I did decide however that I wouldn’t continue for the full 7 days. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t getting enough calories to maintain my normal workout. While the juice did make me more active and alert, I couldn’t sustain that energy through a workout.

I won’t be stopping juicing however. Instead, I will be supplementing it with other meals.

For anyone who is interested in doing this to clean out their system or lose some weight, I would say go for it. I really do feel that my body is in better shape after doing so.

You can see my final update video below. For some reason, the video was dropping frames while I was recording which messed up the video a little bit and also distracted me.

Please leave comments or questions.

Day two is turning out to be a little different. The night after the first day I ended up with a very sore throat, a slight temperature, and didn’t get much sleep. I’m not sure the cause, but maybe it was my body’s reaction to the toxins leaving my body? By morning the temperate had gone, but part of the sore throat remained. I also had a bit of a headache. I don’t really get headaches, so I am pretty sure that is from the juicing. As I write this post  at 6pm the headache is mostly gone.

My stomach is also a little unsettled, and I have very little energy today. I can still drink the fruit juices no problem, but the vegetable juices are getting a little harder to get down. On the good side, I have less cravings for unhealthy food.

I think the biggest thing is that I am just getting so few calories and it is a shock to my body.

I’ve heard people say that they have gotten really smelly when they started juicing, but so far I haven’t had much change in body odor. I did notice that the first day my urine had various strong smells, but that seems to have gone away at this point.

I have decided that I will be changing from 7 days to 3 days though. Having so few calories makes it very difficult to keep up with my workout schedule. I am worried that if I move too much I will end up with a major headache.

You can find the review of my first day below:

How do I feel? I’m not quite sure yet. I feel energetic, but I also feel like I don’t have enough energy. That probably has to do with better calories, but far fewer of them. The thing I have noticed the most is that I tend to feel full for a long time after, but I never feel lethargic. It’s only been one day though so I guess I will see how I feel tomorrow.

In the meantime, here are the first two videos I made of the first and second juice. I am speaking in Japanese, but there really isn’t that much talking.

I actually had my first juice last night, but I had also had a lot of other food, so today is really my first day of only juice. For breakfast I had a mostly fruit juice since I wasn’t yet fully awake and thought too many vegetables might be a little hard to take in the morning. It tasted great, and after I did a calorie count I realized that one full glass of fruit juice was only about 150 calories.

If you are wanting to go on a diet, juicing is an amazing way to cut calories. Morning juice was as follows.

• 1/2 white grapefruit
• 1 orange
• 1 large cherry tomato
• 1 carrot
• 1 frozen banana
• 3 leaves of lettuce
• 1/2 lemon

For lunch I went a little more heavy on the greens. Things like cabbage and mushrooms.  I was worried about how strong the taste was going to be, but I went a head with it anyways. To be honest it wasn’t great tasting, but it was still edible. Not something you savor the taste of, but I was able to get it down no problem, and I didn’t feel it was the worst thing I had ever had either. I can definitely do this for 7 days.

Lunch consisted of the following.

• 1 bell pepper
• 2 large cherry tomatos
• 1/5 of a carrot
• 1 shitake mushroom
• 3 leaves of lettuce
• 1 stem of broccoli
• 3 large leaves of cabbage
• 1/2 cucumber
• a handful of blueberries

All together that is about (maybe less than) 300 calories. The same as a breakfast when I am dieting. I am currently loading a video on Youtube and will post it up shortly. As I mentioned earlier I am speaking Japanese, but it’s just juicing so shouldn’t be a big deal.

After lunch juice. This one was really good, but a little citrusy. Adding an apple or some strawberries would have been a good idea.

• 1/2 grape fruit
• 1 orange
• 1 kiwi
• 1 small tomato
• 1 banana
• 1/2 gauva
• handful of blueberries
• 1/2 cucumber
• 1/2 lemon

I will still have one or two more to go for today, and will definitely be way down on calories.

Once again, if you are also a juicer or someone interested, please leave a comment below. I would love to hear about your experiences, and will be glad to answer any questions I can as well.

About two weeks ago I watched a movie called “Fat, Sick, and Almost Dead“. You can find it on Hulu for free. At that time I had just ordered a blender, and figured I would do a 7 days of juicing when it arrived. The blender actually arrived two days ago, but I had a dear friend who was moving away and wasn’t able to spend much time at home. Yesterday, however, I was able to start juicing.

My plan is very simple: eat mostly juice for a total of  seven days (I won’t kill myself if I eat something else, but it does need to be healthy). I dont have any particular plan on what fruits and veggies I will be adding, but I am trying to keep it as local as possible (we have two farmers markets) and keep it varied.

My basic recipe is 1 cup of water and enough fruits and vegetables two make two cups of juice. It actually doesn’t take too much since fruits and vegetables have a lot of water. I am going heavier on the fruits in the morning and heavier on the vegetables later in the day.

I’ll be posting a couple of videos, but I actually made them in Japanese for my friends who are interested here in Japan.

If you are a juicer or have done something similar in the past, leave a comment. I would love to hear your opinions and get any tips.

If you are reading this post, then you are searching for the secret on how to lose fat, gain muscle, and get in shape the easy way. So here it is:

There isn’t one!

