Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It! (32 page)

Consumer-quality juicers generally fall into three categories: centrifugal, masticating, and twin gear. What’s the difference, and how do you choose? Here’s the skinny:

Centrifugal juicers use a fast-spinning grater to shred the fruits and veggies. The juice then gets flung through a strainer and out the spout, while the pulp flies up and into a catch basket.

Masticating juicers use one slowly turning screw-shaped gear that chews up the veggies and squeezes the juice through a stainless-steel screen. This action gently tears open the cell membranes in order to release the nutrients.

Twin gear juicers are the crème de la crème. They work at even lower speeds, slowly squishing the fruits and veggies between two gears until the pulp is nearly dry and almost all the juice is squeezed out.

All three types have pros and cons. Centrifugal juicers are easy to use, quick to clean, and less expensive. Many of them have a wider mouth, which means less prep time cutting and juicing veggies. However, the grating and spinning of centrifugal juicers causes the nutrients to oxidize quicker. Exposed to air, the enzymes start to break down and your juice loses some of its nutritional oomph. All juice should be consumed as quickly as possible, but this is especially true for those made in a centrifugal juicer. Consume them within fifteen to twenty minutes of juicing. If you can’t drink it right away, don’t wig out. Do what you can. Immediately pour your liquid sunshine in an airtight mason jar (fill to the top) and store it in your fridge for later.

Masticating juicers extract more juice. Because they operate at slower speeds than the whirling dervish centrifugal juicers, you get more nutrition (enzymes included), less foam, and a longer fridge life. If you need to, you can store your well-sealed juice for a day or so.

Twin-gear juicers give you the biggest bang for the buck. The juice lasts up to seventy-two hours (so they say). You can also use them to make scrumptious nut butters and even ice cream. Twins can also extract wheatgrass juice (as can some masticating juicers).

The downside is that both masticating and twingear models take longer to make juice and longer to clean up because they have a narrower mouth, move slower, and have more parts to scrub. They’re also heavier and take up more counter space. And lastly, they’re pricey. But they do make the best juice. Be nice, ask Santa, see what happens. Ultimately, the best juicer is the one you’ll use! Juicers are not dust collectors, folks. They are active members of your family and they hate being shelved. Quite frankly, it hurts their feelings.

Wheatgrass juice
is a powerful tonic for healing, as you learned in the preceding chapter. Those magic mini-lawns are filled with liquid sunshine, crammed with chlorophyll. According to
The Wheatgrass Book
by Ann Wigmore (the queen mum of chlorophyll), wheatgrass juice “Increases red bloodcell count and lowers blood pressure. It cleanses the blood, organs and gastrointestinal tract of debris. Wheatgrass also stimulates metabolism. The juice’s abundance of alkaline minerals helps reduce overacidity in the blood. It can be used to relieve many internal pains, and has been used successfully to treat peptic ulcers, ulcerative colitis, constipation, diarrhea, and other complaints of the gastrointestinal tract. The enzymes and amino acids found in wheatgrass can protect us from carcinogens like no other food or medicine. It strengthens our cells, detoxifies the liver and bloodstream, and neutralizes environmental pollutants.”

For fresh wheatgrass, check your local health food store, or grow your own. You can buy inexpensive, easy-to-use wheatgrass growing kits from many online sources. Some even come with the soil. Visit my pal Michael Bergonzi’s (the wheatgrass king) Web site to learn everything you ever wanted to know about this magical grass: wheatgrassgreenhouse.com.

He’s the best grower in the country and will teach you a ton about sprouting, too. In the age of online shopping, you can get trays of fresh wheatgrass shipped right to your door. To enjoy DIY wheatgrass juice at home, you’ll need a twin-gear juicer or a not-so-fancy hand-crank model. That’s what I use—it’s a little plastic job that I got for $28—great for travel and easy to clean. Go to
healthyjuicer.com
for more deets.

Another great way to get
liquid nutrition is to blend your fruits and veggies into delicious green smoothies. They’re easy to make, take little prep and cleanup time, and require only one piece of kitchen equipment—a blender! The difference between a juice and a smoothie is that a smoothie leaves no pulp behind—it contains all the fantastic fiber of the ingredients. The tough cellulose structure of the produce is broken into tiny pieces that are easy for your body to digest and assimilate.

Think of it as a pre-chewed blast of optimum nutrition. Smoothies balance pH and blood sugar while the fiber assists in sponging up toxins. You can load them up with good fats, quality vegan protein powders (see supplement chapter), and ground flax, chia, or hemp seeds. Smoothies are more filling and provide more energy. On days when I want rich and creamy emotional comfort, I blend, baby, blend!

There are a million ways to make a smoothie and even more recipes online. I call my enlightened fave “the Green Guru.” It’s like wisdom in a glass! The guru’s ingredients are really simple: avocado, coconut water (or purified water), cucumber, romaine, pear or banana, a dash of stevia (or agave), a wee bit of cinnamon or cacao, and 1 to 2 ounces of E3Live (see
chapter 9
for more on this supplement).

