What is Juicing?

Juicing is the process of blending vegetables and fruit together in a way that removes the pulp. When you do this, it’s much easier to digest. Everything we eat has to get turned into liquid, but juicing is already in that form. Food can take 3.5 hours to digest or longer, while juicing can take 15 minutes. A smoothie does not remove the pulp, and has to go through the whole digestive process. Both of them are great.

Benefits of Juicing

• Gives digestive system a break
• Digests very quick
• Get a ton of nutrition in a single place
• Fat loss
• Cognitive function

Things to Avoid

1. Excessive fruit

When you juice, make sure to emphasize vegetables rather than fruit. Fruit has its place, but we want to take into account the nutrition. Excessive fruit can be counter productive because of the sugar content. When you ingest a liquid, it hits your system much faster, and your body is not able to mount as much of a response to the glucose intake.

2. Not enough variety

We don’t want to just be juicing one type of vegetable all the time. Make sure to rotate and get a wide variety of greens. This will insure you get diverse nutrition, and avoid anti nutrient build up in your system.

How to Juice Properly

1. Add a variety of ingredients to your juice

In addition to vegetables, you can add in things like herbs, nuts, and seeds. Ginger is excellent to add to juice to aid on digestion. Ginger has been used for thousands of years in Ayurvedic medicine for a variety of conditions.

2. Add fat to your juice

Fat will give you long lasting energy. Adding things like avocados, chia, and flax seeds will provide you with nutreints like omega 3s. These are critical for brain function and our cell membranes. Other examples would be coconut oil, MCT oil, and ghee.

3. Add protein to your juice

Amino acids are the building blocks to everything in our body. Everything from hormones, neurotransmitters, and bone. Putting on EAAs, whey protein, or plant based protein powders can be beneficial.

4. Craft a juice based on your goals

If your goals are based on performance, adding beets to your juice is the way to go. Beets can significantly boost nitric oxide, which is great for athletic performance. Other examples would be sea salt, electrolytes, and arugula. If your goal was fat loss you would focus on things that are low in calories, but high in nutrients. You would also focus on satiety. When you are satiated you won’t feel the need to eat. Getting your macronutrients right with lower carb and higher fat in the morning can help for most people. Fat and protein are more satiating than carbs. Eating majority of carbs at night was shown to burn more fat and build muscle.

5. Slow down and enjoy

Your saliva encodes everything you eat with DNA and RNA to get familiar with your digestive system, and start off the process. You have many digestive enzymes in your mouth that break down food. Slowing down will help this process. Also having gratitude will put you in the parasympathetic nervous system which is designed for rest and digest.