So earlier in the week I wrote about what a great deal this diet bet is as far as self-discovery. One of the kind comments from readers suggested I watch "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead," a documentary that followed Joe Cross and his insane 60 day juicing fast. It was very inspiring and Cross had some serious results, shedding 90+ lbs in his two month food-free trek across America.
I tried a 10 day fast back in January after I returned from our own cross country trip back to my home state of Oregon. While I was there, I met up with one of my old high school friends and former roommate. Kellie is a nutritionist (check out her website: http://therightnutritionplan.com) and has written a couple of books on weight managment and eating whole foods. She has a number of clients and gave me her books, knowing I was looking for some answers. Anyway, one of her books advocates juicing and I gave it a try. An honest try. For a day. Nobody told me that kale is awful and I had trouble choking it down in juice form. So my fast lasted a day. Ok, a meal. Maybe two.
So watching this documentary, I knew that I would not be able to 10 days, let alone 60, but it did inspire me to give kale a second try. Yesterday I hit up the local Wegman's and bought a bunch of kale, carrots, beets, cabbage, and celery. My wife cut up all the veggies and juiced it all, making 10 cups of kale, cabbage, celery juice and 2 cups of beet and carrot juice. I know I won't be able to juice the traditional way, but I can add the juice to my morning smoothies for more micronutrients. We decided to freeze it all in 1 cup containers. What we figured out was that 8 cups of chopped veggies yielded 2 cups of juice, so 1 cup of juice would be the same as 4 cups of veggies. That's a lot of micro nutrients!
We put our concoction to the test and made a pretty darn good smoothie. Here's the recipe we came up with:
Smoothies for 2
2 scoops of vanilla protein powder
1 cup of cabbage, kale, celery juice
1/2 cup of beet, carrot juice
1 1/2 cups unsweetened vanilla almond milk (30 calories/serving)
1 cup of frozen strawberries
1 tblspn peanut butter
Blend till smooth and YUM!
Our best estimate is that the calorie count hovers around 230 per serving, taking the peanut butter out would lower the calorie count but I like the combination with the strawberries.
So I guess the bright side of things is that I am open to suggestions and willing to try new things to keep on going. And I learned that kale doesn't suck. Too much.