Habits can either work for us or against us. It all depends if the habits are health promoting, like taking a walk each day, or disease promoting, like smoking each day. As we go through our lives, we tend to build various habits, which may not always seem obvious to us at first in terms of how they impact our health. Sometimes we simply adopt certain actions or behaviors without knowing their full consequences. The intention of this essay is to help you build one of the healthiest habits, that of juicing.
Given that we live in the age of information, it is getting harder and harder to plead ignorance about any given topic. If we are not sure what a certain ingredient on a label is, it only takes a few minute Google search to find out. If we are not sure if consuming a certain food, or using a certain substance is good for us, again a simple Internet search can keep us busy for days with reading material. Whether it is a type of food, or product there is less and less excuse today for not knowing how something may be impacting us, our health and our well being.
With this in mind I want to share with you about a particular habit that can greatly benefit your health — home juicing. Juicing provides the most easily absorbable and most nutrient concentrated form of food, and has the potential to take your health to the next level offering a variety of cleansing, detoxing, healing, nutrient providing, and health promoting functions.
Although we have been told that it takes 21 days to form a habit, this can vary greatly depending on the person and task at hand. A study done in 2010 and published in the European Journal of Social Psychology reported that it can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form a habit, with 66 days being the average time to reach automaticity. What improved results for participants was logging daily progress.
Upon getting my very first juicer, this being the Jay Kordich Power Grind Pro, I decided to start off with a 21 day juice challenge. I knew I wanted to make juicing a part of my life and take advantage of the wonderful health benefits it provides. I didn’t want this fantastic kitchen appliance to just sit on my counter and collect dust. Therefore I decided to create a daily juicing routine for myself by doing a 21 day juice challenge. Each day in the afternoon (between lunch and dinner), I made a juice using my juicer, and logged my daily progress to keep track of the juice I had that day.
Having just finished the 21 days, I can say for sure that it will be easy to making juicing a healthy habit up, though it will definitely not be replacing my reliance on whole food green smoothies and whole plant foods in general. It was a pleasure to taste the many different flavors of home vegetable and fruit juices, while working with an easy machine to use and clean. In the future, I intend on experimenting with some juice cleanses as well. For now, I share with you the 21 different juices and juice recipe combinations to help motivate and inspire you to make juicing a part of your lifestyle as well.
21 Days, 21 Juice Recipes
The following are what my 21 days of juicing consisted of. Each serving made roughly 1 and a half cups or 12 ounces of juice. (Variations can exist between 8oz to 16oz depending on your fruit and vegetable sizes.) Watch here a video demonstration as I make one of the green juices and provide extra tips.
Day 1: Carrot-Apple Juice
- 2 small apples
- 6 medium carrots
Day 2: Caesar Juice
- 2 tomatoes
- 4 celery stalks
- 1/4 onion
- 1/3 jalapeño
- handful of parsley
- handful of spinach
Day 3: MixedVeg and Apple Juice
- 4 – 6 celery stalks
- 1 carrot
- several sprigs of parsley
- 1 apple
Day 4: Almond-Pear Mylk**
- 1 cup soaked almonds (24 hours)
- 1 pear
- 1/2 to 1 cup water (depending on preferred consistency)
Day 5: Spinach-Pear Juice
- 3 small pears
- A few handfuls of spinach
Day 6: Orange Juice
- 2 large or 4 small oranges
Day 7: Pineapple Juice
- 1/4 large or 1/2 small of a fresh pineapple
Day 8: Beet-Lemon Juice
- 1 lb beets
- 1 lemon
- some water
Day 9: Papaya-Pineapple Juice
- 1/2 papaya (peeled)
- 1/8 fresh pineapple
- some water
Day 10: Celery-Apple Juice
- 4-6 celery stalks
- 2 apples
- some water
Day 11: Hazelnut “Nutella” Mylk
- 1 cup soaked hazelnuts (24 hours)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons of raw carob powder
- 1/2 to 1 cup water (depending on preferred consistency)
Day 12: Cucumber-Apple Juice
- 1 large English cucumber
- 1 large apple
Day 13: Carrot Juice
- 6 to 8 large carrots
Day 14: Carrot-Apple-Lemon Juice
- 4 large carrots
- 1 large apple
- 1 lemon
Day 15: Celery-Apple-Kale Juice
- 4-6 celery stalks
- 1 large apple
- 4 to 5 large kale leaves
- some water
Day 16: Parsley-Parsnip-Apple Juice
- 4 parsnips
- sprigs of parsley
- 2 small or 1 large apples
Day 17: Parsley-Parsnip-Pear Juice
- 4 parsnips
- sprigs of parsley
- 2 small or 1 large pears
Day 18: Greens n’ Fruit Juice
- 4 to 6 celery stalks
- 3 – 4 large kale leaves
- 1 pear
- 1/8th fresh pineapple
Day 19: Tomato-Parsley-Onion Juice
- 3 tomatoes
- several sprigs of parsley
- 1/4 medium onion
Day 20: Spinach-Apple
- 1 large apple
- several handfuls of spinach
Day 21: Beet-Carrot-Apple Juice
- 3 beets
- 3 carrots
- 1 large apple