My own background story with Juicing

This story begins before I left Israel, around October 2009. I was working comfortably in the hi-tech industry, eating regular meals every day with my colleagues. The sad truth is that I somehow let myself go, and eventually weighed around 105kg (that’s almost 210 pounds for those on the imperial system). For a person who used to being very slim and athletic, it was a horrible shock to look at a photo of myself one day, and realizing what I have done to myself without noticing.

Fast forward to the winter of 2010. I was living in Russia with two flat mates (It was cheaper to rent a room than to rent an apartment, plus I was lonely at the time and I figured I could use the company).

The two women in the apartment used a steamer to cook their foods. I remembered my mom using a steamer, way back in my childhood, but it was only used rarely, for some very specific types of food; definitely not as the main cooking apparatus.

Moscow is notoriously expensive, and since I was trying to save money, buying meat was reserved for special occasions. I basically bought a lot of Broccoli, Cabbage, Carrots, Onions, Beet, Corn, and a LOT of Buckwheat (As the Russians call it: “Grétchka”). And so, for a period of 3 months this is mostly what I ate. This, and the occasional whole wheat Subway sandwich with imitation crab meat and tons of vegetables. Needless to say, I did not drink sugary drinks, and instead drank water with lemon juice.

Old dog learns new tricks

About 1.5 years ago, my friend Golan Ben-Oni introduced me to Dr. Fuhrman, the book “Eat To Live” (which has since made it to the New York Times’ best selling book in the “self help” category), to the China Study, and to Dr. Novick, the funny and witty nutritionist with the warm, charming smile and the always-awesome presentations. He also told me about the movie “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead” by Joe Cross (which has since become a sensation). That movie, along with the rich information provided by the nutritionists I mentioned, has really opened my eyes about nutrition.

In the space of a few months, I realized what I had been doing wrong my entire life, and why when I was eating only vegetables and raw grain back in Russia, I was losing weight fast, and feeling extremely healthy. In fact it almost got scary to see myself losing so much weight so quickly – I lost 20kg in 3 month.

And yet, it’s one thing to know what to do, and to actually do it. Just like many smokers know smoking kills and causes cancer, but never actually quit smoking. But what if they actually got cancer, suffered through treatment, died, and were suddenly given another chance to jump back in time to the moment they started smoking? How many of them would actually decide to never start smoking?

I feel that what happened to me by chance, has inadvertently shown me two things: 1) It is actually possible to go back to your BMI, and in just a few months. 2) The feeling of being healthy and looking great again, is totally worth the effort.

So can an old dog learn new tricks, and change his ways? Well, mostly. I don’t believe in going to the extreme – I think you sometimes need to have your comfort foods, so that you feel you aren’t completely giving up on your old lifestyle. A slice of Pizza every 2 ~ 3 months? That’s totally acceptable to me.

The basic idea behind juicing

The idea here is that our bodies no longer get the nutrition they need, because we eat a relatively very narrow diet. A study of bones found from before and after the agricultural revolution clearly shows that before the agricultural revolution, people were taller, healthier, and better fed, compared to people who lived after the agricultural revolution.

The simple explanation is that before the agricultural revolution, we were “hunters / gatherers” which meant that we relied on a large variety of foods (whatever we could find that day). After the agricultural revolution, we started eating only one or two types of grain, instead of 50. What this essentially means is that we significantly narrowed our spectrum of nutrients, vitamins and minerals. Suddenly our bodies were not getting all the minerals and vitamins they were used to getting.

The same problem exists with dietary supplements. Rates of cancer have actually gone up since dietary supplements were introduced. The simple truth is that you can’t replace a tomato, which has hundreds of types of vitamins and minerals, with a pill that contains just vitamins A, B and C. Our nutrition is more than just those 3 vitamins. We actually do need those hundreds of vitamins and minerals that a Fresh tomato has, and no pill can give us those nutrients, no matter how good it is.

So why juice? Why not just eat vegetables and fruits?

You could certainly just eat vegetables and fruits, but when you are trying to recover and heal your body, either from some trauma, chronic disease, malnutrition, diabetes, or major weight gain, and you are out of time (literally), you have to take drastic measures. Once you get to the point where you are healthy again, then you can move to “maintenance mode”, and you can start juicing just once a week, of course while eating a balanced diet consisting of vegetables, legumes, fruits, nuts and seeds, leafy greens, berries, etc.

How does juicing work? What’s special about juicing?

In order to heal, your body needs to rebuild its reserves of vitamins and minerals. The problem is that if you tried to obtain the amounts you actually need, you would have to consume 5 whole leafs of kale, 5 stalks of celery, 1 beet, 1 bunch of spinach, 5 large carrots, 2 apples, 2 tomatoes, 1 lemon, and repeat all this 3 times a day.

Thing is, you can’t possibly eat all of that in a day, simply because of the large volume of space this food would require in your stomach. To overcome this limitation, we juice those vegetables and fruits. Luckily, modern juicers separate the juice (containing all the good stuff) from the pulp (which is just empty cellulose). By getting rid of the cellulose, you get a juice that contains all the vitamins and minerals from all those vegetables and fruits that you can drink easily.

Recipes

The “Everything” Juice

• One bunch of Kale (Around 8 ~ 10 leafs)
• Two carrots
• Two small beets or one large beet
• Two celery stalks
• One Green Apple
• One Red Apple
• Ginger (5 slices)

Just Green

• One bunch of Kale (Around 8 ~ 10 leafs)
• One bunch Spinach
• Two celery stalks
• Two Green Apples

And here are some external links:

• Joe Cross (from Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead): “Mean Green” recipe