Day 1 - I'm hungry!

As expected, my body's been flashing red signs, telling me I need to eat. For breakfast I did about 30oz's of the same mango blend juice we did the night before. For work I brought a 30oz container of an apple, carrot, and celery mix... It's only 11am and I'm already half way through it. I think I may need to buy another container and bring more while I'm working next week. It makes me wonder if I should juice the night before, and how much nutrition might be lost between the time I make it and the time I drink it. I can't wait until we're further into this, my body's definitely feeling a little shocked.


As consolation to my occasional pangs, I did some searching on sort of 'what to expect' while detox juicing. Found a relatively informative page here. I also couldn't get to sleep until 1am and was back up at 6:30am which is probably part of why I feel so off right now.

Gotta get back work

The "Before" photos

Tonight we juiced two recipes that I think were hits for both of us. One was a kale, celery, beat and apple concoction that was surprisingly fresh and sweet tasting. The other was a mix of fruits I decided to throw together (Apple, orange, Mangos, and strawberries) that ended up tasting a lot like Orange Julius! I'll admit I snuck in a tiny bit of vanilla (figured it couldn't hurt).

Afterwards, my girlfriend and I took 'before' photos and weighed in. This is the heaviest I've weighed in a long time. Luckily I've never gone over 250lbs, but I've been getting awful close lately. Below are the stats:

The last supper

Tonight we had our last "hoorah" at a nice Italian place I haven't been to in years. It was a good send off, complete with Chocolate Fondant & Cheesecake.

Over the past few days the social implications of what we're about to embark on began to set in. This weekend alone my old roommate wanted to do an all-u-can eat Korean BBQ, my gf's good friend is planning to take her out to a breakfast place we've been dying to go, and the thought has crossed my mind on multiple occasions to postpone our dietary plunge into darkness! But it doesn't take long before I think of reasons not to postpone, least of which the determination it takes to just get to the point where I'm at...there's always a surplus of social occasions, the same can't be said for the desire to fast.

So with the excitement of foodlessness for the future on my mind tonight, food for thought won't be a punny term I'll be using again for at least a few weeks. Instead it'll be juice for thought... The title I should have probably given this blog when I was trying to figure out what to name it. :P

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Taste the rainbow

Friday marks the day we'll be taking the plunge. Once upon a time I thought of myself as a pretty healthy guy. I ate lots of veggies, rarely ate processed foods, had a superman metabolism, & lots of girls crushing on me (unbeknownst to me!). Now I'm starting back at square one, and somehow it's really exciting.

Sheila and I made our first trip today to Costco for various fruits & veggies. As soon as we got home we both thought of the same thing and grabbed our cameras! I forget sometimes how beautiful fresh produce can be when you lay it out next to each other.

The JE900 Has Arrived!!

Breville JE900

This beautiful monstrosity of a machine arrived yesterday in the mail! My girlfriend and I were so excited, we immediately juiced a large bunch of oranges. Unfortunately the oranges weren't of the highest quality... but holy crap does it eat through stuff in a hurry! It sounded like a finely tuned jet engine as it sucked up every last bit of cellulose our low quality oranges had to offer.

Cleaning up was a breeze. Most of the components snap on and off with ease and by virtue of the design cleaned up with minimal effort. The main parts come clean with a little spray washing and the metal mesh strainer only required a bit of scrubbing with the included cleaning brush to get the pulp out.

“Oh Captain! My Captain”, where art though?

I heard a quote last night just before watching Sherlock Holmes with my girlfriend. It was out of a trailer for a Morgan Freeman & Matt Daemon film called Invictus.

“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul”…

The line grabbed me, for only a brief second, but it struck a chord in me. Today as I jotted down some ideas I had about energy, improving my sociability and diet… a couple things struck me.

• Because I’m not eating healthy, energy filled foods, I have less energy to socialize and/or do rigorous activities with or without company.
• For more almost 15 years now, I’ve felt neither the master of my fate nor the captain of my soul.
• I like to play connect the dots with otherwise unrelated ideas. 

I remember the line playing once more at the end of the trailer. I liked the idea of it, almost a  self prayer, a spell or binding to affirm oneself. It struck me how it must change a person’s view of their world and how they see themselves in it when it’s repeated enough times... like a reminder to their inner person who the boss is. Lines like these scare me, they’re a reminder of how I’m not happy in my life because of my lack of will power. I’d like to say I’m in control, and for my day to day activities I am. But if my life were a billiards game, I wouldn't be able to tell you where the que ball will be if I knock in the next one. If, because my aim is good but not consistent. And even though lines like these remind me of my inconsistencies, they also remind me that when I’m not being lazy, and have the energy to focus, I'm actually a decent pool player.