If you are going to start your year off right, you have to prepare ahead of time. I sat down a few weeks ago and came up with a list of stuff that I needed to cut, and other stuff I needed to add. I decided this year that I will be trying to be as healthy as possible, so I decided to start juicing.

Here’s the thought process I went through when deciding to start juicing. Feel free to steal my whole routine here:

Decide to be healthier
Get a juicer
Buy fruits and vegetables
Juice
Drink Juice

I’m pointing this out because juicing has become a daily habit that has made me feel much better, and it’s incredibly easy to get into.

How I discovered juicing

Spend enough time on the internet and it feels like you have heard of everything. Somewhere along the line I started looking into secret cancer cures and medical conspiracies. One of the cures being thrown around out there is the idea that what’s causing cancer is actually just deficiencies in our nutrition. This made some sense to me as Americans generally eat like crap.

From here I saw a few videos pointing out that in order to beat cancer, you should start juicing to get said nutrients in your body. From there your body will just take care of the cancer itself. After reading this I wondered why not just juice before you have cancer to prevent it?

I filed this stuff away in the back of my mind under random internet stuff and moved on.

In the last year I became aware of a blogger named Mike Cernovich. Mike is an interesting character because he is basically the opposite of the kind of people usually pushing juicing. Most people pushing juicing are vegans, non weight lifters, and on the other side of the political spectrum than me. So when I see a guy into weight lifting and general man shit getting behind juicing, I gave it a second look. His website Fit Juice was a major help in getting started in the juicing game.

Why Juice?

One of the aspects of bulking up as a skinny guy is that you have to eat a lot of food. Most people who lift weights agree that if you are super skinny, it’s imperative that you don’t think about nutrition that much until later and just start eating more.

However, when examining my diet in respects to bulking up, I noticed that it was severely lacking in my daily requirements for fruits and vegetables. The problem is that to get the daily recommended amount of fruits and vegetables in your diet, you have to eat a good amount every day. Not only is this time consuming, but it isn’t exactly appetizing to eat all this stuff.

Juicing solves both of these problems.

Here’s how long juicing takes (I timed myself today):

Clean and prepare fruits and vegetables (4 minutes)
The actual juicing (5 minutes)
Cleanup (3 minutes)
Drinking the juice (2 minutes)

As you can see the process takes about 14 minutes give or take a minute. 14 minutes for your daily fruits and vegetables intake is not a big deal in my mind.

As for the taste, blending a bunch of fruits and vegetables together into one concoction actually makes the taste awesome. There’s different tastes with different fruits and vegetables you use, but generally the juices I make taste better than eating the fruits and vegetables individually.

Depending on the different fruits and vegetables you include in your juices, these are some of the benefits of juicing:

Better skin
Lower blood pressure
Increased endurance
Increased happiness/Decreased depression

Juicing gives you these benefits because the juice of fruits and vegetables contains a multitude of different antioxidants and phytonutrients you wouldn’t normally get in a typical American diet.

The Costs

Yes, juicing will cost you more money every week than you are normally spending. However in the long run it will be worth it because your health will be much better as you age. This means spending much less on doctor visits for degenerative diseases. That’s the cost-benefit analysis you have to do for yourself. I can’t sit here and tell you that you will be cured from everything by juicing, but just think of it as more health insurance.

As for the actual breakdown, juicers themselves will run anywhere from $60-$300. The difference in price comes down the the style of juicer you have. The lower cost ones work fine and are great for juicing, but the consensus out there says they yield less juice. The higher cost ones crunch up the fruits and vegetables at a slower pace and tend to yield more juice, so there’s a trade off.

The juicer that I purchased is the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Juicer 67650. This is the entry level juicer that comes in at $60. It works great. If you are new to juicing, I recommend getting this. The thing about juicing is that it’s a lifestyle change, and you may not want to invest $300 before finding out if you’ll stick with it.

Get the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Juicer 67650 here

On the other hand you may already have been in the juicing game for a while and be looking to get a higher yield from your juice. If that’s the case I’d recommend moving up to an Omega J8006. These bad boys use a masticating method of extraction. This basically means that the fruits and vegetables are passed through an auger and the juice is slowly extracted. This not only yields more juice, but it also exposes the juice to less oxygen creating a fresher tasting juice.

Get the Omega J8006 here

As for the fruits and vegetables themselves, I have no idea what they cost in your area, but my go to stuff to use are beets, carrots, celery, apples, tomatoes, lemons, and ginger. This isn’t too expensive for a week’s supply, usually under $50 dollars or so. Some ways to save money in this area is to buy at costco, or go to a place like Produce Junction. Produce Junction is a produce store where you get handed produce by the guy behind the counter, but at a much lower cost.

As for buying organic or not, you can save money by buying some things organic and others not depending on where they are on these two lists:

Clean 15

Dirty 12

My Experience

I get up in the morning and immediately go over to the juicer and go to work. I find that right after I consume my juice, I get a little high from it. It’s nothing huge, just a small lift. It feels great and lasts for hours so for me it’s definitely worth it.

I’d like to make it clear that I have no idea on the specifics of what this juice is doing to me. All I know is that I’m getting way more fruits and vegetables into my diet now. I’m coming from a place of relatively good health, so I’m not trying to heal anything in particular. I’m just doing this as a preventative measure.

I’d also like to note that I’m not in this to lose weight. There’s a lot of talk about doing what is known as a “juice cleanse” or “juice fast” to lose weight. I don’t have any weight problems so I’m using this as a supplement to my regular diet. I can’t speak to whether those fasts work or not.

Overall, over the past couple of weeks my experience has been very positive though, and I intend to continue juicing forever.

Here’s my go to beginner recipe: