A New Beginning of Sorts, Day One

Today is a new beginning for me. Spring Awakening, my show at the Center, is finally done after 5 wonderful months. I did not shave my head this morning like usual as I'm welcoming back my beautiful locks! And I will not eat food for the next 10 days; only natural juiced fruit and vegetables.

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My hair is a Tina thing. My wife loves the hell out of me. She has given me so much in our time together. We have built such a beautiful life with each other. She is nothing short of a miracle to the story I call my life. Only she lives with me day in and day out. Only she knows the intimate details of my neurosis. She has seen me at my best and also at my worst. She has followed me into the whole Center for Living Arts saga and she has never complained. Plus there's a ton of other stuff that woman does that goes without mentioning that would take an entire lifetime to write out.

With all of that, I want to be pleasing to her in every way that I can. She likes my long hair. It's the very least I can do. It may seem silly, but to me, it is an outward gesture of my love for her. I'm not married to baldness. I like being bald just fine and it was certainly a very freeing thing to do after being a hippie for 11 years. It was very cathartic for me. But I've been bald for 7 years now. It's time to go back to the other side. I want to be one of those old white haired guys with a ponytail when I'm older; and the white has started to make its appearance.

The Food or lack thereof....
Two weeks ago, I watched a very persuading documentary, "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead." It was about a guy who was, you know, fat, sick and nearly dead. He juiced fruits and vegetables as his only nutrition for 60 days....60 days! He dropped almost 100 pounds and he became quite fit and without disease.  I feel the same way; fat, sick and nearly dead. What disease do I have? Tiredness, grouchiness, the feeling that the best days of my life are long behind me. The feeling of "do I really have to get off the couch?" when my boy wants to go run outside. Damn it, I just don't want to be the man I'm starting to become!

My diet is for shit most of the time. It's not like I'm deep fat frying twinkies and guzzling down crisco, but I hardly ever get fruits and vegetables in my diet. I'm honestly just not that fond of them. So this plan of only juicing for the next 10 days is designed to give my body a 'reboot.' By the end of my time, I will hopefully have fed my body superconcentrated amounts of micronutrients enough that I will actually feel more life flowing through my being. Then will come the next step. That will be to continue to juice for another 10 days or to simply start eating a more plant based diet.

My feeling is that after I get through the first three days of feeling like hell, I will start to love eating (not eating) like this. I have done fasts before. I have done juice fasts before. However in the past I did not juice fresh fruits and vegetables, I just drank 100% apple and grape juice for 7 days. This new plan has so much more nutrition than the old way. Number one, I'll be juicing vegetables along with fruit and you can juice damn near any fruit or vegetable. I made a concoction of apple, carrot, broccoli, celery the other day and it tasted wonderful. I'll just get creative and experimental.

If you think about it, it's just concentrated nutrients, pretty much digested (broken down) and ready to go straight into your system. It's giving my digestive system a break from dealing with all the meat and chips I shovel in on a regular basis. I am also adding an hour long walk to my day and my usual 20 minute sessions of meditation. Plus this daily blog. I'll need someone to talk to...especially when I start feeling like crap this afternoon and tomorrow as my body starts to detox. That's the only thing I'm not looking forward to, but I've done it often enough to have the confidence that I'll make it through.

I told Tina that I'm really putting a lot of faith in this process. I told her that I'm pretty sure that once I start to feel better during the first week, I'll be all like 'born again' and trying to persuade her to cross the river Styx to the other side where you feel young and alive again! We shall see. I'm actually pretty balanced in regards to letting people walk their own path. I just don't want to be the 58 year old guy at my boy's hs graduation that has to use a walker. That may seem like an extreme statement to you, but it's certainly not to me. I cannot tell you how old I'm starting to feel. And everytime I imbibe on high doses of sugar or processed food, I start to feel even older. The way I see it, we've been given fruits and vegetables to eat on this planet, why not try that for awhile?

So, wish me luck. Keep me in your thoughts. I'll post daily, even if it's just to say the day sucked....or better yet, how much better I feel.  I started today with a large glass of freshly juiced orange. I must now go poop. And so it starts.
Blessings on the journey!