On Juice Cleansing - My First Attempt

Anyone who embarks on a juice cleanse or juice fast should be required to wear a sign around their necks for the first 48 hours that says, “Step away....I am fasting and it’s not pretty.”  Those first couple of days are brutal, at least they have been for me.  I am now on Day Four of my cleanse and can finally FINALLY write about the experience so far without using any swear words or slurring my speech or crying.  This is my first cleanse, so bear with me as I explain.

Why the heck would anyone WANT to do a juice cleanse in the first place, right?  I mean...who would willingly give up coffee, sugar, alcohol, cheeseburgers and all that other deliciously unhealthy stuff we poke into our pie holes day in and day out, year in and year out and opt to starve themselves for “good health?”  I’m only doing it for a week....some people sign on for TWO!  Anyone who knows me well understands that THIS is just the sort of thing I jump into.  I can’t NOT jump at the idea of a challenge involving willpower and stamina and stupidity.  I’ve jumped out of airplanes, done a fire walk across 1200 degree coals, ran away to Belize on my own for a 7-day adventure travel trip without knowing a single soul I’d be traveling with....and the list goes on.

The cleanse I’m on is entirely my friend Evan’s fault.  I got the grand idea of juice cleansing about a year ago from him.  He led our first trip to Ireland and we stayed in touch thereafter.  Almost immediately upon getting home, Evan said, “things have GOT to change for me” and he embarked on a self-guided health kick involving a 14-day juice fast and that 90 day exercise thingy that’s been all the rage for over a year now.  The next time I saw him, he was completely transformed.  I’m not kidding.  He’d lost all kinds of extra weight and his eyes were clear and he just looked so much healthier, I couldn’t help but get curious about the ways he’d gone about kicking himself in the ass and getting healthy.  I’m already a fitness nut so I was most interested in the juice fasting.  I’ve wanted to give it a try myself but it’s actually been challenging to carve out “THE WEEK” when I felt I could truly pull it off and dedicate myself to not eating and taking care of myself during the process.  

Just ponder for a moment the idea of NOT eating and drinking anything but water and carefully-prepared juices for an entire week.  We are incredibly social beings, us Americans!  How do you go to a wedding or a barbecue or a family dinner when you are on a juice fast??!!  People will KNOW.  People will ask questions.  You will stick out.  You might not be able to be around a wedding cake without giving up all thoughts of civility and launching yourself through the air in your high heels and diving full-bodied onto it.  So:  it takes some careful decision-making about when you feel you could reasonably set aside eating and socializing and other habits for an entire week (or two).  For me, I finally decided it was time when I got back from Ireland (for the second time) about a week or so ago.  While vacationing, I indulged in dining and drinking and also felt completely exhausted from the vacation itself, which was more like adventure travel than a leisure pursuit, to put it mildly.  We toured Ireland again this year with Evan at the helm.  I recall seeing him walk into the bus station in Portland for our first leg of the journey and mumbling to my husband, “Oh my god...Evan looks so thin and healthy.”  Since his first 14-day cleanse, I believe Evan has managed to do at least one and maybe two more.  Having just four days under my belt, Evan has now elevated to Rock Star status in my book.  Knowing that someone else made it through a cleanse has been KEY for me...someone who parties in the pubs and eats probably just as poorly as I do at times.  If he can handle it, then what the heck was I waiting for?  Couple those thoughts with my dwindling self-esteem at having put on a few pounds myself this last year and hating myself for letting it happen and BAM!  As soon as I got back from Ireland, it was time for my cleanse to REALLY happen.

Mike and I chose to have our juices prepared for us at Mojo Health Bar for our first cleanse.  The proper juicing equipment costs about $200 and there’s all that work involved in procuring good, organic veggies and fruit and then preparing all of your juices while working a regular, full week.  We also opted for a seven-day cleanse for our first experience rather than 14.  We just didn’t want to set ourselves up for failure.  We saw the juice cleanse as a way to prepare our bodies for a new life regarding food and diet.  By cleansing in this way, we felt the chances were much higher that we'd not go back to our unhealthy habits, that we'd feed ourselves only things that promote good health and longevity.  No crap.  Through this cleanse, we are cleaning out our temples, our bodies, and hope to treat them better hereafter.

      So, here’s how it works.  Twice a day, Mike goes to Mojo and Philip or Jacqueline prepares our juices.  For the first two days, we drank two 20-ounce juices per day and ate a little bit of salad or steamed veggies.  From Day Three forward, we are drinking three 20-ounce juices per day and as much water as we can handle and no more solids at all.  We are now half way through Day Four.  

Day One was easy for me.  I didn’t even want to eat the solid foods Mike told me I had to eat.  No problem at all...everything was new and I was full of confidence.  I thought the first cup of juice was delicious.  It was full of the taste of beets and celery and kale and carrots.  Not bad at all, I thought.  I worked a full day, drank my two juices, ate a little veggie stir fry for dinner.  I took my two Benadryl at bedtime (another vice...more on that later) and called it a successful first day of juicing. 

Day Two was much, much more challenging.  No coffee meant headaches...which turned into muscle aches and tension in my neck and shoulders.  No caffeine also meant lethargy.  What was I thinking taking the Benadryl??  I was pretty much dragging my achy body around, slurring my speech for much of the day.  And I was a grouch.  And I kind of wanted to cry.  But I didn’t.  I pressed onward and stuck to the plan.  Every time I felt hungry, I sucked on my water bottle.  If I needed an extra perk, I added ice to my bottle.  It’s the little things, I’ve found, that get you through the rough moments.  We decided to let Brody close the school for us and valiantly headed to a Bikram yoga class at 4:30 on Tuesday afternoon, thinking it might help us overcome the headaches and muscle tension and speed along the “detoxing” through all that sweating.  Philip had coached Mike that we should have plenty of energy to do all our normal activities, including working out, so we trusted that we’d make it through class without passing out.  It actually worked for me.  I could even see and feel a difference in my practice already.  One of the biggest motivators for me in doing a cleanse and then following up with better eating habits is the desire to regain mobility in my body.  Extra pounds and let’s face it...fat....encumbers me and I feel like I can’t move the way I’m used to moving.  In my clothes, I feel hemmed in and constricted and tight.  At yoga, I feel like I can’t stretch as far as I used to be able to and can’t get as deeply into my postures as I want to.  So, getting a tiny little boost from noticing that I could tuck my body completely against my legs in a certain posture and seeing my flatter tummy in the mirror made my day.  For Mike, it was a different story.  Mike likes alcohol and he felt like he’d been hit by a truck on day two.  He felt like he was detoxing not just from caffeine and all those other things, but specifically from all that whiskey and beer he’s pickled his body in over the years.  He came out of yoga mad as a hornet and ready to sting everyone in sight.  He hated himself and yoga and his life and....me.  It was a rough night, but he drank his p.m. juice and felt a bit better heading to bed.  We still had headaches but the yoga helped and we’d both lost quite a bit of weight in just the first two days.  I’d lost five pounds and Mike was up near eight.  I reduced my Benadryl dose to 1 pill and tried to get some sleep.

