All-juiced 11th: The Lost Scroll, and the Aftermath.

The lost Juicevember scrolls, found in a cyber-cave online.

Day 42 (of 45). I’m sure you’re probably wondering what happened after I broke my November fast in early December. First off, I blew the dust off the Facebook scrolls and found the “lost” last post from the last day of November, posted on December 1^st. Who knew? Anyway – here that is, really quickly.

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Juicevember 30th – Preparations. I’m counting down the last hour of my 30-day juice fast like it’s New Year’s Day. I would have written this earlier, but I have been in the kitchen preparing my meals for the week since about 4:30 this afternoon. It all started with toasting sesame seeds that became what my wife/taster says is a nice tahini. Then, I drained and rinsed raw cashews that I soaked overnight and blended them with vegetable broth for a little extra fortitude in my vegan vegetable soup.

I made the soup, which my wife says is tasty but a tad spicy for her tastes (I added in a couple of habaneros and a couple of Hungarian wax peppers to the original recipe). Then I made my own hummus from cannellini beans. Tucked my oldest into bed, then finished off a mashed chickpea salad I’ll eat during the day for sustenance. Oh, did I mention that in an effort to reinforce delayed gratification I fasted through my evening juice, while cooking all of this food? I want to make sure the food I prepare on Sunday makes it as far through the week as possible, and I know that if I'm nibbling while making stuff it won't last nearly as long as it would if I held out - or taste nearly as good when, after a night in the fridge, the spices really start to work together to make the dish what it's supposed to be. I’m hoping my efforts will be repaid in tasty, nourishing food.

Another thing I want to avoid is running my taste buds into a rut. When I’ve dieted before I have tended to be very one-track with my food preferences. I’d eat the same dish for weeks at a time once I found out it helped me to lose weight. Of course, this practice completely underscored my addictive behavior, and caused me to miss out on a potentially rewarding exploration of my spice rack. This time, though, I’m planning on changing up the food choices on a regular basis. I have about a week’s worth of soup in the fridge and freezer, but after that I’ll be looking for the next thing to prepare. I know I’ll be making soups fairly regularly, and different types of nut-based cheeses, but other than that I’m open to all kinds of vegan options.


I’m actually not planning on eating that first meal until about noon, so I’ll let you know how it goes! ‪#‎juiceon

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So, that happened. Would ya look at all of that willpower? Don't worry, it didn't last long. My adversary is too crafty to come at me from a direction I was expecting. Instead, he came at me from what I thought was a safe haven. Boy - was I wrong! 

I weighed myself on December 1^st, and checked in at 270.8 pounds, down from 309.8 at the start of the juice fast. That’s 39 pounds lost in 30 days, for all of you scoring at home. I had prepared stuff for lunch and dinner: a mashed chickpea salad and a hearty soup, if memory serves. Oh, right – I have pictures to prove it. I made that 10-spice vegetable soup, with an 11^th spice (habanero peppers) added in. I only put two relatively small ones into a huge pot of soup, but…WHOOOOO! On first taste, I was almost ready to admit that I couldn’t finish the rest of it, but it did cool down eventually. For me, at least. My poor wife is nowhere near a spicy food fanatic as I am, and she couldn’t have any more of it.

Then, a few days in, I knew something was terribly wrong. I weighed myself and I had actually gained a few pounds. How was that possible, I wondered. In hindsight it was extraordinarily easy to see. I was eating a ton of nuts (cashews, mainly, in just about everything) and every recipe I made called for some amount of olive oil. It’s important to get those good fats in when you’re eating a whole food, plant-based diet, but not every meal, and certainly not in the amounts I was consuming.

The upshot was that a week later, I had to post a startling confession on my Facebook page.

Yup, the “golden boy” of good eating habits had packed TEN POUNDS back on…in a week. See? This is why I weigh myself every day. Anyway, I switched up the whole regimen to include many, many more raw veggies and staggered my prepared meals, and my body responded by losing that extra ten I had packed on, plus another five more, in the seven days that followed. The healthy eating train back on track, I continued to stick to the WFPB plan, and the rest is history.

