Day ten

Woke up on my own about 630 am. Usually when I wake up it's because something aches or I am uncomfortable. This morning I feel refreshed no pain in my back, fingers aren't numb from sleeping the wrong way. The only time I usually feel this good is when I am doing intense aerobic workouts five days a week. I feel loose in my muscles and joints and very mellow. I can still feel aches and pains in my feet but they are less than when I went to bed. I now think the pain was actually the juice working in my body. I read somewhere on our juicing group facebook page that you have flare ups in reverse order of injuries. Since my feet were the most recent injury it makes sense. So maybe my feet are on the road to recovery. Scale was up two pounds from yesterday. I guess I am a bit frustrated with all the additional water I drank plus the fact I limited my fruit intake yesterday. I thought it would go down but noticed I was not in the bathroom as much yesterday so maybe more water is the right answer and I am retaining.  I may start weighing myself once a week and just pick Mondays. So in reality I am still down 6.5 pounds from last Sunday so I should not complain. Today I will focus on antiinflammatory juices I do love my big book of juices with all it's great ideas. I will try to post raw vs juice pictures today.  To keep myself motivated I keep doing Internet research.  Today the topic is Leptin.

So since I hit a plateau today I got worried that my caloric restriction could be affecting my leptin levels.  Typically on many diets you will see a cheat day in order to increase leptin levels.  I think this is for the leptin levels in the gastric juices.  For those of you who do not know what leptin is let me explain.  Leptin is a hormone that is had about a molecular weight of 16000.  Water on the other hand has a molecular weight of 18(I threw that in there because I am a scientist that studies molecular weights). We know that 75% of our bodies are water give or take a few percentage points.  People are still arguing that situation stating the fatter we are the more water our bodies contain.  So  I digress let me get back on the leptin kick. Leptin a protein  hormone  which is 888 times bigger than a single water molecule and it plays a role in obesity as well as weight loss.  Leptin is produced by fat tissue(I won’t get into the technical stuff for you non techies) It is one of the messengers and gate keepers that controls our appetite and acts as a gatekeeper and has been found when your leptin levels decrease you have an increase risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s.  In addition lack of sleep, exercise,  and obesity all affect the way this molecule works inside of us.  Leptin tells our body whether or not to store or burn fat.  Fasting can cause our bodies to be less sensitive to leptin which means we may experience hunger pains, cravings, and lack of energy and since we know hormones always win we give in. So far in this fast I have seen many people give in to these little hormones.  So how can we control and keep our leptin working for us according to published studies?  Since we know our bodies are working at night to repair critical functions we should stop eating at least three hours before bedtime. This allows our hormones that help us use nutrients to release and burn fat instead of processing food.  While juice fasting  we should space our juices throughout the day.  We need to not overload with a calorie feast in the morning and then only have a few 100 calorie juices later in the day.  In addition we should watch how many of those juices are more fruit based. Fructose has been found to directly cause the hypothalamus to be resistant to leptin.  However,  vegetables have been shown that they help the body use leptin more effectively.  That’s good news right?  In addition leafy greens are the best at it.  So make sure you are juicing a lot of those dark leafy greens.  When we stop fasting there are beans and some of us may go back to eating meats I may research that as I transition back to whole foods.  Good news is if we stay away from the processed carbohydrates as well as the grains we may have reset our leptin to a low level and have receptors that react when they should and how they should and truly work at keeping us at a healthy body weight.

Here is something else about leptin if you are overweight you have higher levels than a normal weight person.  So in theory that means an obese person should burn more fat.  However this is where that resistance part comes in.  We have all heard of methicillin resistant staph aureus (MRSA) (commonly referred to as flesh eating bacteria?).  Exposing SA to too much penicillin caused SA to become resistant. Now we have issues combating it with modern medicine. Well overeating causes the leptin receptors in the hypothalamus to become resistant and causes defects in the pathways. This is why when we are overweight we feel hungry all the time.  So realize if you are overweight, you are reducing your level of leptin and you will feel hungry on this fast at the beginning.  I know at times I do.   I do have some great news.  By being on the juice fast and following it with a raw diet for thirty days we are back to our Paleolithic roots and are eating what our bodies are built to eat. This will help in resetting our leptin receptors and we know the body has an amazing way of healing itself and fixing those defective pathways.  As everyone has mentioned lowering the fruit amount of our juices always helps as well.