Get Juiced!

More than a dietary fad, juicing can change your life. Here are the essentials for drinking your way to better health.

From celebrities to athletes and mainstream Americans, juicing has become the star in the kitchen. Here’s why: It energizes, cleanses and flushes away fat, and it’s helped thousands of people heal when nothing else did.

More than a year ago Theresa called me for nutrition counseling because nothing had helped her lose 50 pounds of water weight. Her health was so poor she could barely walk to her mailbox. In fact, her doctors suggested she get her affairs in order because she would probably not live. I suggested she add a glass of green juice to her good diet and drink that before each meal. Not long after, she’d lost the 50 pounds, was walking a mile a day, and chopping and stacking firewood.

People often ask if they can use a blender or if they actually need a juicer. You need a juicer to make juice—a blender will only make a smoothie-type drink that’s mushy and unpalatable when using lots of vegetables. I recommend using organic produce with mostly vegetables and only a little fruit for flavor (too much fruit means too much sugar). I personally like lemon with carrot and ginger as a base, but whatever your favorites are, it’s important to like what you make. (Try some of my tasty recipes at juiceladyinfo.com.) Add some greens like kale, chard, spinach or lettuce for bonus nutrition. 

There are countless reasons why juicing makes a powerful difference, but here are just a few:

• It delivers easily absorbed nutrients—amino acids, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, biophotons (light rays of energy) and phytonutrients in a highly absorbable form. Even if your digestion is weak, you can readily take in the nutrients from juice because the juicer does the work for your digestive tract.
• You can sneak in veggies your family won’t eat. They’ll get all the nutrients without knowing they’re in the mix.
• You can use parts of plants you’d usually throw away such as broccoli and asparagus stems, radish leaves, and cauliflower bases. That’s good economy!
• Juice heals the body. Doctors at Norway’s Oslo Rheumatism Hospital found that rheumatoid arthritis patients who drank fresh carrot, celery and beet juice as part of a special dietary program had a substantial reduction in disease activity. This is just one of many studies of how vegetable juice has helped people heal from a variety of ailments.
• It alkalizes. The majority of the foods Americans eat are acid-forming, but juice is extremely alkaline, so it helps restore pH balance.
• Juice encourages weight loss. Acids act on your tissues like a meat tenderizer on a New York strip. The body will do whatever it can to protect your delicate tissues and organs; therefore, it will store acids in fat cells. It will even make more fat cells for “holding tanks” if needed. When you begin alkalizing your body, the weight just melts away.
• It detoxifies. Fresh juice is loaded with antioxidants that bind toxins and carry them out of the body so they can’t damage your cells. Toxins make us sick, contribute to aging and cause us to gain weight in much the same way as acids. Toxins also contribute to cellulite—that lumpy, bumpy, orange-peel skin. (You can get rid of that stuff!)

Healing Power

It was the hope of reversing an illness that prompted me to start juicing years ago when I had severe chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Within three months of juicing and eating a healthy new diet, I was operating back with full energy. My experience is in no way isolated: At my Juice Wellness Retreats, every attendee has had a life-changing, health-renewing experience, with some people losing up to 14 pounds in one week.

You may be praying for a healing miracle or better health for family members. In answer to your prayers, God may be asking you to make some dietary changes or help someone else make changes. Many of the illnesses in the U.S. are caused by poor food choices. When people stop eating the foods that make their bodies sick and adopt a lifestyle of juicing vegetables and eating whole foods, they not only can heal, they can keep their healing. When people have an illness return after being prayed for and healed, it’s typically because they continued the lifestyle that made them sick in the first place. Prayer and the juicing lifestyle go hand in hand.

Whether you’re new to juicing or you have a juicer catching dust in your basement, I encourage you to daily juice vegetables. You’ll never know how energized and healthy you can feel until you give juicing a try.

Known as “The Juice Lady” for her work with juicing and health, Cherie Calbom, MS, has appeared in countless national magazines, TV shows and radio programs. Her latest book, The Juice Lady’s Big Book of Juices and Green Smoothies, releases this month.