Juicing Questions!

I've juiced before, here is my advice:

*add a peice of fruit or two to your juice for some extra sweetness (i like using apples and strawberries, but whatever you like)
*lots of green veggies, kale, spinach, collards, just make sure you rinse them thouroughly.
*avoid avocado, bannans, or anything else soft, as it will create more of a paste then a juice
*there is really no difference between organic and regular, especially since your just juicing it.
*Beats are amazing, but they will turn your juicer pink, so if it's white, be careful!
*Juicing is great because you can throw veggies in that you wouldnt eat ordinarily and you are still getting those nutrients without the icky taste (I for example do not like peppers or onions, but juicing them with a mix of other veggies and a bit of friuit masks the flavor entirely)
*It's better to juice veggies because you can get a lot more nutirition value, and you wont make yourself as full. Eating veggies is great, but how often do you eat veggies without cooking them, or putting something (like oil or butter) on them, also, when you cook veggies, they lose some of that nutritional value.

Hope this helps,
happy juicing!

I recently started juicing too! I would suggest peeling any citrus fruit and taking out any pits. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way with cherries. I buy usually get the produce available in my local grocery store and farmer's market. If it's organic, great! If not, I still buy them. My hubby and I started off with recipes from www.jointhereboot.com. My husband like carrot apple juice (3 Carrots, 2 Apples, and piece of ginger). I prefer the mean green (6 Kale Leaves, 1 Cucumber, 4 Celery Stalks, 2 Green Apples, 1/2 Lemon, 1 piece of ginger). I omitted the ginger for a whole lemon just b/c I prefer lemon to ginger.

Might sound gross to you as it did to me at first but it tastes much better than it sounds

if you take protein shakes and have a blender or some sort of blending equipment then try adding some organic peanut butter to the shake sounds bad i know but organic has less fat and no sugar and tastes better when mixed with powder and water I thought it was going to be nasty but its quite delicious!!!!! I have loads of other protein recipes if you want just ask

So is juicing for weight gain then, with all that fibre avoiding and greatly increasing the amount of natural sugar you can eat in one sitting?

I juice quite often and love it. You asked why juice and not just eat all those terrific veggies? You can't do it. You throw together a juice of cucumber, celery, apples, carrots, greens, etc, and you get a nice tall glass full of juice. Try to sit down and eat all of that and it's next to impossible (plus you'd likely lose interest by the time you're half done).

Course you can eat it. I manage it every day. Its not hard. I'd rather munch through a plate of veg that have a glass of juice minus all the fibre.
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I don't know if I think of it as "juicing" but I like to make a smoothie with half a frozen banana, frozen blueberries and almond milk.

I've been juicing for close to a year now. I do it primarily for the health benefits....weight loss is a bonus. A year and a half ago, I was having to take 3 pills a day for high bp, 1 pill a day for high cholestrol (hererity, not by diet) and 1 pill a day for arthritis and was borderline diabetic.

Now, I take none of those pills and feel 10 times better and keep looking for other resourses to 'feed my body' the foods it needs to do what it needs to do to keep me at my best health in 20 yrs. Even my doctor was amazed.

It really works...if getting healthy, dropping weight and maybe getting off pills is what you wish to achomplish..... it's not for everyone and I don't do exclusively. Once or twice a day, 5-7 times a day and I eat regular meals too...nothing proessed.

Here's some info about the enzymes....

The fresh juices deliver not only important nutrients but also enzymes. Enzymes are your body's work force. Acting as catalysts in hundreds of thousands of chemical reactions that take place throughout the body, enzymes are essential for digestion and absorption of food, for conversion of food stuffs into body tissue, and for the production of energy at the cellular level. In fact, enzymes are critical for most of the metabolic activities taking place in your body every second of every day.

Fresh juices are a tremendous source of enzymes. In fact, the "freshness" of juice is one of their key features, because enzymes are destroyed by heat. When you eat cooked foods, whether its meal, grains, fruits, or vegetables, if the food is cooked at temperatures above 114 degrees, the enzymes have been destroyed by the heat. Since fruits and vegetables are juiced raw, the enzymes are still viable when you drink the juice.

Coincidentally, many of the phytochemicals that nutritional researchers are focusing their attention on are either enzymes, or more often, they are substances that help build or activate enzymes that play essential roles in protecting cells from damage.

In addition, fruit and vegetable juices are good sources of the traditional nutrients. Citrus fruits (grapefruit, oranges, etc.) provide healthy portions of vitamin C. Carrot juice contains large quantities of vitamin A, in the form of beta carotene. A number of green juices are a good source of vitamin E. Fruit juices are a good source of essential minerals like iron, copper, potassium, sodium, iodine, and magnesium, which are bound by the plant in a form that is most easily assimilated during digestion.

Plus, since juicing removes the indigestible fiber, these nutrients are available to the body in much larger quantities than if the piece of fruit or vegetable was eaten whole. For example, because many of the nutrients are trapped in the fiber, when you eat a raw carrot, you are only able to assimilate about 1% of the available beta carotene. When a carrot is juiced, removing the fiber, nearly 100% of the beta carotene can be assimilated.

Finally, fruits and vegetables provide one more substance that is absolutely essential for good health - water. More than 65% of most of the cells in the human body are made of water, and in some tissues, for example the brain, the cells can be made up of as much as 80% water. Water is absolutely essential for good health, yet most people don't consume enough water each day. Plus, many of the fluids we do drink, coffee, tea, soft drinks, alcoholic beverages and artificially flavored drinks each contain substances that require extra water for your body to eliminate. Fruit and vegetable juices are free of these unneeded substances and are full of pure, clean water.

Happy juicing!!! :drinker:

My favorite is 2-4 oranges depending on size, 2 handfuls kale or spinach, 5 large carrots, 1 handful blueberries, and a sliver of ginger. It make about 3 big glasses of juice and holds its flavor really well for two or three days chilled.

i love my juicer! i don't juice fast or replace meals with juice though - i just think it tastes great and makes me feel wonderful. i like being able to use up all the leftover fruits and veggies from my week in one easy drink. i do buy organic but that's just personal preference. there are tons of juice recipes online but have fun with it! as a lifelong vegetarian, i'm always open to any new fruit or veggie recipe so i sometimes get wacky with my combinations...here are some basic ones:

my husband love fresh citrus juice in the morning (1 lemon, 1 grapefruit and 3 oranges)

another favorite - a butternut squash (peeled and de-seeded!) an apple and a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg.

berries and apples. sometimes i throw in a pear if i have one laying around. or kiwis.

two cucumbers (peeled) with an apple and a lemon. one of my all time favorites especially in the summer - it's very light and refreshing and comes out in pretty colored layers.

watch the calories on fruit drinks though - they can add up quickly.

ps - make sure you clean your juicer immediately after using it!

good luck and have fun!

I want to get a juicer so I can consume veggies that I don't really like and get the nutrients from them. I have low iron and low vitamin d, and I would rather start juicing then taking the supplements. I've also read that its good for people with IBS who have a hard time digesting the all the greens.

My go to for juicing is half veggies, half fruit if you like the sweeter taste, which my husband and I do.

Our go to is apples, celery, and carrots. We make about 20 ounces of this most nights and eat it with lean protein to feel fuller. You can also substitute pears for the apples or make it all together! Hope you have fun and enjoy it as much as we do!

Join the MFP Group "Be Juicy". We can help!