Juice cleanse! A seven day experience

(Note: This entry is about a month late. I wrote the first half during the cleanse and didn’t come back to it till now. Better late than never right? )

So lately, ever since my first juice cleanse back in February, I’ve become more and more conscious  of what I’ve been putting into my body and noticing how I feel in return. And I feel so much better than before. The three day juice cleanse felt like the jumping off point to a new course of lifestyle choices. Since then, I’ve had a juice (mostly composed of kale, spinach, apples, lemon, ginger, cucumber, beets, and as of late, dandelion greens) at least once a day. On top of that I’ve decided to go mostly vegan with as little unnatural/processed food as possible and its been such a journey of health!

First off, I won’t say that doing a 7 days juice cleanse was easy. It was difficult but it would have been WAY more difficult if i hadn’t eased myself into it first. Some things that helped me get there:

• I gave up meat since February and I believe this helped me detoxify my body greatly.

• I started drinking at least one juice per day. I’d usually do this in the evenings after work. Often times it would fill me up so much that i wouldn’t feel like eating more for dinner.

•  I started following this wonderful youtube channel, DaraDubinet (add link here). And because of all the great recipes, i took notes and started making my own “tonics” as my breakfast smoothies.

• I upped my green leafy vegetables —mostly romaine and spinach salads for lunch. And if I didn’t have a leafy salad, I’d definitely have the nutritional value from the green leafy kale, spinach, and dandelion leaves in my juice. If you have not-so-great digestion like me, a digestive enzyme supplement like Beano is real helpful.

• Slowly but surely I had more liquids in my diet with a tonic/smoothie in the morning and one juice everyday that would sometimes suffice as my dinner.

• Along with the morning smoothie and the evening juice, i’d have a soup for lunch and I did this mostly for the whole week prior to the seven day juice cleanse

So, for the seven day juice cleanse — here’s what I had:

Day 1 – May 10
1 flax milk with chia seeds
2 green juice (dandelion greens, kale, cucumber, celery, carrots, one beet, parsley, turmeric, ginger, 2 apples, 2 lemons)
3 green juice
4 immune booster from mangia
5 green machine + ginger shot from Terri, this vegan restaurant near my office
6 carrot apple juice from a juice vendor around the corner
7 green juice
And lots of water and female toner tea throughout the day

Day 2 – May 11
1 flax milk with chia seeds
2 green juice
3 green juice
4 female toner tea
5 green juice
6 green juice
7 green juice
And an okay amount of water in between

Day 3  – May 12
1 glass of water with lemon
2 flax milk with chia seeds
3 glass of water
4 green juice
5 glass of water
6 female toner tea
7 green juice
8 smooth move tea (to help continue the flow of waste and toxins)
9 water
10 green juice
11 water

Day 4 – May 13
1 glass of warm water with lemon
2 flax milk with chia seeds
3 half water and half ginger aid tea
4 green juice
5 coconut and carrot juice (kinda pulpy)
6 half water and half ginger aid tea
7 green juice
8 water

Day 5 – May 14
1 water with lemon
2 flax milk with chia seeds
3 half cup roasted dandelion tea
4 water
5 female toner
6 green juice
7 carrot juice from vendor
8 water with Emergen-C (I was feeling slightly ill so I took to prevent it from getting worse)
9 water
10 carrot, beet, kale, spinach juice from a nearby deli
11 water
12 green juice

Day 6 – May 15
1 water with lemon
2 flax milk with chia seeds
3 water
4 female toner
5 homemade juice
6 half water half tea
7 beet, garlic, kale, grapefruit juice
8 water
9 female toner
10 green juice
11 water
12 perfect pear juice from Terri

Day 7 – May 16
1 warm water with lemon
2 flax milk with chia seeds
3 water
4 female toner
5 green juice
6 carrot apple ginger celery spinach juice from a juice vendor
7 water
8 perfect pear juice plus ginger shot from Terri

Despite going an entire week without solid food, I wasn’t as hungry as I thought I’d be. Don’t get me wrong, I would definitely get hungry but once I drank something (juice, water, tea, or flax milk) the hunger would go away. If you are considering a juice cleanse, a good tip to follow is to drink something as soon as you feel slightly hungry. This way, your potentially growing hunger won’t lead your thoughts to eating solid foods and you can spare yourself the mental anguish.

