What is green juice?
Take a big bowl of organic green vegetables - more than you could ever hope to chew through in 24 hours: cucumber, celery, spinach, fennel and lettuce. Wash them thoroughly. Add some lime and ginger. Run through your juicer. Add a cube or two of ice. Drink it down in 20 seconds. Get a strange energy high you never expected. Flight through the day feeling great and knowing you don't have to worry about where you're getting your vitamins from.
Let's break it down further: why is juicing so clever?
- You get a hit of energy to rival a double-espresso
Ever experienced a spinach high? It always takes me by surprise and it needs to be experienced to believed. This hit is just as welcome mid-afternoon as it is first thing in the morning: two fantastic times to juice.
- You absorb far more nutrients from juice than the whole vegetable
Juicing "pre-digests" the vegetables. Most of us have sluggish digestion and can use a lot of extra help. The juicer gets the nutrients out of the fibre, so we can actually use them.
- You can easily consume the nutrients of triple the amount of vegetables
A quick glass of vegetable juice is far more accessible to most of us than eating through half a kilogram or more of the whole vegetables.
- Getting properly nourished curbs cravings and appetite
"Amazingly, many people still don't understand that when your body is well nourished, your appetite goes down," says Dr Mercola, creator of the very popular health site mercola.com. "Chronic hunger is often a sign that your body is starved for nutrients."
- You can get all your vital nutrients for the day before 9 am.
This is the best part: knowing you've started the day for optimal health, and can enjoy your meals without having to load them with hours of chewing material.
So why aren't you already juicing?
You possibly already have a juicer. You've possibly been through periods of juicing, but haven't entirely committed to an ongoing practice. Perhaps you've thought about juicing but decided it was too much effort and/or expense. Like most of us, there are a lot of other thing you've possibly decided are more important that juicing and it's health benefits. Like:
- spending money on clothes, magazines, cups of coffee and other "stuff" rather than on organic vegetables or a good juicer
- spending time chatting, watching TV or movies, playing games, overworking or "insert favourite addiction here" rather than spending that extra 10 minutes in the kitchen that it takes to make your green juice and clean up afterwards
- convince yourself that if most people can get by without eating the decent amount of fruits and vegetables, then why can't you?
- convince yourself that now isn't the right time: you'll get around to it when your life changes.
Talking the "should" out of good nutrition
In truth, the fact that we should do something is rarely enough incentive to make it happen. Bullying ourselves don't work. Focusing on the fact that we should do something can keep us paralysed in the passive role of being deficient or not good enough as we already are. "You can be motivated out of a desire to grow rather than a need to repair your deficiencies," suggests Wayne Dyer, author of over thirty books on self-
actualisation and spiritual alignment. "Growth motivation means using your life energy for greater happiness, rather than having to improve yourself because you've sinned or because you are in some way incomplete."
He goes on to quote George Bernard Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession: "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them." Consider how you can make the circumstances right to include juicing and its accompanying vitality in your life. After all: "if you are growing, you are alive. If you are not growing then you might as well be dead."
Growth habits are best embraced where they improve your life quality so much that you couldn't live without them. Approach juicing as a habit for self-care. It can be a wonderful expression of nourishing and loving yourself. Rather than thinking of it as punishment for your other daily forays off the righteous path, try to look at your juicing as a way of pushing yourself to a higher frequency.
Juicing pin-ups and mentors
There are some incredible stories of how proper nutrition through juicing has changed peoples' lives in almost surreal ways. Nothing delights me more than a tale of success against the odds, and Joe Cross's journey across America with his juicer is certainly as moving as it is encouraging. Joe is an normal Australian guy: albeit 100 pounds overweight with a gut like a beach ball and a dependency on steroids to treat his autoimmune disease. He commits to 60 days of juicing, helping others as he goes. See the trailer here. It put a tear in my eye!
Some other notable daily juicers are Margaret Paul and Mimi Kirk (both in their 70s), and Dr Mercola (58): just their photos are enough to make you think seriously about committing to juicing sooner rather than later.
