Juice Fast Day 13 plus Handling Cravings

Today is Day 13 and I weigh the same as yesterday, 134.2. I have lost 1.6 pounds total in 13 days. As you can tell it can be discouraging not losing much weight when people lose at least 5 pounds by this time. This happens to me all the time though when I eat healthier/exercise/etc so this time it is not discouraging me it is just the way my body is. If I were to do this solely for weight purposes this would have made me think about quitting. I wrote some pros and cons of my experiences so far.

Pros:

• PMS seems to be better but unsure of this.
• Undereye circles seem to be a little better but not much (this may just be a genetic thing)
• I seem to look smaller (although the scale says otherwise)
• I am already at day 13! I need to try this fully at least once in my life.
• Mood seems to be better.
• Juicing is easy and delicious.
• Sleeping is good, I mostly don't feel tired in the morning.
• I am probably detoxing so I am healing my body doing this.
• I have material to write in my blog.

Cons: 

• Craving kale salads :) This is a big one.
• Pimples all over face (I usually get this when eating fruit as I veer away from it). I love fruit but it doesn't love my face or body as I get pimples everywhere when I eat it. This could be a liver thing so I was doing the liver flushes but I guess it hasn't helped yet. Maybe I could do a pure green juice fast with no sugar at all but I am not sure that I am ready to do that. Maybe I need to for more results. I think I will first do this fast and if it results poorly then I will do a green juice fast albeit with less days at first. I feel like doing a green juice fast is great but it won't mean that I will be able to eat delicious fruit again without getting skin problems. This is the part that worries me.
• Slow weight loss. I was expecting to lose a little bit of weight at least. Not losing practically anything has me thinking... But if nothing works for weight loss then quitting won't help this at all.
• Cooking for others. When smells are overpowering it gets very difficult.
• Money. This isn't really a problem as produce isn't that expensive but it can be annoying to go to the store every other day.
• No detox symptoms or real changes experienced yet. Perhaps this is a reason why I need to continue this fast but it seems strange not to have experienced a whole lot by now.

 The thing with juicing is that you don't know what to expect or how your body will react. So it is bad for me to say that this doesn't work and I need to break the fast. I will definitely continue and I am used to juicing already so it won't be so hard to power though. I don't know how long I will go but I will check in periodically and think about continuing. I am not juicing too many fruits but it may be enough for my body to not be able to handle them. I will think of doing a green juice fast... Maybe once all my fruits are gone I will attempt a one day green juice fast and see how hungry I get. It's just so hard limiting yourself over and over again without seeing any results. There is a limit to how much a person is OK with limiting his or her food choices. Which leads me to the next point:

Handling Cravings:

I think I figured this one out at least to combat the first con in the list: my craving for kale salads. This is all a mental issue by the way. A person who has no limits to what he or she eats simply eats whatever he or she is craving. These may not be the healthiest cravings and go away on a healthier diet. When I eat raw I almost don't crave any cooked food because of how I can recreate a raw version of it. Also I find that eating enough wards away many cravings as well. So the trick to cravings when eating raw is to focus on what you can eat and make a raw version of the dish as well as to make sure you are eating enough.

With juicing this gets even more complex because you can't recreate a kale salad with a juice. But you can use the same thinking and shift your focus from what you can't have to what you can have. Instead of spending my time thinking of delicious raw foods I have to spend my time thinking of delicious raw juices. Then I will start coming up with juices I should try and how delicious they will be. This may be what I need to do if I do a green juice fast with no fruits as the only juice I like this way is gazpacho and I can't imagine only drinking that all of my fast. Nevertheless I may need to do that because I can't stand it when my face has little red dots all over it.

So the point is to always keep your mind on what you CAN have and just dream about those foods and come up with new recipes rather than salivating over what you CANT have but will have soon, in a while, or never again.