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WHERE JUICING FITS IN

I find juicing to be one of the best first steps on the road to returning health. Though, whether one is just starting or has been into wellness for their whole life, juicing is a valuable tool for our bodies. I am more into wellness than anyone I personally know and I still have a hard time getting enough plant mass into my daily diet. Juicing makes this much more doable. The reason juicing is useful for weight loss can be found in the reason we become overweight. The first step to weight gain/fat storage is taken due to our modern agricultural society, agriculture creates massive food stores which are processed into starchy boxed foods. Vitamins, minerals and enzymes are removed in this process. All that remains is pure starch and food additives. Though starch is pure energy, we cannot use it. This is because our bodies need vitamins, minerals and enzymes to convert starch into useable energy. So when we put that “healthy” cereal bar into our body, it just gets stored as fat. Our body says, “I’ll just wait until some real food comes in with real micronutrients so that I can convert this fat into usable energy.” This is where vegetable juicing fits in. It acts as a concentrated blast of micronutrients, giving fat stores the ticket they need to be burned as a usable energy.

Of course there is much more to weight gain that processed food, but processed food certainly kick starts all of the other weight gain factors. It certainly kick starts perhaps the biggest factor that also must be addressed naturally for weight loss, which is leptin resistance.

JUICING BASICS

I will provide recipes below, but this article is more about the little tricks you can use in juicing to insure weight loss while still having good tasting juices. These little tricks are actually more important than the recipe itself. Notice before I said “vegetable juicing”. The reason is that vegetable juicing is going to bring much better results than pure fruit juicing, which will spike your insulin and raise blood sugar, even contributing to weight gain. The problem with pure fruit juicing is that the fiber is removed and the sugar is consumed. Fiber acts as the time release for the sugar which at least partially prevents a massive insulin spike. Starting out, it is fine to add a fruit to your juice. The bulk of effective weight loss juices need to be vegetables, but worry not! They will still taste good and sweet.

The first trick I will share is how to bulk up your juice. Just about every juice should have a cucumber, which is over 90% water, and loaded with vitamins and minerals. One cucumber will bulk up your juice greatly and it is a pleasant taste, very mild and slightly sweet.

Cucumber benefits: Loaded with B vitamins as well as important minerals potassium and magnesium, all very important for weight loss. Cucumber is also one of the highest sources of silica which is one of the best minerals for skin, hair and nail beauty as well as bone and connective tissue health. Very low in calories, great weight loss food.

The next trick I would like to mention is one of two tricks needed to make a vegetable juice taste great and sweet without much fruit added. This trick is the addition of stevia, a natural no calorie sweetener from the stevia plant. If you have never used stevia, at first it may bring a slight aftertaste that you are not used to. For me, this aftertaste went away only after a couple weeks of using it. Just start out with a couple drops of liquid stevia. After you get used to it you can add more. Every health food store has many flavors of liquid stevia, for juices I recommend any berry or fruit flavor. Lemon flavor would also be great. One more natural sweetener I would allow for weight loss is a sugar alcohol called xylitol, I only use xylitol extracted from birch trees. Xylitol contains 1/3rd the calories of sugar and zero fructose. It is metabolized independently of insulin and will not result in weight gain. In fact it even prevents cavities! You can stir it into your juice until it dissolves. If you really need a sweet juice, the best option is to use both stevia and xylitol together in moderation for a nice well rounded sweet taste.

This third trick of the juicing trade goes along with the last stevia/xylitol trick. It is to add an acidic/sour aspect to the juice. Similar to lemonade, the sour flavor really brings out the full sweetness of a drink amazingly. One can add a half a lemon or a full lemon or lime to any juicing recipe to accomplish this. Lemon/lime is awesome but I actually prefer to add the acidic bite with a splash of apple cider vinegar. This actually is a weight loss trick! Apple cider vinegar inhibits the enzyme glucosidase in your digestive tract. Glucosidase breaks down sugars for absorption. With apple cider vinegar, you are essentially lowering the carbs/insulin requirement of the juice which is hugely important for weight loss. Apple cider vinegar has long been used to lower blood sugar and this is why I recommend it over citrus for weight loss juices.

The last trick that I will share that is specific to weight loss is the addition of thermogenic ingredients in your juice. A thermogenic food is one that actually increases the metabolism, increasing body temperature, utilizing the bodies ability to burn body fat in the process. The first thermogenic food which is a common ingredient in juice recipes is fresh ginger root. Start with a small slice and increase daily to taste.

