Fast and Furious

I want to start this post with the sentiment that has been sticking with me all week long. Kale is evil. For those of you who do not know what kale is, kale is a leafy green that folds in on itself a lot. It reminds me of parsley that's gotten out of hand.

You might be asking yourself why I am suddenly writing about the alignment of produce. You might also be asking yourself what an alignment is(if you don't know, you might be on the wrong blog). The reason I am suddenly discussing this is because I am just finishing up day 4 of a juice fast. This is something my wife has done in the past and wanted to do again. So, to support her in this, we bought a juicer...then I agreed to join her in boycotting chewing things.

A bit of back story on me: I am not what I would call "fat" but I am not exactly as slim as I would like to be. Laziness and a penchant for fried, extremely tasty foods have left me with more pounds than I really know what to do with, I have been drinking a steady stream of mountain dew for the last 13 years or so, and I really enjoy bacon and everything you only find when fair season comes around.

I have had no preparation for this endeavor. I did no homework. I watched no documentaries. You can count all the fucks I give about spirituality through fasting on zero hands. I am strictly doing this to support my wife and so I don't have to buy new pants.

Let's go through this day by day.

Day 1:

Woke up in the morning and finished the last can of Mt Dew I had remaining in my house. Attempted to postpone my fate by saying "we also need to eat all of the remaining nacho chips and guacamole that is sitting in the fridge." That didn't work. Currently I have an unopened bag of Santita's sitting on my counter. Mocking me.

Then, we went to the store. Got a whole bunch of stuff we thought we would like, or knew that we needed. Then went home and ran the juicer for the first time. Now, this is not a top of the line juicer. This was the least expensive one we could find that had decent reviews. I'm actually pretty surprised at how well this thing performs. We prepped our vegetables and ran the ingredients through the extremely loud, miniature jet engine that now resides on our counter. Celery, carrots, ginger, apples, half a lemon, and my nemesis. This was my first experience with the green menace. I want to be able to tell you all that it wasn't as bad as I expected. I want to be able to tell you that the juice was surprisingly tasty. Those would both be bold faced lies, and I feel that you deserve better.

 The kale was overbearing, the apples didn't sweeten it up enough, the carrots were lost beneath the ginger. All I could taste was kale and I wanted to die. We choked it down and later on in the day we tried another recipe for swamp water which was slightly more bearable. I had a pretty crazy headache at the end of the day because I had been replacing my normal caffeine intake with stuff like water...and health. Other than the headache, I felt pretty good. I was ready to try new things and blah blah blah.

Also, at the end of the day, I was able to walk into the grocery store, buy a cart full of produce, and go home without having any type of snack fall into the cart. This was a good start for me.

Day 2:

OH. MY. GOD. I. WANT. FOOD.

That's my entire thought process for most of day 2. If any of you decide to try this, avoid anything on TV or radio or movies until you get past this phase, because everything you see will make you want that food RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

Day 2 is where I didn't just get to stay at home with the support of my wife. Day 2 was the day I went to work. I work in an office. My office building has a wonderful little cafe on the first floor that will make wonderful things such as fried shepherd's pie. Also, I work in an office where apparently people can't go for more than 10 minutes without cramming something into their face hole.

All day long I was bombarded by the scents of all of those things I couldn't have...basically anything that requires teeth. Also, my headache came back with a vengeance. A few Advil took care of it, but it wasn't pretty.

In the morning my wife attempted a grapefruit and carrot juice that she enjoys. I took a sip and almost started wishing for kale. It's not because I enjoy the taste of kale more than grapefruit, it's just that grapefruit unlocks the secret bitter taste buds that don't really appear for me in any other food I eat. To me, grapefruit is a Mjolnir of bitterness to the face.

I choked down a glass of the stuff and created my own lunch combo. It ended up being blueberries, grape, apple and orange. This was tasty as hell and I enjoyed it at work that day. It allowed me to make it through the rest of the afternoon and get home to something called "Mean Green". I won't go into detail here because juicers love this drink. It is in every juice blog, and every juice recipe book. What I will say to the non-juicers is: Stay the fuck away from mean green.

Day 3:

That morning I woke up after having food dreams. My head was pounding and I was craving anything. My dreams reminded me of cartoons where they have people stranded on a desert island and start showing them having food hallucinations. Things in my dreams were just randomly becoming food and I was eating it all. At one point, I did manage to bring my conscience into the dream. I was at the beach and was hungry. Standing there, being tempted by the fried dough, french fries, Italian sausage and myriad of other boardwalk foods, I sent a message out on Facebook. "Anyone near the beach have a juicer?" Even in my starving dream, I remembered I needed to juice. I received a text from my wife, "On my way...with chicken!" I don't think I could have ever loved her more than in that one moment in my dream.

 Most of day 3 went by in a blur after that. I made the same recipe I had had for lunch on day 2, only without the oranges for my lunch. I had the remnants of my wife's "green lemonade" (yes, more kale) and headed off for work. One of my coworkers ordered Chinese towards the end of the day and I almost cried. Went home, made a new concoction of kale, carrots, apples, grapes and ginger for dinner and this time it wasn't so bad. I had enough sweet items to make most of the kale. It was still there. It's always there. But it was bearable.

Day 4:

This was today. Now I'm starting to feel the effects of the "detox" phase of juicing. I feel like I've taken a bunch of niacin and I'm feeling...lighter. I've lost a total of about 7 lbs so far, and the cravings have died down for the most part. My headache from lack of caffeine seems to be gone, and I am able to function a little better.

I did have an episode this afternoon when pizza was bought for my department. This pizza was from one of the best places in the city, and while people walked around handing it out, they realized I couldn't have any and tried to apologize. I grabbed a slice and put it on my desk with every intention of eating it...then I thought a moment. I have been without any solid food since Sunday night. What would a slice of pizza do to me at this point? I managed to stare down what would have very likely been the best tasting piece of pizza I would ever eat, and pass it on to one of my coworkers...untouched. I'm shocked at my willpower in the extent that I still haven't eaten anything. Although, at this point it is more out of fear than out of any real desire to lose weight or prove something to myself.

Anyway, now that day 4 is in the books and I have started out doing ok. I am going to try to start blogging about this further. Currently I have lost a total of 7 lbs in 4 days. I am expecting this to taper off, especially now that the initial water weight phase has completed. This was initially going to be a 30 day fast. I would still like to shoot for 30 days, but I'm going to reassess after 10, just to make sure I'm being somewhat healthy. I'll keep you all posted.