Start easy: start with green shakes!
Put your trainer wheels on and start gentle. Gentle is good.
A green smoothie is easier because it's sweeter (contains fruits) and doesn't require new equipment or so much cleaner. All you do is add greens to a fruit smoothie. Sites like Simple Green Smoothies and Thug Kitchen (language warning) can show you how.
The best vegetables to juice?
Cucumbers and celery are a great juice to start with. They are high in water, and form a base for other ingredients to be added to.
To these you can add:
- spinach
- watercress
- dark lettuce leaves
- sunflower and pea sprouts
- endive
- fennel
- herbs
- cabbage
Organic is critical with all these particular vegetables, as they tend to be the most pesticide-loaded.
What you don't want to do is add beets, apples or carrots to your juice. While sweet, their fructose content undermines the nutritional benefits of green juicing. If you really want Lime, ginger and cranberries are the preferred way to cut through the bitterness of green juice.
The juice recipe I like best: simplicity is key
- 300g greens: spinach, watercress, herbs, sprouts (I mix it up for variety)
- 1 cucumber
- 1 lime
- 1 cm ginger
Juicer vs. Vitamix?
It's said that the best juicer is the one you'll actually use. With that said, juicers provide superior juice quality that is faster to drink in great amounts, but they're messier and "waste" the precious fibre. Blenders like the Vitamix are quick and tidy, but the friction of the blades destroys some nutrients, and the fibre content means drinking more than a small glass requires effort. Not only that, the fibre means your body has to work harder to digest and access many of the nutrients.
The best juicers are not those oh-so-fun wide mouth centrifugal juicers, but gear juicers. The best value for money model? Dr Mercola recommends the Omega 8003: at $230 Mercola feels it's the model that best balances quality, effectiveness and value for money. At the top of the line, the Norwalk juicer is considered a must for those who practise Gerson Therapy. The best juicers for greens are "gear juicers" - they slowly press the nutrients and juice out of the vegetable flesh rather than spinning and grating like a centrifugal juicer: a motion which does little to get the most nutrients out of your vegetables without damaging or over-oxidising the juice.
The most annoying things about juicing, and how to get around them
Juicing can be messy. Juicers are heavy. Organic vegetables are expensive, and lugging them home several times a week is a big commitment. Let's address these problems head on!
Problem 1: You're housekeeper has gone on permanent vacation, and cleaning up is a P.I.T.A.
Solution: Learn to dismantle, wash and reassemble your juicer like it's an M16 rifle. Go into training. Your juicer is your weapon against mediocre health, after all. Anything than becomes a habit becomes easier, and after 30 days of juicing this will seem more normal that like extra effort.
Problem 2: You travel a lot. A juicer weights 8kgs/16lb. That's my whole carry-on allowance on some airlines!
Solution: Get a Z-Star manual juicer. It's only 3.5kgs. Apparently it works fantastically on greens. I'm yet to try it, but some people prefer it to their regular juicer. The Omega 8003 juicer is the most compact of the high-performance regular juicers, and it can be worth packing instead.
Problem 3: The extra shopping.
Solution: Can you get your organic vegetables delivered? Isn't it time you figured out how?
Problem 4: The cost of the extra vegetables.
Solution: Perhaps you can make one less stop at Starbucks today? $4 is enough to pay for your daily juicing habit.
The bigger picture
What you might not realise when you commit to juicing is how it can signal an incredibly important change in all areas of your health. Ten small minutes daily can have huge ramifications. The truth is that when you start to experience how it feels to be vital and nourished, healthy eating generally starts to look much more appealing.
You realise just how much the right foods can effect how you feel and perform. You start to crave real nutrition rather than fake foods. Healthy eating becomes something you are really committed to, rather than a priority you can address later. One small habit in the right direction can thus become a gateway to a new life.
source : Green Juicing For Peak Performance: How to Get All Your Vitamins Before Breakfast
