Posts Tagged ‘raw food’

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.

I wasn’t feelin’ the joy much this morning – but ran across the blog of personal development blogger Steve Pavlina. This guy is amazing – attracting more than two million monthly readers to his website! (StevePavlina.com)

His post “You know you’re a raw foodist when…” is a funny one that will make you smile – see if your cooked food friends can figure out things like:

….you spell juice fasting with an extra e.

…you want to try solar gazing soon. (or have already tried it!)

…you know the difference between raw and really raw when it comes to foods like almonds, tahini, and agave nectar.

…your crackers cost more than $1 per ounce

and more…check it out and feel the joy!

feelin’ the joy,

~Jules

I have a can of “body spray” that I have used apparently totally unconsciously…I just read the ingredients:

SD-Alcohol 40, isobutane, propane, fragrance, butane, water, propylene glycol.

WOW. If I ever need a fire starter… For years now I have been paying attention to keeping toxins out of and off of my body. I make my own bath products (soap, toothpaste etc) I don’t use harsh commercial cleaners – vinegar, baking soda and peroxide are bought in bulk in my house.

So I’m amazed I let something like this fire starter slip in unnoticed.

Read your ingredients. Ever little bit counts in the long run when you reduce your toxic load.

I made the photo above – I guess if the packaging of the perfume would have looked like this I would have paid more attention.

SD-Alcohol 40 - Denatured alcohol – denaturant (Denatonium Benzoate) is added to non food products to make it taste bad – you know, so we won’t drink our favorite perfumes. The denaturant has a similar structure to lidocaine, a topical anesthetic.

Isobutane – propellant qualities allows the spray to easily be expelled from the container. Take the place of freon as a compound that aids in the refrigeration process. Very important wouldn’t you say, to have your fragrance be refrigerated?

Propane -  Derived from petroleum products during oil or natural gas processing. Considered a clean-burning fuel because it vaporizes once it is released from its pressurized container. Good to know its clean burning - wouldn’t want to pollute the environment with smoke when I catch fire.

Fragrance – sheesh, could be anything

Butane - Also a fuel and highly flammable. When used in this manner its considered a propellant, you know, in case the isobutane didn’t get it to spray out fast enough for us on-the-go people.

Water - Yeah! Water, water is our friend.

Propylene glycol – Known also by the systematic name propane-1,2-diol, is an organic compound (a diol alcohol), usually a faintly sweet, odorless and colorless clear viscous liquid that is hygroscopic and miscible with water, acetone and chloroform. Uhh, okay. What? Wheres my dictionary.

Propylene glycol is also found in de-icers, stain removers, degreasers, paint, adhesive, wallpaper stripper. All of these ingredients are deamed safe for use. Do you want to spray fuel on your beautiful vibrant body?

You see my blog on my juicefeasting stopped at day 5.

I was blogging on the globalJuiceFeast.com site – I juiced for 35 days. I’ll eventually get all the blogs I posted over there – over here. Right now I am starting on MyFoodDiary.com to keep track of my raw food diet – its kind of fun and very interesting to input ingredients of my raw recipes and see the nutrient data on them. For example, I have been on a watermelon juice kick – MFD didn’t have the info on raw fresh watermelon juice, but I found it on line – and discovered it is full of potassium. 

Of course, since its a summer fruit and we need the potassium when we sweat. It also has lycopene a powerful antioxidant. All of your red fruits will have lycopene – tomatoes, pink grapefruit, persimmons, papaya.  

Remember to purchase the variety with seeds – they taste better and aren’t hybrids.

I still felt good when I woke up this morning. Though it took me a while to go to sleep. Had a lot of thoughts about the feast going through my head. I did notice that the ball of my thigh joint didn’t hurt. For some time where the thigh connects to the hip, that area has been a bit swollen and hurts to the touch. Didn’t ever hurt otherwise – just when you rubbed it. Anyway, no more. And also my hair quit falling out a week ago when I got back to more raw. That had been a problem before I went raw – and quit right away. In the past few months where I was eating more cooked food, my hair started falling out again.

Day 5 and it is starting to feel like routine now. Released another pound. Noticed a bit of mucus in my eyes today and had to blow my nose often. So yea on the toxins leaving the body!

Sitting at the computer working today I couldn’t get warm. I finally made me a cup of that ginger, lemon, honey tea that David and Katrina had on their video the other day. Yummm-meee. I added a dash of cayenne and a couple dashes of cinnamon. Oh it warmed me up and made me think of sitting by a warm Christmas fire!

I’m doing the daily 4 quarts, enema, MSM, and started some morning yoga today. I also add a dash of kelp and dulce to almost every green juice. And I drink rejuvelac everyday – love it. More fermenting on the counter right now. And I have some wheatgrass in its 5 day of growing. So pretty.

I really get a lot of inspiration from everyones postings and blogs and love the daily video from David and Katrina. Without anyone around me to share this exciting adventure with – this site is my support. I’ve mentioned it to friends and family and no one even pretended to be interested.

Evening – Inspirational Messages
Finally I had some real cravings – cravings just for food, something to chew on. Not any food in particular. But I made some hot tea and browsed these message boards and it passed. I jumped right on it when I felt that these were such strong feelings.

This also helped: I made some little business card size cards that have inspirational messages for me.
One of them says: “Cravings are only for the moment, my health is forever.”
And another: “Imagine how you will feel after accomplishing this juice feast!”

Go to http://www.studiojules.com/rawcards.html to download a PDF of some cards for you!They are 10 up on a page – print them, cut them out, tape them everywhere! I have some on the cupboard doors that I stare at when I am juicing. And one on my dashboard of my car!

I’m am happy that I had a weak moment, actually I can’t say “weak moment” since I think its only natural that the body is putting out these messages – it means that things are moving, changing, healing.

My dog and I had a really nice long walk in the park today – It was so beautiful out and some of the trees are starting to bud bright green leaves. When we returned, I finished a quart and about 30 minutes later I became extremely tired. I took a nap and slept for almost 4 hours hard. This is the 2nd time that has happened, I’m glad my office is at home and I had the time to take that rest. But now I am staying up late to get some work done!

The hot tea was really satisfying as I didn’t want to drink juice this late.

Oh, I made a quart of honey dew melon juice today – it was amazing! Almost too sweet to drink. Half a melon = 1 quart!