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Question: What should you think about when embarking on a three-day juice fast? Special juices to target? Things to avoid? Can you make do without a juicer, drinking only store-bought stuff?
Answer: First ask yourself—‘Why do I want to embark on a three-day juice fast?’ The answers out there are as varied as they are appetizing. ‘Because I need to lose eighteen pounds before my high-school reunion.’ ‘Because I want to detoxify my system of all those saturated fats I absorb whenever I hit the drive-thru at Jack in the Box.’ ‘Because I need to save money so I can go to grad school.’ ‘Because I’m hoping that at that seventy-first hour I’ll come face to face with my personal god and forget that I’m curled around the toilet with a half-finished can of Juicy Juice Grape in my gnarled, malnourished claw of a hand.’
Relax. That would never happen. At least not if you follow this strict regimen of juice and juice-like ingestives, all centered around your particular goals, whatever they may be.
Goal: Cleaning House
Fasting is a popular method of cleaning yourself out, below-decks. And your bowels are seething with bugs. So how do you evict them? You juice ‘em out. Below are two options for the home juicer and one for the grocery-store juicer.
The Banana/Orange/Strawberry Blow: Tasty and bowel-stripping, when prepared correctly. While the bourgeois elite may prefer the popular ‘smoothie’ format, you’ll instead juice your fruits from the inside. Start with the banana, unpeeled. Swallow whole and think of it as a battering ram that’ll dislodge all the bad stuff lurking in the folds of your intestines. Next, zest the orange until you have a bowl full of rind. Stir the rind into an eight-ounce glass of water. Drink. The rind shreds will presumably act as ‘scabs’ in your newly recessed bowel tract and will slowly be expelled over the next six weeks. Finally, eat the strawberry in the ambulance.
Montezuma’s Lavage: The avocado is, technically, a fruit. And a scrumptious one at that, amigo. Mix one whole avocado with half a tomato, some chopped onion, a few sprigs of cilantro, and a pinch of salt. Devour. Accompany with a glass full of one part fresh lime juice (it’s a fruit too, you know) and two parts bottled cactus juice (recommended: Cuervo Gold). Repeat every twenty minutes. Trust me, you’ll clean out something tonight.
Welch’s Grape Soda: The carbonation is the key to what makes this juice the best choice for system-cleansing. That, and its relative ubiquity in vending machines across the country: after all, you never can tell when a spot-cleansing may be in order. First, get a can. Note: this drink must be served at room temperature. Microwaves are available for your use in many convenience stores. Carbonated drinks, as everyone knows, are delicious. Chugged warm on an empty, food-starved stomach, however, they show their true volatility. Drink and wait for the magic.
Goal: Pinching Pennies
Forgo that store-bought juicer. After all, you’re trying to save money here. Think of the greats: Gandhi, a legion of Hindu yogis, and you. What do you all have in common? You’re poor. Therefore, you should pick the cheapest juices you can get your hands on. Lemons, for instance, are cheap. You can get, like, six for a dollar. Who can beat that? Slice each in half, squeeze into a glass, and cut with water. Maybe add some sugar, if you can dig out enough change from the couch you slept on last night. The money-minded may find that this version of fasting works best (read: saves the most money) when extended beyond the three-day period. Don’t worry, you’ve only your enamel to lose.
Yes, never has it been truer: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And often.
Goal: ‘Juice,’ If You Know What I’m Saying
There’s fruit juice, and then there’s just juice. Or, as those in body-building circles say: anabolic steroids. Why live on nothing but fruit and risk shrinking down to an eighty-five-pound splinter when you could emerge, three days later, a full-limbed, rock-hard, muscle-blossoming mass of human engineering?
Exactly. Beware, however, of friends’ reactions.
‘I thought you were going on a fruit-juice diet.’
‘I WENT ON A JUICE DIET!’
‘But you’re gigantic.’
‘I KNOW!’
‘All from fruit juice?’
‘JUICE!’
‘You’re full of shit.’
‘I’M FULL OF JUICE!’
(Subdue friend.)
