Always Too Much and Never Enough

by Jasmin Singer

  I was also trying to find support online, and not just criticism. I read an interview with someone who had done a whopping ninety-day juice fast and had relied on a Post-it on her fridge that read, You can do this. You are cleaning every cell and organ in your body. The struggle is temporary. You will feel so much better! I got over the image of Stuart Smalley looking in the mirror and telling himself, “I’m good enough, I’m strong enough, and doggone it, people like me!” and put that saying on my fridge as well, and that simple affirmation actually helped immeasurably.

  I found that physically, I was sated from the juices—not extremely hungry by any means, and certainly energetic enough to go through my days with relative normalcy. The truly hard part was readjusting my brain not to deal with my anxiety, my boredom, and even just my longing for the happiness I experienced by way of eating, by mindlessly running to the fridge.

  This kind of impulse and this brand of longing goes far beyond simply a physical addiction or craving. Like many people, I have always used food as a way to assuage feelings and, to be honest, I don’t think there was necessarily anything wrong with that in and of itself. Food is one of the greatest joys in life, and there’s no reason not to use it as a means of celebration, ritual, and even dealing with feelings. And there’s no reason that using food as a way to help manage moods needs to be considered inherently a “bad thing.” If a nice little snack in the middle of a wearing afternoon (or post-run pancakes, my drug of choice these days after particularly long runs) relaxes you and cheers you up, that’s fantastic. We all need some cheer. There’s no reason why food shouldn’t be used as a means of comfort. It’s part of the greatness of eating, and something that bonds everyone in the world together. Food is about ritual, about sharing, about celebrating, and about enjoying ourselves. But, for me, the use of food as therapy had, for most of my life, simply taken over and had become the primary way I dealt with my feelings (Pop-Tarts make excellent shrinks). That is a whole lot more likely to happen when the foods you’re eating are highly addictive and nutrient deficient, which described my diet, in spades. And that was the story of my life, up until juice.

  For me, when I juice fast—and this was especially true during that first time—I find that the thing I have to get used to the most is not eating my feelings, and not dealing with life’s normal pitfalls solely by way of food. I have found, actually, that this break from the constant choice and availability of food, and the concurrent abundant consumption of nutrients, creates a wonderful opportunity for delving deeper into my psyche and allowing myself the room to heal the parts of me that haven’t otherwise had that chance.

  Prior to my juice fasting, it was simply understood that if I had a bad day, or a bad moment, I would run to the fridge for a spoonful of icing, or to the cabinet for a handful of pretzels (to be followed, of course, by several more handfuls). This is pretty common behavior for a lot of us. Food is our drug. Which is probably better than having actual drugs be our drug, in which case, simply replace “a handful of pretzels” with a quick fix of fill-in-the-blank.

  But for my entire life, my personal relationship with food went so far beyond balance that it entered dangerous territory and became my lifelong shield against the world and against living my own truth. Food brilliantly and frighteningly kept me from facing everything I didn’t want to face, from the more existential pain of recognizing the realities of living in an unjust world to the much more personal painful feelings associated with recognizing those areas where I needed to grow inside myself. Once I began to detox my body from things like sugar, I was able to begin the process of detoxing my mind and heart, too, and figure out why it was that I so mindlessly ran to the fridge for my fix. It wasn’t until after I began the detox process that I was able to begin the process of truly embracing and accepting myself for the fabulous and flawed person I was. It all started with juice.

  During that first juice fast, I wanted Oreos. I wanted cake. I wanted French fries. Admittedly, dreams crept in at night with Teany’s vegan cheesesteak in the starring role. I would wake up drooling (which, okay, I usually did anyway . . .), lusting after the creamy desserts and savory meals I wanted to ravage. In the early days of juicing, these foods haunted my nights, and sometimes my daydreams, too. I remember once saying out loud, but meaning to only think it, “I want cake.”

  “Don’t go there,” Mariann responded, battling her own food fantasies.

  I wanted cake, but what I had in front of me instead was kale juice with some ginger and apple. I knew that I had made that commitment to myself—ten days or bust. I would stick to it no matter what.

  What happened was that instead of grabbing for the Oreos, I started to think of why I wanted them in the first place. Why were they so comfortable and familiar to me? Why were they so reliable? And, for that matter, what did it mean for me to rely on something else instead of cookies to get me through an anxious or fraught day?

  I’ve read that many people find that meditation is helpful while juice fasting. I admit that I am not one of those people, because, though the intention has been there, I have never figured out a way to work traditional meditation into my life (which is probably reason enough to do it). Frankly, I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than meditate, especially during a juice fast (though at least I’d be putting a fork into something).

  But even without traditional meditation, there are most certainly moments of my life that bring me that same kind of mental clarity and calmness, such as being out in nature, taking a walk, or—these days—going for a run by myself. Juice fasting creates an opening to bask in meditative moments—whatever they are for you. It makes the “break” from eating that much more conscious and intentional, giving you more bang for the buck. When followed through, it can jolt you into consciousness about your consumption—at least, it did for me.

