First-time Juicing

I started juicing recently. I always see cancer patients start juicing when they are diagnosed with the disease. So I knew it must be beneficial although I did not look into the details of how and why. Until now, I never had the motivation to buy a juicer and start juicing myself due to busy schedule and thinking of the trouble to clean it after juicing. However, now that I received a juicer as a gift, there’s no reason I do not make good use of it!

Similar to fruits, juice is best consumed before meal and the best timing for me is probably early morning before breakfast. For me, knowing it is tough to do it on weekdays as I will be rushing to work, I start setting my target to juice once per week. Hopefully by getting used to it and practice it as a habit I can slowly increase the frequency. Juicing at night is another alternative if there is enough time gap between dinner and sleeping time. For people at home, juicing in between meals is of course another alternative.

The first question people commonly asked is, “Why is taking fruit juice better than taking the fruit directly?” The answer is because liquid is absorbed more easily by our stomach. Also, it is easier to consume juice than to eat fruits (comparing eating 2 apples and drinking a glass of apple juice). However, beware that there is a risk of over consuming fruit juice and thus taking in too much sugar. Also, by juicing we no longer take in the fiber (unless you eat the remaining after juicing).

I do not take juicing as a replacement of eating fruits, but an addition or a supplement to it. Thus, I choose to juice vegetables and fruits that I seldom consume directly. I started with carrot (it is rich in vitamins, and I do not eat it raw), mixing with a little tomato (it is also a healthy choice and I like it but seldom eat it) and some apples. I was told that green apple is more juicy compared to red ones – it also has less sugar. The juice really taste good and I am starting to get addicted to juicing :). I intend to add celery and beetroot as the next step, also due to their nutrient values. There is some work to clean up the juicer after juicing, but I guess this little effort is worth the benefits!

Introduction

I am in the high risk group of having cancer with a strong family history. This motivates me to live a healthier life to protect myself from this disease. With our current busy and hectic life, an environment where so much "junk food" is available for the sake of convenience, and so many temptations on the good taste of those "bad food", it is very difficult to live and eat in a healthy way. Nevertheless, it is still very important for us to remind ourselves that health, both physical and mental, is the most important thing in our life and it is our own responsibility to take care of our health.

Most of us have some old "bad habits" from young, wrong concept / knowledge about food and health, and it is very hard to "undo" them. Furthermore, there is too much information out there and even the medical professionals hold contradictory views on many occasions. We need to carefully filter all these information and make our own choice / decision. What I share here is filtered based on my knowledge and personal belief.

Above all, I try to live a healthy life style in a realistic and practical way. I believe in taking many small steps which accumulative achieve a giant step. For example, for a person who hardly exercises and wants to start exercising, I think it is practical to start once a week first instead of aggressively everyday. Although the latter may work for some people, I believe that for most of us it is easier to start taking baby steps first, instead of a drastic change. Most importantly, one must feel comfortable with the change and slowly incorporates the changes into a habit. As one gets used to it, one can slowly increase the density / frequency. As the saying goes, Rome was not built in one day!

Definitely my aim of this blog is to share and provide all health-related information and hope that you will benefit from it.

Your destiny is in your own hands!