A Juice Fast

​We're a couple of days into our first juice fast. I'm going along in solidarity with my husband. This project is what I refer to as a Fact Finding Mission; it's one of many that I've undertaken out of a spirit of curiosity. I prefer to find out what something is like for myself, based on direct experience, rather than my inner sense of resistance. I'm not a true believer, not yet anyway. I thought our experiment might provide useful information to both skeptics and the hesitant.

The first thing to share is that in no way could I have guessed what fasting felt like from observation. We've both been on diets, generally not at the same time, and it's similar. It's similar to other ordeals, such as Finals Week or caffeine withdrawal, which may have been undergone and then largely forgotten. It's a human failing not to have much sympathy for others, whether they're suffering something we have suffered and overcome or something with which we're unfamiliar. Doing this fast together helps us to remember that we're both struggling.

The second thing to share is that it's not really as bad as all that. We're hungry but functioning. The big thing is to remember to start preparing the next juice, soup, or salad on schedule, because delaying by an hour or more turns into crashing. We're doing about double the food prep that we do for ordinary meals. My husband has to make his next day's pitcher of juice after dinner, as well as packing up his breakfast and lunch, so the first day was front-loaded with extra effort.

I used to have a second-hand juicer, which I eventually gave to a friend. It created a great deal of pulp. We went out and bought a high-end blender, which is technically a different beast. It is about ten times easier to clean than the juicer and there's no pulp afterward. This was a good decision.

The juice itself tends to look scary and taste fine. This may be because it IS fine, or it may be because we eat a lot of cruciferous vegetables already. I'm really not sure whether a picky eater who hates vegetables could get behind this. It's not just the juicing part but also the vast salads and the vegetable soups. You're literally eating nothing but fruit, vegetables, herbs, and a little salt and oil, so if you hate those things, it probably won't work out. (But then, consider whether your default is working out...)

On the second day, I walked five miles, went grocery shopping, did three loads of laundry, moved some furniture, and made four separate dishes. This surprised me somewhat. When I went on a strict calorie-cutting diet, eating the same number of calories as on the juice fast, I felt lethargic and mopey. There is definitely something to be said for ingesting massive amounts of micronutrients and fiber, as opposed to subsisting on tiny portions of more ordinary fare. (A packet of oatmeal, a tiny sandwich, a single piece of fruit, and a dinner salad or other measured, minute quantity).

Fasting has a gendered aspect. A big, hockey-playing, chainsaw-wielding man such as my husband, who has an advanced degree, can go on a strict fringe diet and make it look like little more than an interesting athletic challenge. Such stamina, such dedication! A small-framed, delicate flower of femininity such as myself sends more of a message of insanity, body dysmorphia, or narcissism. All I can say is that I know my own mind. I've done all sorts of things out of curiosity, from riding a mechanical bull to jumping over open flames. What I've found is that my own physical limitations have yet to be reached. Every time I try to do something, it turns out that I can do it. That includes running a marathon.

Concern in our culture over excessive weight loss is so strong as to approach hysteria. Perhaps this is because 70% of us are overweight now, and even 25 pounds overweight looks small. Perhaps this is because most of us don't like contemplating at what age we will develop diabetes, if we don't have it already, and so we turn our focus toward health problems at the opposite end of the spectrum. This taboo aspect of physical transformation is part of the fascination for me. So few people know about the experience of being not-fat now that it's become alien and alarming. Perhaps a bit of reassurance is in order. According to the charts, I would have to lose a full 15 pounds to be underweight, and that's not happening in such a brief time period. Even if I did drop a dramatic amount of weight, say from food poisoning, I can gain a pound a day without even trying. This is not a project that is likely to result in permanent harm, or even short-term harm. My goal is not to lose weight or to look a certain way, but rather to share an experience with my husband. Although, when my goal was to lose weight, I did it and have maintained it for two and a half years. No crazy was gone.

Athletes do it all the time. Actors do it all the time. Spiritual practitioners from most, maybe all, religious traditions do it all the time. Pre-Industrial people of every culture did it every winter, and do it still, in an unbroken chain that goes back before human history, before human prehistory, and undoubtedly all the way back to the beginning. Animals in the wild cannot rely on steady access to a standard amount of calories every day, in all seasons. Occasional, unintentional fasting is the way of the world for all life forms. Occasional, voluntary fasting is a common cultural trait.

Both of us are over forty. We look around and see that almost everyone we know in our age range relies on pharmaceuticals to live. We have a dozen friends who rely on medical appliances, either for diabetes or for sleep apnea. There always seems to be someone we know who is going into surgery or recuperating from it. This is nervous-making. My husband just filled out a questionnaire for his health insurance at work, and it included the question, "How many medications are you on?" There was an option for "5+." Neither of us have been prescribed anything. Our blood work has come back in the healthy range the entire time we've been together. Deviating from the Standard American Lifestyle seems to be working out pretty well for us so far. The older we get, the more we start looking for healthy role models who are rocking it at our age or older, and the more willing we are to make habit changes.

Our initial commitment to this juice fast is for ten days. I will of course report back on the results.

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