Yesterday marked the tenth day in a very arduous, and at times nauseating, process. A multitude of factors including, but not limited to: an extremely spartan food budget, that extra holiday bulge shared by millions of people the world over, increasingly bad skin, an upcoming Burlesque performance in which my body would be on display for all my loved ones to see, and an exceedingly unflattering picture of me published in a local Russian newspaper brought me to the simple conclusion that I needed to do something about my food addiction, and quickly. This was not for a boy. I repeat: this has nothing to do with finding Mr. Right. Actually, I was dealing with more boy drama before I decided to lose weight.
I was sick of bitching to my friends about how I couldn't fit into a single pair of jeans. It was getting so bad that even my thick leggings were beginning to tear at the seams. My muffin top was slowly engulfing my sides, and turning into a uniform curve from the middle of my waist to the tops of my knees, feeding, no doubt, on the boredom and insecurity that fester when I'm dissatisfied and not paying attention to the movements of my hand to my mouth and back. I was spending more money on takeout Chinese food than anything else. The situation was becoming dire. I didn't want to go up a size, so I decided to devote the time directly following my 21st birthday to slimming down into the body I've always imagined I had. I knew it would be hard work, so I enlisted an accomplice, who also wanted to lose weight, albeit for a different motive.
Our first stop was a cleanse. We talked about it, and decided that a cleanse would be the easiest way to re-set our addictions to sugars and processed foods, while losing a little bit of weight right at the beginning for inspiration. I'd done a serious cleanse once before, last year, right before I left for Israel.
Dr. Alejandro Junger's book Clean is an amazing resource that details the detriments of living in a modern society. The dangers of toxic living show themselves in excess fat around the middle, poor skin, depression, and allergies. I've never had allergies, but the excess fat around my stomach, and acne rang true. I wouldn't necessarily call myself depressed, but I do get moodier than I think many people do. I try to bury that emotion with more food, which subsequently turns into a worse mood, more weight gain, and more eating. This isn't a problem that many people face. Before I read the book, I hadn't thought of my shower, or the impure water I was bombarding the largest organ in my body with. No wonder I couldn't lose the weight.
Dr. Junger's cleanse is deceptively simple. You begin your morning with a couple of glasses of water, and a teaspoon of olive oil. If you have a neti pot, you wash your sinuses out with it. You take a shower that's as cold as you can stand, after brushing you body off all over with an organic body scrubber. They're sold at most health food stores, and at first glance resemble more of a brown bristly torture device than anything else, let alone the first thing you want to confront in the morning. Your breakfast is a liquid, prepared to the letter from one of the recipes detailed in the back portion of his book. Lunch is solid, and dinner is another liquid. You maintain a 12-hour window between dinner and breakfast, so if you drink dinner at 9 PM, the earliest you can have breakfast is 9 AM. You are also advised to sweat as often as possible, which means copious visits to your local sauna, or hot yoga, alternatively. All grains and almonds must be soaked in filtered water before they're cooked.
You're supposed to last on this for three weeks. I managed two, and was interrupted by my trip to New York, and then Israel. I always meant to get back on after I came back, but didn't get around to it. This time, with much less money, my friend and I decided to do the Master Cleanse.
The entire cleanse is supposed to last for ten days, during which you consume nothing but a mixture of lemon juice, grade B maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and water. My friend and I did a few warm-up rounds of three days each, and noticed a difference immediately. I realized just as quickly that eating nothing is almost impossible. Not because you get hungry, but because almost every human interaction that involves going out somewhere also involves food. Or booze, which is also prohibited. So whenever I went out, I'd have to explain everything, and get uncomfortable looks.
To be honest, the first day sucks. Day two is no better, but you hit day three, and you no longer really want much of anything but the cleanse drink. Between mini-cleanses, I tried a piece of birthday cake, and the only part I could taste was the disgusting congealed vegetable oil that the cake was baked with. Unappealing, to say the least. I still craved chocolate, though, and on occasion, I'd want something to chew. Walking through the food court to my retail job sucked for many reasons, but when I really wanted something desperately, I'd breathe in, relax, and tell myself that it's okay to have cravings. Everyone craves things. Not everyone gives in.
Yesterday was my last day of carrying around a huge jug of nasty-looking liquid with chunks of lemon floating inside. I went to sleep at five, because I'd awakened at four in the morning for work, and woke up to day of one the ease-out day. I'm drinking orange juice all day, but the horizon is in sight. Soon, I'll be out of the cleanse period, and into another tier of my dieting. Next up is the vitamin-rich Israeli soup diet, which lasts for a week. That'll bring me within two weeks of my Euro-trip, which gives me enough time to ease into normal food, though restricted calorie intake. I think my biggest mistake was to go straight from the cleanse last time to normal eating, and that's the quickest way to gain back the weight lost, and then some, since your body doesn't have as much of a tolerance for the toxins as it did before.
This isn't for a boy, and this isn't because I think I'm fat. I love what I see when I look in the mirror, and I love my shape. I want to be healthier. I want to live a long and fruitful life. I'm worried that bad habits and momentary stupidity will impede my progress. This time, I don't want to let them.
No comments:
Post a Comment