Juicing Success Story – Janis loses 18 pounds

Janis Jaquith tried a 30 day juice fast last year having watched the Joe Cross documentary ‘Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead’.

Almost one year on Janis agreed to be interviewed by us at Running On Juice.

1. Throughout your 30 day juice only regime, what would you say has been the most challenging thing that you had to face? And, what did you do to help get you through it?

Hm. Challenging? It’s interesting that I really have to think to come up with something!

I would say that evenings were challenging. It was February/March when I was on the fast, and you get really chilled while fasting — most noticeably in the evening. I would wrap myself up in a blanket as I sat in the living room and watched TV or read or whatever. I SO wanted a warm, juicy roast chicken! Here’s what saved me:

You can have vegetable broth on this fast, and continue to lose weight (I could, anyway). So I tried out a bunch of brands, and would have a steaming mug of hot vegetable broth whenever I was feeling chilly and deprived. [The tastiest brand, IMHO, is Organic Better Than Broth Vegetable Base. It's not available in all grocery stores. You can get it from Amazon, if need be: http://tinyurl.com/acy86rj You mix a teaspoon of the stuff into hot water and you're good to go.]

Another comforting hot drink is warmed-up homemade tomato juice. Maybe three tomatoes, a stalk of celery, a cucumber, some salt, a little cayenne if you’re so inclined. Buzz it up in your juicer and microwave it. Drink it from a mug, or call it soup and use a spoon. No doubt, you’re doing something awful to the enzymes or whatever in the tomatoes by heating them. Nevertheless, you will have gotten through a difficult time, and stayed on your fast.

Oh! Another challenging thing is joining friends at a restaurant and not looking like a dope. I did that two times while on this fast. Both times, I told the waitress what I was doing, and both times, the reaction was very supportive. They offered me fresh lemonade or fresh orange juice from the bar, and brought the glass to me on a plate. Actually, there was a third time, when I caved and ordered a salad. The only time I cheated in the entire month. My dining companion thought it was a hoot that eating a small salad counted as cheating!

2. What made you decide to start juicing as part of your weight loss strategy? What have you found to be the biggest benefits you’ve experienced from doing this?

I watched “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead” and immediately went up into our attic and unearthed our 1993 Juiceman juicer. The movie is very persuasive! I’d been trying all my old dieting tricks for the past few years, and they no longer worked. I was ready for something completely different.

The biggest benefits are

1. Losing weight and keeping it off.

2. Losing my craving for bread and other grains.

3. Gaining a desire for all kinds of vegetables and fruits.

3. Has there been anything you’ve found to be troublesome or hindering while using the juicing strategy to lose weight? Or has it been relatively smooth sailing?

Well, there’s a feature to juicing that at first seems like a hindrance, but I think it’s a positive feature. That’s the amount of time I spend in the kitchen preparing to juice, juicing, and cleaning up.

However, consider what you’re obsessed with when you’re on a diet. If you’re like me, you read cookbooks and think about food and you’re itching to go out in the kitchen and MAKE something. (Or at least heat something up!) With juicing, once you’ve gone to all the trouble of preparing a fresh, homemade juice, you just want to sit down and drink it. You feel satisfied, having done all that kitcheny stuff, and now you get this lovely juice. It pushes all the right psychological buttons to satisfy your need to prepare and consume something good.

4. What is your favorite juicing recipe? Do you tend to juice the same fruits and vegetables daily or try and mix it up as time goes on?

I admit it: I get stuck in a rut. My go-to recipe is eight kale leaves, eight chard leaves, one lemon, two sweet apples (no Granny Smiths for me), a few carrots, a few stalks of celery, and half a cantaloupe or honeydew melon. If I have a fennel bulb, that’s a nice variation. Today, I added a beet. The recipe evolves over time, depending on what’s available and cheap. A dessert juice my husband and I both like is two ripe pears plus a bulb of fennel. Even better is to mix it half and half with champagne!

5. For someone who is considering starting juicing to help with their own fat loss journey, what advice would you give them?

A lot of people get hung up on what kind of juicer to get. There are so many choices! But any juicer is better than no juicer. Also, if you ask around, you’re likely to find a friend or relative who has a juicer gathering dust in the attic. Borrow one and see if you like it.

Also, if someone is curious about juicing, and has not seen the documentary “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead” I hector them until they tell me they’ve watched it!

6. How has being able to lose weight through juicing changed your life? Do you find you’re more confident now? Has anything else changed significantly since you were finally able to shed the weight?

