Day 19 (& 18)

Yesterday's menu:
1 qt h20, lemon, 1T msm
2 qt celery, cuke, carrots, bok choy, watercress, cabbage, radish, tomato, parsley, turmeric, garlic, 1 T hemp oil
1 qt grapefruit, orange, lemon, 3 T E3live, 1 T msm
1 qt apple, kale, romaine,lemon
.5 qt pineapple and h20
1 T each: bee pollen, coconut oil
probiotics, zeolite, additional h2o

We ran into a little Friday night trouble after a very positive day yesterday. We had that feeling of dreariness and got on the topic of food fantasies. We actually laughed really hard because Jill said "why don't we make an extra juice" and Jack said "I'm so sick of f-- juice! I can't even hear the word 'juice'" and the disdainful way he pronounced the word "juice" (which, when you think about it, starts to be a pretty funny word) got us hysterical. This felt good, but didn't solve the craving problems. We toughed it out, though, with Jill making an emergency pineapple juice in the crap back-up blender (Vitamix spare part has not yet arrived)and Jack, true to his word, disdaining even the thought of more "juice". Today Jack's all happy though because he dropped a couple more pounds finally. We took some pictures and will hopefully post them later. As it's Saturday, we have only had our msm water so far and will post today's juices later.

I will say this for the blender/bag method of juice-making, which I am often ranking below the juicer. It is preferable to the Green Star if, like last night, you only want to make a single juice where everything goes in the blender at once. I would not bust out the Green Star for that. And it is good to have the option of the blender, so thanks to juicefeasting.com for that idea, which clearly works all the time for some people and at least some of the time for us.

While not making any definite decisions about how long we are going with this has definitely taken the pressure off, it also leaves us free at any point (like last night) to say "wow, 18 days is a solid amount of time for a fast, we could just stop now". Of course, we know our intention is to go further than that, so ultimately we know this is rationalization and addictive habit and whatever else. Basically, we know we don't want to stop because of cravings, but rather because in a clear-headed way we feel we've accomplished what we came for and yet, those numbers, which are really arbitrary, start to seem significant. We discussed briefly, back in the beginning, how long we might want to continue and arrived at several answers:

1. 20 days is a solid length.
2. 30 days is the most Jill has ever fasted before, so anything longer would be LONGEST FAST for Jill (whatever that really means)
3. 54 days is the longest Jack has ever fasted before, so anything longer would be LONGEST FAST EVER for us
4. juicefeasting.com defines a long fast as 60-92 days, so 60 or more seems to be the definition of COMPLETION by that standard
5. 92 days is the arbitrary number that most people seem to be shooting for. Maybe this would be truly ideal health-wise, maybe aspiring to this is just a kind of "macho" desire to "win" - like running a marathon.

It is hard to sort out the distinctions between the weightiness or seeming "level of accomplishment" associated with a given number and just the general physicality of the experience. Especially since it's very hard to mentally access the "true results", which are presumably subtle and cellular. While I'm not consciously into the goal-oriented thing of shooting for a particular number at random, or to feel "victorious" or avoid feeling like a "failure", there's also the way that having goals can encourage one to move beyond gratification and to try for something amazing and difficult. I have also to admit that I probably would have stopped now if it weren't for this blog and the sense that, though we never said "how long" there is an assumption that we will not stop lightly and will try for maximum results and deep cleansing and that our little community of same-schedule bloggers is expecting more of us than 18 days. There is a disconnect, since the rest of the world thinks that fasting for 18 days is insane and way too long already. But we don't subscribe to very much of what the rest of the world thinks, particularly not about food...

ok today's juices are made:
1 qt h20, lemon, 1T msm
1 qt celery, carrots, cabbage, watercress, garlic, 1 T hemp oil, 1 T grn superfood
1 qt grapefruit, orange, lemon, 3 T E3live, 1 T msm
1 qt apple, kale, romaine, lemon, celery
1 qt celery, cuke, pear, bok choy, parsley
1 T each: bee pollen, coconut oil
probiotics, zeolite, additional h2o

We are finding the vitamineral green to be a huge challenge!