The most grueling part of the cleanse though was how low my mood sank. Like, to the point of tears. I was pretty surprised. Old feelings that I thought I had closure with crept up and came out along with my physical toxins. So this juice cleanse truly did clean me out in more ways than one —physically, mentally, and spiritually. It was an interesting time and it gave me a chance to take note how I take pleasure in the act of tasting, chewing, and swallowing, and how all that played a role in the way I think, act, feel.

Altogether, the experience was a positive one even though there were times I just felt like a sad sack of frowns. Ultimately, I felt more vibrant, connected with myself, and, yes, happier. An added bonus, I didn’t keep track if I lost weight (that wasn’t the point of it for me) but at the end of the week, I definitely felt much lighter and leaner.  Despite the mental pain, I’m looking forward to my next week long juice cleanse in August. Wish me luck!

Juice Cleanse! A Three Day Diary

Day 1:

I was a little intimidated using my juicer for the first time, but once you start, it gets easier and easier every time.

My first batch of juice was the recipe from Annie Jaffrey’s juicing video. If you’re not familiar with Annie Jaffrey, she’s a beauty and health YouTube vlogger who is incredibly inspiring. I actually bought the same juicer she has — the Breville Juice Fountain Plus (and I’m not at all disappointed).

The following three batches afterward, I used this green juice recipe with a bit of cilantro and parsley added to the mix.

How I felt on day one:
• Hungry
• Cold – but that could be because it’s the dead of winter here in snowy New York
• I was kinda sad – again could be because it’s the dead of winter here in snowy New York. But I’ve heard emotions can be affected when doing a cleanse. Food is often a comforter and the fact that this cleanse involves only drinking nutrients, toxic emotions kept in place by the comfort of food can come out as well. This is my hypothesis anyway. I don’t think I’m the type of girl who eats her feelings, but then again, maybe I am.
• Tired – not like sleepy tired, but just overall low in energy.
• Gas – yea, I said it. If you do a juice cleanse expect some gassiness. Good thing I was cooped up alone in my apartment during a snow storm.
• Extra plaque – my teeth felt super plaquey and my tongue was really coated with plaque. Kinda gross not as gross as gas.
• At the end of the day, I was noticing a bit of rash appearing on my forehead – I’m thinking it’s part of a healing crisis from the juice cleanse detoxifying my body.

Day 2:

After my first batch (which is about 2 glasses) I ran out of produce, so I had to face the winter snow outside to get to the grocery store. There, I basically bought a double amount of the same produce (minus the cilantro, parsley, and ginger which I still had). I was getting super hungry so I hurried on home to make more juice.

How I felt on day two:
• Upon drinking the first glass of the second batch, I got super hyper. I felt the opposite of day one which was wonderful.
• Still hungry but the hunger would subside upon drinking a glass of water or more juice
• Poop was dark. That’s all I’ll say.

Day 3:

By day three I was pretty stoked about the juice fast — thinking about what juice to make in the morning and the evening. I was super into it. Granted I would get cravings for regular food but they weren’t as strong compared to day one. To keep my spirits at that level, I watched a ton of youtube videos regarding juicing, cleanses, nutrition, and health. I definitely subscribed to a bunch of new channels and one gem of a video I found is the funniest juicing video I have ever seen yet!

How I felt on day three:
• Cold again – I wore like two thick sweaters with a blanket over me. I decided to drink a detox tea (Lemon Everyday Detox by Traditional Medicinals) to warm myself up.
• I took a little nap in the middle of the day.
• Other than the coldness and mid-day tiredness, I was fine.

If you want to make juice or do a juice cleanse, here are some tips:

Tip 1: Wash your juicer right away before drinking your juice — particularly the blade/filter. If you don’t then all that pulp will get all crusty and hard to clean later. You won’t want that — again, particularly on the filter/blade. Here’s a video that showed me how to clean my juicer (skip to minute 3:00 for the cleaning part).

Tip 2: Chop out the discardable stuff from you fruits and veggies, like carrot tops, lemon rinds, and apple cores and put them in the bin (included with my juicer) that your pulp will ultimately go into.