The juice fast reprogrammed my brain. I don’t know how that works, and it’s strange — in a good way! But I’ve lost my taste for grains and for daily meat or fish. I do eat meat and fish, but the day can feel complete without them. What I crave are salads, avocados, and juice. (If anyone had told me, at this time last year, that I would have written that last sentence, I would not have believed such a thing possible.)

7. What role did exercise play in your weight loss results? If you were exercising, what does a typical week look like for you?

I’ve been pretty fit for years, and bumping up my workout didn’t help with weight loss at all. Not at all. In my experience, exercise doesn’t help you lose weight, but it helps you keep off the weight you’ve lost. (Plus it has a zillion other wonderful benefits, and is totally worthwhile whether it helps you lose weight, or not.)

During part of my fast, I was training for a 10-mile race. I had run a 5K before, but the 10-miler was a huge challenge. I discovered that running more than a mile while fasting is not a good idea. You feel like you’ve run out of gas after that mile. As soon as I began the transition plan, after the fast, my energy picked right up again. Regular workouts and walking are fine while fasting, but that’s not the time to train for a race.

8. What overall rate of weight loss did you see while using juicing? Were you losing weight faster when you first began or has it been relatively steady the entire way through?

For the entire fast, with one exception, it was a fairly steady weight loss. They tell you not to drink coffee, but I was not about to give up caffeine AND chewing! For me, coffee means cream and sugar, too. When my weight loss slowed, I didn’t cut out the coffee, but I cut out the cream. Bingo: weight loss picked up again. (And I kept using sugar or agave syrup.)

I lost ten pounds that month. That may not sound like much for someone reading this who has a great many pounds to lose. Luckily, I wasn’t dangerously overweight. I’m 5’8″ and was closing in on 160 pounds when I discovered juicing. I’ve lost another eight pounds since last March, when I ended the fast. So that’s a total of eighteen pounds.

9. What does a typical day of eating/juicing look like for you? What is your meal/drink schedule?

Now that I’m not fasting, regular life consists of coffee in the morning, then a banana because I’m often feeling too lazy to make juice. Maybe a handful of mixed nuts. Late morning, I make a batch of juice that’s about a quart and a half big. I drink that through the day. Sometimes there’s a bit left, and I split that with my husband before dinner. Pretty much every day, I have an avocado with some ginger/miso salad dressing on it for lunch. Dinner is often salad with a decent serving of chicken, beef, or fish. Sometimes, it’s just salad and some other veg. Or a baked sweet potato, split, mashed up with some olive oil and salt.

10. Have you used any additional supplements as you went through this process?

I am all ABOUT supplements! Fish oil, curcumin, magnesium, D3, C, K — the list goes on!

11. What plans do you have now for the future with regards to your health/exercise/nutrition program? Have you set some new goals now that you’ve successfully lost weight?

I’d like to run a decent 10-mile race. Last year, I was injured (pulled muscle) during training. That’s why I started the juice fast: I was afraid I’d gain weight while sidelined. I did run the race, and the first seven miles were fun. The last three miles were ugly, though!

12. Did you ever receive any negative feedback from your choice of juicing for weight loss from others? And if so, how did you handle this?

The only negative feedback came from the anonymous comments by readers of my newspaper column on the subject of juicing. I was told that I was setting a horrible example to young women by going on a diet that caused me to lose weight so fast. (Taking a month to lose just ten pounds? Are they kidding?) I handled the criticism by continuing to lose weight and by being extremely healthy.

13. For those who have quite a significant amount of weight to lose, getting started can feel very intimidating. Many people are coming out of feelings of being hopeless about being able to lose weight effectively. What advice do you have for these readers on how to get started?

Get started by thinking of this as what it is: A wonderful adventure!

You can read Janis’s full story at Chipping Away; True Confessions of a Juicer

Comments

audrey says:

February 9, 2013 at 5:38 pm

I want to do juice fasting about 30 days. Need to lose about 30lbs.

- Angie says:
  
  February 10, 2013 at 8:39 am
  
  Hi Audrey,
  Juice fasting is a great way to detox and it’s not easy. If you have never fasted before you might want to start by adding a juice a day to your regular diet or do a few days before committing to 30 days. Don’t mean to discourage you but know from experience that lasting change happens with small changes over time, however for a handful of folks (and this maybe you) sweeping drastic change shifts everything and can be sustained but its rare.