  Moving from the metaphysical to the practical, during that third day when I was struggling with some pretty deep emotions and a rich (pun intended) fantasy life, Mariann and I were developing a pretty severe garbage situation. Juicing leaves a lot of bulk behind, and it seemed a shame to just throw out all those beautiful remnants of organic produce. Our solution was to keep our compost in the freezer until we were able to drop it off at the Union Square compost bin. This is probably easier for people who aren’t city dwellers and can compost on their own, or even city dwellers who live in places where compost is now picked up at the curb, but, alas, Manhattanites do not have those luxuries.

  In any case, the waste produced from juicing, and the impetus to find the most ethically sound and responsible way of managing it, can clearly be looked at as one big fat metaphor. Feeding this so-called waste back to the planet through composting, and realizing that when it’s reused in a new way with a new purpose, it can actually be beneficial and instigate growth, is a very healing thought. Perhaps my very own bundles of emotional waste could follow suit, be replanted, and wind up being useful, rather than simply being tossed aside.

  day 4

  Day four was better, but didn’t improve things as much as I had hoped. In fact, my dog Rose’s food (which is vegan) began to look a bit too appetizing. I was also tired, and a bit foggy brained, and decided to allow myself to lie down and rest every now and then. I took a bath, which was not only restful, but had the added benefit of helping with the detox.

  I decided that it would help me understand what was happening, and help me on my journey, to do some reading on detoxing, food addiction, and juicing. I chose to start with The Pleasure Trap by Douglas Lisle and Alan Goldhamer, which focuses on our addiction to excess (food and otherwise) and offers solutions to unintentional self-sabotage. Reading that book started a tradition for Mariann and me and, to this day, when we juice fast, we make an effort to read, watch, and listen to something every day that informs our juicing and our subsequent food plan. This works as a combined minivacation and self-directed fast-track learning program. And, always, it helps to kee
p me on the juice.

  This time, from my online reading and watching, I found out that, as healthy as green juices are, we needed to limit the amount of beet greens and red chard and, to some extent, spinach, because of the oxalic acid present in them, which can decrease calcium absorption and shouldn’t be consumed in huge quantities. Good to know. I found it out the hard way, actually, by getting a scratchy throat that I later found out was due to consuming too much of that oxalic acid. Remaining conscious of how much of those particular greens I juiced was certainly no reason to cut down on other greens, though, since they are so good for you, and, in fact, four out of the five juices I consumed daily were greens based. We continued our practice of starting off the day with a fruit juice, though, and on day four it was watermelon juice, which thrilled me probably more than it should have.

  day 5

  Admittedly, I was tired. I was, in fact, very tired. I tried to convince myself that it was because I had exercised the previous day—for the first time in as long as I was able to remember.

  Not too long before we embarked on this juicing journey, Mariann and I had invested in a Nintendo Wii Fit, which was perfect for me since I didn’t have to go out of the house and be seen in order to exercise. There had been an intriguing article in the New York Times about the Wii Fit, and we were officially hooked by precisely what the program became famous for, the mix of playing games and burning calories. (Being a child of the eighties, I was also extremely excited about reintroducing Dr. Mario into my life.) But I was hardly in good shape, and a juice fast was probably the worst possible time for me to shock my system into exercising, especially given the fact that I was not used to it. I needed to remind myself that I didn’t have as much energy as I usually did, and even if I did have energy, I’m sure that beginning an exercise regimen, given my usual sedentary ways, would be physically jarring.

  A lot of what I had read about juice fasts talked about how great people felt, especially after the third day. How much energy and vibrancy they experienced. So even though I was able to partially blame my fatigue on my need for instant gratification by way of my Wii Fit, it was a bit discouraging to find that I was still feeling tired.

  And so, feeling discouraged and wanting to reenergize and motivate myself, I started examining my motives for doing the juice fast in the first place. I was deliberately not weighing myself regularly and I was quite adamant that I was not doing this cleanse to lose weight. (As an important side note, Wii Fit offered the option of getting weighed without displaying the number, so I did that, only checking back on the actual number much later—once I was able to stomach the truth.) Instead of regularly hopping onto the scale, I reported by way of my vlog that the juice fast was “a reboot, a way to get rid of some nasty addictions you might have, or nasty habits. And it’s also really good emotionally, too.” I stressed that “it allows you to slow down in your life and just take things a little bit more easy.”

  Detox. That was the name of the game, not weight loss. And, throughout any detox process, some negative symptoms are inevitable. Even somebody who doesn’t have weight to lose could still benefit from doing a juice fast because of its detoxifying properties, both physically and mentally.

  Thinking of the juice fast as motivated by detox, rather than weight loss, helped me in other ways beyond just helping me to explain and tolerate my negative symptoms. Juicing with the mind-set of doing it for health, rather than doing it for weight loss per se, really shifted things for me and allowed me to come at it from a much more open and less defensive, place.

