How To Get Started With Juicing: The Ultimate Guide

Kate and I were taking a walk the other day and she was telling me about a listener who recently found our show and asked her a lot of questions about juicing. The listener was asking how to get started and whether or not juicing was better than blending.

She was at a loss. She wasn’t sure what kind of juicer to buy, what kind of produce to buy (organic or conventional), how often to juice, when to juice during the day, whether or not a juice would last and so many more questions.

I forget that not everybody out there knows what our listeners know. If you go into the forum or listen live in our chat room you can figure out pretty quickly that people who listen to Extreme Health Radio are on the cutting edge. 😉

So in this post I’d like to share some basic tips and ideas about how to start juicing.

Why Is Juicing So Good For You?

Juicing helps to deliver all kinds of enzymes, phyto-nutrients, vitamins and biologically available minerals directly into your bloodstream in about 15 minutes. Nothing else will deliver that kind of nutrition to your cells faster. The reason is that there is zero fiber when you juice. This means all of the nutrition and living enzymes get delivered to your bloodstream and cells incredibly fast.

Not only does it help to deliver oxygen and minerals to your body but it cleanses your organs as well. Juicing helps to detoxify your colon, liver and other critical organs. Juicing helps you age gracefully, boost your energy levels, detoxify chemicals, lose weight and change your entire life….if you let it.

The juice of a vegetable is also properly structured. All liquid that comes from the earth, much like spring water, carries with it information in the form of hexagonal patterns. Fresh juice is properly structured and biologically able to actually penetrate the actual cells of your body.

How Is Juicing Different Than Blending?

When you run the vegetables and fruits through a juicer you’re separating the fiber from the juice of the plant. By doing this you’re allowing the nutrients to come into your body with zero digestive effort on your side.

This means instant nutrition!

When you put your fruits and vegetables in the Vitamix blender for example, your body still has to break down that fiber and work to do so. Juicing allows your pancreas to relax and not have to make enzymes to break food down. It’s a great way to cleans and heal the body from disease.

How Often Should I Juice?

I recommend telling people to start juicing once per day. It’s recommended to get some people to help you (roommate’s, spouses, children, friends etc) if you can. This way it’ll help you stay motivated (especially if they’re looking to make a commitment to juicing like you are).

If you’re coming off a pretty standard Western diet consisting of lots of unhealthy junk food, you might want to start out juicing 3 days a week. You’ll notice that making green juices “stirs” things up a bit in your belly. Don’t worry this is normal.

After you spend a few weeks juicing 3 days per week, then bump it up to 5, 6 or 7 days a week.

Can I Juice Fruit?

I don’t recommend people to juice fruit. As Jay Kordich (The Juice Man) says, eat your fruit and juice your veggies. For all the amazing benefits juicing has, this is the one thing that people get wrong. If you juice fruit, it can be incredibly detrimental to your health. You’ll feed candida and yeast infections as well as spike your blood sugar levels which could lead to diabetes and other sugar related health problems.

Personally the only fruit I juice is nothing sweeter than a green apple and maybe 1 or 2 carrots and a quarter of a beet. And I don’t even put all of that into one juice.

Stay away from juicing fruit. Fruit is best enjoyed and eaten while veggies should be juiced.

What Type Of Juicer Should I Buy?

It all depends. Not the answer you wanted to hear right? If you want a centrifugal juicer (the kind I currently have) you can get something like a Breville. They’re easy to clean and it makes great tasting juice. The down side is that it oxidizes the juice because of the high speed. This means it probably kills some of the enzymes and it goes bad quickly. I end up having to drink it within 15 minutes.

There are other masticating juicers you could buy that I’ve used before and HIGHLY recommend. My current favorite is the Hurom and the Omega Vert.

The latter is my favorite.

These juice slowly which makes a higher quality juice but you end up having to cut the pieces and spend more time prepping your veggies.

If you’re healing from cancer I’d actually recommend the Norwalk juicer but that’ll run you about $2,500. If you’re young and healthy, I’d recommend the Breville. If you’re trying to overcome an illness and need a very high quality juice, I’d go with the Omega Vert or Huron.

What Time Of Day Is Best To Juice?

That all depends on your body. But for me, I like to juice first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. This way it’s immediately absorbed and doesn’t have to be combined with food in your stomach. I think you’ll notice that this will work best for you also.

How Long Will A Juice Last? Can I Batch Juice?

If you have a Norwalk Juicer the juice will last a few days in a dark glass container that’s air tight and cold. Some people add a small amount or raw honey to increase the enzymes in the juice as well as a shot of Crystal Energy or Mega Hydrate to increase oxygen as well.

Typically a juice is meant to be consumed within 30 minutes of being made. This way all the bio-available enzymes and minerals are still charged and alive for your body to recognize.

I don’t recommend making juice twice a week for example and storing it. If you were to store it though (let’s say you can’t drink it for a few hours), then you’d want to keep it cold, dark and air tight. This means filling the mason jar all the way to the top and sealing the lid. Then you want to keep it as dark as possible and as cold as possible to retain the life giving properties.

How Will Juicing Benefit Me?

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this article juicing can completely transform your life. I would highly recommend a complete program that walks you through step by step about how to juice properly. This program will be custom tailored to suit your exact needs. We’ve had Drew Canole on the show and he was an amazing person to speak with.

Juicing can help you lose weight, detoxify your colon, liver, lungs and blood. It can help to give you energy, remove toxins, clear up your skin and even improve sleep. Juicing can help to improve eyesight as well as fight off sicknesses and diseases. Some people even juice their way back from cancer. Obviously follow your doctor’s advice before trying any juicing program to heal from a disease. 🙂 I have to say these sorts of things because everybody knows juicing can’t heal the body from anything. Only the body can heal itself.

I tell people this all the time, if there’s only one discipline I could encourage you to do each day, it would be to simply juice. Grab them veggies out of the refrigerator and change your life. Your health will greatly improve and if you do it for 30 days you’ll be a different person at the end of it guaranteed.

Check out our show with Joe Cross to see how he changes his life by juicing. He even made a documentary about his juicing journey called Fat Sick and Nearly Dead.

With that being said, make sure to check out the program by Drew called Juice Up Your Life. I think you’ll really enjoy it.

For those that haven’t seen this here’s funny clip about juice.

Enjoy!