“Vegetable and fruit juices are good for you, so why are they out of the challenge?”

“The juices have vitamins and minerals my body needs. Why they are out?”

“What’s the problem with diet drinks? They contain no sugar. They are recommended to diabetics. I don’t understand.”

If those thoughts crossed your mind, today is for you.

Vitamins vs Sugar

Write the following on paper on hang on your fridge:
Sugar will take whatever health benefits the food will give you.

It’s a rule of thumb and 99.99% of the time is true.

For example, when you eat sugar, if there are extra vitamins, the body doesn’t use the vitamins properly.

Plus, if sugar is around, vitamins do not start the repair of sugar damage. Vitamins only help once the sugar is out.

Besides, between you and me, today’s modern agriculture took away most vitamins and minerals from plants. Our grand-grandparents sucked the minerals out from the ground before us.

But they didn’t have supplements!

Your body will get every vitamin and mineral it needs to repair sugar damage from the supplements. It means you’re free to not depend on eating meals to get them. It’s freedom right there 😇

Fruit Juices

OK, that’s easy.

Fruits have tons of sugar. To create a juice you need to squeeze a lot of fruits = a lot of sugar. And remove all the fiber and usually the skin.

By the way, most of the health benefits of fruits are coming from the skin, not the pulp. For example, the benefits of red wine are from the skin of the grapes, not the sugar in grapes.

So fruit juices give you all the sugar but without the fiber and the skin.

The only “juice” allowed in the challenge is cutting a small piece of lemon and putting it in your clean water. Lemon juice is out of the challenge.

Vegetable Juices

Vegetables have less sugar than fruits. But they have enough so that when you squeeze them into a juice, they may prevent the repair.

We’re not in the business of doing everything right and having one little thing destroying the whole shebang, aren’t we?

So wait with your favorite vegetable juice after the challenge.
The only vegetable “juice” allowed in the challenge is cutting a few pieces of cucumber and putting it in your clean water.
So you have that and the piece of lemon in water.

Diet Drinks

They contain chemical sweeteners that create sugar damage without the calories. And we’re after sugar damage, not calories, so these drinks are out. It’s fully explained on Day 11 – Sugar-Free Foods.

Alcohol

The rules for alcohol in the challenge are simple. You can drink once a day of:

• Dry red wine and dry white wine – glass• Hard liquor (gin, rum, vodka…) – shot
• You can add ice and sparkling water to
these.

These are outside of the challenge:

• Any sweet additions to the above, including Redbull, etc.
• All semi-dry wines, or sweetened wines
• All beer (yea, sorry about that!)
• All cocktails. All of them. (Sorry again)

What’s the best alcohol to drink? Dry red wine, unsweetened.

More to read:
About diet drinks – Day 4 of the Challenge – Sugar-Free Foods