  And the incentives were powerful. The fact that I had high triglycerides, which my doctor had made clear at my recent physical, meant I was on my way to heart disease. Plus there was the fact that I was constantly fatigued. During that first juice fast, there were times when even just carrying my weight around felt taxing. “I’m going to stand up now,” I would say to Mariann, who—from her seated position across the room—would say, “Okay, honey . . . I know you can do it.”

  “I’m going to . . .” I would respond, still sitting there.

  “Good,” she’d say.

  “But first I’m going to rest.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Mariann would respond, supportively.

  A few minutes later, I’d stand up, overdramatically grunting the whole way, for effect.

  Perhaps my fatigue was partially caused by an emotional weight, too. I started to see my detox symptoms—swollen lymph nodes, mild tiredness, and hunger—as something I just had to get through in order to heal and become healthy, even if that meant confronting what lay beneath, the reasons I had so eagerly opted for instant gratification in the form of calories for so many years. My addiction to food. The ease with which what I ate hid my own reflection. Maybe this all sounds like an overstatement, or a hyperbolized tabloid headline: Sad, Fat Woman Juices Her Way to Happiness and a Killer Bod. That’s really not how I mean it. But when I finally took the step to reclaim my health, and as those dastardly detox symptoms worked their magic, I began to realize just how much crap I needed to rid myself of—both physically and emotionally—before I could finally get to the bottom of my toxic relationship to food, and my warped body image.

  Our bodies give us opportunities to detox every day. Even the word “breakfast,” literally “break fast,” is a recognition of the fast we (in theory) just completed overnight. When we are fasting, we are, by definition, detoxing. I began to realize that prior to this juice fast, each morning after my “overnight fasts” (a.k.a. “sleep”), as soon as I would get my morning lull or headache, I would immediately go for the coffee—because I needed caffeine to stave off the detox that was making me feel like crap. Shockingly, this is not that dissimilar from detoxing from drugs or alcohol. As soon as we feel the shakes, we need our fix, and then it is magically all better. It’s why I always knew instinctively that when I got cranky, the solution would be a lovely bowl of sugary cereal. When we consume foods that don’t nourish us, we are keeping the toxins in our bodies, and forcing our bodies to stop detoxing. The only way to get over the painful detox period is, frankly, to white-knuckle it.

  So when I stopped consuming those foods and started juice fasting, my body had no other choice but to bring the toxins out—hence the icky symptoms I was experiencing. My hope was that, once they were gone, my body would thrive. During that first juice fast, it was this very thought that kept me going.

  Of course, in reality and in retrospect, I think I probably did actually see weight loss as the primary reason behind doing it, but it was too difficult to admit that to myself at the time. I had failed at that far too many times. Instead, recognizing the many health benefits—physically and mentally—made it a lot easier to carry out than simply a “diet,” like the many diets I had been on in the past, which focused solely on shedding pounds. I think that the mental shift that made juice fasting doable for me was looking at it, ironically, as a way of feeding myself, rather than a way of depriving myself.

  And it’s true: I was feeding myself better than I ever had in my life. Funny thing. Although I wasn’t eating solid food, simply by consuming so much vegetable and fruit juice, I was flooding my body with nutrients. It would be nearly impossible for any of us to actually eat the amount of nutrients we consume during a juice fast. I preferred to look at juice fasting as abundance rather than deprivation. It was a tiny mental shift, but one that made all the difference for me.

  There are other ways in which juice fasting was so much easier for me than dieting. One is the fact that it has very clear and concise parameters. Grabbing a slice of (vegan) pizza, for example, could somehow be rationalized if I were on a “diet” (I could always bend the rules enough to have that pizza by imagining I would make up for those calories—those all-important calories—with subsequent deprivation), but when I’m on a temporary juice fast, the guidelines are so clear and unbending that it’s nearly impossible to rationalize my way out of it.
Since rationalization is my stock in trade, this was hugely important to me.

  Another thing that has always worked for me about juice fasting is that I always knew when my next juice was coming—and it was usually within two to three hours. Plus, though there is unquestionably some degree of calorie reduction on a juice diet, there are certainly enough calories that I could live my life virtually uninterrupted and unaffected, except for perhaps going a bit slower than usual (and allowing a bit more time to go from sitting to standing). So even if I had a hankering for a slice of pizza, I would simply implement the tools I had already begun to create—reading the affirmation on my fridge; reminding myself of the reasons I started; tapping into the support I was finding online and with Mariann; reading books about health; finding my own brand of meditation—and I would remember that in two to three hours, I would get another juice. That kept me going when the going got tough.

  FIFTEEN

  a healthy obsession (days 6–10)

  As I continued on this journey through my first ten-day juice fast, I could not possibly have known how deeply and permanently my life would change because of it. Looking back at the daily video log I kept, which documented my challenges, thoughts, and excitement throughout the process, I am grateful to have a play-by-play detailing everything from discovering new vegetables to what it was like to trade in caffeine for carrots to how I felt stepping on the scale for the first time after the initial fast.

  Admittedly, there’s a degree of self-involvement that I believe is inherent to anyone who has undergone such a radical physical transformation as I have. There’s a fascination with “my former self” and how that relates to the me now.