Day 56 - Tasteless pineapples and snowstorms!

So after my shift at the hotel today, I started making my way home. Only, we got 51cm of snow (almost 21 inches) over the weekend! Really crazy snowstorm! The sidewalks were completely snowed in; no choice but to walk through main roads. Luckily most people avoided venturing out of their homes. The buses were totally fucked and cabs were nowhere to be found. It took me over an hour to get home. Unreal!

Here are some pictures of what my walk home looked like:

David and Katrina... can I come juice feast with you guys in Patagonia? I'm getting sick of this winter! :P *giggles*


When I finally did get home, I was staaarving. No time for water and MSM this morning, I'm afraid. I wanted green juice ASAP! So that's what did. I felt really tired all day today which was basically due to working the overnight shift. I really need to quit the hotel...real soon or I'm going to have a burnout. I can feel it. :( After juice feasting I should be able to afford quitting the hotel....

My next juice of the day was one of my all time favorites; pineapple and blackberry. Only this week, I wasn't able to find some big organic pineapples so I settled for some non-organic ones. Wow. People who think organic is a big joke have no idea of how much more flavorful organic produce is. This conventional pineapple I had tasted soooo watered down. It was a total bummer! Sigh. I hope the other 3 pineapples I bought have more flavour than this one.

Today I had:

1.25 celery/collard greens/parsley
250ml water+chanca piedra
1.5 pineapple/blackberry
1.25 grapefruit/blood orange/carrot
250ml water+chanca piedra
1tbsp bee pollen+agave
2tbsp honey+royal jelly

(another buzzkill was the 1lb of bee pollen I bought at the health food store... tastes like CRAP compared to the one I had bought from the local guy in the market. Damn.... there's 14$ down the drain.... I LOVE my local guy bee pollen... I'll have to go buy more from him soon...!)

Today I also did:

Napping? No exercise today guys... I was zombified! But I did fill my head with lots of inspirational raw-vegan podcasts from Revvell (http://www.revvellations.com/)

I'll start logging sleep and everything tomorrow. All I did today was nap since I worked overnight... I think I got in 6 hours of sleep throughout the day.

That's it for me today..... I know, boring post today eh? Well the snow thing was cool! :) I sure picked THE winter to go raw, eh?

- Ben

Day 28 - Sleepy time bye bye

Sorry for the delayed posting. I'm backdating this posting for blog accuracy. So just pretend okay? :)

I was super super knackered; mostly from the weekend at the hotel. I went from not being able to sleep before my overnight shift to being zombified and, later, comatose. I got home after my shift a the hotel, drank my water+msm+lemon and went to bed. I woke up at 1PM and started getting ready for my date. First, it was time to make some green juice! I was staaarving and pretty light headed by then (it had been 15 hours since my last juice!).

In case you're wondering, the date went very well and I believe the feeling to be mutual. We went to a cute local coffee shop where I had peppermint tea. Afterwards, we went for a walk around the market. There was a man selling local bee pollen. A nice big jar of unpasteurized local bee pollen for 9$! Sweet deal! We ended up going to the fruit market where I got blood oranges. I've been craving them ever since Carrie mentioned them. 10$ for 10 blood oranges.... it made 1L of juice! I know, I thought it was a very expensive juice to make too. But then I thought, I would have paid this for a cosmopolitan a few years ago so.... I'll just think of this juice as a cosmo! :)

Afterwards we went to Winterlude: an annual festival celebrating winter where people from around the world come to show off their ice sculpture skills as part of a competition. It was nice...except for the fact that I was FREEZING! Side note: my body temperature has been considerably lower these past few weeks!

We retired back to starbucks where I had more peppermint tea to warm up.... that is, after I had some cataloupe juice since I was starving. I know, it's daring to pop a mason jar out in public and start drinking from it.... even more so on a date hahaha!

All that to say, it's possible to be social even whilst juice feasting!

Today I had:

1.25L water+msm+lemon
1.00L celery/kale+E3live+kelp
500ml cantaloupe juice
1L peppermint tea
1L blood orange juice
1tbsp bee pollen+agave
1tbsp coconut oil

Today I also did:

Skin brushing
40 min of Yoga
2L enema with cat's claw tea (meow!)

Lowest amount of juice in ages! But I was really knackered for most of the day and I was out and about too! Toooootally stole the cat's claw tea enema idea from Carrie. Sorry Carrie, you're that special! People want to emulate you! :)

That enema by the way was intense. I was able to hold it for 10 minutes. I think I eliminates some really old matter because afterwards I was REALLY tired and shivering too. Nonetheless, I still managed to get some yoga in. Tomorrow, it'll be time to try doing pilates again. I need a flat tummy!! :)

- Ben

Day 10 - Sweeeeeeeeet!

