Day 7:

Here's what I'm noticing: I'm lazy. In the morning, I'm all about drinking juice all day. I have no issues throughout the day either. As soon as I get home, I lay on the couch and I have this incredible urge to nap. Sometimes, I give in. Other times, I can abstain. Either way, when I realize it's 10 O'clock and I have to get to sleep soon... but before that, I have to juice everything for the next day, I get really upset about juicing. I get this "Am I really still doing this?" feeling. But then I spend the 5 minutes juicing whatever it is and cleaning the juicer, and I go to sleep. The only thing I don't like about this juice fast... is the physical juicing part. I'll drink juice all day forever... I just don't want to have to do the juicing. That's the epitome of lazy. Anyway, onward:

Weight: 234.2 lbs
BFP: 35.2%
Hunger: 3-4

Another pound down and still no change in my BFP. What's interesting though, is that my visceral fat dropped by 1 point. I haven't been posting my visceral stats on here, because I wasn't sure if anyone cared. For those who aren't aware, visceral fat is the fat inbetween your organs! It's more dense and more difficult to get rid of than subcutaneous fat (the fat that sits under your skin) and can have some serious adverse effects on your health if you have too much of it. My rating (14) is horrible. You should have a visceral fat rating of around 7-8 to be healthy. Anything over 13 is unhealthy. Visceral fat is what causes "pot bellys" and "beer bellys". The biggest concern is that having high amounts of visceral fat has been directly linked to heart disease. This morning, my VFR dropped from 14 to 13! Sweet! A new stat.

Today's juice is pretty darn tasty; 4 pears, 2 apples, 1 banana. Juice, juice, blend. Gotta use these bananas faster. They're starting to go bad. Something my Aunt told me: Don't buy more fruits and veggies than you'll use in 3 days (she knows her stuff). As for my comment yesterday about my pants not fitting any better; I'm a liar. I was sitting down when I wrote that. I've been pulling my pants up all day. I figure I've probably lost around 2" on my waist, but I have no way of knowing, because I didn't measure. Anyway, 1 week down. Two weeks to go.

Day 6:

Ughhh... being sick is horrible. Day 6 of juice, day 3 of sickness. I noticed yesterday that I was hungrier than I had been in previous days. I finished my 35oz of juice for the day around 3pm. This morning, I got SUPER hunger around 9am, which is about an hour earlier than I have been. Anyway, last night... juice. I broke out the fennel bulb. Now... I love black liquorice. If you don't, you don't want to buy fennel bulbs. I grabbed the dark black cherries and some raspberries, juice the fennel bulb (on high) and threw the stalks in there too. Then I blended the juice from the bulb with the raspberries and cherries. I think they called this recipe "The Cherry Surprise" or something like that. It's good stuff, but the cherry kinda gets lost, which I'm a little bummed out about. Onto the good stuff:

Weight: 235.2 lbs
BFP: 35.2%
Hunger: 5-6

10 lbs down in 5 full days. Not too shabby. I haven't noticed any major bodily changes. My face looks a little thinner. My pants don't fit any better. That probably has something to do with the BPF still being up around 35.2%. That's the main reason I decided on such a long period of time. I figure it's going to take some time to get rid of all of the sodium and other garbage in my body. So, after all the water weight is gone, my body will finally start burning some fat. And we'll see that in the BFP.

I'm losing approximately 1.6lbs per day. If I can keep that pace for the entire 21 days, we're looking at a total weight loss of 33.6 lbs at the end. That'd put me at 211.6 lbs. It's been over a year since I've been 210 lbs. The major benefit to losing that 33 lbs is not having to carry that around with me when I run. Imagine carrying a backpack with 33 lbs worth of weight in it everywhere you go. Can you imagine running with that?! It's pain, I'll tell ya. Anyway, day 6. Here we go.

Day 5:

Good morning folks. Still sick and not getting much better. Still drinking juice. I've been crashing out as soon as I get home after work and then waking up 2 hours later. The problem with this is that I can't get back to sleep until 1-2am and that throws off my whole day. Last night, I just finished up the juice from the day after my nap and then threw together my juice for today: 4 pears, 2 fist-fulls of spinach, 1 orange and 1 apple. This is really good stuff. The pears make an unbelievable amount of juice! After juicing the 4 pears, I already had 25oz. If I were to juice 4 apples instead, I probably would have had around 10oz. Taking that mental note and keepin' it close. Here's the goods:

Weight: 237.2 lbs
BFP: 35.1% (still no change)
Hunger: 1-2

My stomach has pretty much shrunk to the size of an apple. One cup of juice and I'm pretty full, which is a huge change from the norm. I typically have an ever-expandable stomach and can shovel food into my face for as long as food is available. Keep me away from buffets; it's not a pretty sight.

I'm a little bummed that my BFP isn't dropping with my weight. I suppose it's to be expected for a while, but if all I'm losing is water and muscle, what's the point? I guess we'll see what the final product is at the end of the 21 days. Yes, 21 days of juice.

