Juice-ly 31st - FLASHBACK: Crunch Time.

NOTE: These entries were originally posted on Facebook during November 2014, a month in which I embarked on my first super-extended juice. I began the month with some significant health problems and ended it some 40 pounds lighter! 

Since then, I have eaten a whole-food, plant-based diet and lost a total of 125 lbs. and counting. I hope you are able to benefit from my struggles. Enjoy, and feel free to leave a comment! 

 

Day 31. Thirty-One. Wow! The end of the month, which means that it would be kinda awkward to continue the whole "Juice-ly" gimmick. No worries, though. I've already thought of a catchy label for the first half of August, as I wind this fast down.

"Ahhhhh," Bugs Bunny once crooned in an old cartoon. "Something new has been added!" To my November mix, that is. On top of getting my eating under control, I was starting to feel the pressure of the many, many deadlines staring me in the face as the semester came to a close. Not only did I have my own papers to write, bu I also had a monstrous stack of undergrad papers to grade as well. Oh, and did I mention that certain, usually gluttonous, holiday coming up in a matter of mere hours? I don't remember feeling any especial pressure, for some reason. Just renewed determination to show myself that I could in fact maintain healthy eating habits despite an exponential rise in my stress level. Why I didn't remember this lesson at the end of the spring semester is beyond me. But...hey! All's well that end's well, right? I sit here today, teetering on the edge of the outskirts of OneDerLand, and I wouldn't be anywhere close to this weight without God's grace and my two-month extended lapse.

Good thing that God is willing to teach me this lesson as many times as I need to learn it. Read on!

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Juicevember 25th (late edition, 275.6 lbs.) – deadlines. Thanks so much to all of my new accountability partners who took me seriously yesterday and either prayed for me or actually got up in my cyber-face about how I’ve been doing with holding down this addiction. Don’t worry, I’m still juicing, and I wasn’t seriously tempted on that front yesterday.

Today, though? Different story (which will come in Part Two later on). For now, enjoy!

It’s the most. Wonderful tiiiiiiime. Of the year.

For grad students, that is. Twenty page papers on top of quizzes, finals, and whatever other assessment device your prof thought was a great idea to assign at the beginning of the semester, but now that Crunch Time is officially upon us, not so much. I’m still trying to figure out how it’s humanly possible to cram so much work into such a short period of time without heads exploding like ripe whiteheads on teenaged faces all over the history department.

Anyway, I’m fortunate not to have to go to class for the next week, but that doesn’t mean my work schedule isn’t all the way full. Which is better than the alternative, I guess. Last night after my late class I had a total adrenaline dump. When I put my oldest daughter to bed I usually lay on my side with my head propped on my hand, mainly to prevent myself from falling asleep before she does. Last night, however, when she moved over and sweetly invited me to join her and her “baby” with their heads down on the pillow, I couldn’t refuse. An hour later, and probably in the middle of a dream about eating something I shouldn’t, I jolted out of sleep to try to get some last minute pre-trip items scratched off my checklist. As it turned out, the only thing I got done was “get a full night of sleep to stay awake on the drive.” At some point in that semi-conscious haze that happens right before we drift off to sleep, I thought about getting back up to compose a reasonably coherent post, but my head never made it off the pillow. No worries, though. Double entry today!

Why are the shortest days always the most difficult? Yesterday I tried my best to focus on class, but my mind was on the other side of town, to quote an old O’Jays song. One of my classmates in my sociology class thought it would be a grand idea to bring in homemade chocolate chip cookies. Believe it or not, desserts don’t really get me all that much, until I’ve eaten a slice, or a piece, or whatever. Now, if she had decided to bring in several pounds of pulled pork, we’d be having a different conversation right now. Probably with me writing from the hospital. Thank goodness she was a self-proclaimed baker and not a caterer!

Then, my undergrad class. The lecture portion lasted all of 15 minutes but seemed like ten eternities because I was thinking about many, many other things. Like different recipes for vegan cheese. Sounds pretty innocent, but this will represent a major challenge as I add solids back into my diet. Back a few years ago when I did the vegan thing for the first time I stumbled upon a quick and easy way to make a concoction out of cashews, nutritional yeast, garlic, and lemon juice that tasted close enough to a cheese spread to satisfy my craving for that particular taste. Since I hadn’t really dealt with my addiction at that point, I ended up eating a lot of the cheese straight from the processor (believe me, there’s a way to lick the blades without getting hurt too badly), and rarely, if ever, allowing it to last more than a day.

This time, however, I’m looking up recipes that demand discipline. I will need to put my almost finished product in the fridge for several hours, even days, before it is ready to be eaten. And I’m also planning on cutting whatever I make in half, so that I won’t be able to eat it all in a day. I’m hoping to be able to take what I’ve learned this month into that waiting period and learn not just to be able to “wait it out,” but also to be able to, you know, live life normally while my food ripens. Instead of what I’ve found myself doing recently: thinking about all the great stuff I’ll be able to make when I’m able to eat solids again.

The absolute WORST case scenario on December 1st - a return to "normal.".

Honestly, my preoccupation even with good things like vegan cheese scares me. I don’t want to use juicing as a crutch that prevents me from living truly free of my addiction, but I’m also not sure if I’ll be ready to go back at it like “normal” on Monday. Anyway, I have an added incentive not to cram my gullet full of meats and cheeses, but I’ll reserve that tidbit of news for the post that’s actually supposed to come on this day. #‎juiceon

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Tomorrow, the countdown begins! You enjoy your weekend, and I'll catch up with you Monday, August 3rd. Or should I say, "All-juiced" 3rd? [see - I told you I had a catchy name up my sleeve.] In my flashback post, we land in Michigan for the holiday, and I experience a small but significant non-scale victory at the dinner table. I also receive an update on my steadily improving health. Stay tuned! In the meantime, peace and blessings to all!

