DAY 14 JFP: More Power to You
Introduction
Today you will gently begin, or continue, to wake up to your own potential. Be happy, you have an amazing community of people supporting you! Today we are going to add some happiness to your life that will be a source of strength to you the rest of your decades!
Purchases will be made today. Please know that the life shifts that you make now are going to bring abundance into your life swiftly. Supplies for your Juice Feast – some of them will be used by you for years. They will make other appliances, health challenges, and emotional patterns relics of the past. As you acquire items for your journey, breathe and smile. Rest in the knowing that your life, and that of those whom you will positively change for the rest of their lives, will benefit from the actions you are taking now.
New Life Practices
Smiling in the Morning. I don’t know about you, but every morning of my (David Rain) life (until I cut out the processed foods) I was agitated for the first 30 minutes or so. And agitation could quickly lead to anger. Family and roommates kept quiet, and maintained their distance a bit. I was dehydrated and toxic from the foods I had eaten the day before, and the quality of my sleep was less than good, hence the agitation. Two weeks after eating all plant-based live foods, I woke up one morning feeling happy, right from the start. I realized that I could brighten someone else’s day immediately. It was a miracle! I became one of those happy morning people you see cartoons about. One of our Juice Feasting students recently experienced this and wrote about it:
I also want to mention how I had… to be at work for 7am. Despite not getting a lot of sleep (I don't know why, I stayed up late watching TV LOL), I got up at 4am and made my juices, skin brushed, contrast showered, got pretty and ran out the door. On my way to work I realized... that in my pre-JF days, I would have been utterly knackered; zombie-like, groggy, bitchy and ready to stab anyone that stood between me and a venti soy latte........ This is how much energy you have while juice feasting! It's unreal! And I just thought I wasn't a morning person!
Ben Kaelan, Day 15 Juice Feast on A Juicy Conspiracy
But not only is the food going to help you have a better morning – you are going to decide to water your best seeds and set a deep intention for the day before getting out of bed:
Waking up this morning, I smile.
Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment,
And look on all beings with eyes of compassion.
This beautiful morning poem by Zen Master and poet Thich Nhat Hanh is something you can write down and lay next to your bed until it becomes part of your memory, and your morning automatically. You might try saying this with your partner before the two of you get out of bed, which, over a few days and weeks, will have a subtle but significant effect on the quality of your mornings together.
Calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh
Finally, know that beautiful things await you every day of your Juice Feast. Because of the great intention with which you heal yourself, and the purity of the foods you are taking in, you become a vortex for wonderful things to come into your life. Synchronicities will happen, and even the events which do not look initially positive will turn out to be very good. You may not believe us right now, but just remember that we mentioned synchronicities and Juice Feasting, and you will experience this for yourself.
Morning Green Smoothie. It took me almost three years of eating live foods before I could look at a Green Vegetable Juice and not see it as Oscar the Grouch in a Can. We have been socialized to like anything but greens, and when we do eat them, many are of the pale, substandard Cobb Salad variety, dressed in dairy just to get them down. I have been there. Greens have taken it hard by the processed food culture.
But greens are making a comeback, thanks in large part to Victoria Boutenko and her book Green for Life, which set the Green Smoothie (blending fruit, leafy greens, vegetables, and superfoods together) on the world stage. Why would someone make such a drink?
Visit Day 8: Greens, Chlorophyll, and Health
We know that leafy greens are the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet. Nutrient density is defined as a ratio of nutrient content (in grams) to the total energy content (in kilocalories or joules). Nutrient-dense food is opposite to energy-dense food (also called "empty calorie" food). According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005, nutrient-dense foods are those foods that provide substantial amounts of vitamins and minerals and relatively few calories. For example, fruit and vegetables are considered nutrient-dense food, while products containing added sugars, saturated fats, and alcohol are considered nutrient-poor food.
Nutrient density is also understood as the ratio of the nutrient composition of a given food to the nutrient requirements of the human body. Therefore, a nutrient-dense food is the food that delivers a complete nutritional package.
One of the major reasons for eating greens is that they are the most Nutrient Dense Foods available to us. David Wolfe, in his landmark book The Sunfood Diet Success System, notes:
Green-leafed vegetables are overall the best source of iron; parsley and spinach are particularly high in iron. Greens heal anemia. (Other sources of iron include red-colored fruits, such as watermelon, berries, pomegranate, and red-flesh figs).
Green-leafed vegetables often do not taste as wonderful as fruits. But eating them nonetheless breaks associations of pleasure with eating, therefore decreasing the possibility of overeating. Green-leafed vegetables diminish the enjoyment in eating and act as a natural stop for us in the eating cycle.
Where does the cow get its calcium for its milk? From green grass, of course. Now we are not grass eaters, but this analogy is instructive because it demonstrates that all the minerals a cow is constructed from are present in grass - in simple green grass!
Green-leafed vegetables are always the best source of heavy minerals: calcium, magnesium, etc. The alkaline minerals in greens balance the acid-forming minerals (sulfur, chlorine, and phosphorus) found in avocados, nuts, seeds, onions, garlic, etc.
