juice Fast." About.com Guide. About.com, 31 December 2011. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.

Day Four

It is such a wonderful relief to eat real food again! The last day of juice dieting has finally come to an end and I have learned a lot about it. Even though the process was painful and way more difficult than expected, I am glad I had the opportunity to research juice diet/fasting so intimately. But let's get one thing clear; I plan on never, ever juicing my entire meal plan again for the rest of my life. The reasons why bring me to my next discussion, the cost versus benefit analysis.

Top 3 benefits of a juice diet (all claims made from juice-diets.com):

1) “Easy, effective and appetizing way to lose weight”.

My rebuttal is that juice diets do not fit any of the above descriptions. The juice dieting for me was challenging, disgusting and hardly lost any weight in the end.

The cost is having limited options of when, where and what to eat. The pleasure factor is taken out from this diet. The process of making fruit juices at home can be fun but the actual consuming of the juice drinks takes a long time and frequently taste gross. And according to WebMD.com, it is all water weight that is being lost anyway.

2)“[Gives] digestive system and internal organs time an opportunity to rest, rejuvenate, revitalize.”

Referring back to the article on WebMD.com, Doctor Wiel says there is no scientific evidence for diets that detoxify. And more importantly the cost could be eating less for no reason.

3)“[Reduces] risk of disease and permanent, positive change in diet.”

This is a very broad statement considering everyone is individualistic and complex human being. What might keep someone from illness could possibly be detrimental to another person. Also how could a diet with the possible side effects of headaches, tiredness, hypoglycemia, constipation, acne, increased body odor and bad breath, encourage someone to adopt a healthier diet? And the side effects list continues at http://altmedicine.about.com/od/detoxcleansing/a/juice_fasting.htm. The costs seem to outweigh the two benefits that may or may not happen to you as an individual.

If you are considering a juice diet, take time to weigh your options and make sure the plan you partake of is flexible and helpful to your specific needs.

It has been pleasure blogging my juice dieting results and I hope you learned a little bit more about juice diets than you did before!

Day Three

Second day of fasting was full of temptations. Of course the one time my step-brother bakes the most delicious smelling chocolate chip cookies would be when I am on a juice diet. People who stick with any diet must have an unbelievable amount of self-control. Besides the side effects I felt yesterday, I also had absolutely no precision of focus and lacked my usual gusto I have when interacting with others. And once again, recognizing no benefits whatsoever. If my digestive system was “detoxified”, I have no way of confirming this claim. I certainly did not feel any different inside, besides being hungry all the time. However, I did weigh myself on a scale and I did lose about three pounds but nothing that made a considerable difference in physical appearance. Altmedicine.com's article about juice diets by Cathy Wong lists more side effects including acne, increased body odor and fainting. Thankfully I did not experience those but I did feel headaches, tiredness and dizziness which were also mentioned in the article.

And now as promised, I will share two of the recipes I made at home with a juicer. I found both of them from juice-diets.com. And because I was making these recipes for just me, I had to halve all the ingredients.

The first one is called Cucumber and Celery Cooler Recipe.

¼ peeled medium cucumber

½ peeled lemon

1 celery stalk

1 sliced apple

4 medium carrots

And this was not suggested but I added one cup of water to make the final product less chunky. The cucumber and celery cooler was definitely an experience I will never forget. It was my first time eating a homemade juice with both fruits and vegetables. It tasted like vegetable applesauce which I surprisingly did not find disgusting. But perhaps it was because I was eager to eat anything at that point.

The second recipe I tried was titled the Calcium Drink.

½ peeled lemon

½ cup of chopped broccoli

1 apple

Sprinklings of parsley

3 medium carrots

Then I also added a cup of water to give the recipe more of a “boost” in calcium. This drink actually did not taste awful either. It was a lot sweeter than I expected. It take me forever to eat though. Both of these smoothies took me over an hour to drink. Granted, I am a sipper but it was definitely not a convenient, on-the-go kind of juice.

My next blog post tomorrow will be devoted to a cost/benefit analysis on juice dieting and my final concluding thoughts.

Day Two

The first day of juice fasting was every bit as hard as I predicted it would be. I definitely do not feel any benefits thus far into the process. I am drinking the disgusting Naked Juice flavor, Green Machine, which contains broccoli, barley grass, algae and garlic. It was straight-up tasted nasty and smelled horrible. Some side effects that occurred to me throughout the day were nausea, dizziness, fatigue and constant hunger. Now I realize the monumental importance of the adequate intake of food is in order to function properly. Although I experiencing the disadvantages of a juice diet, I'm still wondering what the benefits are?

An article on WebMD.com, “Detox Diets: Juice Up Your Health?” by Jeanie Lerche Davis discusses the advantages of juice fasting besides losing weight. Detoxification of the body is the process of ridding toxins within the digestive system. A theory is detoxification can be achieved through juice fasting which flushes out the poisons that have accumulated inside fat deposits. But Andrew Wiel, MD reported to WebMD; “There is no scientific evidence to support the claims made for detox diets.” Chris Rosenbloom, RD, backs up this statement while explaining in a little more detail. Rosenbloom says the average, healthy body can push toxins by itself through normal bodily functions, without the aid of detox diets, laxatives or extreme types of regimens. She goes even a step further, warning that detoxification are ineffective for losing weight too and saying anything lost is water weight. And if on this type of diet too long, muscle mass will start to deteriorate, not fat.

All this information is probably disheartening to the avid juice faster but I can not make permanent judgment until my juice diet trial is completed. Day three I will share the juice recipes I have been making for my meals.   

Juice Diet: Day One

This blog is dedicated to females interested in the fad diets and dieting in general. I hope my "experiment" provides insight and helpful information to juice fasting.

I started this morning waking up with an optimistic feeling inside, thinking my four day juice fast would be a cinch. By 2pm in the afternoon, I already hated drinking juice even though my eight servings of fruit were certainly delicious. Then I read a link on juice-diets.com, the maximum amount of time to be on a juice fast is five days. Therefore I made an executive decision to do the “juice only” on day two and three of the diet. And today and day four, juice will be consumed along with three small proportional meals. This way I will be able to experience a little bit of both juice dieting and juice fasting because supposedly there is a difference. According to an online website, fastweightloss.com, explains that juice diets is a supplement to other healthy foods, whereas juice fasts emphasize just drinking juice, nothing else. I am already dreading tomorrow and the hunger cravings that come with it! On a daily basis, I do not really spend much time thinking about to eat. But having the foreknowledge of not being able to eat anything, makes me hungry just thinking about the absence. It is like knowing what I can not have, makes the object more desirable mentality.

Going into this project, I knew absolutely nothing about juice diets until I started researching. I never even heard about juice fasting until I saw Cam and Mitchell try it on Modern Family. In fact, I don't think many people know about the concept of juice dieting since it is a fairly recent trend. The survey I conducted had the following results: 95.8% of the participants said they have never tried a juice diet and only 20.5% claimed to know someone else who has tried juice dieting.

It should be said upfront, I personally have absolute no faith in juice dieting or fasting. I mean, if it didn't work for two characters on a sitcom, there is little chance it will work someone in real life. However, I am willing to experiment with the idea in order to confirm my hypothesis and am excited to share the process. I promise to write a lot more tomorrow about day two!