When building your smoothies, it’s best to use the same 3:1 (veggie to fruit) ratio as described for juice. Berries are a good low-glycemic choice in the summer (put ’em in the freezer for added pizzazz). Sweet pea or sunflower sprouts are electric—they’re loaded with oxygen and protein. Other lovely leafy options include spinach, kale, and red lettuce.

Now that you’ve got the blending scoop, do you have the right tools? Like most people, I had an old hand-me-down blender from my mom’s disco daiquiri days. You know the one—cracked pitcher, missing buttons, and a motor with the power of a nose hair trimmer. I didn’t know what I was missing until I got serious about green smoothies. I now use a Vita-Mix, the Cadillac of blenders. This sucker could pulverize a cowboy boot! I use it to make the creamiest smoothies, soups, puddings, dressings, sauces, and occasional (killer!) margarita. The only drawback is the price: anywhere from $340 to over $600, depending on the model. But it’ll be the last blender you ever buy! Snag one when you get a little financial breathing room.

The Blendtec is another powerful high-end brand. They’re slightly less expensive, starting at around $230 and going up to $600. Among smoothie aficionados there are those in the Vita-Mix camp and others firmly planted in the Blendtec camp—it’s up to you to decide. Always do research, read consumer reviews, and Internet- and comparison-shop for the best deals.

As for moderately priced blenders, Breville has three models ranging from $150 to $300. Waring’s MBB518 Pro is less than $200 and gets user kudos for strength and durability. KitchenAid’s five-speed, 56-ounce blender is less than $100 and earns high marks. And at around $65, the Oster Classic Beehive is a stylin’ bargain.

Is juicing better than blending?—
I recommend including both in your weekly repertoire. Both are terrific, but juice gives you instant energy while smoothies take a bit longer to assimilate and require more work from your body. Personally, I juice more than I blend. In an average week I’ll juice four to five days and enjoy smoothies for the remainder. Juice makes me feel lighter and more hydrated first thing in the morning. Breakfast literally means “to break a fast” and I prefer to do that with juice. It allows my body a longer process of cleansing and repair.

But I don’t want to give green smoothies a bad rap. They are definitely more filling and stick with you longer, plus they take less time to make. They’re also an easier sell to skeptics. In 2009 I went to New Orleans to care for displaced female survivors of Hurricane Katrina with my friends from the Urban Zen Foundation. We spent three days in the Superdome as part of Eve Ensler’s ten-year V-day anniversary. The stadium was transformed into SUPERLOVE—a place to heal, celebrate, and activate through yoga, massage, healing circles, makeovers, and more.

I made smoothies—anywhere between 5,000 and 7,000 cups of liquid love! The SUPERLOVE recipe was really simple: cucumber, watermelon, a sprig of mint, a dash of agave sweetener, and ice. Normally, I wouldn’t add sweetener to a recipe like this, but the fabulous gals of the Big Easy were used to sugar and spice and everything not so nice. As a result, many of them had serious health issues.

My goal was to teach the women that real fruits and veggies can be delicious. If added sweetener could help me do it, amen! In the end I was surprised at the number of ladies who came back for seconds and thirds. I highly doubt I would have nabbed so many skeptics with a dark green glass of juice. The moral of this story is that luscious smoothies can be the sneaky little helper you need to get your friends and family to embrace healthy libations.

The bottom line: Do what works best for your majestic self (and your schedule). Including liquid nutrition, in whatever form, will change your life. Juice, blend, sip, somersault. Got it?

Fasting is nature’s surgical table
. It’s also a ticket to the divine. Fasting affects you on every level—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. This ancient practice has a long history in culture and religion. But like many time-honored wisdoms that have been bleached from our society, fasting gets a bad rap these days. It’s considered either a fad, new agey, or dangerous. But we can look to the animal kingdom to learn the truth about the “dangers” of fasting.

When my super-pooch Lola gets a bellyache from sneaking rotten treats from the garbage or dining on deer turd, she doesn’t call up the vet or head to the drugstore. She fasts by drinking water and
chewing grass and is feeling better posthaste. Quite frankly, I’d rather take a page from her healing manual than get sucked into the medical system of endless pills, bills, and insurance bullshit.

Fasting should never equal starvation, deprivation, or restriction. Fasting is simply resting from solid food. You’ll still be receiving an enormous amount of nutrition (and oxygen!) in liquid form. Fasting gives your body a break from spending the enormous amounts of energy required to break down food—especially the high quantities of junk in the Standard American Diet—and allows you to redirect that energy toward healing and detoxification. While fasting, you release toxins stored in your colon, liver, lungs, bladder, sinuses, skin, and kidneys, allowing your body to function better.

On my 21-Day Plan (see
chapter 10
), I recommend fasting one day per week. I base my protocol on personal experience and what I learned during my health educator training at the Hippocrates Health Institute. In his book
Living Foods for Optimum Health
, Dr. Brian Clement, director at Hippocrates, says, “Fast one day every week, consuming only freshly squeezed green drinks, vegetable juices, purified water, herbal teas. These fasting days will allow any potential long-term toxins to be released before they can cause serious damage. It’s like changing the oil in your car before your engine fails.”