Green-leafy vegetation is also an excellent detoxifier of the liver, especially wild green vegetation. Deep green and wild green vegetation binds with heavy metals and chemicals from recreational drugs and allows the body to wash them out as salts through the urine.
Below is a nutrient-density chart by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, MD, author of Eat to Live, another excellent book you will be hearing about again. You will notice above are all the items highlighted in blue that we are accessing on a Juice Feast. By using 12-15 lbs of these nutrient dense foods each day, taking alkalizing and rebuilding all the way. To your health!
The chlorophyll-hemoglobin graphic below is also important. Plant blood is very similar to human blood hemoglobin, with one notable exception—the element magnesium is at the center of the chlorophyll molecule, and the element iron is at the center of our blood hemoglobin.
Why is magnesium important for our health? It is 17 times more prevalent in our heart muscle than in any other tissue in our body. That means that eating leafy greens is feeding your heart! This is undoubtedly behind the high rates of heart disease in the westernized world that eats few plant foods.
Visit Day 43: Heart Disease
Want scientific data to back that up? Below is a chart from Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, MD, showing the rates of cancer and heart disease versus the amount of plant-based foods eaten in a given society.
The bottom line is getting greens in is crucial, and one of the primary ways to do this is to make Green Smoothies. These are easy, delicious, and portable! Below is a basic Green Smoothie Recipe.
In your blender, mix:
¼ cucumber
3 stalks celery
½ lb leafy greens
10-16 oz fruit – preferably low glycemic fruit such as berries
1 T Green Superfood Powder Concentrate (Vitamineral Green, Pure Synergy, etc)
1T Blue Green Algae (Spirulina, Chlorella, or E3Live)
½ cup water
Blend in your High Speed Blender for 30 seconds, pour and enjoy! You can also add bee pollen! Drink a quart of Green Smoothie (or more) every morning. Katrina and I eat this way almost every day of our lives. This is an excellent way to get greens into your life, and to train your physiology, taste buds, and your own habit energy to ask for greens, even before you start Juice Feasting. As we mentioned in an earlier post, adding in Green Smoothies now will do two very important things: one, it will begin to train your body to like and ask for greens, and two, it will lighten the load on your digestion which will make the beginning of your Juice Feast much easier.
Finally, watch the Green Smoothie Queen herself, Victoria Boutenko on a six-minute video demo with host Adrienne Martin of Abundant Living. This is the best video we have seen yet on making Green Smoothies.
Kitchen, Bath, and Body
Things to be ordering over the next few days:
Vitamix (or other High Speed Blender) and/or Juicer. A common question is “What is the best juicer?” The answer is, “The one that is used.” Whatever you make juice with is your most important appliance on a Feast. In order for the Program to work, you need to extract vibrant, living juices from your produce with no pulp left over. Some produce is difficult to juice, such as leafy greens, because each cell wall must be broken open to extract the juice. Some juicers do not have this capacity, such as centrifugal juicers like the Juiceman (still an good little juicer for fruits and root crops, however. The best orange juice we have ever had comes out of our Juiceman.)
To be clear, you can use either a blender or a juicer to make juice on a Feast, or a combination of the two. Historically, we have used both a juicer and a blender to make juices, and we will cover in detail how each appliance can be used to make great tasting, vibrant juice. What do we want in a juicer? Mainly:
Excellent extraction of juice from produce
Ease of use and cleaning
Enzyme Retention (i.e. juice that lasts after being made)
Affordability
We want this Juice Feast to be effective, and yet as efficient as possible for you. Your easiest way to make juice on a Feast is with a Vitamix, straining the juice from the pulp with a nut mylk bag, so let's start there. You can make all of your juice for the day in about an hour first thing in the morning with a Vitamix, and clean-up takes seconds. Let's look at the Vitamix.
A Vitamix will be your most useful and used live foods kitchen appliance, without question. We know, it is just a blender, right? It makes smoothies, soups, salad dressings, sorbet, pâtés, and, most important in Juice Feasting, your green vegetable juices for straining through a nut mylk bag (see below).
Most of us do not have much time to make juices. You can make every juice on the Feast using this appliance. You may have a version of the Bass O'Matic seen in this video. If you do, please trade that blender in for this. Bass O'Matics and other honorable blenders even found at stores like Target and JC Penny are not going to break open the cell walls of your greens enough to be able to expose the juice inside.
After the Feast, you will want this baby to do the Four Means to Get Your Greens, which you can read more about under Current Projects or on Day 83 of the 92-Day Juice Feasting Program.
Get this blender even if you have to sell your oven and microwave and coffeemaker to get it. We are not kidding.
For more information on blenders, see the VitaMix/BlendTec showdown, and download the High Speed Blenders Comparison File we have created for you free on JuiceFeasting.com.
Nut Mylk Bags. These bags are for use in straining juices (mainly Green Vegetable Juices) made in the blender. Also useful for making nut and seed mylks when not Juice Feasting.
