Pass the vibes on...

Today I did my first juicing talk/demo here in Costa Rica. I really enjoyed it. I did it with my friend, Laine who has been juice feasting here with me and we had a great time sharing the concepts with the guests at the BEAUTIFUL Namaste Ashtanga yoga studio here in San Jose. We made juice for everyone and gave out info sheets on how to juice and answered questions. They seemed to get a lot out of it and all enjoyed the juice too – even the straight greens on their own (see picture)... :O wow…hardcore :)
We’ll be holding more such events in the future, so email me at angela@rawreform.com if you’d like to come along.
We were gifted SO many beautiful things this evening too – HUGE juicy fresh aloe leaves, bundles of turmeric, fresh raw honeycomb, oranges, sweet lemons, an abundant amazing green called katuk and big sugar cane sticks…EXCITING – different nutrients :)

Ok, today I have had:

600ml (2.5 cups) water
600ml (2.5 cups) orange juice with hemp oil
2 tbsp pollen
1 litre (1 quart) greens/apple/beetroot juice
1.6 litres (1 quart and 2.5 cups) pineapple/greens
250ml (1 cup) water
1 litre (1 quart) celery/greens/carrot/beetroot/cucumber/turmeric/cayenne
500ml (1 pint) water
100ml (1/2 cup) sugar cane juice

making…around 5.5 liters of liquids today or…around 1.45 gallons

Today one reader – Allison - wrote with a handful of questions about my feasting journey – I’m going to answer them here, as they’re probably things that are useful for many people to read…

Are you considering staying with juices permanently, instead of eating? Can one do that healthfully? I would think so.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell, there’s a question…yes, people do indeed go for looooong periods of time on just juices, or just liquids and there its definitely something very appealing about that for me at this point, but I cannot say in the long run how it will go…the one food that really calls to me from beyond the realms of juice is…DURIAN…so, maybe if I could work that into smoothies and have juice the rest of the time, I might stay in a fluid world…we’ll see…one day at a time right now…;)

Do you make each juice fresh, or do you make, say a quart in the morning, and then only drink some of it, saving the rest for later? Wouldn't it go bad that way?
I make each juice fresh. As I am using the Vitamix/nut milk bag combo and not a high quality juicer – like the Norwalk or Green Star, the juice oxidizes pretty fast and needs to be drunk asap. (With those kind of juicers, the juice will last for many hours in the fridge – up to 72 hours for Norwalk juice). So, I drink whatever I juice, immediately. Not everyone has to do it this way though – if you’re using a juicer like the Green Star for example, you could make juice in the morning, drink some then, take some with you wherever you’re going (keeping it cooled), then juice again in the evening when you’re home. It is really dependent on the quality of your equipment and the time you have for juicing.

In the beginning did you experience hunger and the desire to eat (instead of drink)?
No, not really. I have experienced very little hunger on this feast. I think in the beginning I was SO stuffed up from months of raw food restaurant eating and raw festie food and so on, that my body was just hugely RELIEVED for the first few days – which tend to be the toughest for most people when starting fasting, in terms of hunger pains. Since then, whenever hunger arises, I just get some nutrition into me – juice, pollen, oil, whatever flows best for me at that point. No, the desire to eat has been almost completely absent for me during this feast – it just doesn’t interest me at the moment. I get tiny flashes of it – like when the guy offered me a slice of guanabana a couple of weeks back in the market, or the thought of durian ;) etc – but nothing strong…just like little peeks into a different reality…

When you started, did you plan your juices and the times you would drink them ahead of time?
There was a small element of planning, I guess, in that we would buy in produce that we knew would fit well together in taste for juices, but other than that, it has all just been very ‘of the moment’. Just getting to the point of hunger, choosing which fruits/vegetables are going to meet the Vitamix at that particular point, then bam – drinking juice…it does feel important to get a good pace going right from the start though – 1 gallon AT LEAST a day is a LOT of liquids to be getting down you - a lot more than many people are used to. Start the day with something with greens and keep the pace up well during the day – every couple of hours at least – keep the metabolism ticking over so that it does not go into lulls or ‘starvation mode’.

When you list, say 2 quarts pear and greens juice, do you drink all of that at once? If not, about how many juices a day are you drinking, and how much time goes between each juice?
Yes, if I list 2 quarts pears and greens, that means I’ve made a whole huge jug of pears and greens and drink it all in one go. (Well, I pour off one quart and chill the rest in the fridge until I’ve drunk the first bit, then get the rest.) I get juice/some kind of nutrition into my body every couple of hours or so, more or less.

Have you ever figured out how many calories you are getting each day while juicing? If so, how many?
I have not actually calculated that very well yet – just roughly at times…I feel it is definitely at 1500 calories or even more per day. I will attempt to work it out someday soon. The site www.nutritiondata.com has great tools for working out how many calories you’re getting in each juice…

Thanks for your questions Allison, hope that helps :)
All love to all,
Angela. xxx