The fault is entirely mine.
It was my idea to do the juice fast. I even talked the Scribe into it, who was minding his own business until I decided that I couldn't leave well enough alone.
But in my defense, the BluePrint Mind + Body Cleanse isn't just any juice fast. It promises total mental and physical renewal, courtesy of a three-day regimen comprised of drinking six custom-engineered super juices per day, eating exactly nothing, and attending special workout classes. The grand finale is a full-body massage at a snooty spa on Central Park South on the third and final night.
It would be like going to Canyon Ranch only cheaper and more convenient, I told the Scribe, who was clearly skeptical but I knew harbored a weakness for anything that promised enhanced ab definition. Eventually he capitulated, and we signed on for a Monday start.
Why was I so set on doing this? Boredom? Maybe. The steady approach of beach season? Partly. But given how much of my mental and physical energy I devote to food, I was fascinated to see what it would feel like to give it up for three whole days. According to the BluePrintCleanse website, I eat far too much animal fat and gluten and not enough fiber. I don't drink enough water. I drink too much wine. I'm short on vitamins and long on toxins. My nutrition is in crisis -- to a juice faddist, at least.
Maybe that's going a bit too far, but there's still something appealing about the idea of giving the whole system a spring cleaning. When I close my eyes I picture streams of purified water, green tea, and vegetable juice coursing through my blood vessels and flushing out the "toxins," whatever those look like, probably like the cast of Celebrity Fit Club. After all is said and done I might emerge on the other side of this looking like one of the blue people from Avatar. Or least like an aerobics instructor.
The Scribe and I began our wellness journey yesterday morning, in a class called "Core Fusion" that left us unable to rise from a seated position unaided for the rest of the day. From there I went to the office and began to put the juices to work.
There are plenty of calories in the juices (by plenty I mean exactly 1,250 per day, so enough to avoid crippling headaches and blackouts), but they're loaded with things like lettuces and parsley and cucumber. Trust me, there's a reason why romaine juice doesn't have a spot on the supermarket shelf next to OJ. Never before have I gotten so little pleasure from taking calories into my body.
My body is in cleanse mode, but my mind wants no part of it. A partial list of foods I've been craving that are not allowed on the BluePrintCleanse: coffee, mango, a hot bagel with cream cheese, pad thai, cigarettes, lamb stew, coffee, vegetable dumplings, mojitos, eggs benedict, DID I MENTION COFFEE?, a dirty martini, cheese and crackers, pasta bolognese, and chocolate cake.
We're only about halfway through so I'm not going to pass any judgments just yet. So far, I have only questions: Will I gradually become less hungry? Less angry? More energetic? How can I be worse at Core Fusion than all the middle-aged women in the class? And most importantly, how is it physically possible that I am peeing so much?
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