Posts Tagged ‘juice feasting’

The annual 92 day Global Juice Feast will be underway again soon. They added a 30 day Feast in January – the 92 day feast begins in March. This will be their 2nd annual Juice Feast. I feasted with the Global Juice Feasters for 35 days last March – quite a ride! Met lots of people from all over the world. I recommend it even if you only do a week.

I myself have been gearing up to do another fast. Preparing the body by eating less, eating light and eating raw. I felt called to do another extended fast for some deep physical and emotional healing. I’ll start in a day or so and listen to the intelligence of the body to see how long I should fast.
I realized that without consciously planning it, I have engaged in an annual cleansing or fast once a year for a few years. Most experts agree that an annual cleanse is beneficial to your health and longevity.

• I enjoyed a 35 day juice feast with the Global Juice Feasters in March this year. It was a blast meeting people from all over the world. I recommend it even if you only do it for a week. The site is a social network site so you can create your own blog, participate in discussions, upload photos and learn from each other.

• Last year I did a 21 day internal cleansing program that included eating very light, juicing, raw foods using the Blessed Herbs Internal Cleansing Program. This is a good “kit” to order if you need direction and dicipline for a lengthy cleanse. (As a designer, I thought the package design was outstanding) Everything is spelled out for you with the included how-guides. It was pretty cool, people noticed saying things like my skin looked so great.

• The year before that I attended the 2 week raw food fast and detox program at Creative Health Institute – (based on Dr. Ann Wigmores program)

• The year before that I did a week long juice fast.

I first learned of fasting in high school when I began the first of many years of yoga classes. It wasn’t until my 20s that I tried 3 and 5 day water fasts. I learned that for me, anything less than 5 days was cutting short the healing opportunity. 3 days is right when things start going easy, your energy returns, you aren’t hungry, you quit thinking about food every hour of the day.

Fast – True fasting is taking nothing by mouth except water. This stops the continual overloaded work of our digestive tract. When eating a SAD diet (standard American Diet) the poor overworked digestion never gets a break and often works into the night. This work diverts the energy from what it should be doing – healing, cleaning and repairing the body. Our amazing bodies are designed to heal themselves – we just never give it a chance.

Feast – When juice feasting, you are drinking only fresh juices and lots of them. Drinking 4-5 or more quarts a day you are receiving all the calories needed and there is no deprivation. Being total liquid (juices preferably strained through nut milk bags to remove all pulp) the digestion is given a rest. In the Global Juice Feast logo it says “Cleanse, Rebuild, Rehydrate, Alkalize.”

I had an interesting side benefit – I wonder if it had to do with being more cleansed and alkalized: I used to be plagued by mosquitoes – during mosquito season, I walk outside and will get 10 bites right away. They loved me. During the feast, I noticed that they would fly around me, but not light on my skin! I never wanted to spray toxic repellant on myself, so walking the dog was a real pain – I would get so many bites sometimes that I would have a histamine reaction. They would swell, my whole body would itch and it would hurt under the skin so bad. It was something I just lived with. So this benefit of the Feast was a real miracle to me! And it has continued. I no longer get swarmed by mosquitoes. When I do get an occasional bite, it doesn’t swell and itch and hurt all over.

Recommended reading for fasting info – Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor’s Program for Conquering Disease by Joel Fuhrman, MD. Interesting overall good health info book – not just about fasting.
Recommended sites for Juice Feasting info – JuiceFeasting.com lots of info, but if you choose to do the paid membership (I did it for a month) you will have access to an unbelievable quantity of information you can download. And GlobalJuiceFeast.com – both hosted by David and Katrina Rainoshek.

Have you seen the Iron Man movie yet? I rented it this weekend and thought it was great. Of course Robert Downey Jr is a cutie pie and now we know why – he drinks green juice! Or at least his character does – maybe that’s where the Iron Man gets his special powers!