Juice-ly 30th - FLASHBACK: Flight; Patterns

NOTE: These entries were originally posted on Facebook during November 2014, a month in which I embarked on my first super-extended juice. I began the month with some significant health problems and ended it some 40 pounds lighter! 

Since then, I have eaten a whole-food, plant-based diet and lost a total of 125 lbs. and counting. I hope you are able to benefit from my struggles. Enjoy, and feel free to leave a comment! 

I remember this day quite well. I had the Thanksgiving holiday squarely in the front of my mind, and God gently tapped me on the shoulder to remind me that there are more important things to think about than the future, for one. And that He is right there, with a host of angels, if necessary, to guide me through this and any present or future struggle. It's always comforting for me to remember that! 

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Denzel, making The Denzel Face, fighting addiction in Flight.

Juicevember 24^th (278.6 lbs.) – wow, what a day! I just love starting the day off with a solid workout on the treadmill. Let’s ignore for a second the fact that the (much) younger men on either side of me when I first started were running almost twice as fast as I was, but I was out there, which is all that counts. Got my sweat on for a good 45 and sealed it with 15 additional minutes in the sauna.

Which was nice and all, but the highlight of the day at school was having a refreshingly honest conversation with one of my friends in the history program about our struggles against food addiction. I enjoyed it so much, mainly because my friend felt comfortable enough to sit down and share her story with me. Also, I’m getting increasingly comfortable just letting go of insecurities and shame that I would have held deep down inside of me before I started this juice fast. It’s going to take far more than just a few short weeks to drill down to all of those issues, but I think I’m off to a promising start.

Later, sitting at the café at Giant Eagle Market District, I put David Crowder on my Spotify. I’m not normally a huge fan of songs with a ton of repetition, but in this case the repetition is what finally got me to pay attention to what Crowder was actually singing.

Oh, praise Him! He is holy!

Such a simple song, but such a powerful message. After days like this, all I can do is praise Him, because it’s like I feel Jesus walking right alongside me, pushing me right through what would have been some serious temptations just a short while ago. I hope I can praise Him even as I begin to wrestle in earnest against my addiction in the blink of an eye and a half.

On the way to school for my workout this morning, I thought of a scene in the Denzel Washington movie Flight, in which he plays an alcoholic pilot. The open minibar scene. Denzel’s character seems to defeat the demons inside him urging him to take a drink, but the scene doesn’t end when you think it’s going to end. The camera focuses on a tiny bottle of vodka in the foreground, blurring the rest of the room as the soundtrack cuts out. Silence. Watching that scene as an addict, you just know what’s going to happen before it does, but you’re hoping against hope that it doesn’t happen the way you know it’s going to.

He’s going to cave in. [More silence, just that bottle.]

[Silence, as anticipation begins to tear through the chest cavities of every addict watching that scene.]

He’s gonna cave in!

Finally, all we see is a blurry swipe of the pilot’s hand as he palms one of the small bottles of clear intoxicant, and you realize that it’s over. [Every addict knows exactly what that phrase means in that context.] The next scene shows a trashed hotel room and a completely empty minibar.

That’s me and food, right there. Just when I think I’ve made it through another day having outlasted my urges, it’s 1am and I’m done with my reading for the night and I’m making my second cheese sandwich while I’m in the middle of eating my first one. [A scenario that is way to specific not to have happened, multiple times, in the days before this fast.] And it’s over. For sure, God’s grace and mercy is made new every morning, but you can only surrender so many times before you’re lying prostrate before Him, pleading for Him to intervene on your behalf in what has become a one-sided fight. I know I’ve experienced some tremendous victories this month, but I also know that my demons have December 1st circled in their calendars as well.

What they don’t realize, however, is that whatever happens when I start to eat solid foods again, it’s going to happen in the context of war. Today, I declare war against my flesh – that part of me that urges me to heap even more food onto my plate, when I haven’t even begun to savor the first bite. The part of me that thinks it’s okay to open and empty a container of anything in one sitting. That inner man who is perfectly content with hitting the snooze button and missing a date with the treadmills at RPAC. The guy who lacks even the most rudimentary self-control when we drive by the golden arches or that all-too-familiar smell of flame broiled “beef” wafting from the king of burgers. Yeah, that guy. Mr. Mediocrity. I switched over to the other side of the rope in the tug-of-war battle for my quality of life.

There will be days when I get dragged into the mud, I know, but I am determined not to let those days slide into weeks. I’m enlisting everyone who has read these posts this month as my accountability partners. In my right mind, before the darkness of the trials come, I’m telling you all: if I’m not talking about how I’m eating and/or working out, then I’m slipping and trying to cover it up from you. Know that today, and don’t be shy about asking me how my 90 percent vegan lifestyle is going. And don’t take lame answers. Actually, I’ve been talking to a couple of people today about the possibility of chronicling my continued fight in a blog, so that might happen after “Juicevember” is but a memory. Stay tuned!

I’m fully aware that even the most successful generals lose battles, but those defeats come with the caveat that they will be back in the face of the enemy again, ready for the next hostile engagement. I have a host of angels behind me, and the Holy Spirit within me. This war is already won. #juiceon

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Tomorrow's flashback post contains some eerie foreshadowing on the dangers of eating too much good stuff. Specifically, vegan cashew cheese. Stay tuned! In the meantime, peace and blessings to all!!