It's day 10! And boy, was this ever a good day. I made the BEST juices today. Also, I made it a point to pamper myself a bit. :)

Today I had:

1L water+msm+lemon (up to 2tsp of msm now)
1L celery/cilantro/red chard E3live+kelp
500ml Peppermint tea
1L pineapple/blackberry (Yuuuuuuum!)
500ml coconut water+mystery melon (Mmmmm!)
750ml Orange/Carrot (extra yuuuuuuuum!)
500ml celery/field greens juice (yuuuuck!!!) + hempseed oil
1Tbsp bee pollen

Okay so that last juice was so nasty I was only able to drink half of the 1L I made. Don't make that juice. It's nasty! The other 3 were really good though!!! :) I was worried about the carrot/orange one, after Katrina Rainoshek warned me about mixing citrus with other things... but this was SOOO TASTY and it didn't give me any stomach pains. :) I did have a wee bit of stomach pain earlier in the day, immediately after nibbling on the bee pollen.... This was exactly the same time as yesterday. So... I'm not going to take any bee pollen for a bit and see what happens. Maybe it's taking bee pollen on an empty stomach?

So when I got home, I decided I needed to treat myself. I had stopped by the health food store to pick up organic oatmeal and avocados. No no! I wasn't about to cheat and eat any solid food! I made a facial mask out of avocado, almond oil, oatmeal, aloe gel, veggie glycerin and coconut oil. :) yay! My face needed it; it's been a dry and cold winter so far.

I made a similar mix for my hands... which are SO dry from washing all those veggies. I just... don't want to put anything unnatural on my skin right now.

I'm toying with the idea of making a cream out of coconut oil, msm and almond oil to put on my psoriasis to see if heals faster... maybe I can try it on a few patches? Some areas are already healing nicely... fingers crossed that it all goes away by day 92! :)

- Ben

Day 6 - Enamored of contrast showers

Day 6 was kind of special in many ways. The intense and short lived hunger fits and acute cravings have, for the most part, disappeared. I believe that I needed a bit of time for my stomach to shrink down. I used to eat such huge portions of food.... I was honestly quite worried about how my overnight shift (at the hotel) would go sans-coffee and sans-solids. I'm happy to report that I had MORE energy than normal. I was actually wired by 8am. It wasn't the artificial coffee-induced kind of wired either.

When I got home, I had my water with msm. Despite not drinking juice in almost 14 hours and being a wee bit hungry, I was able to take my sweet time making my green juice. I really do believe this is because my stomach shrunk. I actually find the 500ml juices really filling now. Which brings me to this:

Today I had:

1L water+msm+lemon
1L Celery/Spinach juice
500ml Pineapple-Apple juice
500ml Grapefruit juice
500ml Kale/Bok Choi+E3Live
1Tbps bee pollen ( I found a trick for this!)


Eeep! I did really badly today in terms of reaching the 1 gallon mark. Again, I think that's because it's the weekend and I'm pretty much zombified every weekend from working overnights. I also need more organic fruits. Tomorrow I'm going shopping for week 2 of juice feasting. Hoping to find tons of coconuts! :)

I also wanted to report that drinking grapefruit juice on its own wasn't conducive to any stomach pains whatsoever! yay! :)

Regarding the bee pollen, I used to take the whole tablespoon in my mouth, chew it down and swallow. The taste could only be described as "what barns smell like". Luckily, last night, I found a trick! Seeing as the tastebuds for sweetness are at the tip of the tongue, I found that taking small amounts (5-10 granules/time) and chewing them with the front teeth actually makes it taste pretty decent! :)

In terms of 'eliminations'... I just wanted to mention that, while I thought most of the detoxing was behind me, weird things started to happen today. Not to gross anyone out but... I was surprised today by my body purging 'mucus'. I'm definitely sticking with the daily enemas for a few more days and then moving to 1 every 2 days. I just ordered an open bag enema kit online... right now all I have is a bulb enema kit and that's not the best tool.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Contrast showers!

It sounds like a weird form of torture, but they're actually not so bad once you get used to them! I think I've reached that point. For those who don't know, contrast showers involve changing the waster temperature from warm to cool at regular intervals while you shower. I actually find this very invigorating.

I usually start with a warm shower and once I've rinsed the shampoo out of my hair, I put the shower on cool and place moisturizer in my hair. This is where I start having fun! When I first started doing these, I would keep all my limbs close to my body, shiver and rotate in the shower like a chicken in a roaster.... Now, I make it a point to loosen up; it makes it less 'painful'. Also, I find dancing through the cool cycle makes it a lot more bearable! I know, it's goofy...but it works and it's really fun!

Contrast showers end on a cool cycle so have a towel handy to warm you up! :) Try them out! They're great for preventing colds, improving lymphatic circulation and enhancing the detoxification process! :)

That's enough ranting for one night :) Schlaf gut!

- Ben