Benefits of Ginger Root: Besides burning fat through increasing metabolism, ginger acts as a PPAR agonist, PPAR is an enzyme hugely involved in weight loss and even cancer prevention. To put it simply, ginger works on an enzyme that will inhibit adipocyte differentiation (growth of new fat cells) as well as the growth of existing adipocytes. Not only will ginger work on your PPAR enzyme to prevent weight gain, it will also work to unload the fat droplets from the adipocytes (fat cells) to make existing fat cells shrink. Additionally, ginger is among the most potent anti inflammatory herbs around which is vital for weight loss. This is well known as weight gain is an inflammatory process. As an anti inflammatory, ginger is going to work in preventing most all degenerative diseases.

The next thermogenic herb you may want to add is any hot pepper. The active ingredient called capsaicin (this is what burns in your mouth) is responsible for increasing metabolism, thus utilizing fat stores for energy. Some people are very fond of a spicy kick hot peppers add to the juice. Others, like my white self, do not enjoy it as much. If you do not enjoy it like me, you can still get the benefit just by taking some cayenne powder mixed in a shot of water three times per day. Do this separate from the juice if you want to enjoy your juice without the hot burn. If you can find fresh cayenne to juice that is great. More commonly you can find fresh jalapenos which do not have as much heat. Bell peppers make a great juice addition but contain no heat and will not be thermogenic.

One more thermogenic vegetable I will mention that also tastes great in most juice recipes is fennel. Fennel is thermogenic and has a sweet flavor similar to licorice but much more mild. Fennel goes well with many other vegetables and fruits. As a food medicine, fennel has potent cancer preventative effects as well as heart disease prevention compounds that are anti inflammatory.

RECIPES

As I said before, this article is less about recipes and more about the Art of juicing, with all these ideas in mind you should be ably to wing a recipe great fat burning ingredients and make it taste great. I have never made the same recipe twice, I always use everything I have in a juice as long as it does not throw the flavor too much. Again, it is okay to add one fruit at first as you are getting into the juicing habit. Good fruits to start with are apples, pears, pineapple, grapes, oranges, grapefruit etc.. As you learn your juicing alchemy and how to optimize the sweet flavors of veggies, you can reduce fruit for more optimal weight loss. I am to the point where I never add fruit to my recipes and my juices still taste plenty sweet using the tricks I mentioned.

Important! Keep in mind, some vegetables are actually quite high in sugar and should not be overdone if weight loss is the number one goal. A great example is carrot. I have had pure carrot juice and it is very sweet with sugars!

Here are some quick examples of juicing recipes that include the tricks and food/medicines I have mentioned.

Carrot Celery Juice

– One half pound carrots

-One to three celery stalks

-One cucumber

-Handful of greens (lettuce, kale, carrot greens etc.)

-One apple

-Slice of ginger-

-Half lime or splash of ACV

-Sweeten naturally to taste (stevia ACV)

Tomato Juice

-Three cups diced tomatoes

-One cucumber

-One stalk of celery

-One bell pepper

-Cayenne or jalapenos to taste

-Half lime or splash of ACV

-Pinch of pink land salt

Sweet greens

-One apple

-One cucumber

-Two or three stalks of celery

-Kale to your taste-One to five leaves

-Ginger to taste

-Lime or ACV

-Sweeten naturally to taste

Sweet beets

(Great for the liver)

-One to three beet roots

-One cup pineapple or one orange (Half of both is good too)

-One to three carrots

-One to three whole cabbage leaves

-Lime or ACV

-Sweeten naturally to taste

Green lemonade

-One apple

-One cucumber

-Spinach to taste (half cup or more)

-Kale to taste (couple leaves)

-One lemon

-Small pinch pink salt

-Sweeten naturally to taste

I love to eat berries but I will occasionally make a berry juice. Unfortunately, if you have a centrifugal juicer (Example: Jack Lalanne Juicer) juicing berries will be almost a complete waste. You can juice berries if you have an auger or masticating juicer than you can juice all the berries you want. For these juicers, here is a berry juice recipe.

Green Berry Blast

-One cup strawberries

-One cup blueberries

-One big handful spinach

-Stevia to taste

I hope you have gotten some great ideas here. This was a very brief article on the topic of juicing. The rabbit hole goes much deeper, as always. There are many more tips and suggestions for those wishing to optimize their daily juicing. Remember, seconds and minutes saved adds up quickly with daily rituals. As briefly mentioned, there are many types of juicers and certain juicers do juice certain fruits and veggies better or worse. No one juicer is perfect for everything. The auger and masticating juicers are best for leafy greens and berries while the centrifugal juicers push through the carrots, beets, celery, cucumbers and apples brilliantly.

One more little tip for better juice. All juicers will make a juice with small amounts of pulp in it. This is great for those who like the pulp but the amount of pulp is so small that the health benefits are minimal. A trick is to take the final juice and strain it through a very fine strainer or even an old shirt. This removes all pulp and provides a juice with a much better mouth feel.