Introduction to Juicing for the Raw Food Lifestyle

by Robert Ross

Juicing is a one of the easiest yet most powerful things you can use to make your raw food lifestyle more successful – and improve your overall health and wellness. Usually I juice every day and drink between one or two quarts of mostly-green juice every day. Some people prefer to have one regular juice day every week, also called a juice ‘feast’ or juice fast day.

By removing all the hard-to-digest fiber from your nutrient-rich veggies, juicing improves your absorption of all the important nutrients. This is particularly important for people beginning a raw food lifestyle because most of us have poor digestion and incomplete absorption after decades of eating cooked and processed foods. Juicing, using a slow-speed masticating juicing only, breaks down the cell walls of your veggies releasing the nutrition so you can absorb it like a sponge.

How Much to Drink

I usually recommend at least 16 ounces of juice daily. Most days I fill up a 16 oz. insulated sports canister and drink it throughout the day. When I am doing a juice ‘feast’ I double that, drinking it throughout the day, but mostly around meal times or whenever I am feeling hungry.

Making this much juice every day might seem tedious, but I have a secret.  First, I don’t actually make juice every single day.  I actually juice every two or three days and make enough for the next two or three days, which I then store in a tightly sealed, insulated container in the fridge. If you do this a lot you may want to get one of those food saver appliances that sucks the air out of a ball-jar style container, but I have found that my juice lasts up to 3 days just fine without that – though as always, the sooner you drink it the better!

In order to do this you MUST you only a high quality masticating juicer that produces little oxidation hence has a high juice quality and juice stability. These include single-auger juicers like those made by Samson, Hurom, Omega and Kuvings and twin-gear models like the Green Power, Green Star and Super Angel.

If you are new to juicing I recommend a single-auger juicer. Avoid low-cost centrifugal juicers entirely (like the Juiceman or Jack LaLanne models) because they break easily, produce low quality juice, and are very loud. Most importantly, they have the lowest juice quality because they fling tiny droplets of juice through the air to separate it from the pulp, and this thoroughly oxidizes all the juice before it even reaches the glass! Oxidation is the enemy of nutrition, enzymes and health in general. So plan on spending between $200-300 for a good single-auger juicer.

As your juicing expertise grows you may want to trade up to a twin-gear juicer, which start around $400. These are the best juicer when you talk about juicing efficiency (more juice from the same veggies), juice quality (more nutritional density from the same veggies), juice stability (longer lasting in the fridge) and ease of use or cleaning. Beyond that there is something called the juice press, but these are thousands of dollars, are very messy and tedious to use or clean for very little additional benefit compared to the best twin-gear model from Super Angel. In fact, I have sold many Super Angel juicers to people who own hydraulic juicers that just cannot stand them any more!

Once you get used to your new juicer and strart enjoying all the benefits, you’ll be surprised to discover that it’s much easier than you thought it would be. In fact, it can be a lot of fun! After many years, I’ve got my juicing down to a routine that usually takes less than 15 minutes including clean up.  Since I only juice every two or three days, I only have to clean up every two or three days, too. I generally just rinse all t he juicer components under hot water and toss them in the dish rack. I clean and brush the juicing gears and juicing screen more thoroughly. One or twice a week I scrub everything more thoroughly using soapy water.


Though most of the nutrients are removed from the pulp by your juicer, it is still a valuable resource. I mix my pulp with my dog’s food – and he loves it!  It makes a great topping for almost anything, especially salads. You can also compost it.

Juicing for Healing Dis-Ease

When I first went to the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego (OHI) as a guest for three weeks, mostly to accompany my eldery mother, I was the poster boy in my neighborhood for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFIDS). After years of trying all kinds of alternative therapies, from Chinese medicine to homeopathy, Tai Chi, acupuncture and much more, I had some limited success and actually thought at the time I was cured since I no longer had to sleep all day long – and could actually stay awake most of a day. But in reality I had forgotten what normal felt like.

The program at OHI begins with a 3-day juice “feast.”  After three days on simple, basic juices I suddenly felt more energy than I had in years and years. I realized then that not feeling noticeably “sick” was not the same thing as being wonderfully alive and bursting with more energy than I knew what to do with.
Before that first juice feast I was walking around like a zombie that didn’t know it was dead. If you reached out to shake my hand and introduce yourself, I would stick a limp arm out and offer a weak hello in reply. But after the juice fast I was genuinely excited to meet people, and thrilled to make new friends. I walked around with a perpetual smile on my face the whole time I was there and made lots of new friends.

In fact, I was so impressed by the miraculous transformation in my life that a few months later I returned to OHI as a volunteer, agreeing to work there for 3 months in exchange for room and board. I ended up staying there for six years, losing over 75 lbs. and changing my life forever.

The OHI program is a comprehensive, life-altering program of juicing vegetables and wheatgrass combined with detoxification and an intense education in nutrition, physiology and other ltd topics – but juicing is the core nutritionally!

My experience after the first few days is not the exception! In fact, my mother, who was in her 70’s and extremely overweight at the time, had a similar experience.  On the first day we had to change her room to a more expensive room closer to the main buildings because she couldn’t even walk up a flight of stairs. After the first week she was a different woman, walking all over the place, up and down stairs, with a glow I hadn’t seen in decades.

Realistically, though you may experience intense highs at first, you can also experience uncomfortable lows associated with detoxifying your body. So it is important when you undertake a any juicing program or any juice feast longer than a day or so to support your body’s excretory system in removing released toxins with colon-cleansing techniques such as colonic irrigation or even just a daily enema. The colon is one of the most important organs for eliminating waste during detox and if no food is moving through it you need to give it some help.  I also recommend not to attempt juice feasting for more than three days without professional guidance like we had at OHI.  That much intense fasting is usually not required to achieve amazing results and get quite uncomfortable and even dangerous for some people.

Real, lasting transformational results, of course, only come after months or even years of making raw food part of your lifestyle. At first you may only be half raw, but you can ad to that bit by bit, cleansing and educating yourself along the way until months later you are 75% raw, then 80%, and so on. The more raw food you eat the faster your body can eliminate backed up toxins.
In my experience, if you eat at least 80% or more of your diet as raw, live food, in about three months you’ll start to see dramatic improvements in your health. That’s because it takes that long for your body to replace most of it’s red blood cells. So don’t expect juicing to be a magic bullet or overnight miracle in every case.

You’ll probably notice some immediate benefits like Mom and me, but you will also go through ups and downs in your personal process of growth and transformation. Even living at a raw food health center, it took me 6 years to become 100% raw…and that only lasted a few years before moving to another state caused new challenges and issues in y life. One thing is certain, I think, and that is the ups as well as the downs are much easier to enjoy as a raw foodist, just like riding a roller coaster and laughing all the way.

Best Vegetables for Juicing

The most powerful ingredients for your juice are the dark green leafy vegetables. These are the most alkaline-forming vegetables, but they don’t taste as good as the veggies we are typically used to in the market. So to compensate for that I add just one or two carrots, a lemon or an apple.

I recommend not making the juice any sweeter than that because it will exacerbate any problems your body has with sugar metabolism. Even if you aren’t diagnosed with a sugar problem, you probably have borderline, uduagnosed sugar issues results from sugar being added to everything in your cooked, processed diet for your whole life. So avoid sweet veggies like carrots and beets, and try to eliminate most fruit at least until your body rehabilitates it’s ability to properly metabolize sugar.  Avoid fruit and sweet veggies entirely if you have candida, hypoglycemia, insulin resistance, diabetes, or cancer.

Here are my favorite veggies (all organic and washed thoroughly of course):

• Dark green leafy veggies like collard greens, Swiss chard and kale
• Celery
• Parsley (high in vitamin C, bioflavanoids, iron, minerals and chlorophyll)
• Cucumbers (with skin)
• Leftover veggies in the fridge (broccoli, cauliflower, sprouts, whatever)
• Carrots (use sparingly due to high sugar content)
• Ginger root, for its anti-inflammatory properties
• Lemons (high in vitamin C & bioflavanoids.

Notes:

• Start juicing the vegetables that you already enjoy eating whole so you won’t be overwhelmed with strange flavors right away – you should enjoy your juice!
• Never juice orange or grapefruits peels since they contain toxic oils.
• Rotate vegetables and try new recipes regularly to get a variety for best nutrition and to avoid developing sensitivities or allergies from too much of the same thing constantly.
• Unless you are doing a controlled juice feast, brief fast or detoxification program you don’t want to use juice as a meal replacement. Juice has very little protein and almost no fat so it cannot replace a nutritious meal. It is really a powerful nutritional supplement or boost to your diet, ideally used in addition to regular meals.

