Like many North American girls born in the 50s, and growing up in the 60s and 70s, my diet was less than kosher, (and I'm not even Jewish), and I ate whatever I wanted, when I wanted, and as much as I wanted. I scoffed at the basic concepts of good nutrition, having been raised on southern cooking that included fried foods, greasy foods, sugary foods, animal foods, suspiciously processed foods, and notoriously famous foods and/or drinks. Pepsi-cola, Coca-cola, Hershey's chocolate, Nestle's chocolate, Chesty's BBQ potato chips, Frito-Lays, Marhoeffer weiners and bologna, and McDonald's, Arbys' . . you name it. Anything with a household name attached to it and within driving distance was alright with me, even preferable to a sit-down dinner that might have something green as part of the fare. Pizza, pizza, and more pizza was a staple in my diet.
With all this highly processed food, I stayed relatively thin and malnourished, until some maturity and 3 pregnancies later, when I gained around 50 lbs. with each birth of my precious babes.
Having babies and caring for them, nutrition becomes a subject of contemplation and discovery for a girl used to having candy and chips for dinner at times. The 70s became, for me, a time of learning about healthy eating habits and how to develop them in small children. I had to abandon, or at least control, my OUT of control urges to eat whatever was around, and try to focus on how to keep my childrens' teeth from rotting out of their heads, how to make sure their little bones were developing properly and how to let them know that while eating chocolate instead of rubber bugs wasn't exactly the right choice, it was at least a safer one.
A book known as "Diet for a Small Planet" made its way into my hands, and after reading it I became indignant about eating beef. I gave it up. I vowed only to eat fish or fowl. I proudly added brown rice and some salads to my menus. I started learning how to really cook - no, I mean REALLY, cook - not simply making a Chef Boy R Dee pizza and tossing it into the oven.
Thus began my deepening curiosity about food and how it affects us, or at least, me. Over the years, I haphazardly tried many types of diets, some with meat, some without, claiming to be a vegetarian when I was only partially one, and knowing almost nothing about the harm caused to tissues by sugars, and the value of some good greens passing through the pipes.
While I was looking more closely at food as life-sustenance, as medicine, and as a lifestyle choice, food itself was being changed by farm take-overs, processing plants, mass production and its pitfalls, the advent of bio-manipulation, and faux foods. The food I was eating was touted as healthy, but I was becoming sicker every year and somehow, I wasn't feeling any power from eating. In my yoga practice, I learned from the theory of yoga, that eating is a grounding sacred activity and that it is life-sustaining and pleasurable. Food is for eating, eating is for life, life is for love, and love is for eternity.
Yet, while we eat, we become less like life, and more like death, at least in our bodies.
Why am I writing this run-down on my history with food? Better question yet is, why do I think of food as so powerful in its most natural state?
Because of the detoxing I've been experiencing.
No, I haven't seen any of the octopus-like parasites in my poop. You know, those horrible looking creatures you see on health websites selling detoxification pills, teas, and the like. Yuck. I hope I never see them. I would look away and flush. The symptoms I've been getting are more like short bursts of illness. Headaches, muscle pain, bouts of indigestion, fatigue, cold spells, and then sudden energy lifts, like one might have after a large dose of B-12 or a 5-hr. energy drink (although I've never had either so I wouldn't really be able to compare these).
These symptoms don't come all at once. They come without announcement. For instance, I've been on this fast for 49 days. This morning I woke up with what felt like inflammatory pain in my hands, fingers, and forearms. I'm a massage therapist, and I worked yesterday, but I only performed 3 massages. I also worked in the garden too, so this pain seemed consistent with over-use syndrome which I've experienced before. It hurt, but it didn't seem unusual to me, just a little more intense.
I was sheduled to make some videos at the health center where I work so I didn't have time to put ice on my hands, and I don't take ibuprofen, so I drank some juice and moved on out the door to get to work. When I got there, I prepared to make the video, but I felt distressed about the pain in my arms and hands. I mentioned it to the nurse and she recommended that I do a far-infrared treatment on my entire body. This is a heat treatment that is warm but not hot. Domes are placed over the body and the heat mobilizes the cells, increases circulation, boosts metabolism and burns 900 calories. There is plenty of information about this treatment available on the internet, so I won't go into it in depth here. Suffice it to say that after the treatment, my hands and arms were pain free. Not too surprising since one of the treatments for massage therapists' hands are known as contrast baths, where the hands are immersed in first hot, then cold water and alternatingly continued until normalcy of blood flow is returned. Now, here is the weird part.
Because of all the juicing I've been doing and the water I'm drinking, my urine has been clear, or lemon-y yellow if I've taken vitamin supplements before, or even very light yellow like lemonade. Right after the FIR treatment today, my urine was a dark yellow, almost brown in color. The pain in my hands and arms was gone. The color in my urine, I assumed, was the evidence that my body was releasing some toxins through elimination. Again, not unusually surprising, except that I'm only about half way through the fast. In the beginning there is about a 3-day period of detox symptoms that everyone who does the diet experiences, quite without fail (which is why many don't continue). There can be headaches, chills, fever, fatigue and sluggishness, sadness, brain fog, diarrhea and other nasty symptoms that signify your diet is working. There is a continued mobilization of cellular wastes throughout the time you're on a live food diet until the diet ends, or until you are free of the most easy to release toxins. Over time, and at some point, you will get to the deeper, older build up of crap that has been accumulating in your body from years of eating poor, over-processed foods.
This process can take time. There may be more than one try, more than one month (which I've done before). For the past 3 years, I've done some variation of fasts and detox cleanses. I've seen my allergic reactions to the environment become entirely manageable with a neti-pot wash of the nostrils, to almost negligent and short-lived. Its interesting to watch as these symptoms make themselves noticeable and then watch them quickly subside, usually in the same hour or two. Sounds too good to be true, I know, but I am here to testify that because of juicing, I'm getting 5-6 times more vegetables and fruits into my diet, per day, and I'm losing weight and inches, and feeling better, sleeping better, looking better, and I'm less sick, if I'm sick at all. It has taken a few tries, but I'm now confident that I'm on the upswing.
Its so interesting to me, that it becomes worth it to turn away from pizza, chocolate, and starchy snacks. When I've had the right combinations of nutrient dense foods, its even easy.
With this, dear reader, I wish you Ad astra (to the stars).
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