Well here we are on Wednesday, day three of our fast. I haven’t eaten since Sunday morning and the hunger hasn’t been too much of an issue. I think, as Peta says, the heat helps that, but also being accustomed to not eating by having one fast day a week helps immensely too. Coffee is a question that often comes up with regards to fasting. You never never never have caffeine during a fast. When you fast you absorb anything you put into your body. Coffee is what you are trying to detoxify. It is many times more damaging during a fast. Add milk and it’s more damaging, add sugar and its even worse. If you can’t abstain from coffee, don’t fast (but you can and you should). Herbal teas are ok. but dont use teas containing caffiene like green tea. You can make a nice tea from organic citrus leaves and hot water..

Peta is fine and not hungry. The heat helps with that, she did have a bit of mucus elimination this morning, which is the aim after all. I watered the garden this morning and proceeded to hit the wall. A coconut water and a rest and I’m back to normal. Its not unusual to feel sick or headachey especially on day three and four of a vegetable juice fast. I was surprised by being a bit off colour for an hour or so on day two. People always want to talk about weight loss with fasting. It’s not about that at all. Sure losing weight is a happy side effect, but the purpose of fasting is detoxifying the intra and extracellular fluid in the body and resting the digestive system. Many people go through their entire life never doing that. A few people have asked about the best juicer to use. Always a cold press is the best, they are around a thousand dollars. We just use a Breville Juice Fountain (pictured).

Ok. This is the entire 2016 crop. Some might say a pretty poor effort. That doesn’t take into account the flavor. They really were delicious roasted with some of the garlic crop. If you are a gardener you ‘re probably not convinced. Hey, wait till you see next years crop. It will be double. At least.

Today we begin our fast for 2016. It has become an annual event each January to allow our bodies the chance to cleanse and detoxify by having only raw organic juices, especially after Christmas. We fast every Tuesday on vegetable Juice so it’s no big deal really. I’m aiming for four days on vegetable juice followed by three days on raw salad vegetables, one more day of raw juice then one more day of raw salad.I will introduce steamed vegetable after that then seeds, white meat and nuts.

Peta is aiming for 9 straight days on vegetable juice followed by three days of breaking the fast on vegetable seeds and finally white meat.

The purpose is to cause autolysis in the body. The body accumulates fats and stores toxins in the fats. Traditionally fasting has been used to help the body overcome serious disease.

If you don’t know what you are doing with fasting, don’t do it. It’s likely you will cause more harm than good. I encourage my patients to fast, but only with guidance and supervision. There is a great deal of evidence of the benefits from not only empiric sources but also formal scientific studies. There are also a number of ways of going about it including Intermittent fassting, 5/2 fasting and the traditional fasting used heavily by the European health spas previously.

I started with the older leaves of the drum head red cabbage and Kale from the garden. To my surprise I felt slight nausea for an hour or so. This is said to be a sign of detoxifying.