Tip 3: If you’re doing a juice cleanse, take three days to prepare. I actually didn’t do this and didn’t realize that I should/could have done it until I was on the cleanse already. However, I made it a point to eat healthier since around late December by cutting out coffee, wheat, gluten, and sugar (as much as possible anyway) and including fresh fruits and veggies to encompass over 50% of every meal. Because my eating style was already pretty clean (like clean 90% of the time, yea I’m using a lot of percentages) I think my detox experience was a bit less painful(?) compared to others.

Tip 4: Again, if you doing a juice cleanse, take three days to taper off the cleanse. Which I’ll be doing today, tomorrow, and Wednesday.

In conclusion

Overall, I’m so glad I did this juice cleanse. After the first batch of juice I thought I wasn’t going to make it through the day because I was so, so, so hungry. But a helpful thing I did to get over it was to write myself a note and sticking it on my computer (and then drinking another juice). The note said “My will is strong — do the juice cleanse <3 <3 <3 <3.” And yes, it’s totally silly, but it definitely works to constantly remind yourself of how strong you are. In a way it was as if I replied back to the stickynote with “why, yes stickynote, my will really is strong and yes, I am doing the juice fast, thanks for looking out.” I got a great experience from this three day cleanse — it really got me looking inward, noticing my discomfort, and pushing my limits of what was possible for me. And this May (3 months from now) I’ll be stepping it up with a 7 day juice cleanse. Yea, I said it! Stay tuned, y’all!

How about you guys? Would you ever consider doing a juice cleanse? Or simply including juice in your daily morning routine kinda like Annie Jaffrey? Let me know what you think!

Carl Sagan is the man

Enjoy having your mind blown:

Adventure Time

Man that cartoon has awakened my love for animation.

Doodles can get complicated if you want them to

Stay

Starting up again

Another Weekend of Epicness

I don’t have a lot of money, but I’m definitely rich. This weekend has been a reminder of why I wanted to move here. There are just so many—too many—epic, enriching experiences in New York to partake in and that’s what’s so encouraging about this city. There’s are so many opportunities to experience something new, meet a new person, and become more enriched with life and culture. Music and art show in a Brooklyn gallery, deafening music in these Manhattan clubs, another case of lost voice, a 5k at the Bronx Zoo, a new unfortunate case of runner’s knee, the Cherry Blossom Festival, a picnic at Prospect Park, and lots in between. I just can’t get enough. Anyway, just want to share some appreciative reflection about the good (and bad) parts of my life as of now.

Special thanks to Jina (pictured in the finish line image) who added to the awesomeness of the weekend.

How They Met My Mother

And when I say “they,” I mean the songs of Feist, Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, the Avett Brothers, Local Natives, and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

Since my mom named me Karen Gayle, after Karen Carpenter of The Carpenters and Crystal Gayle—two very folky, country singers who my mom loved—I decided to make her a mix cd combining some of her faves and some of mine to make the ultimate folk/easy listening/soft rock medley. Oh yeah!

I designed a front and back cover of the packaging to reflect our not-so-different, light hearted musical tastes.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Love you, Mom.

Connection

After lots of thinking and drawing and processing and more thinking, I recently came up with a logo for Brooklyn Men (K)connect, an good non-profit organization that provides resources to improve, educate, and help the MSM community by distributing resources to HIV/STD-related prevention and education.

Ultimately, the logo portrays the M as two figures holding (connecting) hands, suggesting care and support (connecting emotionally). It’s a simple logo but it’s a product that came out of lots of research, processing, sketching, and so on — which I’d like to share.

Ultimately, from this mass of sketches, the outcome was a clean and simple one. Harrah!

As far as projects go, I’m grateful to have been the designer for this project, because not only did I get to do lots of conceptual thinking (what I love best about design), but I played a part in dialing up this wonderful non-profit’s voice.

A message to fellow designers: if you want to improve yourself, design-wise as well as human-wise, take a bit of your time to donating your time to make work for non-profits who have low (or no) budgets. These organizations are often looking for volunteer designers (check out www.idealist.org to find some gigs), and they sometimes happen to include kind-hearted, good-natured clients. You get to exercise your creativity, you can build up your portfolio, and to top that out, you get to help and empower those who help the world, which will ultimately, karmically help you. It can satisfactorily come around full circle for us if we use our powers for good, even for just small pro bono side gigs.