It began innocently enough: a friend telling me about this new thing called “juicing.”
“Uh-huh,” I nodded, automatically filing this away into my mental drawer marked “Fad Dieting” under the “Brain Spam” category, fully prepared to ignore it for the rest of my life.
To be fair, she described it as a three-day cleanse where you replace all caffeine, sugar, salt, solid food, and alcoholic beverages with healthy tonics made of fresh fruit and veggies. And that you will “feel like death” while your body “detoxes.” And this just sounded like so much fun I figured I’d let people who really need more excitement in their life have first crack at it.
If I were to be honest with myself, my better-than-average diet could be better. I drink more tea than water. White rice is a guilty pleasure a little too often. And yeah, I have a broken relationship with salad (which you can read in my post about a salad).
Nerd-hubs likes to watch documentaries. Specifically, his favourite are apocalyptic types that make me want to build and fortify an underground bunker-farm with my own personal moat. For my own mental health, I usually tune out, except the other night, he was watching one which had many formerly 300+ pound people who were on about juicing: the most amazing thing ever.
They were enthusiastically talking about how “dieting” is a bad idea, and how you shouldn’t deprive yourself of food, you should just add more good food to your meals, and the bad stuff will become less appealing and/or you will have less room in your gut to put it.
One of the interviewees likened juicing to drinking jet fuel because pow, you get all things great about the vegetables (excepting the fiber, obviously) in a glass of liquid that your body can just instantly snort up into your bloodstream like certain illicit drugs. This made me scoff, but then a little lightbulb went off in my brain. If they’re juiced, vegetables take up much less volume. And then I don’t have to spend all day grazing like a cow, which is the biggest turnoff of all the lifestyle-change diets.
For the record, if a guy ever objects to buying a juicer, the correct response to get your way is: “Can you think of any downside to drinking more vegetables?” He could not, and so we picked one up at Costco for a better-than-we-expected price of only $100.
I bought about $150 worth of vegetables of types I’ve never bought before and tried it out, making a foul swamp-thing coloured concoction that fortunately tasted better than it looked. The following conversation took place about 30 minutes later while doing house cleaning:
Me: Are you OK?
Hubs: Yes, why?
Me: You just were singing Sir Mix-A-Lot, then quoting from Office Space, then singing the theme song from Shark Tank. Or did you not hear yourself?
Hubs: I didn’t hear myself. It must be because of that juice mix you gave me. I dunno what you put in it, but it tasted alcoholic.
Me: Nothing alcoholic, just “superfood.”
Hubs: Oh, then I’m just high on life.
And yes, he really was singing about how he liked large posteriors, and how he couldn’t prevaricate.
Juicing has now taken the place of our usual breakfast of caffeinated beverage only. I like to think of it as a liquid multivitamin without all the scary-and-perhaps-cancerous side effects. I eagerly anticipate the “glow” that’s supposed to come with juicing.
Hopefully it’s not the glow that comes from too much β-carotene, cause I’m not ready to rock the Oompa Loompa.
Sarah (est. 1975) says
I like big Oompa Loompas and I can not lie.
Food Retro says
You other juicers can’t deny!
Courtney says
I’m rather skeptical about the whole juicing thing because I think I’ll be hungry all the time. Even if I jut swap my breakfast for it like you do. But I give you mad props that you are able to do it. Go you!
BadSandy says
I did two different juice cleanses. You’re skinny for like a day afterward. Then you eat and go back to square one.
xo
Food Retro says
Hehe, I’m not trying out the juice cleanse… I was just trying to get more veggies with fewer salads 😉 I also seem to be less inclined to drink caffeine lately.
Kyla @ Mommy's Weird says
LOL. I totally would like to try it. But, losing my mind, been there, still doing that!
Suzanne says
Did it really take away your “need” for caffeine?? I’m good with juicing fruits, but can’t seem to get over the color of the veggie ones…maybe they don’t taste as badly as they look?
Food Retro says
I didn’t seem to miss my morning tea. And come to think of it, my hubby didn’t drink as much coffee (although he might have snuck them at work instead, not sure!). The veggie ones look awful, but they definitely don’t taste as bad as they look. Swiss chard is kind of bitter, and parsley doesn’t seem to juice well, but celery, carrots, cucumber, kale, tomato, and even lemon all go pretty well together.
I tossed in the juice of half a lemon with each of our drinks–the only fruit I put in with veggies. I heard that lemon juice can act like a natural energy drink, and becomes very alkaline in the body like consumed. Granted, all the stuff I heard is of dubious scientific veracity and I haven’t gone to research it… but right now it’s in the “what can it harm” variety. 🙂