Days 52-57 (Saturday through Thursday): A bit of a Detour!

I'm still on track, it's just that the road "detoured" for a few days -- I'm now back on the original road and picking up where I was before I started the 92-day thingy.

Here's what I learned from my hydrotherapist (Joyce) at the end of Day 2 of the 92-day juice fast I'd begun Monday. First of all, she was appalled that I'd even undertaken a 92-day juice fast. She said that if I were 100% raw, and wanted to do further detoxing, it would have been fine - my body could have handled it; but since I've just begun eating a mainly raw diet, there is no way my system is "clean" enough to handle the incredible detox dumping that would occur on a total cellular level in a body that has not been eating healthily for over 25 years! If I were to only drink highly nutritious juices for the next 92 days, she said my system would practically revolt!

She pointed out that it is not just the colon that has years of debris within, but that every CELL has toxins within -- in other words, every bit of tissue within our bodies! She said as the inner organs' cells release those toxins, as well as bone cells, etc., all doing the same SIMULTANEOUSLY, the entire system would be flooded with poison seeking ways to "get out" and thus causing some very unpleasant reactions: severely achey joints (especially the knees), strong headaches, skin outbreaks, nasea, etc. She commended me for my zeal, but helped me see that it ultimately would backfire and overload my body with enormous amounts of cellular detritus (dead stuff) it couldn't dispose of quickly enough, given where my body is at.

What I failed to take into account when I followed the lead of Angela Stokes and embarked on the 92-day fast ("feast" as she called it!) is that Angela has been a 100% raw foodist for the last two years, and was 80-85% raw for three years prior to that! It makes a huge difference in what one's body can tolerate.

So, I'll count on the wisdom of my hydrotherapist -- who has been for the last 20 years first vegetarian, then vegan, and for the last 5 years a 90% raw foodist. She actually got a bit peeved with me, thinking that an earlier discussion about all this might not have been heeded by moi. To some degree she was correct; I let my zeal get way out ahead of me.

So ... after all that hype about the fast, I'll now be modifying things somewhat. I'll be juice fasting on Mondays and Tuesdays (heading to my hydroT's on Tuesday evenings), and the rest of the days I'll be eating mainly raw food -- being sure to have cooked veggies in the evenings (as Joyce recommends).

Here's a link to Angela's blog -- I'm mentioned in it. Not by name, but as someone in her audiance who just started the Juice Feast ... funny! Scroll down to Monday, May 14's entry where she mentions her lecture at Bonobo's Restaurant in NYC.

RawReform Blog

My fast/feast lasted all of two days -- and it was a lot of work. I juiced the most visually beautiful veggie I've ever seen, bok choy -- red kale, green kale, whole heads of romaine lettuce, bunches of radishes, lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruits, swiss chard, cucumbers, whole heads of celery, carrots and green apples! And that was just two days' worth of juice (8 quarts). I had to get up two hours early each morning just to do it, and clean the juicer to boot (no fun -- takes a toothbrush to clean the wire mesh basin inside!); then had to pack it all on ice in a mini-cooler to carry to work. My forearms got a workout. :-) I could do it for two days a week though -- which is now my plan. Beats the heck out of doing it 92 days in a row! (Thank you, Joyce -- tee, hee).

Today I had a terrific veggie juice in the morning (spinach, kale, celery, cucumber and half of a green apple); a salad with salmon from the caff for lunch (roasted artichoke, cucumber, celery, mixed greens, a small amount of poached salmon, and a few croutons). Tonight I'll do my old standby -- summer squash "pasta" w/ raw home-made maranara sauce.

Am I having fun yet? Nope! But I knew this cleaning out of my body was NOT going to be a walk in the park. You don't clean out overnight a "house" filled with debris 25 years in the making. The trick for me is to just keep on keeping on. And so I will.

(New addition today - Check out Phil Spector, Raw Foodist , second image at the top right of this page; pretty funny stuff. The first image is a mini-interview with David Wolfe, guru to many a raw foodist).