When people can find no other argument against the program they come up with the most common one of them all. Some finally concede, “OK, it might be healthy and, yes, it appears to have incredible results with every common ailment and, yes, I can see how the sugars in vegetables and fruits is a completely different kettle of fish from ‘white refined sugar,’ but if you don’t eat solid food for a week …”
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Won’t You Gain Weight in the Long Run?
Going on this program does not mean you are guaranteed to pack all the weight back on and more when you start eating again. I know this firsthand as I followed a much more drastic juice-only program than the one you are reading about.
Three-Month Juice Madness
I once went on a “diet” where I had nothing but freshly extracted juices for three whole months—yes, nothing but juice for 12 weeks. It wasn’t like this program where you are having some amazing veggie smoothies and some incredible super foods such as wheatgrass and spirulina (optional). I mean I had nothing but pure, mainly carrot, juice, without even any husks or seeds for added fiber. Was I crazy? YES. Would I ever recommend it? NOT IN A MILLION YEARS! Was I uninformed on the juicing front back then? YES. Did I turn orange because of the amount of carrot juice I was having? YES!
However, I only did it out of sheer desperation to rid my body completely of psoriasis. I had had some good results by adding a few juices to what I was normally eating, but I wanted to clear my body completely.
Did I lose weight? YES—big-time! And did I lose too much weight? YES. As you can imagine, I lost not only my excess fat, but also my healthy fat and plenty of lean muscle tissue too. In fact, my soccer legs looked like those of a “heroin chic” model. I would never, ever recommend anyone do a juice-only program for this long unless it was well thought out with plenty of mixed avocado and vegetable juices. Then it can be incredibly healthy, and for some who are struggling massively with their health and obesity, it can save their life. But it needs to be well thought through, not just carrot juice like I did!
The reason I bring it up here is not simply to warn against doing a juice-only program for that long without knowing what you are doing, but to prove that just because you lose weight through liquid only doesn’t mean that the minute you stop and return to eating you will end up as big as a house. Yes, I know Oprah Winfrey lost tons of weight when on a liquid-only diet, only to put it all back on and more. It’s all about the quality of the liquid together with how you introduce regular food back into your diet, what you consider to be “regular food,” and how you move your body on a regular basis—which I will cover in depth to make sure your success lasts.
When I started to introduce good-quality whole foods back into my diet after my three-month juice-only thing, I soon started to fill out—but I didn’t get fat. My muscles returned—I got my legs back—but no double chin was to be seen. In fact, before I started I was overweight, but after eating good food as well as continuing juicing every day, I went to a healthy weight—and have remained there ever since. Again, I wouldn’t advocate this, and looking back there was no need for me to do it for so long. The perceived wisdom is that if you go on liquids only you could become obese in the long run because of it.
I’m now a very healthy weight and, like most, if I eat too much of the wrong things and don’t exercise I will gain weight. But that’s just simple nutritional math: if I eat too much of the wrong stuff and don’t move—I get fat! Call me Mr. Obvious but isn’t that the same for nearly everyone?
I’ll tell you now, if after you do this program you go back to eating the same amount of junk as you did before and you don’t exercise, guess what? You’ll put the weight back on and, chances are, even more besides. But again that has nothing at all to do with the program or the “our bodies go into fat storage survival mode” theory. It’s simply because you were gaining weight before you went on the program because of the crap you were eating and drinking and now that you’ve gone straight back you have picked up where you left off. It amazes me that when people gain weight after a diet they blame the diet. It appears amnesia sets in and they seem to have forgotten the fact that they were gaining weight before they tried to do something about it, and now it’s the diet’s fault, not the fact that they are eating everything in sight again and are glued to the sofa. It’s not that diets don’t work—most of the time it’s the person who doesn’t work. It never seems to dawn on people that they may have something to do with their own success. If it isn’t the diet they blame, you can bet your bottom dollar it will be something else—but not them!
This is why I am covering just about every aspect in order to make sure you continue with Phases 2 and 3, making this a lifestyle change, not just a week’s “diet” to get into your new outfit or whatever. It is also why so many people have incredible lifelong success after the initial 7 days on juice, like the woman I mentioned earlier who emailed in just now saying a massive THANK YOU because she has dropped 98 lbs (44 kg) and 8 dress sizes in a year. And she’s far, far from alone. I could fill an entire book just with testimonials from people who have done the 7 lbs in 7 Days program, dropped a load of weight, gone on to lose a stack more excess weight and more importantly, kept it off.
The truth is I have devised this plan so carefully that you could live on it for three months if you chose to—there’s no need to and I don’t advise it for the average person, but on a nutritional level you could. This is why I just cannot understand why oh why some doctors and dieticians regard the 7-day plan as dangerous, especially when you can see and feel the results. Sometimes I think we have to just accept that nature is bigger than us. We have to accept that sometimes all of the medical or dietetic training in the world cannot fully explain how the body heals with the power of the liquid contained within fruits and vegetables. You cannot argue with results, and when you stop the junk, flush the body, and furnish it with pure freshly extracted juice, amazing things happen. Sometimes we just have to accept that we may not know how it works, but as long as it works—who cares?
There are many examples of how the human body survives, often baffling the medical profession. One such example will help reenforce a few of my points. If the medical profession thought my living on nothing but juice for three months was crazy, then it’s positively sane compared with …
7
A few years ago the illusionist David Blaine went for 44 days on nothing but water while living in a glass box hoisted above Tower Bridge in London. Many people don’t believe he actually did this and that somehow it was all an illusion. However, as well as being a remarkable illusionist, David Blaine is also able to demonstrate the most amazing examples of what human beings are capable of. He will push himself over and over again simply to test human endurance. As well as living on nothing but water for 44 days, he has also buried himself alive for 7 days, lived in a block of ice for 3 days, and stood on top of an 80 ft (24 m) pole for 34 hours before leaping down onto some cardboard boxes. The pole business may not sound like much to everyone, but it is not something