When you order these, order FOUR NUT MYLK BAGS. The reason is that these will get holes in them during your Juice Feast, and they are essential for making your juices. Make sure that you have enough of these.
A Juicy Tip is that when you get a hole in a bag, don't throw it out. Save it, and when the next one gets a hole, you can put the two together and keep right on juicing with them.
Also: clean your nut mylk bags in 3 percent hydrogen peroxide every week. The best way to do this is put a cup of hydrogen peroxide in a glass, and submerse your nut mylk bag in it with a spoon on top to hold it down. Just leave it like this while you are away at work, and rinse when you get home!
Note: An old t-shirt, a pillow case, or a lady’s knee-high nylon stocking can serve the same function until a nut mylk bag arrives.
Supplements and Superfoods
If you are ordering supplements and superfoods online, today and tomorrow are the days to do this if you want these items before the Juice Feast begins. That being said, if you do wait a little longer to order because you are just learning about these elements of the Feast, know that having them right away is not crucial. The most important thing you are doing is drinking GVJ and supporting your organs of elimination through the practices on the Day in the Life of a Juice Feaster. However, adding some of these in even while you are Getting Your Juices Flowing can be excellent. For example, you can add in MSM to your Morning Water with Lemon, add Green Superfood Powders and Blue Green Algae to your Green Smoothies, and explore our favorite superfood, bee pollen granules (check out Day 17: Bee Pollen).
Detailed information about these supplements and superfoods is available in the free Juice Feasting Introduction on Juice Feasting.com in two main places:
Supplements and Superfoods
Juice Feasting Timeline
You will see these popping up again as you are Getting Your Juices Flowing, as well.
Exercise
YOGA! We encourage you to begin a yoga practice. This and walking are your two easiest forms of exercise – and yoga can be done indoors even when it is not so nice outside. If you have never practiced yoga before, go to your local organic foods market or bookstore, and pick up some copies of some yoga magazines, such as Yoga Journal. Just begin to expose your mind to the poses, the information, and get inspired. Cut out beautiful people in various positions and put them on your fridge, or leave them laying around. These are archetypes that you can pre-load in your mind. You are going to find your archetypal self – your authentic yoga practice, and it may or may not look like those photos, but it will be you. These images are to help you develop a feeling inside yourself – they look the way you have the capacity to feel doing yoga: that is the point. Rodney Yee expresses this experience in a Gaiam video called “Love Your Body.” The days of looking at magazine covers and models and all that garbage and wishing you looked like them is over. Juice Feasting is designed to help you feel and be beautiful from the very depths of your being, and when you access that, then your true beauty will shine forth and everyone will see it, including you.
Right off the bat, a stellar online resource for yoga is created by long-time yoga practitioner and teacher, Rodney Yee. Check out his store: http://rodneyyeeyogastore.com There you will find books, mats, DVDs, CDs, and more. Another excellent online store is Gaiam.
Yoga video resources
Videos by Rodney Yee
Free Online: 10 Essential Yoga Poses with Rodney Yee
Yoga book resources
Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee
Yoga for 50+: Modified Poses and Techniques by Richard Rosen
B.K.S. Iyengar Yoga
Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class by Bikram Choudhury
Yoga: The Poetry of the Body with Rodney Yee
Yoga Mind, Body, Spirit by Donna Farhi
Yoga from the Heart by Yogananth Andiappan
Next, get a yoga mat and make sure you like it – no, love it. There are some great eco-friendly yoga mats made out of jute and rubber you may be able to find.
Find some music to practice yoga by at home. We LOVE Yoga Rhythms by Shiva Rae. You can get a taste for that CD here.
Finally, see about joining a class in your local area. The place you want to go to find a class in your area is: YogaJournal.com/directory.
What you will find as you progress in your yoga practice is that you do not do yoga or practice yoga anymore; you are yoga, as this is a deeply unifying practice. Shazzie writes in her book Detox Your World:
Despite the many types of yoga, there really is one common aim: to create unity. This is done by cleansing and purifying the mind, body, and spirit simultaneously. It’s a great way to achieve equilibrium, so if you feel unbalanced in any way at all, yoga will be of great relief to you. As well as detoxing you on a physical level, by promoting your lymph to move, yoga detoxes your emotions. The great thing about yoga is that it works on everything simultaneously.
To say that yoga is complementary to Juice Feasting is an understatement. We are so pleased that this exercise has been made so accessible now that we can water this seed in you as you prepare for your hero’s journey.
Multimedia/Internet
JuiceFeasting.com Peruse the Juice Feasting Intro. We have created this Introduction to be a source of consistent information about Juice Feasting, free and available to everyone. Refer to it often, as it augments this Guide.
Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko at www.rawfamily.com
Video: Victoria Boutenko Making Green Smoothies
What’s Ahead
Tomorrow morning, we are going to add in a new Life Practice – Morning Water. You are also going to improve your kitchen some more with a new implement or two, and join an online community of people who are on a similar hero’s journey to the one you are on now.
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