I honestly don't think I've ever been prouder of myself. Ever.

Hey Internet, what's up?

Busy eating something? Something that involves chewing?

Lucky duck.

So as we've established, I am currently doing a ten day juice fast. I am on day ten and I am totally looking forward to waking up tomorrow and having a damn english muffin.

CAN YOU STAND THE EXCITEMENT?

Me neither.

Those of you who are my Facebook friends will wonder why I'm pussing out with the english muffin when I've been dreaming of chow mein FOR NINE DAYS but the problem is that you can't get chow mein for breakfast. I thought about getting a bunch of people together for a OMG YAY I CAN EAT AGAIN breakfast but then I remembered:

1. It's possible that I'll barf up whatever solid food I eat.

2. I'll probably feel like crap.

3. I don't really like breakfast anyway, so why waste the excitement on an omelet I don't really want?

So instead I'm gonna have a couple eggs and a high fiber english muffin -- the same breakfast I've had 100 times before.

AND THEN I'm gonna get me some chow mein and a tuna sandwich from Subway (the only other thing I've really been hankering for this whole time) and I'm gonna go sit in the big chair at my parents' house and watch the Real Housewives on my Tivo and see what happens when I suddenly introduce a bunch of salt and grease to my very-well-cleansed system.

And bite your tongues with all the "Why would you do that if you just finished cleansing?" and the "You'd better have something really bland to introduce food back into your body" blah blah blah because I don't care. I didn't do this for the cleanse...I did it for the challenge. And now that it's (almost) finished, I'm having me some damn chow mein and a tuna sandwich.

But hey...did you ever in TEN MILLION YEARS think I'd stick with this the whole time??

ME NEITHER. I thought for sure I'd be DONE after two days...but not-so-suddenly, it's 240 hours since I last chewed a meal. (I had dinner on Wednesday night so TECHNICALLY it's 10 days from my last meal right now!) I say "meal" because I did cheat and eat the following:

* 4-6 radishes (one of which was a "French breakfast radish" that Leslie gave me from her CSA box and I wanted to know what such a fancy radish tasted like)
* 1 stalk of celery (though this was in an attempt to chew off the waxy buildup detailed below)
* 1 strawberry
* 1 blueberry
* ~10 half pieces of Trident (This one pisses me off because I didn't even realize I was doing it until yesterday. I don't spit out my gum, I just swallow it...and yesterday I realized that I don't recall ever spitting out my gum this whole ten days which must have meant that I swallowed it, DAMN IT! And yeah, half pieces, because I think whole pieces of gum is TOO MUCH GUM IN MY MOUTH...even Trident.)

I am NO BONES ABOUT IT, a food addict. And it shows. I do a pretty good job of managing my urges most days, but if I did a pretty good job of managing my urges ALL days, I wouldn't be as fat as I am.

True fax, yo.

So anyway, going for TEN WHOLE DAYS without eating anything that is good or comforting or particularly filling? I was never going to be able to do it.

Except that somehow, I DID IT. And you know what? It was awesome.

Lots and lots and lots of things about it sucked though. For example:

1. The tops of my chewing teeth feel like they're caked in wax. Organic juicing is stupid expensive so I did non-organic juicing, and I suspect the wax is from the look-how-pretty-this-apple-is wax or something and that without the hot food and the chewing to melt it off, it just sorta builds up.

I started brushing my teeth with hot water and it sorta works, but I'll still be glad to feel clean teeth in my mouth again.

2. Speaking of clean teeth, palatable juices have a lot of sugar in them. Sugar makes my teeth hairy. I'm dying to brush my teeth by the time I get home from work.

3. Juicing sucks for a girl's social life. It was 80 degrees and perfect today and Lauren and I were lamenting the fact that we couldn't go sit on a patio and have cocktails because I can't have cocktails. Watch it rain or something next weekend just to mess with me.

4. Juicing is a pain in the ass. It would be a lot easier if someone else could be in charge of the juice preparation and clean up.

5. I'd read a warning about drinking your juice too close to bedtime because it would keep you up for hours. PSSSSHHHHHH, I thought. In the beginning I was DOG TIRED almost from the moment I woke up and could only think about how long it would be until I could go to bed...no way was JUICE gonna keep me up! But then I transitioned past the detox/adjustment phase and I had a tomato/celery/lime juice an hour or so before bed and HELLS BELLS, I was up until 2AM. I just could not quiet my head.

No big though, right? Drink juice earlier, go to bed, all is well. Except that then I found it difficult to go to sleep with hunger pains...which I hardly ever felt until it was time to go to bed, conveniently.

6. Despite all the energy I had almost from the moment I woke up until the moment I finally fell asleep, I noticed that my muscles would tire out really quickly. I went and did a couple of Dailey Method workouts and both nearly killed me.

It all sounds pretty crappy, I know, but there were lots of awesome things too:

1. Once I got through days 1-4, which I didn't realize were as bad as they were until I was on the other side, I felt GREAT.

