Juice Cleanse - Day 5

Hello everyone!  Its day five of my juice cleanse and so far its going very well.  I'm feeling centered, calm and clear in the head.  I also have enough energy to take care of two little ones and attend boot camp classes and go to Charlie's medical and therapy appointments and all of the other things required of me during the day.  I'm not having any big energy dips or mood swings either.  I haven't murdered a child or held up a Krispy Kreme at gunpoint yet, so I'd say I've had a successful cleanse thus far.  However, I'm only half way through, so stay tuned!

I wanted to check in about a few questions I've had from readers and friends.  The first is "Why are you doing this?"  This is a totally fair question.  I am doing this because I was inspired by a documentary.  (Of course, this is the last thing a mother wants to hear... "I did it because I saw it on TV".)  It was called "Fat Sick and Nearly Dead" and documented a man's journey to cure an autonomic immune disease and lose some weight.  He did a 60 day juice cleanse and it worked.  I was inspired, looked into it and that's why I'm doing it.

The second question that has come up is why juice?  Why not smoothies or herbs or eat a big box of veggies every morning?  The goal of a cleanse is to give your digestive system a break so that your body can focus its energies on other things - like healing damaged tissues, restoring the efficiency of your eliminitive organs, and clear older more impacted waste.  "Isn't it true that your body can heal itself AND digest at the same time?"  Yes.  It can.  Your body is always doing both at one time.  Except when you sleep.  When you sleep, your body has a little digestive break and kicks into high gear.  When you sleep, your body grows more hair, more cells, knits up muscle damage from the day and a host of other amazing things.  By juicing, I am giving my body a flood of nutrients and live enzymes, while allowing my digestive system to skip all the fiber and roughage that slows down my body's healing process.  And by juicing, my body can restore itself 24 hours a day instead of the small window at night, which for me is about 2 hours because I'm up at night with babies.  (Another reason for me to be cleansing right now.)

The last question that comes up a lot is "Aren't you hungry?"  The answer is "no" and "yes".  When I am living my normal eating life I eat solid food.  Then after a while I get hungry and I eat more food.  Its a pretty simple process.  Its the same when juicing.  I drink water when I'm thirsty and I drink juice when I'm hungry.  If I find that my belly is grumbling, I drink more juice.  The juice, just like the solid food, fills me up for a while until I need more.  I'm averaging about four 24oz glasses of green juice a day.  Sometimes its more, sometimes its less.  It depends entirely on how hungry I am. 

When I initiated this cleanse, my plan was to have some raw green evening meals in the middle of my cleanse.  But  I've been feeling so well that I've decided to skip the nightly meal.  I planned for the meals to help me get through the 9 days with success, but I find now that I don't need them.  So I'm currently on my fifth day of green juice only.  My plan now is to continue with only green juice through the 6th of March.

Thank you for reading Smaller Sarah, staying connected with the blog and asking such great questions!  Your inquiries always help me gain more clarity and specificity about my choices.  Thank you so much!