Until the end of the spring semester, when the wheels came off the bus. But that’s another story for another post…

Aaaaand, speaking of weight. Well, I finally weighed in this morning, after not weighing myself at all while I was on vacation. I was tracking my fat loss while we were there, though, and I dropped another percent in the week. So I thought I would be at least in the mid-190s, if not the low-190s, which would set me up well to finish out the fast in the 180s. Which would have been incredible.

Notice how I said, “would have been.”

I stepped on the scale this morning, and staring back at me was this. Again.

I didn’t need to take another picture, because this was the exact same weight as when I checked in before my masters’ degree exam. One stinkin’ week ago.

You mean to tell me that, after a full week of faithful juicing, regular bathroom visits (and sometimes irregular, if you know what I mean), and two long runs without the benefit of a moving rubber road underneath my feet, that I didn’t lose even a single ounce of weight? Not a thimbleful of blubber? Not even an eye-dropper of fluff? Unbelievable!

In the middle of a huuuuuge plateau right now, apparently.

I have hit plateaus (plateaux?) before, and powered through them by sticking to the plan, but a week’s worth of no weight lost, even though I felt like I was losing at the same rate as I have been (about a pound a day), is extraordinarily frustrating. I know that some highly sought-after experts have advocated for NOT weighing yourself every day, but for me, I think it’s absolutely necessary in order for me to make the adjustments necessary to avoid such extended periods of stagnation. Almost the opposite of the old aphorism, “A watched pot never boils.” In my world, a scale ignored returns the favor.

It’s hard for me to be frustrated for long, though. I’m still losing weight at a rate that at this moment is actually greater than a pound a day, even with a big fat zero hanging over my head from the past week. I’ve dropped another 43 lbs. during this fast, bringing my total to somewhere around 150 lbs. lost in total. (Remember that I don’t know how much I weighed at my heaviest, because I literally maxed out my home scale.) Even though I had some serious congestion in my lungs when we were up north, I still managed to get out and run distances I could never have dreamed before – without taking the inhaler that has been absolutely vital for any strenuous workout I've done since I was 10. I’m now having to fold over the 36-inch waist pants and shorts I used to wear when I thought I was doing well and looking slim, and I’m actually about to retire the last pair of 36 shorts still in use. I can't wear the 33-waist pants I just bought without a belt. And I have saggy skin. On the bottoms of my feet! (Among other places, but WOW!)

So – don’t cry for me, Argentina. Or, as Jodie Foster would have said in the weird Appalachian dialect she somehow invented for the movie Nell, “No cay fo’ Nay-uhl.” (Who else remembers Nell?)

[In Liam Neeson's voice] "Don't cry for Nell."

I’m looking forward to eating mostly raw foods and smoothies as I transition back to solid foods, and keeping it simple. One of my biggest mistakes from my first fast, as you just read, was hunting down all of these recipes during the last few days of the fast, then feeling like I had to make every. Single. One of them. For every meal, every day. This time, though, I’ve only hunted down a few dozen recipes (hear me out!) and instead of making them every day, I’m staggering them over the course of, you know, the rest of my natural life. There’s absolutely no rush! Unless something goes horribly wrong, I’m eating this way until I’m no longer able to raise a pair of chopsticks to my own mouth, which means that I’ll have countless opportunities to experiment in a ton of different ways. Also, most of my “meals” will be whole, raw foods anyway. A salad with chopped veggies and sunflower seeds, topped off with homemade, OIL FREE, raspberry vinaigrette dressing, just for example.

We’ve also blocked off certain days as outlets for some of the more adventurous aspects of our culinary exploration. I’m really looking forward to Tofu Thursdays, especially since my wife isn’t a big fan of tofu. Guess what? A few months ago, neither was I. Then, though, I had a tofu scramble at the Heirloom Café on campus, and I was hooked. We’ll also probably try recipes that involve not only tofu but also tempeh, seitan, and other vegan meat-like products on that day. Looking forward to it!

My Lean Habits book came, as I thought it would. Since I’m taking this week off of reading for school, what better thing to do than read that book? More to follow tomorrow. Thanks for reading!