Juicing For Weight Loss

Fresh vegetable juice can help you lose weight better than any other single thing you could add to your weight loss program. A recent study evaluated surveys of 500 people on a living foods diet, and showed that a high percentage of live foods—meaning raw foods—helped more than 80 percent of the people surveyed to lose weight.

The Juicing for Health program is a way of life—not a temporary “quick fix” diet that you ditch when you lose your weight. The juicing lifestyle is a way of life that you can follow for the rest of your life.

Besides losing weight, I think you’ll want to follow it for another reason—for your health’s sake. I typically hear people on this program report that their pain has disappeared—headaches gone, back pain gone, knee, ankle, and foot pain gone, or joint pain gone. I get reports on skin improvements, hypertension gone, sleep improved, mood improved—people become happier and much more capable of dealing with stress. ..and on and on the list goes.

An Overview of Why Juicing Helps You Lose Weight

First, I want to give you an overview of why juicing works so well for weight loss, and then give you more information on some of the key points noted below.

Juice supplies an abundance of absorbable nutrients including vitamins, minerals, enzymes, Phytonutrients and biophotons that satisfy the body’s nutritional needs, which means you won’t be as hungry as before.

All of the highly absorbable nutrients in juice squelch cravings, which is a huge weight loss bonus!

Juice is energizing, so fatigue becomes a thing of the past. It’s full of those little energy sparks we call life – named biophotons by researchers.

Fresh raw juices are considered “live food” because they feed the body a large amount of nutrients that have not been destroyed by heat or processing along with the energy the plants absorb from the sun.

Many people report that they actually feel like working out more when they juice. When you work out consistently, you build more muscle and that helps you burn more calories—even at a resting heart rate.

Juice detoxifies the body because it’s loaded with antioxidants. Toxins can actually cause you to gain weight, and make it very difficult to lose weight. You see, your body will even make fat cells if it doesn’t have enough of these storage units already.

Raw juice alkalizes the body, bringing balance to the pH. Vegetable juice is quite alkaline and drinking alkaline-rich juices encourages the body to release fat cells with the acids they contain because there’s plenty of buffer to neutralize the acids.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the key points more in depth so you can better understand just what is working to your weight loss advantage when you drink fresh juice.

Juice Helps Curb Cravings So You Don’t Feel as Hungry

Because vegetable juice has very little sugar, while offering an abundance of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, biophotons, and Phytonutrients, it’s incredibly helpful for weight loss. It’s very absorbable—even people with very compromised digestive tracks have found they can absorb the nutrients in fresh juice. It’s like a pre-digested food that feeds your body so well that your brain stops screaming for more food.

It offers your body what it needs to do its work to keep you healthy, and therefore you feel much more satisfied. Most people not only choose to eat fewer calories when they include fresh vegetable juice, they gain more energy. Compare this with eating a bag of chips. How often do you want to eat more even after you’ve eaten an ample portion? They offer a lot of empty calories that make you feel sluggish and tired, plus the chips are addictive.

The biggest plus of a juicing program is that it adds valuable, bio-available micronutrients with a heap of health benefits and a minimum of calories.

Nutrients That Satisfy The Body’s Nutritional Needs

Chlorophyll has been shown to deactivate systemic yeast. Chlorophyll is a plant pigment that is concentrated in green leaves. It binds to mycotoxins—those very acidic waste products produced by fungus and yeast. Chlorophyll blocks them from entering the bloodstream. When mycotoxins are deactivated, it removes a major barrier to weight loss for those who suffer from yeast overgrowth. That’s because Candida albicans thrive in an acidic environment produced by their own waste. They then it pumps out even more mycotoxins in the process. However, because of cholorophyll’s very alkaline pH, the acidic mycotoxins are neutralized and the damaging cycle is halted. There are very specific nutrients found in juice, especially green juice, that can help you lose weight more quickly and easily. It has been shown that about 70 percent of American women suffer from yeast overgrowth of Candida albicans. This particular yeast produces a host of symptoms including carb cravings along with sinusitis, ongoing fatigue, allergies, and vaginal infections.
Your best choices for green leaves are collards, chard, kale, spinach, dark green lettuce, parsley, beet leaves, or any other dark green leaves.

Enzymes Speed Fat Burning. One of the major contributors to weight gain and fatigue is enzyme deficiency. Heat easily destroys enzymes, which means that processed and cooked food is sadly depleted of vital enzymes. This causes your enzyme-producing organs to have to work harder, which causes your metabolism to take the back seat. But when you drink plenty of vegetable juices, which are rich in enzymes, you reduce the workload of your liver and pancreas and they can concentrate more on their metabolic tasks of fat burning and energy production.

Magnesium boosts metabolism. Greens such as collards, chard, kale, beet tops, and spinach are especially rich in magnesium, which plays a key role in fat storage. It has been shown that as many as 80 percent of American women don’t get enough magnesium. When magnesium is low, insulin and glucose build up in the bloodstream and get stored as fat rather than being burned for fuel. Upping the intake of magnesium in the diet has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and lower blood glucose by up to 35 percent. This would also help diabetics and pre-diabetics control their blood sugar. It is important to know that magnesium in supplements is packaged in particles that are rather large for the body to absorb, reducing their bioavailability down to 4 to 15 percent. In contrast, green plants take up the minerals from the soil and package them in much smaller particles that the body can absorb easily. That’s why juice is so effective and why there is nothing superior to whole foods—90 percent of plant magnesium can be delivered to the cells. Also, a British study found that magnesium-rich diets were associated with high levels of adiponectin—a hormone that is known to boost metabolism. Therefore, I highly recommend that you include plenty of dark leafy greens each day in your juice.

Research Shows That The Juice Diet Works!

One to two glasses of vegetable juice a day has been shown in university studies to promote weight loss, making it four times more effective than that of the non-juice drinkers on the same Heart Association Diet. Both studies were randomized controlled trials, each lasting twelve weeks.

One study carried out by UC California-Davis, among 90 healthy adults between the ages of 40 and 65, was found that each person who drank at least two glasses of vegetable juice a day met their weight loss goal, while only seven percent of the non-juice drinkers met it. Participants who drank either one or two glasses of vegetable juice per day lost an average of four pounds, while those who drank no vegetable juice lost only one pound. The researchers also found that people drinking the vegetable juice had significantly higher vitamin C and potassium intake, and ate far less carbohydrates. Participants in the juice group with borderline high blood pressure also lowered their blood pressure significantly.

Those who drank vegetable juice said they enjoyed the juice and felt like they were doing something good for their body by drinking it. According to Carl Keen, Ph.D., Professor of Nutrition and Internal Medicine at UC Davis, and co-author of the study, enjoyment is critical to developing good eating habits that people can stick with for a long time. He noted that vegetable juice is something that people enjoy, plus its convenient and portable, which makes it simple to drink every day.

Another study, by the Baylor College of Medicine, involved 81 adults who drank 8 to 16 ounces of vegetable juice daily as part of a calorie-controlled, heart-healthy diet. They also lost an average of four pounds over a 12-week period simply by adding the vegetable juice every day. Of the participants in the study, 83 percent had metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of risk factors including excess body fat around the mid-section, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and elevated cholesterol. About 47 million Americans have some combination of these risk factors, placing them at increased risk for diabetes and heart disease. That’s why drinking veggie juice and eating a low-glycemic diet works so well for weight loss and is especially helpful for people with blood sugar challenges such as those with metabolic syndrome.

Following are some recipes to help you get started: