My health is nowhere near as poor as his, thank God. I'm overweight and I have hypertension but that's kind of like saying you have an iPhone and a drive a sedan in that most people seem to fall into that category these days (not to dismiss them as being acceptable, mind you, just to say that I'm not out of the ordinary). Still, I was intrigued by the notion of a juice fast and cleanse. The idea of your body functioning purely off the liquid residuals of pulverized fruits and vegetables was fascinating if not somewhat baffling (notice I used the word "was" and not "is" in that sentence). Part of it was because I wanted to do something to benefit myself, however I will admit that another aspect of it was a desire just to try it for the sake of seeing how my body would react.
In the film, Cross' fast lasts for 60 days. I knew I wasn't going to do anything near that - as I told my wife, at some point I'm going to want a cheeseburger and I'm only going to be able to deny myself for so long. As it turned out, my fast lasted for the better part of 2 days before I decided to throw in the towel.
When I initially had the idea of doing a juice fast, I bought a juicer from the Walmart in Orangeburg, South Carolina. I can't help but be honest in stating that positive experiences with this particular Walmart have been few and far between for my wife & I, and I should've had that in mind when I went there with the expressed purpose of buying a juicer. I hadn't done a whole lot of research into juicers but I knew I didn't want to invest an arm and a leg in one. They had a Black & Decker model on display that caught my eye - it was a low-end device based on its price point but I figured it would work well enough for me. I have always gotten good performance out of the Black & Decker tools I own so my confidence in it as being a quality purchase was somewhat high. I grabbed it with haste just in case anyone else might have been eyeballing it at the same time as me because it was the only one of that particular model left on the shelf.
As I put the juicer's box up onto the conveyor at the checkout counter, I noticed that it appeared as though the tape on the packaging had been tampered with. Suddenly I became worried that this unit might have been purchased previously and returned. "It'll be alright", I told myself. "Just wash it out when you get it home to be safe..." When I opened the box at home, this is what I found.
As I feared, the juicer had in fact been purchased and returned. I had not counted on it having been purchased, used, returned, and then set out on the shelf for purchase again without every being inspected. I would like to blame the original purchaser for having lied to the staff at customer service about not having used or opened the juicer, but at the same time I blame Walmart for having not taken the time to inspect a return prior to pushing it back out onto the sales floor. To that end, I will say that when I took the juicer back to Walmart I met no resistance in making the return however the employee who reclaimed the device from me marked it as being defective. It might have been defective, or it might have worked fine - the truth of the matter is that I don't know. All I do know is that this almost turned me off to the prospect of juicing as a whole. As you might expect, I was quite grossed out by having brought God only knows what kind of refuse into my home. Even so, I put the money I was returned towards the purchase of a Hamilton Beach juicer which wound up being about $30 more expensive than the Black & Decker.
I've learned that when it comes to juicers (or juice extractors, as they seem to be referred to more commonly) there are two types, centrifugal and cold press. Centrifugal juicers are less expensive; they work by forcing the unlucky specimen to be juiced through a metal blade which spins at an incredibly high rate. The spinning motion helps to separate juice from pulp as the two diverge into separate containers. These juicers aren't seen as being the best option, nutritionally speaking, as the blade builds up heat and heat can lead to a loss of nutrients. Cold press juicers, on the other hand, are more expensive as they grind up their victims then press the resulting bits in order to squeeze out their vital fluids. Apparently they yield more juice as the process is more efficient and they don't generate as much heat so they produce a higher quality juice.
In preparation for my fast I did a fair amount of research (read, I Google'd something) regarding juice recipes. Full disclosure here; I wasn't looking at nutritional values when I considered recipes, rather I was trying to put together a menu of sorts that included concoctions I thought would be pleasing to my palette. I figured if I was going to be putting myself through this I should at least be having drinks that are tasty. Trust me when I say it's tough to figure out what's going to taste better when A) I have no idea what vegetable juice tastes like outside of a good, old fashioned V8 and B) my experience with raw vegetables is somewhat limited. If it hasn't shown up on one of the local salad bars or a pizza, chances are it is a completely foreign substance to me.
At the same time, when looking at recipes I tried to keep in mind the fact that our local grocer isn't exactly known for carrying what I'll refer to as exotic selections of flora and fauna. It's a Piggly Wiggly for crying out loud (or at least it is right now; Bi-Lo bought a bunch of the Pigs in the area and they're supposed to be converting them to Bi-Lo's soon), what do you expect?
As it would turn out, I was able to find a majority of the ingredients I went after - cucumbers, carrots, lemons, limes, apples, etc. I wound up having to substitute romaine for spinach as the only spinach to be had was a carton of baby spinach. Likewise, I had to omit other ingredients like beet root and ginger because they weren't available.
I don't remember the complete contents of my purchase but the grand total was in the area of $35. That wasn't too bad of an expense in my mind. I figured since these materials were going to replace my meals for the next few days $35 was reasonable when compared to the average per meal cost. I didn't realize this when I was in the store but my wife pointed out when I got home that a lot of discounts were in play according to the Pig's mail ad we'd received that same day (an effort on their part to clear the shelves as much as possible before Bi-Lo's stock arrives), and fruits & vegetables were included in the sale. I take the time to point this out because in actuality what I bought for $35 might have normally been much more than that.
This is as good a transition as any into talking about the cost of this endeavor as juicing is criticized as being an expensive approach to wellness. At this point I'd invested roughly $100 into the project between the $60 I paid for the juicer and the $35 spent on fruits & vegetables. Lets assume that I bought enough food to sustain myself for 3 days in that purchase. By this arrangement, were I to continue the fast for a longer period of time - say the entire week - I'd have been looking at spending $70 or more, which equals out to roughly $10 a day. That's not bad, so long as you're dedicated to doing what you're doing and can bear the burden. However, I will say that my wife and I typically spend in the area of $60-$70 per week on groceries; that's for the two of us and it includes a lot more than just a bunch of stunt doubles from VeggieTales. What I'm getting at here is that in terms of bang for your buck, it would appear that juicing isn't the most economical option but that should be no real surprise. For a number of logical and illogical reasons, fresh foods are simply more expensive than their boxed and canned counterparts.
I planned on starting my fast on a Saturday as I wanted to be at home when I kicked things off for fear of how my body might react. For my last meal, as it were, my wife and I ate dinner the night before at a local Sonic Drive-In. Yep, high class big spenders me and her, that's what we are. I had a large order of tots with chilli, cheese, and jalapenos while she had a corn dog. We wound up ordering desert as well, mine in the form of a small caramel java chiller and hers a molten cake sundae. I figure it was about as poor of a meal as could be had considering I was about to embark on a journey to health & wellness. My stomach apparently agreed with me as I had to make a number of emergency trips to the restroom during the night (FYI, I'm not done talking about bowel movements yet so stay tuned for more of that).
The next morning I made my first juice, a recipe that had been named "power punch". It was amusing to me when looking at recipes that most of them were given monikers that were affirming and overwhelmingly positive in nature. Looking through them made me feel as if I were going to be drinking a motivational poster instead of a juice cocktail. In hindsight, the motivational poster probably would've tasted better than some of the juices I put together.
Power punch consists of 1/3 of a pineapple, 1 lime (the original recipe called for 2 limes; I only used 1 in fear of 2 making it too tart), 1/2 of a cucumber, 6 romaine leaves (which I substituted in place of spinach), and 2 apples. I'm not lying when I tell you this was actually quite good, especially when it was ice cold. The pineapple juice paired up well with the apple and lime, making for a very refreshing beverage. True to its name, I did feel a boost of energy after I drank it. This was a good debut and it made me look forward to trying other combinations.
Unfortunately, power punch wound up being the only juice recipe I tried that didn't taste like I was drinking the scum scraped off the interior walls of a poorly maintained swimming pool. Not that I know what pool scum tastes like, mind you, but it seemed like an appropriate analogy. I blame this lack of palette-ability on the inclusion of cucumber juice in most of the other recipes. Admittedly, I am not the world's biggest fan of cucumber as I will eat it in a salad but not in large quantities and not without the addition of a dressing (because a suitable amount of ranch dressing can make anything taste better, that's why). The cucumber juice was oddly overpowering, even when mixed in with a variety of flavors. I use the word oddly there because cucumber doesn't normally come off as being especially pungent, although it was in this scenario.
I knew that preparing ingredients would be time consuming but I didn't know how time consuming it would wind up being. I'm unaccustomed to breaking down foods as part of my normal routine of receiving sustenance, meaning it probably wasn't as bad as it seemed to me but all the washing, peeling, and cutting got old quickly. I tried to use the time spent in prep mode to focus, not really meditating but at least concentrating on what I was doing and keeping a good internal monologue going. I was talking to myself about how much I'd sooner have been eating Chinese food, in other words.
The preparation wasn't the only aspect of this process that became a chore. Cleaning up after each juicing session might have been more bothersome than the prep work, if for no other reason than I wound up having to scrub the blade/strainer apparatus thoroughly after every juicing lest bits from the previous batch stay lodged in the device and affect either that juice or the performance of the machine. It became a hassle, is what I'm getting at, and that sensation built over the course of the weekend. Not only with the process but with the fact that I wasn't allowing myself to eat.
There's the real beast you wind up fighting when enduring this or any other kind of fast - the feelings of hunger and, in my case, its associate, the caffeine headache. By about 2 PM that first day I'd begun to feel empty, and this was after having had several juices and lots of water (water will only make you feel full for so long but it was quite good at rinsing out from my pie hole the putrid flavors I'd forced upon myself). I usually drink a cup of coffee in the morning and have a soda with my lunch, which is why I assume the headache was caffeine related although it could've been associated with my sinuses as I have random issues with allergies. At no point did I regret what I was doing and it wasn't as if I'd put myself in any kind of danger, I just didn't like being hungry because in my mind I knew I didn't have to be.
All this was compounded by the fact that my wife was out & about for a majority of the day as she had a handful of events to attend, meaning I was home alone with no one to express myself to other than Roddy, our beloved miniature Dachshund. I can talk to him but I have a feeling he only listens because he can't reach the treat bags himself.
I mentioned earlier the fact that the meal I had prior to kicking off my fast had an unexpected cleansing effect, if you catch my drift. It was a surprise because that's the kind of reaction I normally get from eating at Subway, not Sonic. I can only assume that because of this the juices didn't do what I'd expected them to do in the way of de-cluttering my colon. (Perhaps the juices I made weren't rich enough in fiber to do the job.) Other than when I was dealing with the residuals of my Sonic tots, I didn't poop at all that weekend. Not a once.
I kept up with my juicing into Sunday but by Sunday evening I'd had enough. Wifey was out of the house again, this time off to the theater with her Mom to see a live production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and it was just about all I could do not to eat the entire contents of our kitchen (appliances and flatware included). I didn't like being hungry and I really didn't like the way my juices were tasting. At that point I gave in and made myself a ham & turkey sandwich with a side of Wheat Thins. Believe me when I tell you that food never tastes better than when you've gone without it for more than a day.
In wrapping this up I will say that my expectations for this experience were not met. I hoped to come away from it feeling revitalized and confident in the choice I'd made to try and improve my well being through wholesome consumption of pure nutrients. What I got was a piece of kitchen technology that I will more than likely rarely or never use again and a variety of leftover fruits & vegetables. I hope my depiction of what I went through would not dissuade others from juicing, though, as I will be the first to tell you that I lack the dedication to stick with something like this for a protracted length of time as being hungry is not fun. Those who do certainly are equipped with a greater constitution than I as it takes a lot of heart and mental toughness to stick with this or any other restrictive diet.
I'm not a nutritionist and I can't say that your results will be as fantastic as those of Joe Cross, but if you're in poor health or you're eating yourself to death this might not be a bad option. It is do-able, you just have to want to do it more so than anything else for it to be successful.
No comments:
Post a Comment