There and back again

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was called away suddenly and unexpectedly to Toronto for a few days. I had to leave in a hurry and it was completely impractical to take my juicer with me for a dozen reasons or more. It brought my juice fast to a rapid conclusion, but I thought I could at least survive on the standard fare you find in restaurants and whatever for a few days. Boy was I wrong.

This is a really interesting discovery for me, because you go into a juice fast with a lot of little voices in your head. Some of them lie to you and tell you that juicing will solve all your problems forever. Others tell you that you won't make it because you're weak and a slave to your cravings. And yet others tell you something that's even more disturbing: That this isn't real. That, despite that you logically piece together in your head from what you know about how food works, the whole juice fast is a stupid sham and you'll experience no real benefits or changes and you'll be embarrassed in front of all your friends when you don't drop a single pound and then go right back to eating pizza and root beer four times a day. Naturally, not all the voices you hear in your head can be telling you the truth... but there are some voices you hope are wrong more than others.

The voice which told me juicing isn't going to produce change is the really scary one. You don't want to drink carrots and beets and kale for weeks on end to find out that, when the playing field is level, your body slides right back into its old bad habits. And so, for me, it was a victory when (as I said) the absence of juice made me crave it... desperately. I found myself thinking about it constantly. I was imagining the taste of kale and cucumber in my mouth, even when I was trying to focus elsewhere. My brain was sending me constant signals telling me "I want more of what you were doing." It's not just that my body is covered in hives (it is) or that my fatigue levels are crippling (they are) or that my breath and body smell terrible (they do), but the part which makes this trip the hardest is, ironically, kind of an awesome thing to discover: I want to drink that juice. My entire body wants it. And so, as I return home today, I know that there will be no struggle when I re-enter the routine of juice fasting. Quite the contrary, in fact: My body and brain can't seem to wait.