Post-Feast Retrospective

June 11, 2008

Today I wanted to take a few minutes and share what shifted and changed for me on my 40+ day juice feast:

1. I was never able to allow liquid (juice, smoothie) to be a meal. This was both physical and psychological. I always still felt hungry as I was used to eating large amounts, and psychologically, it just didn't seem like enough. If ever I said I was hungry and Dave said, "Make Juice," I would get annoyed and not even consider it. In the morning, I'd try to have a green smoothie for b'fast, but then afterwards I'd also have French toast, eggs, whatever else.
   
   Now, I am able to feel when I am really hungry, and juice is incredibly satisfying. I can easily have it as a meal, or even go a day (or two, or forty-two) with just juice and feel satisfied.
   
2. I lost 21 pounds. I wish I had done measurements like many other people did, but sadly I did not.
   
3. I totally enjoyed water fasting for a day.
   
4. I was able to survive and thrive on just juice for 6 weeks. I began doing yoga again, continued to nurse my daughter, began running and ran a race (5K), gardened, worked and did many other things while only drinking juice.
   
5. I felt so much better, almost immediately, to how I felt before feasting. I was anemic from the hemorrhage and was able to sense healing on a body, mind and spiritual level.
   
6. I got more connected to an online raw community, met people through their blogs, twitter, and their comments on my blog! I also heard from people from Pittsburgh who knew of me through the Birch Center, and I hope to meet the people I have met only virtually soon! This aspect was amazing.
   
7. learned about things I hadn't before: enemas, bee pollen, MSM, and revisited closely greens and spirulina.
   
8. found I have a taste for savory juices! Juiced onions, garlic, yellow bell pepper...who'd have thought they'd be so delicious?
   
9. I have such an appreciation for raw foods! Now raw food eating feels decadent and so far I have no desire to eat cooked foods! Wow, this is amazing.
   
10. Have clarified my healing goals and started in that direction (what a great beginning!)
    
11. Am loving gardening and am amazed at the abundance of our garden! Am also loving those Anastasia books that I bought. She says that as your garden gets to know you (through your presence, touch, bare feet on the soil...) that it creates the fruits and veggies you need specifically to heal yourself. How funny that we have literally hundreds of volunteer tomato plants shooting up all over the place! (And at one point during the feast, I stopped eating tomatoes, though I craved them, because I thought maybe the nightshades were bad for my joints.) The mind knows so little compared to the energy field!

That seems about it for now. If I think of more I will add them. I am also going to continue posting on this blog...about my raw foods journey, my garden, wild edibles, a possible water fast now and then, and maybe even revisit juice feasting. I hope you'll stay with me!

Today I had:

• green smoothie with garden greens, banana, frozen pineapple and frozen strawberries
• quart of beet, carrot, apple, celery, cuke, onion, garlic, ginger, cilantro, green juice
• flax/seed bread with avo and tomato
• juice and flesh of very young coconut (shared with Ella)
• flax crackers with miso/coconut oil "butter"
• raw fudge: raisins, pecans, shredded coconut, cacao nibs and powder, coconut oil, honey, salt and vanilla
• nori rolls and seaweed salad with miso/orange dressing
• green smoothie with lamb's quarters, red clover, banana, frozen pineapple and frozen mangoes
• lots of water