There is no workout cheat or magic pill. Getting in shape takes hard work, and if you are looking for the easy way, then you aren’t really thinking that seriously about it. How often do you hear a gold medalist or professional athlete say that they didn’t work hard to win the medal. That they just had a “special” program. No, they got there through hard work and sacrifice. The only time they say it’s easy is when they are getting paid to sell something.

The truth is that getting in shape isn’t easy. It takes hard work and a strong mentality. It takes a “I’m gonna do this no matter what” mentality, not a “well, as long as it’s only 10 minutes a day “.  You will most likely need to change your exercise and eating habits,  and possibly your sleeping schedule, and other habits as well. These are all very difficult things to change, and if you need to be willing to sacrifice a daily piece of cake or chocolate.

Does this mean that you need to workout an hour a day everyday? No, but you have to be willing to. I can put an intensive workout into 15-20 minutes, but if I am not willing to do more, I am probably not going to stick with it. However, when it comes to 5 minute workouts, that really isn’t much. At least not when it comes to getting your whole body in shape.

The bottom line is that it has to be important to you. If it is, then going through the pain and struggle isn’t only worth it, it’s rewarding.

The first thing I changed when I got home from the US was my diet. Okay, so I ate all the stuff I bought home from the US and then changed my diet. I figured out how many calories it would take to maintain my weight, and then reduced that by about 600 calories per day. Since I have to know how many calories I am eating I also have to keep track of my calories. This is actually a good thing, because it helps me eat better. knowing that I only get a limited amount of calories also forces me to eat more nutritious food. A few Oreos and I can’t eat for the rest of the day.

On every seventh day, I over-eat by about a 1000 calories. My weekly total is still down, but by over-eating my metabolism won’t drop and I will continue losing fat weight. It also helps keep you on track if you get to eat whatever you want once a week.

My workout consists of mostly exercises I can do without any extra equipment, pullups, pushups, squats, etc. The key is to do one exercise until exhaustion and then to quickly move onto the next exercise. Don’t allow your body too much rest.

I should also mention that I exercise 5-6 times a week. I have found that 2-3 just doesn’t cut it if you want results. Maybe if I was more active each day it would be better, but I spend a lot of time on the computer. Without the workout I don’t get enough exercise each day to maintain decent muscle development. This may seem like a lot for some people, but the good thing is that it is easier to stay in routine because you are doing it almost everyday.

Lately, I am finally starting to learn how to do both. I am really excited with the content I have planned for this blog, and I think you will enjoy it.

Lately, I am really getting into video and editing and I have been wanting to do more with this on the blog. My camera was flooded on a snorkeling trip, but I have a new HD camera on the way and figured what better way to tell you about the new plans for the website than make a video. The camera hasn’t arrived yet and neither has my new computer (I am typing this on a 6 year old laptop). But, I figured rather than wait, I would get started and use what I have.

This was shot on my iphone and edited using a free program on my 6 year old laptop. Let me know what you think, and please leave comments and subscribe (you can find a subscribe button on the sidebar) to my YouTube account. I will have many more vids on the way.

When I first got my driver’s license the price of gas was under a $1 a gallon. There were some places I could find is for $0.78 a gallon. The last time I was in the US (about 2 years ago) the price of gas was around $3. And while I think this is ridiculously high, I pay nearly $6 a gallon here in Japan. Are we insane?

However, it’s not just gas, it’s all commodities. Especially anything that can be controlled and is something people really need. Gas, water, electricity, drugs, certain foods, and a lot of other things fall into this area.

So why do we take it? Are we too comfortable to make changes? Is it money? Too lazy?

I mean, most of us don’t need a new car, we choose to buy one because we want more luxury, more reliability, or just something new. So if we all stopped buying until the makers design something that doesn’t rely on gas, that would be one hell of an incentive.

This goes for the same or green energy. There are more solar panels for sale than there used to be, but most homes still don’t have them. I live on an “eco island”, as classified by the Japanese government, and there are almost no solar panels here either. Though I will admit the local store has a few small ones. They are also just now putting in a small solar panel field. I should also mention that the government just destroyed a major reef to put in a multiple million dollar underwater aquarium, but spends very little on green energy to improve peoples lives. Why do we let them get away with it?

Now as a renter, I haven’t purchased solar panels. It doesn’t make a lot of sense considering I move on occasion. However, I would be willing to add a few bucks a month to my rent to get my power that way. Cheap solar panels are getting easier to find, but I don’t see many people putting them up. Is it that no one cares anymore? Are are we just all too busy with our own lives?

Please comment in the bottom and let me know why you think this is. I would also love to hear from people who are using solar panels and other green energies. What has your experience been like.

A while back I came up with a challenge to get in shape. I made a couple of updates, but then stopped updating altogether. So what happened?

A couple of things, but the biggest one was illness. This year has been especially cold here where I am at and I think it led to me getting sick. I ended up catching a couple of colds as well as some kind of throat infection that gave me a high temperature. Hard to exercise and take pictures when I can’t get out of bed. I also had to reformat my computer and may have lost the pictures I had taken for the first couple of weeks. I’ll have to check.

The weather has finally warmed up here, but now we are in rainy season. So instead of swimming at the beach, I have been working on my car, a 1999 Miata. My most recent thing was to install a Sparco racing seat for more support. You can check it out here if you are interested.

At this point I will be updating this site much more often. I am also planning to make some videos of the island once this weather clears up.