Some of My Favorite Juicing Recipes

Mock V-8 Juice

• 1/4 cup spring water
• 2 tomatoes
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 handful spinach
• 1-2 carrots
• 1/4 sweet onion
• 1-2 celery stalks
• 2 tsp. lemon juice
• 1-2 shots hot sauce to taste

Cucumber Celery Cooler

• 4 medium carrots, greens removed
• 1/4 medium cucumber, peeled
• 1 stalk celery
• 1 apple, sliced
• 1/2 lemon, peeled (optional)

Mock Tuna Salad Using Juicer Pulp

• carrot or vegetable pulp
• raw mayonnaise (see link below)
• whatever else you’d like (celery, onions, etc.)

Add raw mayonnaise to your juicer pulp. Add other veggies to taste (scallions, celery, etc.). Add spices to taste. Add to salad dressings, use on greens, etc.

Raw Fasting
How to enjoy a safe 3-day fast! By Robert Ross

Please remember before starting any new health program consult your own health care professional.

The Health Institute that I used to teach at recommends fasting 3 days a month. It's also a good idea to do a 10 day fast once or twice a year. There are 3 major types of fasts:

3 days helps you get rid of toxins and cleanses the blood.
5 days starts healing and rebuilding the immune system.
10 days helps prevent disease by reversing damage caused by exposure to acidic toxins in cooked & processed foods, pesticide residues, prescription drug residues in the waters, volatile organic chemicals and other acidic toxins.

Fasting on water alone isn’t recommended for most people. This releases the toxins too quickly and can cause unpleasant detoxification symptoms (feels like the flu).

Fasting for more than 3 days should only be done under the supervision of a your health care professional unless you have done this before and know what you are doing. If you have diabetes, hypoglycemia, or another chronic health problem, even short fasts should be supervised. Pregnant or lactating women should never fast.

Remember. it took years or decades to break down your body, so it will take time to build it back up. Remember, to take your time and have compassion for yourself during this healing, rebuilding process.

A raw, organic juice diet will help prevent the most uncomfortable symptoms of detoxification since it lets your beody excrete built-up toxins more slowly than a-water fast. It also improves healing by supplying vitamins, minerals and enzymes. juice fast fast also useful helps you get more accustomed to the taste of raw vegetables so that it's easier to continue a raw food lifestyle after your fast.

3 Day Fast

I recommend taking your time to enter into and leave any fast over 1 day. A 3-day fast should have at least a week of preparation going into and ending the fast. This prepares your body by getting rid of some of the toxins before your actual fast so once you start fasting it is less of a shock to your system. If you have more experience or a very organic and raw diet, you camn skin this step or shorten it.

Weeks 1-2 Start by slowly eliminating all sugar, stimulants (coffee, cigarettes and alcohol), meats, fish and dairy. By the time you are ready to start your fast your diet should be just raw, organic fruits, veggies, seeds and nuts. Also try to avoid gluten (found in grains like wheat).

3 Days Before Fast For a few days before your fast, try blending all your food in a food processor or popwerful blender (I love my Blendtec Home blender). This prepares your digestive system by reducing the digestive workload, slowing it down and getting it ready for a lack of food during the actual fast. You can find tons of smoothie recipes online - especially green smoothies.

The 3-Day Fast Remember the maxim, "chew your liquids and drink your solids." Digestion starts in the mouth, so chew your juices slowly - don't just gulp them down. Drink at least ten 8-oz glasses of water, jjuices and herbal teas daily.

Use only purified water, preferably alkaline mineral water made in a quality water ionizer (I recommend Life Ionizers because of their excellent quality, customer service and Lifetime Warranty).

I recommend juicing only vegetables. Fruits have too much sugar and are too acidic for most people to use during a fast. In fact, most people probably have some kind of sugar metabolism issue and don't know it, so avoid all sugars even after your fast until your are sure your body has rehabilitated its ability to properly metabolise them. Lemon juice for a cleansing drink or master cleanse is an exception. Also avoid the sweet vegetables like carrot and beets, since they are also loaded with sugar, especially when juiced. If you just cannot take the taste of a pure green juice, then add a carrot or two. Some people add an apple, but remember that it is best not to combine fruits and vegetables. This is "food combining" principle, since fruits and veggies require different enzymes for optimum digestion and absorbtion, which is particularly important when fasting.

Dilute all juices with water, at least half water and half juice. Try to use only fresh-made organic juices. If you don't own a juicer, then get your juice at a local health food store or juice bar. Do not use canned, processed, bottled or pasteurized juices, even if they say "healthy" or "natural" on the label - they are not!