2. My mood has been good this whole time -- even in days 1-4. Everyone I know was gearing up to "deal with me" while I was fasting but the chicks I work with -- the ones I spend the most time with -- were even like "Dude, please keep juicing. You're so positive and pleasant!" (Byatches!)

3. Being around people who were eating was not difficult AT ALL. (Which doesn't mean I was willing to go to lunch with a bunch of people from work and just sit there, even though one of the chicks I work with thought that sounded PERFECTLY REASONABLE because she'd done exactly that when she'd been on a crazy diet a while back.)

4. Appetite, schmappetite. I remember being S-T-A-R-V-I-N-G on day two. I'd gone through a TON of juice and was still hungry. That all went away somewhere around day three or four and every day this week I've come home with leftover juice that I may or may not have for dinner. Most nights I've just skipped dinner and had the leftovers for breakfast the next day.

5. My muscles may be tuckered out, but MY FAVORITE THING about this entire fast is how much focus and concentration and mental endurance I've had. Conveniently, the fast coincided with a HELLISH week at work where I was there for 10-12 hours a day and doing things that required me to be paying attention and being smart about stuff the whole time. Each night when I finally went home, it wasn't because I was tired or really *wanted* to go home...I just knew that I should.

Case in point: Last night I had big plans to leave work by 5 so I could suffer through another Dailey Method workout but I left a bit too late and traffic was a bear so I missed my class...but no worries because YAY! I could go sit on my couch and work for a few more hours ON A FRIDAY NIGHT. Suddenly, it was 11PM and my butt was tired of sitting there and I'd produced a pretty KICK ASS [work thing that nobody will care about] and I was SO PLEASED with myself.

6. My second favorite thing is that I figure I've lost about 13 pounds in these last ten days. I officially lost 9.2 at Weight Watchers this morning, but that was just for seven days. I did the math and averaged it out and multiplied by ten and yeah...just over 13 pounds.

And now my goal is to not gain more than 2-3 of that back next week.

[This post is getting lonnnnnng, so here -- let's break it up with some pictures!]

Before:



After:



A veggie-heavy one:



Remnants of a beet-heavy one:



My very last juice for this fast -- an entire bunch of kale, a cucumber, a pint of blueberries from the farmers market and two peaches:



[And now back to the blah blah blah.]

People all seem very interested in "the plan" I'm following, but I tell you this: There really isn't much of a plan.

The dude in the documentary I saw appeared to have gone cold turkey, so that's what I did. He broke his fast with an apple (not chow mein), but whatever...I'm not doing that. He has a website that has a whole program, but I didn't follow it. I just woke up one day and started juicing.

I did follow the recipes on the site for a few days, which was handy because I wanted to be sure I was drinking the juices with the most protein, but I eventually just gave up and started shoving anything in the fridge into my juicer.

What will I take away from this, you're wondering?

Some really great things:

1. I really really really love how well my head is working these days. I think it's possible that this is somewhat attributed to the fact that I haven't had caffeine in ten days.

I know that too much coffee makes it really hard for my head to work correctly -- I have trouble focusing and I can't stand sitting in my desk chair for long, so if I have to pay attention to something (like...say...WORK), I try to regulate my caffeine so I have enough to perk me up but not so much that my thoughts are darting back and forth inside my head. I'm hoping that maybe this incredible focus and attention to detail that has suddenly emerged is perhaps what my brain is like when it's well rested and caffeine free, so I'm going to continue living caffeine-free for another ten days to see if my magical new brains stick with me.

I even bought a 12 pack of caffeine-free Diet Dr Pepper that I'm excited to crack into tomorrow!

2. I'm excited about the new brains, but I am even more excited to have proven to myself that I can do this.

When I was cleaning out my fridge before I started I thought about what I should do with all my condiments...Would I be so desperate in a few days that I'd dip my finger in the hoisin or squirt some ketchup into my mouth? I decided to leave them there, but I did take any even remotely tempting dry goods over to my parents' house.

I hope my half-eaten box of multi-grain Cheerios is enjoying its vacation at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

As it turned out though, I wasn't even the tiniest bit tempted by anything in the fridge...and when my neighbor brought me Rice Krispie treats as a thank you for holding her UPS package for her, I put them in the cupboard and didn't even think about eating them. They're still there, actually.

I'm really really really really really proud of myself and I'm really really really really hoping I can turn this all into a lesson about not letting food be the boss of me.

-----------------------------------------

A week or so ago I was telling Lauren that this experience is sort of like that time we hiked Mission Peak together and how it was uphill for the entire two hours it took us to get to the top and how the only reason I kept going was because I wanted to be able to say I finished it and I didn't want to ever have to do it again, so I might as well suck it up and drag my ass the rest of the way up the hill so I wouldn't have to come back another time and start over.

A week ago I would have told you that I never ever ever wanted to go on another juice fast again, but I was already a few days in and I didn't want to waste those few days or ever have to start over again, so I might as well keep my head down, take 100 steps and then look up to see how much closer I was to the end...just like I did on Mission Peak.

TODAY I will tell you that I do plan on doing this again someday. It has been an incredibly rewarding journey and I am so grateful to my dear friend Lauren for planting the seed that it could be done.