Day Three was nearly as rough as Day Two, honestly.  We both woke up with pounding headaches.  We had less lethargy but neither of us had slept particularly well.  This was our first day without any hope of a reprieve through a little solid food.  It was scary.  Mike made chamomile tea to give us something warm to start the day.  I didn’t even finish my cup.  I drank a ton of water and anxiously awaited my first juice of the day.  Thankfully, the a.m. juice on Day Three was more fruit-based than the previous juices, and there was also a ton of fresh ginger in it.  Honestly, it tasted very intensely of orange peel (not in a good way AT ALL) and the ginger was so strong it burned going down.  It was a pretty orange color though....  And Jacqueline, in hearing about my lethargy, sent along a wheat grass shot for each of us.  So, I basically had spicy ginger and orange peel juice with a chaser of grass to start my day.  I felt better almost instantly.  I’m not kidding!  This juice made my day.  I wanted to lick out the cup (not really...there’s was sludgy orange stuff stuck to it...gross)!   I decided to use my energy to weed the rock wall bordering the playground while the puppies played.    We had another beet-and-green based juice at midday that I had to choke down.  When all you have to look forward to is drinking a garden including the dirt, it can be rough.  In the afternoon, I sat in my chair and napped right along with the puppies.  Things had begun to look up just a bit.  The headaches were still there, but to a much lesser extent, and the lethargy had begun to really lift away.  We drank our evening juice after work and proceeded to do ALL of our indoor and outdoor chores we usually save for the weekend.  This marked the transition into a period of energy we’d heard about from Evan and read about in our research.  Your body is no longer spending 70% of its energy digesting and processing solid food, so you have access to that energy for other things.  We trimmed our 40’ line of shrubs in front of the house, mowed and weed-whacked the lawn and gardens, vacuumed and dusted the entire house and scrubbed the school room and kitchen floors.  And then we fell into bed in a heap of weirdness.  Seriously.  We feel weird.  It’s just not “normal” to deprive your body of all the stuff it’s become accustomed to in a lifetime of eating and drinking mindlessly.  Part of me is just waiting it out, waiting for the whole thing to be over...yet at the same time, I cannot contemplate returning to food again.  It scares me to think about it.  Once you take a break from food, how do you return to it, given what you’ve been through and what you are learning?  No wonder we feel weird.  We are also peeing and pooping red and pink from all the beets.  That’s weird too.  Not a lot of poop, mind you.  That’s not what I expected.  What I expected was to have the blow out runs.  I thought you’d poop your brains out because you were “cleansing” and “detoxing” but since you aren’t taking in solids, there’s not a whole lot coming out the other end.  Cool surprise.

Day Four found me more than six pounds slimmer than when I began.  I pulled my jeans on for work easily and found I could breathe nicely even when they were buttoned.  And, the best part?  No headache at all!  We didn’t even bother with the herbal tea this morning and just started drinking cold water.  Neither of us was looking forward to our first juice of the day but we knew we had to get it down to fuel us through the morning.  I am a total gulper when it comes to these juices.  Thankfully we use straws and I just haul ass on that straw for all I’m worth until all 20 ounces are down the hatch.  Otherwise, I’d be like Mike, pacing around the yard, sipping and wincing.  Not my style.  I’m trying really hard not to reach for my sugarless gum or Tic Tacs today.  My breath is yucky.  My mouth isn’t pasty and I’m not dehydrated...but I don’t like the way my mouth tastes.  Unavoidable I guess.  I’ve had plenty of energy today and we’re planning to hit the mats again tonight at hot yoga.  I’m starting to believe that this juice cleanse is actually a good thing.  I’ve been writing in my journal every morning for 30 minutes and have been feeling emotionally clear and even happy today.  Those first couple of days I felt like I wanted to die, like I was a total idiot for ever embarking on something so difficult.  I stopped telling my customers about it because I couldn’t handle all the comments about why I would do something like this, etc.  Curiously, though, I’ve not been bothered in the least by Brody eating and cooking and drinking around me.  He teases me pretty relentlessly and last night while I was working on my computer he slipped a gummy Lifesaver (big weakness he and I share) beside me and whispered, “eat it...no one has to know” but I shoved it back at him and just laughed.  I have no desire to cheat and want more than anything to see this cleanse through to the final hour.  Things will get interesting as the long weekend approaches.  We plan to hike a 4000-footer in NH on Sunday fueled by nothing but juice and water.  If you don’t hear from me by Monday, send out the search party!  We’ll be hiking Eisenhower.  Oh, and tonight will be my first night in a very long time of attempting to fall asleep and stay asleep without Benadryl.  Yeehah!

What I've Learned From a Weed

There is some type of viney weed that grows on the back edge of our property along a lovely rock wall.  When we first moved here six years ago, this weed was thriving.  It had wound itself around a lilac bush, choked off the growth of a once-beautiful burning bush and twisted its way up and around the trunks and into the branches of several trees, determined to take over and squeeze the life out of these other, more desirable and healthy garden plants.