The best quality juice comes from a slow, masticating juicer (the best bang for the buck is the Samson Juicer, though I use the awesome Green Star Elite myself). Try to avoid a high-speed centrifugal juicer since ti will increase oxidation in the juice and lower the juice quality. However, any FRESH juice is better than no juice, so if that is all you have access to, then go for it! In fact, if you cannot afford a juicer, you can often find a decent centrifugal juicer in a thrift shop or on eBay for under $50.00.

Here are some great detoxifying beverages to add variety and oomph to your fast:

• Fresh lemon juice -add juice of 1 lemon to a cup of warm water.
• Master Cleanse recipe: mix 2 tbsp. natural maple syrup, juice from 1/4 lemon slice & cayenne pepper to taste in 1 pint of distilled water,
• Healing Juice Recipe: 1 or 2 carrots, 3-4 kale leaves, 2 stalks celery, ¼ pound spinach, ½ head of cabbage, ¼ bunch of parsley, ¼ of an onion and ½ clove of garlic or 1/4" piece of ginger root.
• If you don’t have a juicer, place some vegetables (including onion and garlic) in pure water and boil them for 30 minutes, adding no seasonings, for severla minutes until all the vegetables are mushy. Drink the broth after cooling and straining.

Continue your normal daily routine, including mild exercise. Avoid strenuous activity.

Planning your fast over a weekend makes it easier. Remember to get plenty of r since your body needs to channel all its energy into healing, plus, it isn’t getting any energy from food.

The 3 Days After Fasting Always break fasts gently. Your first meal after a fast should be a mono-diet -- this is a very simple meal of just one or two ingredients that help jump-start your stomach into digesting solids again. Freshly-made apple sauce from your food processor or Blendtec works great, or if avoiding fruits try making an Energy Soup in your food processor or Blendtec:

• 5 cups of organic baby greens, spinach, kale, parsley or other dark green leafy vegetable.  
• 1-2 cups of sprouts (alternate daily between mung, lentil, alfalfa, hemp or others as available) 
• One-half to one avocado for its mono-unsaturated fat & enzymes
• one apple or half a beet for a touch of sweetness 
• 2 tablespoons of seaweed for its 60+ minerals (alternate between dulse, kelp and black nori)

Return to blending raw fruits, vegetables, seeds and soked/sprouted nuts for 3 days after finishing the fast. Jumping right back into cooked, processed foods right after a fast is actually worse than not fasting at all - it is a huge shock to your body!

Enemas

Enemas during a fast are an absolute must to take some of the pressure off your kidneys and liver, which are processing all the tons of toxins your body is releasing during the fat. In addition, regular bowel movements are disrupted because of lack of fiber. The toxic waste discharged into the intestine can just sit there fermenting, and even can be reabsorbed into the bloodstream causing a cleansing crisis. Sometimes you'll actually feel pain in the kidney area. 

Enemas assist the body in its cleansing and detoxifying effort by helping to flush toxic wastes from the alimentary canal. Enemas should be taken at least once, preferably twice a day. (Upon rising and before going to bed.) One pint to one quart of lukewarm distilled water is sufficient. If possible, you can replace daily enemas with 2 or 3 (per week) professional colonics from a licensed colonic therapist.

Week 4 and After Slowly reintroduce solid foods back into your diet. Start with raw fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts. Then add easy-to-digest and hypoallergenic foods. If you think you have anyfood sensitivities or allergies, this is the best time to test them. One at a time, slowly reintroduce wheat, dairy, eggs, soy, sugar and nightshade (tomatoes, etc.) to your diet. Eat day consume 2 to 3 servings of one suspect food. Note any reactions. Wait for a day and then on the third day, try another food. Repeat until you’ve test all the suspected foods.

Detoxification Symptoms

If with this safe 3-Day Fast, some discomfort is normal as your body releases toxins. You may experience fatigue, body odor, dry skin, scaly skin, skin eruptions, headaches, dizziness, irritability, anxiety, confusion, nausea, coughing, diarrhea, dark urine, dark and foul-smelling stools, body aches, insomnia, mucus discharge and/or visual or hearing problems. These symptomsl pass fairly quickly. Once they do, be prepared to feel terrific!

You are entering on a wonderful journey - so please take the time to educate yourself about what you are doing. You are starting on a wonderful new life, but doing it properly takes time to learn. Have compassion for yourself and your process - take time to let go of old habits and food addictions. If you find yourself feeling weak or a little flu-like, you may be detoxing, which is normal. You can slow down until you adapt more or take the time to learn more about cleansing to actually speed up the process. Feel free to join my support group and contact me if you have any questions!

Good luck and happy fasting.