I remember the days of having 3 children under the age of 3 running around my house. Needless to say, t he days were a little crazy back then. I would begin my days with the full intention of quickly hopping into the shower. Just then I would hear the first child wake up in need of a diaper change….one thing lead to another (as I’m sure many of you can relate) and the next thing I know it’s bedtime, I’m too exhausted to move, and so I will just take my shower in the morning!!
Luckily this was not an everyday occurrence, but you can imagine what it would be like if day after day, and then week after week, I just wasn’t able to get into that shower! Yuck – I would feel AWFUL never being able to get fully clean!!!
Well, have you ever stopped and thought about cleaning your digestive system? Have you ever wondered how you could give it a good “shower” – metaphorically speaking? Well JUICING is one of the ways that we can do that for our bodies.
Our stomach, liver, gall bladder, pancreas, small intestine, and large intestine all work very hard to do one of 2 things:
- Break down the food we eat into parts so tiny, that the useful elements of food can actually be absorbed into our bloodstream and sent throughout our body.
- Get rid of any leftover parts of the food that our body can’t use.
The quantity of food we eat, the frequency with which we eat and the quality of food we eat all have a part to play in how hard we require our digestive system to work for us.
We live in a time where something called Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is becoming more and more common. This term simply means pain or discomfort in the digestive system after you eat. Our body has the amazing ability to clean itself out, the only problem is that we keep putting stuff in that hinders this natural ability. Weather this is crappy processed food, chemicals that we inhale or consume like herbicides and pesticides, or simply too much food. If our system is constantly working there is never anytime to rest and take a break…..a cleansing per se.
JUICING is a great way to get the nutrients you need, but still allow your digestive system the time to concentrate on cleaning itself out. Because all of the fiber has been removed from the food, the nutrients can flow throughout our body with almost no strain at all on our digestive track. A couple of days of just juice can give your inside a gorgeous make-over….allowing your body some time to clean out all the ‘sludge’ that has been collecting for a while.
Whenever I have fallen off track with my eating or have been indulging a little too long, I start to just feel gross. This often happens after we have been on vacation for awhile. A week in Disneyland is definitely bound to give me that bloated feeling. It always feels great knowing that I can come home and “juice myself back to health”!
2 days of just juice can do wonders. Sometime that is a little tricky for me and so I will do just juice for breakfast and lunch (and snacks) and then have a dinner of only vegetables (cooked or raw). I always feel great when I am done (especially when I can get rid of some food cravings along the way).
At the top of the post is a picture of everything that I put into my juicer this morning:
1 English cucumber
1/2 a head of romaine lettuce
3 kale leaves
3 large carrots
2 apples
1 peach
a small bunch of grapes
1 beet (including the greens)
1/2 a lemon
This is just a list of the things that I had in my fridge. This yielded 6 cups of juice. You really can put just about any fruit or vegetable into the juicer. Focus on green vegetables and add the fruit for some great flavor.
When you are done juicing, there is quite a bit of fibrous mass leftover. My mom likes to freeze the vegetable part and out it into her soups.
I usually discard it and find it is great for the compost pile.
So the next time you are feeling a little sluggish or maybe have indulged just a little too much, try giving your digestive system a little rest and get yourself some fresh juice for a few days.
Source: WFM 1-10