Have you just been on holidays? Did you return refreshed? Did you sleep well? Did you enjoy eating healthy nutritious food every day? Did you get your exercise in?

No? Neither did I. So that makes two of us.

For the last two weeks or so I have been holidaying in Spain. The sun was beautiful and the resort was really good. The kids were crazy and the entertainment was fun. The food, however, was not so good. I have been gorging my usual plant-based self on a wide variety of meat and dairy junk foods – I’ve been bingeing on burgers, pizzas, cheesey baguettes, alcohol, fizzy drinks, ice cream (to help with the hangovers), fry-ups, chocolate, jellies, and crisps.

I did not intend to act like this on holidays but I didn’t cook at all so the takeout options all revolved around this junk. It was fun to change my eating approach for a while, and while they all tasted suitably good when combined with the booze, the after-effects were horrible.

No energy, weight gain of about 7-8 lbs in just 2 weeks and coming home exhausted. Not sure it was really worth it but as step 1 to recover I am doing a juice fast for a few days to try and detoxify my body after my junk food experiment.

This is Day 2 and so far so good. I can literally feel the purge happening inside and with numerous trips to the restroom, I have seen proof that the detox is working.

I am drinking nothing but the Hulk Juice for the next few days. I haven’t set an end date yet as I just want to see how it goes.

The Hulk Juice

• 1 cucumber
• 1 head of celery
• 1 handful of cabbage leaves, any type. You could also use kale or spinach here.
• 2 apples
• 1 lime

This will make about 1 litre of juice so I tend to triple this recipe for a day worth of juice. You can also add some coconut water to this to mix it up and add extra magnesium to the juice.

I find juicing a great way to RESET the body after periods of maybe not behaving as good as you normally would. It will lead me back to the plant-based way nicely.

If you have never tried a juice fast, I would highly recommend it but choose a few days in a row where you don’t have that much on so you can rest up if you need to.

Yours in health and happiness,

JP