It's over! Finally, after ten days, the juice fast is over. And I am back on solid food, carbs, and caffeine. Whee! My elation knows no bounds.
But in the midst of all the skipping and hollering with joy, I have had a little time to reflect on the experience and think about what it has, or has not done for me.
After resuming the eating of normal food, I am forced to admit that my palate was indeed cleansed. No, I do not find myself mindlessly searching out vegetables like a vegan zombie. But I can tell you that everything tastes brighter, fuller, more. The cup of coffee I had this morning was one of the most existentially enlightening experiences of my life, and I somehow don't think it's just because I found the best Starbucks barista in the world. She looked pretty normal to me. So that's pretty awesome.
I have lost a total of 11 pounds. Not as much as I was expecting to lose, but still, a good, solid start. More importantly, I believe my stomach has shrunk a little, meaning I will be full from real food faster, and need to eat less often, hopefully causing the further loss of weight. At any rate, losing this little bit of weight is encouraging and makes me want to lose more. So efforts to eat better (thought not strictly in fruits and veggies) as well as continued efforts to be more active (also partly because I recently acquired these super awesome running shoes) will continue with vigor.
So will I do it again? Nope. I will not. Personally, the pain was not worth the gain to me in this experience. But it was a good experiment, and I certainly did learn from it. The one thing I did not learn was not to be drawn in by extreme healthy food practices that clearly have nothing to do with my philosophies about food and drink (which are, in a nutshell, that life was made for living). I recently discovered this book on this blog, and subsequently added it to my Amazon wishlist. But if/when I give vegan food a try, I definitely won't go whole hog. I will just try incorporating it slowly into the routine. Maybe. We'll see.
And now, thankfully, I can resume normal eating and blogging. This is perfect, because I have a whole slew of fall/winter recipes that I am chomping at the bit to try/modify/force on others.
But in the midst of all the skipping and hollering with joy, I have had a little time to reflect on the experience and think about what it has, or has not done for me.
After resuming the eating of normal food, I am forced to admit that my palate was indeed cleansed. No, I do not find myself mindlessly searching out vegetables like a vegan zombie. But I can tell you that everything tastes brighter, fuller, more. The cup of coffee I had this morning was one of the most existentially enlightening experiences of my life, and I somehow don't think it's just because I found the best Starbucks barista in the world. She looked pretty normal to me. So that's pretty awesome.
I have lost a total of 11 pounds. Not as much as I was expecting to lose, but still, a good, solid start. More importantly, I believe my stomach has shrunk a little, meaning I will be full from real food faster, and need to eat less often, hopefully causing the further loss of weight. At any rate, losing this little bit of weight is encouraging and makes me want to lose more. So efforts to eat better (thought not strictly in fruits and veggies) as well as continued efforts to be more active (also partly because I recently acquired these super awesome running shoes) will continue with vigor.
So will I do it again? Nope. I will not. Personally, the pain was not worth the gain to me in this experience. But it was a good experiment, and I certainly did learn from it. The one thing I did not learn was not to be drawn in by extreme healthy food practices that clearly have nothing to do with my philosophies about food and drink (which are, in a nutshell, that life was made for living). I recently discovered this book on this blog, and subsequently added it to my Amazon wishlist. But if/when I give vegan food a try, I definitely won't go whole hog. I will just try incorporating it slowly into the routine. Maybe. We'll see.
And now, thankfully, I can resume normal eating and blogging. This is perfect, because I have a whole slew of fall/winter recipes that I am chomping at the bit to try/modify/force on others.
Congrats, Katie! Way to try something new and see it through. I admire your persistence, though I do wonder what kind of continued results you might have seen if you'd done a longer study than 10 days... After all, 11 pounds in 10 days is pretty significant.
ReplyDeleteAnd mainly I just wanted to comment that of course you won't go whole hog if you go vegan. You'll be going no hog. Hehe. Get it? :)
-A
I would never have seen that through 10 days. I repeat, you are amazing.
ReplyDelete