The Juicing Rules

To begin with, we're going to do a two day juice cleanse. On Sunday, we went to our fave grocery store, Jungle Jim's, and stocked up on fresh produce. This is by far the most fresh food to ever be in my house at one time. We pulled a handful of recipes from The Juice Generation and ended up with a selection of juices derived from watermelon, pineapple, pears, apples, oranges, spinach, limes, cucumber, carrots, cilantro, celery, kale, and beets. Phew, I think that's everything! We have 5-6 recipes we'll be referencing for our juicy meals Wednesday and Thursday.

Starting Friday, we will replace a minimum of one meal with a juice. The Juice Generation breaks juicing down to three phases.  Phase 1 involves small and reasonable steps, encouraging simplicity and experimentation. The juices in phase 1 will have a 30 percent green factor, meaning at least some of them must contain greens.  In Phase 2, the goal is to make five drinks in a week containing at least 50 percent greens. This phase is more exploratory and broadens your tastes from sweeter to a little more savory. Finally, by Phase 3, you'll be making a green-filled drink every day. The book includes recipes for each phase.

Since we're newbies to the juicing world, we picked all of our recipes from Phase 1 to keep it more palatable. We'll sample more recipes from the first phase to round out the first week. During weeks 2 and 3, we'll focus on phases 2 and 3, respectively. 

I plan to keep a log of calories, assuming I'm able to find calorie counts for juiced produce.  I'm still in the middle of reading The Juice Generation, so I will incorporate relevant strategies as I come across them.  Tonight I have some yummy Mexican leftovers to eat for dinner, and that will be my last solid meal for the next 48(+!) hours.