By Wednesday, my husband was ready to tap out. This is where we reveal a secret. He has Crohn’s. He had done a lot of research on whether this was healthy for him. Normally he is not supposed to eat a lot of fiber, but with the juicer, the roughage is left out, so he was excited that this could be a way to get all those nutrients he felt he was missing. But but by Wednesday he was feeling light headed, nauseated, and with an upset stomach. Basically all the signs of a Crohn’s flare-up. Or…the third day of a juice fast. I thought that, perhaps, he was consuming too much citrus because many recipes call for lemons and oranges. He had a bad experience with Mai Tais on our last trip to Maui and the acid content was a big factor.
We discussed options and he decided not to risk it. Even the small amount of protein he had been supplementing with was not enough for him. He stated that he would be eating real food, but nothing doctored or processed. No oils or salt or added sugar. He immediately took out two beautiful, plump, perfect chicken breasts to defrost. I put some lemon zest, fresh rosemary and mustard powder and left them to marinade. When I cooked them later that night, my mouth watered a bit. The constant refrain that has gone through my head throughout this whole thing is “maybe just one bite…” And seriously, if my husband had offered, I would have taken him up on it. He didn’t offer.
I had an apple, a couple of stalks of celery and a banana through out Wednesday as snacks. Believe me, if it weren’t for the possibility of eating real fruit–crunching on something–I don’t know that I would have gotten through the first part of the week.
On Thursday morning, I felt good. Tired, maybe. Excited that this was almost my last day of juicing. Oh–did I forget to mention? This was now officially a 5 (and 1/3) day “reboot.” Life was about to get in the way on Saturday and it would have been impractical to do on Saturday. I received great news that an event I was going to attend Thursday evening was cancelled due to heavy rains and flooding. I mean, it wasn’t great that there was flooding, but that I wasn’t going to be tempted by pizza and whatever else they had planned for dinner.
My husband decided that he didn’t need breakfast juice and the thought of going through all that clean up for just one little glass of juice was annoying. I seriously considered just eating an apple. In the end, I decided to go ahead and make juice, since I was blogging about it. This forum is like truth serum and helps keep a person honest. Damn you people. Since it was just me on Thursday morning, I made up my own juice sans recipe, and it was totally delicious. See…my husband should trust me more. I had my breakfast and felt satisfied and fairly alert afterwards.
As I was getting ready on Thursday morning, I thought my body looked slimmer. The scale showed that I lost about four pounds. I was still waiting desperately for that skin “glow” people talk about. I don’t know if I will get there in just five days, or maybe I just don’t have glowy skin.
For lunch, I had an extra serving because my husband couldn’t get away…so I had his juice. It was nice and filling, and used my last beet. I really liked the beet-based juices. Not only do beets provide beautiful color, but they provide wonderful sweetness. I bet my husband was not sad to have missed it.
After lunch, I didn’t feel tired, but I also did not feel energetic. And I still felt very unsatisfied. I munched on an apple, which helped the littlest bit. I had run out of bananas by then which was really sad. Bananas are filling and sweet.
I set out a nice piece of salmon for my husband’s dinner. The juice recipe I was using for myself for dinner called for ginger, lemon, and parsley, among other things. So I juiced those first and poured a little over the fish. I sure would have liked to have tried it. I stuck it in the oven and made the rest of my juice, which had a giant green apple, celery, red leaf lettuce and cucumber in addition to the above. I also threw in the rest of my fennel since it was green, too. The green juices are my least favorite. They make me feel like I am drinking pesto. Usually the green recipes go all green, with cumbersome or celery and kale and spinach and stuff. Unfortunately, when you throw greens in most juices to try and cover them up, it make it a really unattractive puce color.
My husband decided not to drink any juice because he felt Crohn-sy. By this point he was pretty much done and finally admitted it. So, instead he ate that luscious piece of salmon on a bed of whole wheat pasta, topped with fresh parsley. I just kept telling myself I only had one more day. One. More. Day. How do people do this for longer ( beach Veg*n I am thinking of you!) ? It’s so boring.
Since my husband was not participating in this any more, I decided not to go to the store and stock up on additional fruits and veggies. I felt I had plenty of fruits and veggies I could cobble together to stick it through one more day: two oranges, five red delicious apples, romaine lettuce, a dozen carrots, several stalks of celery, a thumb of ginger, and a lime. Totally do-able.
TGIF!
On Friday morning I separated my remaining fruit and veggies into three piles: Breakfast was two apples, one orange, one lime, and four carrots, Lunch was one apple, four carrots, one orange, and Dinner was two apples, one thumb ginger, four carrots, four stalks of celery. My romaine had gone bad so I could not use it. Darn. It was going to be an orange kind of day since the carrots were going to be the base of each of my meals that day…but it sure was pretty. And pretty delicious. The carrot-orange combos are pretty good.
Since I only had to make juice for me, I was able to pull about a pint glass of juice from each grouping. I had a a few celery stalks that I saved as a snack since I knew that it would be tough to make it the whole day without having something crunchy. They were total life savers and helped get me through that late afternoon snack attack phase. My husband asked during lunch on Friday afternoon if I was finally feeling that burst of energy I was supposed to feel after the 4th day. I had to think about this. I did not feel tired, but I did not feel full of energy either. I would have to say that I, perhaps, felt more alert than normal, especially in the afternoons.
Friday evening was fairly anticlimactic. I had no special juice recipe to celebrate with, and probably the least tasty juice combo of the day. 
Also, my dinner plans for Saturday were cancelled due to some freak weather issues, so I had no giant bowl of pasta to look forward to. I suppose I could have committed to another two days since my original conflict was gone… but I don’t think a person should be so wishy-washy.
Anyhow, the whole thing just kind of fizzled to an end rather unenthusiastically. But my husband was proud of me…and he kept saying so as he ate his normal, delicious curries shrimp dinner. 
By late evening these are all I had left of that massive pile of produce I had at the beginning.
But I was already thinking of all the delicious, firm things I could eat. Midnight counts as Saturday, right?
Life Improved 