Day 39 - Why Carrot Juice Is So Beneficial

Hi, Tim here with my Day 39 juice fasting update.

Everything is still on track, as it has been for most of this time. Still doing quite well.

I lost 0.4 kg which is just under 1 pound (0.9 pounds).

Total weight loss since I started the juice fast is 17.4kg, which is a bit under 38 1/2 pounds.

So everything is still going quite well in my weight loss. I have still got another 17 days. I'm actually starting to countdown now. I am getting excited!

I am not actually feeling that I need to go off the juice fast, but it is more a case of being a Gemini star sign, I get bored easily. So I am actually looking forward to the challenge of transitioning from drinking juice to getting back onto the solids.

Thank you very much to all those people writing in with all those encouragement and questions and thoughts and so forth. It does seem to be like a big issue to get this transitioning sorted out. What I can gather is - it would make sense anyway - the worst thing would be to go off the juice fast and just go back into old habits.

The way I am looking at it right now is by the end of this juice fast I will have had 56 days where I have had no junk food at all, no meat, no dairy, etc. And it hasn't affected me. And in actual fact I feel much better. So, why would I want to go back at all? That's the question I am asking. Why would I want to go back to that lifestyle, when I feel better not having eaten those foods: meat, dairy, junk food etc.

So, it feels bizarre, but I am seriously thinking I am not going to have any junk food ever again!

Can I do it?

Well, I think yes, it's possible. Because I like to think I have cleared the addictions. However, I am not naive enough to believe that if I start eating junk foods that I won't go back to my old habits. I think that's exactly what would happen if I did start trying out junk food. I would just fall back into the old habits. I have to be strong I think and view this as a positive, and think, I am doing a good thing here. I am really going back to, or creating new habits, which are going to change me. So I won't need to worry about juice fasts ever again, because I am going to be basically eating good food.

It does seem to be normal, from what I am hearing, to gain a little bit of weight when you transition from juice to normal food.

And the reason for that of course is that when you eat food, food survives in your intestines for a while before it goes out, gets disposed of, or gets used, the nutrition gets used. So it makes sense that any period of time there might be food in your food lines, food pipes for want of a better term! So, of course, that is going to take a bit of weight. So if you are transitioning off a juice fast it is normal to gain a little bit of weight.

But I think it's vital to have that plan. And again I'm thinking of that Dr. Joel Fuhrman's plan, Eat For Health. The only negative I have with that is, a lot of the ingredients, if I was in America I could buy a lot of his stuff. But basically a lot of those ingredients don't appear here. I mean, like his vinegars and so forth don't appear to be available in Australia.

Traditionally Australia, importing foods from other countries it is normally very hard to do, unless you're like importing it properly through a business or something of that nature. So, I may have to revise my plan and do something similar. But I think almost certainly what it is going to be is it's going to have a large focus on fruit and vegetables. It's going to really radically change the way I used to eat in the past.

Quite frankly, days or weeks would sometimes go past, and I would have had none, zero, zilch, nada vegetables! And very few pieces of fruits. I may have had a banana now and then. An apple once in a blue moon. So, what I have done is I have dramatically changed that around with this juice fast. And I am absolutely going to keep that, moving forwards.

So, a couple of suggestions. Asian cooking seems to be quite good as well. Very healthy ingredients. Using vegetables. No secrets but the Asians are very healthy, as a rule. And that's because they eat well. A combination of raw fruits and vegetables, and also cooked. I am looking at that as well.

But whatever happens it is going to have a large component of fruits and vegetables.

And I am considering now actually doing a course, a cooking course, to get up to speed with those skills. Because, again, if I go in unprepared, the danger that I see here is that if I do nothing, then Day 56 will come around and I will finish Day 56, and I will be ready to start eating. If I haven't got the food ready in my house, in my pantry, ready to go on that first day, that first day of transition, you know, if I am hungry, what is going to happen?

I am going to say, oh I will just eat this. Because it is here. The foods that are in my house. And look, I am going to have junk foods in my house, because step 1 of this was to fix me. But we have got other members in this household who eat junk food. And ultimately I would like to see those go off that junk food in the future. They haven't got the weight issues I have, but of course they have got the unhealthiness of eating food that quite frankly is poison!

So that's going to be a more long term thing. But the point I am getting at here is, there is junk food in the house. And I am going to have to live with that and make sure I have got the healthy combinations that I need, to keep going.

And I have got no intentions of giving up. I have got no intentions of just going back to the way I was. And honestly guys I didn't tell you this up until today. I took a picture, a side-on picture on Day 1, which I haven't had the guts to put up yet! (Oh, guts! Australian term for a big stomach!) It's not a good look. However I am getting to the stage now where I am looking at myself sideways in the mirror and thinking, OK, you still need to lose a bit of weight, but that's starting to look really good. So, in a few more days, probably in another week or so, I am going to show you the before photo and the after photo. It's dramatic, and it really pumps me up. And I am starting to like my body!

I never used to like what I saw in the mirror. But now I am really starting to look at it and I am thinking, well, actually I can see that this body is going to be thin! It is amazing, it feels good, and that's the good feeling I want to hang on to whenever I am thinking about going back to my old habits. I have to remember how I'm feeling right now. I have to know that in my heart. I can't go back to what I was doing before.

Anyway. I am ranting on. I will be back tomorrow. Hopefully, all things going well, my juicing video will be up and going tomorrow. I am going to get Louise my partner to do the filming. And I am going to show you how I juice, and just talk about some of the different low carb fruits and vegetables that I use, such as carrot juice and the pros and cons, and how I have survived these 39 days.

Thanks for watching! And I will see you again tomorrow!

Cheers for now.

You can watch a high definition version of this Carrot Juice video here if you wish.