Fasting Tips and Tricks

by Julianne Dowse
So, you’ve decided to give your digestive system a break from its never-ending cycle of digesting food and do a juice fast. Firstly, congratulations! Secondly, here’s some tried and tested tips and tricks to make your good days better and your not so good days – well, good.

Your Foodie’s Juice Fast Kit

Here’s some things to help support you through your juice fast.

Getting started

  • Start your juice fast on a Friday – the first day is always the easiest and then if you get any detox symptoms, the weekend will help you to manage these without having to think about going to work.
  • Try some juices out before you start fasting so you know what flavours you like
  • Access to a toilet – yes, you never know what your body is going to experience through a juice fast, so having access to a toilet (more than one if two or more people in the household are fasting) will ease this pressure (quite literally!!!)
  • Tell people at work you are doing a cleanse and work from home if you can for one or two of the days

Kuvings Cold Press Juicer

  • Put a little ‘fruit and veg’ bag in your pulp container, saves washing up
  • Clean your juicer once a day, rather than every time. When you finish making your juice, push cap in and fill juicer up with water and leave.

Nausea

  • A few slices of Ginger in some hot water will help ease the tummy
  • Drink a Peppermint Herbal Tea
  • Make sure you’ve had lots of water, often feeling unwell is a sign your body is trying to flush toxins out and it needs some support to do that
  • An enema or colonic (gravity fed) may also help with this

Dizziness

  • Often a sign of dehydration, drink more water
  • Slowing down and doing some deep breathing often helps
  • Sleep it off
  • Drink more vegetable juices, this will ground your energy
  • Or, if you feel it’s a blood sugar thing – drink more fruit juices to help balance your blood sugars

Teeth and Tongue

Our mouth is the gateway to our stomach and as such, when we fast our mouth gets to detox. But, unfortunately, it can feel pretty ordinary when it does this. Here’s some things you can do:

  • Clean your teeth more often
  • Oil Pulling each day will help with this. Do your research, but it’s basically a tablespoon of coconut oil placed into your mouth that you swirl around for a time and then spit it out (taking toxins with it).
  • Brush your teeth with Food Grade Bicarbonate Soda

Juicing

  • Buy all of your produce at once – it will keep you from quitting
  • Buy your produce from a local fruit/veg market and ask them for bulk discounts
  • Buy apples without wax – much nicer and easier to juice a lot of them
  • Buy juicing carrots – much cheaper
  • Substitute ingredients to suit your taste preference – you will enjoy the experience much better
  • Always have a backup juice that you can make if a juice isn’t to your liking
  • Buy some 500ml or 1000ml glass bottles to make and store your cold-pressed juice for up to 3 days in the fridge. Also makes it easy to transport your juice to work/play and to keep track of quantity.

Headaches

  • Rub peppermint oil into temples and onto the back of your neck
  • A foot bath with peppermint oil is great!
  • Drinking 500ml – 1000ml of water all in one go will often help with a headache
  • Deep breathing or a guided meditation
  • Sleep it off
  • Cold pack on the back of the neck

Hunger

  • Drink more juice
  • Drink more water
  • If you must, eat an apple – chew it up and swallow the juice, spit out the fibre.
  • If you just can’t handle it and need to eat, eat an apple. That’s totally okay and it might be enough to get you through!

Boredom or Feeling Unwell

Distracting yourself can often help if you are not feeling 100%, try some of these:

  • Jigsaw puzzles
  • Watching movies
  • Colouring-in
  • Getting into the garden
  • Reading books
  • Sleeping
  • Going for a walk

Craving savoury

  • Add a pinch of rock salt to your juices (especially any savoury ones) to help with this
  • Sucking on rock salt each day will help balance this