The Good Idea

We decided to do a three day juice fast. 

It just dawned on us, as we moved into the juicing world.  It really was a simple case after viewing the Joe Cross documentary Fat Sick & Nearly Dead.  You can get the details with a simple Google search on the topic, but suffice to say that Joe lost 100 pounds as well as remedied his debilitating autoimmune disease by going on a sixty day juice only diet.  Yes, we were impressed, but never considered anything as radical as what he did; and frankly we didn’t feel we needed to; we weren’t miserable. Yet, the more we dug into the topic, the more we found many attractive benefits in a tailored shorter three to five day juice fast; so one day, on impulse, we decided to do just that.

   Now, my wife is one who digs her teeth into a topic once she’s decided it’s important; I admire that, and frankly I depend on her focus a lot of the time.  I’ve always been the broad stroke sort of visionary; where she is the nuts-and-bolts disposition; as we tell it, “Albert needs to see an elephant wearing a tutu on fire to see it.” Yes, we complement one another wonderfully.  So then, she derived recipes for every meal of our fast, (including juice-pitstop-energy bolts necessary for this epoch adventure.) She made a list and we went to Whole Foods and shopped for all of the necessary-and sometimes exotic- ingredients.  The most alarming fact I was unaware of until we ventured into this journey was the cost; $225 for five days worth of vegetables and fruits was pricy.  The other facet neither of us fully appreciated, even when we did have a winking-notion of it; was the magnitude of discomfort.   Yes, we were aware of a myriad of aches and pains to be visited, but they’d manifest themselves, it was said, most often in the second day.  That didn’t prove to be true for us.  By the twelfth hour my wife was moaning in serious duress; to the point of collapsing on the living room floor blubbering about how she couldn’t see herself mustering the strength to make it upstairs to our bedroom; I knew I was in no shape for an ad hoc rescue-carry-mission, never mind the fact that she barely weighs a hundred pounds soaking wet; probably a lot less after a day of no food.  Now truth be told, I was ambivalent on the idea from the start. Not that I’m even slightly edging towards any finger pointing drill.  Because if anyone should be called to task, it would be me; I had experience. In the past I had fasted, and it wasn’t pleasant. I really don’t remember the reason I did it back then, most likely, under the same sort of enthusiastic ignorance as this time; for better skin, or to wash out toxins.  Most likely still, I embarked this time with the same sweet forgetfulness about the suffering. 

   So I’m clear on the word suffering.  There is of course life’s pains; physical by injury; limiting congeniality. Then there is mental suffering, by emotional conjecture.  Most of the suffering of the mental realm can be addressed with reorienting one’s thinking; so I’ve been trained to believe.  Physical suffering is a bit more of an art in denial.  The nerves in the body are doing their job; they’re signaling dis-ease.  Whether that’s temporary; heat, cold, pressure; by design to alert the mind of the body’s situational conditions that needs addressing. Then there’s permanent, where left unattended will result in serious injury, maiming, and sometimes if ignored long enough; death. But the sensory system has evolved to fulfill that singular purpose; alert the conscious mind to act.  Depriving the body of its essentials will trigger the notice to the consciousness of our being. It is, then, an exercise of ignoring the body for a desired imagined end.  This denial of the elementary needs of the body is the suffering we intentionally embraced; due to a lofty goal that at this writing, has become totally beyond my recollection. But alas, my agreement with my semi-conscious wife to end our quest for the sake of survival put me in good stead with her graces; quitting likes reassuring company. I’ll add that no lesson, no matter how unpleasant, is wasted. We are now alerted to our threshold of suffering for a cause; nearly tissue thin.  And that’s ok with me, I’ve several decades of suffering under my belt with the military and you know, I’ve little to show for it but the scars and the conviction to no more of this silly suffering needlessly.  

  Then there’s the consequence of what to do with all the fresh vegetables packed into the refrigerator. Yup, there’s plenty of external situations to bring suffering into a very intimate roll with daily routine.  I say, don’t invite that kind of guest to your table; nothing good will come of this ~it will only end in tears.