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| Starting to grow on me. source |
After the first three days I was to the point where I’d rather drink water and eat nothing than lift another glass of pulverized vegetable leavin’s to my lips.
Thankfully, Day Four proved to be much different. As crazy as it sounds, hubby ba-dubby has already lost 4 pounds since Monday, and I’m down a good 9 pounds. We both feel oddly invigorated and keep looking at each other like, “Wow! You’re looking slimmer!”
Of course, it’s no wonder when you’re ingesting less than 600-1,000 calories a day with no fat whatsoever.
So, that mystery resolved, let’s talk lack of hunger. As with ketosis, my body has begun to cannibalize its own fat stores for fuel, and I’m just not hungry until later evening, when I sip water and hot, herbal tea to remedy the situation. This begs the question: Could I actually be in ketosis?
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| Quick tip: To make your stix go farther, cut them in half, lengthwise |
The answer: Yes.
How do I know this? I have the same Ketostix I’ve used for Atkins-ing, and, having tested this morning, and in the absence of dietary fat ingestion (which can provide a false positive effect), found that I am experiencing trace amounts of ketosis, the same state of non-hunger and euphoria that leads many low carbers to weight loss.
That begs the question: How can a raw diet of juicing produce ketosis, when the fiber is left behind, and all that’s left, arguably, is the insulin-spiking ‘sugar’ of the vegetables?
You tell me.
In the mean time, I have no plans to stop in the near future. I’m going, minimally, for the next 6 days, to complete the 10 day experiment. Who knows? If the ketosis and weight loss continue, I might just keep going. Apparently, there’s something to this juicing thing… and right now, it appears to be ketosis.
Yesterday, juicing consisted of:
Breakfast: A veggie juice
Lunch: A veggie juice
Dinner: A veggie juice dense with greens like parsley, kale and spinach
Drinks: A lot of ice water
When I want a simple juice I just make this:
The Triple Dipple
Makes 24 ounces
1 tomato
4 stalks celery
4 carrots, ends trimmed
Juice and serve immediately
Extrapolations: I definitely drank more water, but I am working to keep a bottle of water (non-BPA plastic hoootie hoo) with me, even when I’m also sipping juice. Sipping juices, instead of guzzling, allows me to enjoy the process more, with less hunger.
Quote of the day: Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves. ~Dale Carnegie
Are you journeying along with a juicing diet? Trying something different? How are you doing? Leave comments below and share your struggles and successes.
I was excited to see you post that you were doing this. I started on Monday, also and am down 5.7 lbs since then. I'm feeling really good, too…it reminded me of my ketosis or hcg days:) When all seems right with the world. Wake up before the alarm and not be sad about that, hair works, traffic lights are green, etc… I just feel good! I am doing the fruits/veggies and juicing, so i have a banana in the morning, and sometimes an apple in the afternoon. For lunch, I do salad usually. So, I'm part time juicing, but only doing fruits/veggies. It's crazy how much I like it. I was only going to commit for 5 days, but today is day 5 and I'm going for 10. If I get to day 10 and still feel good, I'll go for 15:) I wont go longer than that, though. I am going to be needing some protein, I think… Good luck to you:)
Woohoo on your successes, too. It's good to know you're experiencing the same things we did the first few days. It is really tough. It makes induction flu look like a walk in the park. Here's to the rest of your days!
That IS a very interesting question about being in ketosis while eating veggies. Do you think it's because the veggies you're eating were not crazy carby? The toms and carrots have the most sugar but they're nothing like corn or potatoes..
Congrats on the 9# loss!!
I wondered that, so I ran the numbers for a juice through fitday. One veggie only juice is about 39 carbs, which is pretty high for one meal, but it makes 24 ounces of liquid, which keeps me full for hours. I guess when there's the comparison between the high carb diets most Americans eat (about 300 per day), 100ish carbs from fresh produce just doesn't measure up.
You are in Ketosis because you are on a starvation diet. There is only 600kcals a day difference between what you're eating now and total fasting starvation. You ARE running on a majority of fat for fuel – your body fat. Therefore your daily "diet" including your body fat IS low carb high fat, even though you're having 39g carb in some shakes.
You and your hubby are achieving similar weight loss results that I achieved (and believe me, my metabolism is sluggish – I can't loose weight on low carb which is how I eat all the time to not put weight on) when I did a week of what I called semi-fasting. All I did was eat one meal a day consisting of 600kcals.
However, and I am saying this for purely advice reasons, not just for you but everyone who reads your blog, you NEED protein.
Your body utilises a certain amount of protein everyday for tissue maintenance. If you continue you will experience too much muscle wastage. So, to keep the ketosis going, eat some lean protein as part of your 600kcals a day. Lean protein, like a bit of chicken breast, a bit of steak or some tuna or even BACON medallions (you know, the lean bits from the back bacon). That way you'll loose fat and not your muscles. Eggs are also great protein and the calories in an egg contain vital fat nutrients that you will be depleting by avoiding fat and meat.
This is different to justing cuting out a few cals a day and losing weight that way. Just eating 1800kcals or 1500kcals doesn't make me loose weight. Taubes is CORRECT that Calories in doesn't equal Calories out, but that doesn't mean that UBER low calorie starvation diets (i.e. 6000kcals a day) can't be extremely useful for losing weight. When you've finished this diet go back to low carb, and don't carb up and you will only put back on a couple of pounds, you will maintain 80%+ of you weight loss long term if you stick to low carb. That's what happened for me. And now after a couple of weeks back on low carb 2000kcals a day I will do this 600kcal diet again next week or the week after and hopefully lose more…
Thank you for your fantastic advice, danyelle! I agree that protein is necessary. That said, I'm having trouble adding it since I want to keep these first ten days of the plan as 'pure' as possible. I might, though, try adding a raw egg to the juice. I just need to get over the perfection aspect of that choice, since I don't want to mess with the success so far in changing something up. Does that make sense? I am not a vegan convert, but I want to see if what I'm doing continues to be successful to ten days–at which point maybe I can start adding the raw egg or protein powder to the juices as an added oomph of protein. I appreciate you very much, and I'm glad you shared with me!