I've been thinking a lot about what to do after the 21 days to slowly work myself back into real food without overdoing it. Raw food diet? Benefit would be that I'm going from raw juices to raw foods and I think that it'd be easier on my stomach. Then I thought, "Maybe vegetarian? Maybe even vegan?!" I think, short term, any of these would work, but as a long term solution to losing weight and keeping it off, they're just not reliable ideas. I'll keep you updated.

Day 4:

System went down at work, so I've got some time to kill. Day number 4. I woke up this morning with a sore throat, feeling extremely tired. I had read before I started that you should not start a juice fast if you have a weak immune system. I'd normally say that my immune system is anything but weak and I'm hoping that this is a mere coincidence that my health decided to fail on me 4 days into a liquid diet. One major thing that I've noticed is my lack of hunger. It's really weird. The first day, I was STARVING. I read that when your body is so used to eating the same things over and over again, it can develope both an allergy to it as well as an intense craving for it. So, essentially, your body is working against you, craving the things that it knows are bad for you. Well, on Day 2, the cravings were gone and now I almost have to remind myself to eat. It's really weird.

Okay, so, day 2 back at work and that means night-before juicing. Last night, I decided to get back into the carrots and I had started feeling sick, so I thought "Bring on the oranges!" 4 carrots, 4 oranges, 1 large cucumber, and 1 apple (for sweetness). It's good! And the scale still loves me. Here's this morning's stats:

Weight: 238.8 lbs
BFP: 34.9% (still not much change here)
Hunger: Meh. 2-3

I felt sick this morning, so, I didn't make a breakfast drink. No bueno. So far today, I've got down about 1/4 gallon of water and about 20oz of juice. I'll probably kill the remaining 15 oz before work is over.

The scale doesn't lie... 6.4 lbs lost in 4 days, but hardly any change in body fat percentage. Essentially, I'm still working through my excess water. We'll see how it turns out.

Day 3:

My first day back at work since beginning my fast and it's been a lot easier than I had imagined. I premade my juice concoction last night and stored it in the fridge, in my brand new 52oz Thermos. Yes, 52oz. And it looks like a coffee mug, so, being a recovering caffeine addict, walking into work with a 52oz mug definitely drew in some attention. I went with 2 apples, 4 kiwis, 4 oranges and 2 mangos and ended up with around 40oz of juice. Pretty tasty, if I do say so myself. I've been taking pictures throughout this whole ordeal, so expect to see those up soon. In the mean time, here's the stats for the day:

Weight: 241.4 lbs
BFP: 35.1%
Hunger: 2-3. I'm getting used to the small stomach.

3 days in and 4lbs down. Notice I'm not losing any BFP though! Very important to watch that number. Right now, all I'm losing is "water weight", which is basically just excess water that my body has retained due to all of the sodium I've been ingesting. No more sodium = no more water weight. When that BFP% starts dropping, I'll be happy.

On a side note: The lotto is up to $330 million today, so I bought a ticket. Yeehaw!

Day 2:

Last night, I went out and stocked up on some new produce: some mango, sweet potatoes, fennel, kiwi, pears, cherries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries and bananas. I decided to experiment for my dinner juice... cantaloupe, spinach and celery. Bad idea. Cantaloupe juice was really the killer, to be honest. I ended up putting together a carrot, sweet potato and spinach juice, which was actually really good.

Well, I have to say, I woke up this morning feeling fantastic. I was a little hungry, but had no cravings. It's been a good day so far! I started off the day with a kiwi, orange and banana smoothie (juice 2 kiwi's and 2 large oranges, then throw in a blender with the banana). REALLY good stuff. That might be the best drink I've made so far. Bodily stats for the day are impressive:

Weight: 243.6 lbs
BFP: 34.4%
Hunger: Not too bad. 3-4 this morning. After a glass of juice, I was good to go.

Day 1:

New Years was a success. We brought in the New Year with food and alcohol in hand, staying up late into the first morning of 2011. What did I have for dinner last night? A double burger from a popular food chain... and fries... animal style... It's currently 12:24pm PST on the first day of my juicified promenade. My current weight is 245.2lbs with 34.5% body fat. For the mathematically challenged, that's approximately 84.5lbs of fat that I have on my body right now... I've never been hungrier in my life. I open the refrigerator and just stare. Everything looks so good. I've got chicken, steak, guacamole, GIANT tortillas, aaaaaaand fruits and veggies... I begrudgingly grabbed the apples, grapefruit and spinach and made my first juice of the new year.

It's good. 3 apples, 1 grapefruit, and two fist-fulls of spinach. I have no idea how I'm going to keep this up on a day-to-day basis. Wish me luck.

Weight: 245.2 lbs
BFP: 34.5%
Hunger: IMMENSE (we'll say a 9 on a scale of 1-10)

In the fridge right now: Grapefruit, Apples, Pineapple, Spinach, Beets, Oranges, Bell Peppers (should be interesting), Carrots, Tomatoes, and Celery.

Day 1: Part 2-

It's 2:30pm and I'm STARVING. I read that you're supposed to alternate juice and water every time you're hungry... so I did. It doesn't help that I'm watching TV and every 5 minutes, there's an amazing looking food commercial. This is not going to be easy...