For those of you who are curious, I ended up doing the last juice fast for 7 1/2 days, starting on the evening of October 4th and ending on the afternoon of the 12th. My friend Alex, who was also fasting, went about 5 days on this fast; pretty good for her first major fast

The experience was a powerful one, as you might imagine, I feel much more connected to everything now. These sorts of experiences have the potential to alter the very core of your being and call into a critical light the habits that we rarely expend any effort to contemplate during the normal course of our day.
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Went out to the store and bought enough Celery, Bok Choy and Carrots to last about a week. A friend and I started this fast on Friday we plan on doing this for as long as each of us feels we are capable. I think it would be great if I can keep the juice fast going for at least 10 days, which would put the ending at about October 15. If I’m still able to function reasonably well by then, there’s no reason to limit the experience, but 10 days seems like a reasonable goal to start with.

While most people that I’ve talked to seem to think that Juice fasts are very difficult, I firmly believe the difficulty lies in the mental aspects of such an endeavor. This kind of fasting still allows your body to have calories, depending on the juices selected, as well as many of the essential nutrients and vitamins.

My research indicates that juice fasts have the potential to get our bodies more nutrients than eating “normally.” The reason being, when we eat whole foods that are in liquid form, they are very easily assimilated into the body with very little strain on digestive system. Read the rest of this entry »

I decided this Wednesday to do a water-only fast that, I hope, will last for a total of seven full days. I have a variety of reasons for doing this; the primary reason is the detox benefits that go along with starving the body of caloric intake for a prolonged period of time.

I can feel that my body has reached the end of the Liver’s glycogen stores and is now resorting to ketosis (the burning of fats) for energy. This is signified by sluggishness due to the body’s inability to obtain energy from stored glycogen. This process begins on the second day of the fast and will last for the remainder of this third day.

What the body is unable to obtain by ketosis it obtains by catabolizing, which is the process of breaking down muscle tissue and utilizing the amino acids therin. On day 2 of the fast, between 2 and 3 ounces of muscle tissue are utilized; after this the body begins to conserve the muscle fibers to such an extent that the body could go for a full month without food and only lose 1/4 pound of muscle.

If I can make it through the weekend without breaking the fast, I plan on doing an extensive detoxification regimen next week involving a colonic irrigation. Colonic irrigation is essential for the detoxification to continue unhindered, since the toxins of the colon block the exit of the toxins released by the ketosis process.

If this fast is anything like previous fasts, then I expect to have more energy and feel younger when all is said and done. There is no other process, that I know of, that is as effective as a water fast at accomplishing the cleansing, detoxification and renewal of the body.

For more information, please check out The Health Benefits of Water Fasting, an article which explains the specifics of what occurs during a fast and the benefits.

The fast was broken on Tuesday night. After seeing that my body temperature seemed to be dropping I decided to end earlier than planned. Four days is, however, not a bad length of time for a fast. This is, undoubtedly, one of the most powerful life changing experiences I’ve ever had.

The fasting experience has taught me a variety of lessons about human nature as well as the workings of the physical body. After such an experience, one cannot help but be attuned to the needs of their body; I have no doubt that cellular detoxification and digestive cleansing are the keys to living a long and healthy life in a youthful state. Read the rest of this entry »