The latest nutritional guidelines suggest 9-13 servings of fruit and vegetables a day, every day. With the fast life style we live today that’s pretty hard to achieve. Many “convenient “fast food restaurants are around every corner, and there is always that, just today as I am busy but as of tomorrow … Monday…. I will start bringing my own nutritious lunch to work ….and again yesterday we said tomorrow as well as today. Vicious circle.
The good news is that it’s actually easy to achieve our suggested servings of fruit and vegetables and even much more,simply by juicing! Juicing bridges the gap between what we are eating and what we should be eating. The variety and amount of produce we can put in a glass of juice, beets any plate any day. To make one 16oz glass of green juice, over 2lb of produce is needed. For example : 4-5 stalks of celery, 1-2 cucumbers, 3 big hand full of green leafy vegetables, 1-2 apples, lemon, ginger , herbs parsley or cilantro , mint . Pretty hard to eat all of that in one sitting, even for the healthiest of appetite. The nutrients from all of those produce are in your blood within 20 min. Your body will thank you for it as you will flood it with fuel it needs and your body doesn’t need to work hard for it as juice is pre-digested food, ready to be absorbed.
Juicing provides the body the concentration of material that builds new healthy blood. It provides important alkaline elements, magnesium, potassium, sodium, calcium, selenium, sulphur… Health, is maintaining alkalinity of blood. Juicing helps clean channels of elimination, it hydrates our body, floods our body with essential phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants. Fresh green vegetable juice is rich in live enzymes, without which no chemical reaction in our body is possible. Most enzymes are killed by cooking. Juicing is simply the greatest way to add much needed nutrients into our body.
If you need more energy, go for the natural energy drinks which are \”powered by nature\”. Fresh green juice will give you abundance of it without any nasty side effects.
Raw juicing is not only safe but a great way of adding extra needed nutrients for pregnant and breastfeeding woman , as well as for kids of all ages, whereas full juice cleanses are not recommended.
Just one day a week of juicing your body will reap fantastic benefits, can you imagine what a 3 day cleanse or longer can do for you ?!
When on a juice cleanse one should consume between 3 and 4 litters of fresh made juice a day along with water and herbal teas. This way your body is getting all the calories it needs to function optimally, so you can get on with life as usual. Work, play, exercise etc, can all easily continue on this kind of a cleanse. Many people when on a fast consume very small amount of liquids/ calories, the metabolism slows, energy is down, and they can feel quite dysfunctional. Because of this, juice fast or cleanse gets criticized as unhealthy and dangerous. Big misconception. While on a proper juice cleanse, 3-4 litters of juice a day, mainly green juice, we are consuming between 10-14 pounds of produce a day. This means a large volume of nutrient dense liquid passes through the body daily, helping to cleanse, rebuild, rehydrate and alkalise the system. Far from being a time of deprivation, it’s actually a time of an extraordinary healing process, massive nutritional intake, shift in health and self-empowering time.
Some of the major “side-effects” from juicing are loss of excess weight, elevated energy, radiant skin, and sleep improvement, increased mind sharpness, looking and feeling younger.
So, what are you waiting for?!
Let’s Juice!!!!
Institute of Integrative Nutrition