Day 5 - Simplicity and evil beets

Today was a great day for juice feasting!

The cravings and detox symptoms are subsiding and I'm starting to feel much better. I'm also starting to learn a lot about my body and how to juice-feast properly according to my own body. To be perfectly honest, the first 4 days were really rough, and I doubted whether I would last 92 days... despite my determination. However, things shifted today... I'm content in my juice feasting and I really think 92 days isn't really all that bad! I'm already 5% of the way there! Right? :)

Today I had:

1L water+msm+lemon
1L Celery/Green chard/Cilantro
500ml Pineapple juice (nice and simple!)
600ml Cinnamon tea
500ml Carrot/Beet juice
600ml Peppermint tea
500ml Apple juice
500ml Celery+E3live+ kelp
500ml water

I know, I know... I'm still not hitting the gallon mark today. It'll come! Fridays are going to be awful though; I work 7 days a week.... days on weekdays, nights on weekends. Therefore, Fridays, I work 9 to 5 and then midnight to 8am. So between 6 and 10, I'm sleeping. That accounts for the lower amount of juice :) I was also bad today with my supplements; I missed out on the hemp seed oil and other goodies... I'll try to be better with that.

After I had my very simple beet juice, I started getting stomach pains again. The same ones I had on day 2. I think what is happening is that the beet juice is stimulating the liver to release bile and toxins, much in the same way a coffee enema would. If that's the case, I think I need to approach it in the same way I would a coffee enema; ensure my colon is clean and free of obstructions before drinking beet juice. Therefore, I'm going to scratch off beet juice from my "bring to work" juice list for the next little while. I'm going to try drinking it only after having an enema in the evening. We'll see if that helps.

The good news is, when I started having stomach pains, I went downstairs to the cafeteria and grabbed some peppermint tea. It did the trick! Within minutes, my stomach pain was gone! But then ummm... a few hours later I had a weird elimination. Let's just say, if I had forgotten that I drank beet juice, I would have thought that something in my colon was releasing massive amounts of blood. Yea... it was weird!

I went to a health food store today and also picked up tons of goodies for juicing! Even bok choi and black kale! :)

I also picked up all natural, plant based cleaning supplies. I figured, I've made so many changes in an effort to rid myself of chemicals, I should really follow through with all of them. Therefore, I got the following things;

- All natural dishwasher tablets
- All natural laundry detergent
- All natural dish-washing soap
I wanted to pick up a spray bottle for cleaning the counter but I forgot!

I think this would be a good time to also enumerate the numerous other changes I've recently made:

- All natural shampoo and conditioner (Giovanni)
- All natural toothpaste (Dr Ken's)
- Replaced showerhead with one that has a charcoal filter and quartz
- Stopped using Listerine and gum
- Stopped smoking (was smoking 1 pack/week)
- Stopped drinking coffee (1-2 cups/day)

I think that's all I'm going to babble on about for now :)

- Ben