Over the years, I have continually done my best to thwart the vine’s attempts to thrive....cutting it back, pulling up its roots, loosening its grip on the surrounding greenery.  Sometimes life gets busy and I forget about the vine for weeks at a time, but the weed never forgets, never stops growing.  Before I know it, there it is again with its sticky, curly, tenacious tendrils draping and winding up, up, up.  This past spring I put in a good three to four hours yanking on it, hacking off its woody stalks and balling up and tossing out yards and yards of its handiwork.  And still:  it thrives.  Still, it finds new and more crafty ways to travel underground and pop up elsewhere in the yard as a new menace to yet another area of planned, purposeful beauty.

After six years of this, I feel like this weed and I are in a relationship.  I find myself talking to it as I work along the rock wall, marveling aloud at its will to live, its determination to “be,” however bothersome and irritating I may find its ongoing presence.  “Hello, weed.  I see you’ve been quite busy this last week.  The rain seems to have softened the ground and aided your tireless efforts.”

Sometimes I’m frustrated and less-than-impressed with my weed’s stunning tenacity.  “I hate you, you piece of shit.  Get out of my yard or I’ll get out the Round Up and blast your ass.”

Here and there, I have the time and energy to match the weed’s ardor for growth with my own enthusiasm for its annihilation and happily spend several moments plucking small, tender weeds up by the roots...tens and tens of them.  The growing pile in my hand feels powerful.  My black-eyed Susans almost wink in collusion.  It never escapes me, though, that this amazing vine has adapted quite nicely to human attempts at uprooting and thwarting it, as time and again the shoots break off at ground level as I try to pull them up root-and-all.  "I'm still here," it seems to be whispering, "even if you can't see me, I am here just beneath the surface."  What an admirable and worthy foe.  It’s almost too bad that it’s NOT a wanted plant, that it’s a parasite and a killer of the good stuff.

I’ve been wondering for a while now about this vine and its possible purpose in my daily round.  Certainly there’s something to be learned here for me....and perhaps for you, too, dear reader.  I’ve decided that, for me, the weed is a reminder of the ever-present possibility of allowing the “wrong thing” to take root and grow in my life.  I think all of us have a secret (or not-so-secret) broken place, something that lurks around in the dark corners of our lives that needs examination...light...honesty...monitoring...management....and yes even perhaps annihilation.  Each of us may give this “something” a different name:  addictions of various types come to mind, wily wounds from the past that pester and bother and fester in our current lives, too.  Perhaps we refer to our secret something as a “guilty pleasure” or a “bad habit.”  I know what mine is and where it “lives” in me, and I think that’s half the battle won.  Becoming and staying aware of its crafty and coy nature, I become stronger.  Understanding its many disguises and tricks used to gain a foothold in my otherwise joyful and carefree life, I’m better prepared.  

Like the viney weed in my yard, I am in a relationship with this aspect of myself.  Modern day spiritual/psychological gurus like Wayne Dyer and Eckhart Tolle would refer to this part within all of us as our “ego” or “childlike self.”  A helpful reminder for me is this:  “my ego is NOT my friend.”  Left to its own devices, this part of me can take over...especially when I’m feeling weak, tired, lacking.  Without my constant presence of mind and “weeding techniques,” I easily become inundated with negativity, bogged down by a heaviness of heart or swept away in self-indulgent fantasies.  Working with my viney weed has helped me to better understand this secret something that resides inside of me and to have a certain amount of respect and tenderness towards it.  It’s not something that will ever completely go away, perhaps.  It needs a certain amount of attention, preferably daily, to keep it in check.  A little bit of work each day and I can keep it at bay, keep it from growing, festering, taking over.  I like the metaphor.  Now, each time I’m weeding that back edge of my property, I am reminded not only to weed my own inner garden but also to nourish the tender shoots of what’s most beautiful in me and in my life, to pay attention to what’s good and what’s lovely in and around me.  Nature is such an amazing and powerful teacher, yes?  Namaste.