Day 61 (Monday): First day of a new month

Started off well -- with a walk from the train station to my juice shop where I picked up a greens juice (spinach, kale, celery, cucumber and a half of a green apple). Sipped on that all morning and took a walk at lunch time. In the afternoon I had a scone and a mini-croissant, minus the butter. (Not the best move, as both are made with white flour).

It's now 5:00 p.m. and I'm about to have a banana and walk to the train station. I hardly had any water today and am feeling very sluggish and tired. But I think that's from having so much green juice in the last two days. It has that effect 'cause the body is doing heavy-duty housecleaning, and it takes loads of energy to do that ('splaining the tiredness).

I'm leaving the office right on time tonight so I can catch the daylight and get a bike ride in when I get home.

Onward and downward!

Day 60 (Sunday): Two months and counting.

Today for breakfast I had a coupla cups of coffee with half-n-half. On weekend mornings I like to sit and chat with my good friend out on the lanai ... and coffee is enticing, as she makes a fresh pot every day. For the past couple of weekends I've succumbed.

Later in the morning I had a pint of green juice -- cucumber, celery, kale, bok choy, romaine lettuce and a little bit of green apple. I had another pint for lunch. For dinner I had shrimp and fish sushi w/ brown and white rice, and some shrimp steamed dumplings. (A deviation indeed when it comes to the types of cooked food I've been eating.) The white rice and dumpling dough might as well have been white sugar. Good that they were small portions.

I closed out the evening with a snack of unsweetened banana chips and some raisens.

I didn't get my walking in though but did hit the hay early -- 10:30 p.m. -- and will have a great night's sleep.

Day 59 (Saturday): Autumn in New York!

Wow... it has gotten quite chilly here in the Big Apple the past coupla days. Today it feels like autumn -- cold and rainy with the sun teasing us a bit here and there by coming out blazing and then disappearing behind huge billowy gray storm clouds. Guess I'll be nixing the sun-lolling out on the lanai. :-)

I came across Jinjee's blog today -- Jinjee is a mother of four who, at 40, is now expecting her fifth child, and has been eating raw foods for loads of years. Her hubbie is in his mid 50's and is mucho healthy, having eaten raw for about 30 years now (I think!). Anyway, I really like Jinjee -- she has a hippie soul -- and is always open to learning, growing, embracing new things, etc. I'd like to meet her some day.

Anyway, here's her blog and some amazing photos of her and hubbie hiking -- whilst she "lets it all hang out," so to speak ... she's quite pregnant! I think it's beautiful.

Jinjee's "Celebration of Life" Blog

Day 58 (Friday): Russian Italian Waiters

After investing too much money in a Green Star juicer (top of the line), I've decided that my Breville is just fine -- and since I'm not going to be doing concentrated juicing for months at a time as planned and won't need the better one -- I'll ship it back for a refund (it's still in the box). Oy vey, the hassles of getting healthy!

Coming home from work the other day on the train, I met the owner of an organic farm not too far from where I live (relatively). She said they're about to open their raspberry patch to the public soon -- pick as you go. That will be cool -- as raspberries (along w/ blueberries and blackberries) are some of the most nutritious things on the planet, but I stear clear of them cos they nearly always have tons of pesticides on them. I guess it's cos all kinds of animals (besides hungry bugs) love to eat berries.

Today a few of us took a friend out for lunch for her birthday. She chose an Italian restaurant (there wasn't an Italian waiter to be found in the place -- or American for that matter -- ours was from Russia with an accent impossible to understand). I opted for the eggplant parmagian -- minus the cheese and pasta it came with -- and I passed on the bread. I sipped a great glass of vino instead and enjoyed the simple meal.

This evening I'll grab a green juice on the way to the train -- and later this evening who knows -- I'll play it by ear. A fruit smoothie sounds good.

Well, I'm boring myself to tears here ... time to hit the road.

Check out Karen Knowler's recipe for almond milk. Easy, peasy. I'm going to try this over the weekend. You need a killer blender for making nut milks, though. If you click to the right on YouTube, she has a few other good recipe demos as well.

Karen Knowler Makes Almond Milk

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).

Day 51 (Friday): Let the Housecleaning Begin!

In these next two days, as I prepare for 'housecleaning' on a cellular level, I'm about to do some literal housecleaning too. "One's house is an outward manifestation of what is going on inside of you," I heard in an interview this morning. Oh, my. Does that have a ring of truth to me, or what! I've had a stack of boxes in my bedroom filled with stuff I've been "meaning" to sort through for years. This week will see the end of them!

Let's hope my housecleaning is successful on both fronts. The "house" of my body and the sorting out of those boxes!

Day 50 (Thursday): Oh Happy Day ... New Crossroads

I'm feeling very happy today. One reason is sorta personal. Another reason is that I find myself at an exciting crossroads. Little did I realize when I began down this road 50 days ago that it would lead me here -- on the threshold of starting a 92-day fast (feast!) on fresh vegetable and fruit juices. I can only conclude that by eating mainly raw foods these last 50 days -- virtually eliminating 95% of the cooked foods, dairy, refined flour, refined sugar, and chicken and beef I was used to eating -- I was paving the way for this next step. If someone had told me 7 weeks ago that I'd be embarking on this, I'd have said they were nuts!

Many years ago (1979) I did an 8-day vegetable broth "fast" after reading Paavo Airola's "How To Get Well". I was living in Southern California at the time and I was a "nomad for Jesus" ... a long story! I remember after day three that my clarity and energy levels rose considerably; by Day 8 I felt almost high. Then I began on solid foods again. I never really got to experience the full benefits of detoxing because solid food was reintroduced (I've since realized) prematurely, before the cell-dumping process could fully kick in.

So the next four days will be spent in preparation for this new terrain on my 'road' to health. In my first post here, I said I was aiming at regaining the health of that 23 year old of 30 years ago. It's interesting (and I don't think mere coincidence) but last night as I was reading Angela Stokes' Juice Feasting Handbook, I read that one of the claims of this 92-day program is that for each day of juicing one sheds 120 days of toxicity! Just for the heck of it, I multiplied 92 days by 120 days and guess what? It came out to a little over 30 years! It's designed to release the body of over 30 YEARS of toxicity. How's that for being exactly what I set out to do! To lop 30 years off of my 53! I love it. See, we don't EVER have to figure out all the "hows" of getting where we want to go ... we just have to intend, decide, and set sail (take action) in the direction we want to go.

Now, I'm realistic and I know I will not get back in every respect the body I had when I was 23. But I'm going to get as near to it -- inside and out -- as I possibly can! It'll take time and effort -- and more months than just the next three -- but I'm heading there. (Wherever "there" is! Oh, that's right ... "here" is actually WITHIN "there.") I'm reminded of Norman Walker, who lived to be 109 -- some say even older -- who wrote the book, "Become Younger," when he was a very middle-aged man!

Here are some interesting links for anyone wanting to know more about this cleansing/detoxing method:

Juice Feasting Facts (by Angela Stokes)

Interview with Angela After 92-day Juice Feast

Juice Feasting Website

A Silly Song About the Periodic Table: The Elements by Tom Lehrer

Relevance? Mineral density is key in juicing. :-)

Today I had only water in the morning and in the afternoon, a large salad of romaine lettuce, croutons and two baked vegetable burgers (that actually tasted great -- not like bland shoe leather). Tonight I'll have my raw pasta dish made from summer squash and zuccini.

There are loads of things I need to gather together for the juice feast, so I'll prepare my list tonight. Hopefully, my new juicer will arrive by Monday.

Outta here.