Why is juicing bad? I have to be honest, I don’t know much about juicing. I think it’s because, in the low-carb world, my impression is that it’s mainly done with fruit or berries or things that are sweet. Those things have carbohydrates and so it wouldn’t make sense to me to have something that’s so high in carbohydrates. You would have to burn through all the carbs before your body is going to give up any of its own body fat if you’re trying to burn body fat or reverse type 2 diabetes or other metabolic problems. But, some people do come to my clinic every now and then with the idea that juicing is great.
My simplification in terms of fat burning and carb burning is that you have to count those grams of total carbohydrates and you have to stay under a certain threshold. Your threshold may differ, but I keep people at 20 grams to make sure that their body is going to give up some of its own fat. Let’s look through the lens of how many carbs there are in juicing. I looked at some recipes for juicing that include nutritional information and one of them showed 47 grams (of carbohydrate) for one serving. That is high if I’m trying to stay under 20 grams of total carbs per day. I suppose if you just did the vegetable juicing, using greens, you could possibly create a juice that’s low in carbs. You just have to look at the ingredients you’re using. We do have a list of foods with the allowed amounts of greens and vegetables and I suppose you could come up with a non-sweet version or check out how many carbs are in an apple or a strawberry and then maybe have a little bit of strawberry to flavor it. There are some products that do that. They contain a fraction of a berry or a fruit. There are some low-carb yogurts or imitation yogurts in our area that have little pieces of fruit at the bottom.
Remember, there’s no forbidden food. There’s no “keto food.” Keto is a metabolic state of fat burning and you want to get there by keeping your carbs super low. Adding oils, medium-chain triglycerides, and butter to coffee may help you get into ketosis but it’s not necessary. It’s not required. Your body will burn its own fat and make its own ketones from within. The method I teach was designed back in the 1860s. There were no apps, no internet keto confusion, and there were no juicers. Choose a method of learning a low-carb keto diet that’s simple. A typical-sized apple has 20 grams of carbs. A quarter of an apple would be five grams, so if you put a sliver of an apple into your smoothie or juice that contains mainly vegetables, that might be okay. I’m not sure how it would taste, though! If you could stick to a quarter cup of berries, fruit, or whatever you’re putting in your juicer and everything else was super low in carbs, it might work. If you eat something off my list of foods, the proof is, it has to work. I can pretty much guarantee that if you follow the list of foods, it will work like a prescription drug. It’s been tested that much.
If you want to add in things, you want to watch the total grams of carbs, whether you’re trying to lose weight, reverse diabetes, or have other metabolic problems. I won’t hassle you if you’re juicing using certain things and you’re getting good results. If you’re eating mainly meat, poultry, fish, shellfish, and eggs and you’re adding in some of these other things, you’re going to get great nutrition so I won’t worry about you. Watch the full video here.