I had a bit of a rough patch there the past few days, but I’m feeling much better today. In fact, I’ve been feeling terrific all day — physically, mentally, and emotionally — with just a touch of emotional detox this evening. It’s nice to be back to my usual happy and energetic self again. 🙂

Weight Loss

Perhaps due to what happened yesterday, my weight plunged another 2.0 pounds to 173.2, so that’s a net loss of 5.8 pounds in 12 days.

This is my lowest weight of the whole year. When I hit the 160s, I’ll be at my lowest weight of the whole millennium. 🙂

The Chaotic Cleansing Process

This juice feasting experience has been massively raising my awareness of the connection between what I eat and how I feel. During this juice feast, my body has been doing a major house cleaning, clearing out years of stored toxins from my cells and organs. As this toxic debris is released from my cells into my bloodstream for eventual elimination (largely via the colon), I have to endure major physiological shifts along the way.

My blood actually becomes dirtier for a while as this cleaning process takes place. It’s like when you’re cleaning up your house, and it gets messier at first as you pull everything out and sort through it. Even though it may look like the mess has gotten even worse to an observer passing by, progress is being made. One sign of progress, for example, is seeing trash bags being filled up and taken away. Similarly, I can see that I’m making progress on my juice feast by noticing all the foul putrescence that’s coming out of me. I can also notice that I’ve dropped nearly 6 pounds in just 12 days… all without restricting calories and while meeting my nutritional needs.

These physiological shifts affect my energy levels, how I feel, how I think, and what my current focus is. Sometimes I just have to sit back and helplessly watch my body, mind, and emotions go haywire while the cleaning process unfolds. But I also have faith that I’m making important progress. This isn’t a spiritual kind of faith. It comes from studying juice feasting in depth before I even started, so I’d know what to expect. So far everything that’s happened has been within my reasonable expectations for how this would unfold, and it’s not that different from what other juice feasters have already gone through. I knew in advance that the first few weeks of a juice feast are generally the most difficult.

I also talked to several experienced juice feasters by phone or in person to learn more about what to expect — before I even started my juice feast. Everyone was glad they did it, but I could tell it wasn’t easy for them. It does require a pretty strong commitment to do something like this, especially for a few months straight without cheating.

Cellular Detox

Now I totally understand if you don’t buy into the whole cellular detox notion. This isn’t the sort of thing that was likely included with your college degree (I really hope you didn’t go into debt to pay for that). It took me a while to grasp this too, but it fits the facts so much better than the nonsensical mainstream ideas about health and disease.

I assure you, however, that your cells are already well-versed in toxin storage and elimination protocols. They do this naturally every day when you aren’t looking. Unfortunately they don’t have the liberty of waiting until your health education catches up to their daily reality. So in the meantime, if you consume anything like the Standard American Diet (SAD), your cells are in a pretty diseased state right now, and you probably can’t even feel that anything is wrong, especially if you’re only in your 20s or 30s. But the reason you don’t know that anything is wrong is that you’ve probably eaten this way for most of your life, so you haven’t a clue what “right” really feels like. You’ve never had that kind of reference experience that would make it clear that the way you’re feeling now is rather far from right and is actually quite sick. You feel bad but you label it as normal because you’ve never experienced how much better you could be feeling right now.

If you’re an American, you have an 80-90% chance of dying from heart disease or cancer. It’s a safe bet you’ll die from one or the other, and there’s a good chance you’ll get both of these. The only question is which will kill you first, and there’s a good chance you’ll suffer a slow and tedious decline along the way, suffering losses both mental and physical. Death will claim you piece by piece.

Believe me — making important changes now is a lot better than sending me an email someday that begins with the words, “Hi Steve, I’ve recently been diagnosed with _______, and I was just wondering…”

Yes, I’ve really been getting emails like that. This is serious business. If I can possibly save you from such a fate, I think it’s worth a shot to nudge your health education a little more in the direction of truth and away from mainstream marketing drivel, even though you’ll probably be plenty pissed off at me in the short-term for ruining your delusions of a healthy suicide. I promise I won’t take your backlash personally though, as long as you leave my veggie garden out of this. 😉

Peak States You’ve Never Experienced in Your Entire Life

I’ve been colorblind my whole life, so I have no clue how people with normal color vision see reality. When people start talking about colors I can’t perceive, I sometimes react as if they’re delusional. I can’t see what they’re seeing, so I have no way of knowing if they’re being straight with me or just making stuff up.

However, even though I can’t see reality the way people with normal color vision can see it, they have the option of getting a glimpse of what my reality looks like. For example, take a look at these produce photos. They look essentially identical to me. Whatever colors you see in the top picture that aren’t in the bottom picture, my eyes can’t perceive them. Those colors simply don’t exist in my reality. I’ve never seen them in my entire life. I can’t even imagine what you’re seeing that I’m not seeing. I have no frame of reference for it. How can I imagine colors I’ve never seen before? I wouldn’t even know how to do that.

So my best response to your claims of the existence of other colors outside my reality is to question your sanity. That seems like the right thing to do. No one has ever proven the existence of the color purple to my satisfaction. If I ask two people with normal color vision to tell me the color of a certain real world object, they usually come up with different labels — purple, violet, lavender, magenta, puce, grape, etc. Sometimes they’ll even debate with each other about which label is best. Personally I think they’re all suffering from a mental defect.

But from the perspective of those color-rich people, they see what my reality looks like, and they see theirs. They know I’m stuck in some kind of limiting cocoon. Now what if there was a way they could show me their reality? What if they could show me how to fix my eyes, so I could see all the colors they see? And what if that method required some self-discipline and sacrifice on my part… say for several weeks straight just to see what it was like, followed by a permanent lifestyle change to make it stick? Would I do it?

Now what if I lived in a world where most people were colorblind just like me, and everyone considered it normal? What if the color-rich people were considered extremists? What if I knew people would label me an extremist too if I sought to see more colors?

Would I prefer the comfort and security of the only reality I ever knew? Would I want to stretch, or would I want to stay put?

Would I really be sacrificing anything worth having? What exactly would I be giving up anyway? Just some old attachments to things I can learn to live without, given enough time to adjust.

Now similarly, suppose you’ve eaten cooked foods your entire life. And then you meet some crazy raw foodists who tell you about a whole new level of being. They tell you about it, but you can’t relate because you’ve never experienced it. You project their reports onto your known experience of reality, and it just doesn’t sound that exciting to you. When they say, “I feel absolutely amazing, and the mental clarity is just incredible,” it doesn’t mean that much to you because your version of that statement is like how I see the color red. People tell me that my reds don’t look red at all — they look gray. Similarly, your version of a peak experience is just as gray. What you imagine as the best, most vitally alive you’ve ever felt is like an off day for someone who’s used to living at a much higher level. For me to see the color red would be an enormous shift, but for most people it’s nothing special.

Now I may not be able to fix my eyes just yet, but you have the option of experiencing new peak states of being that you’ve never in your life experienced before. Purifying your diet is one way to create such an experience.

One of the reasons I opted to do a 92-day juice feast was that other raw foodists who’d already done it were telling me how amazing the experience was — compared to how they normally felt as a raw foodist, which was pretty darned good to begin with. I really couldn’t imagine what kinds of states they were describing. I realized they were probably talking about states of being that I’d never in my life experienced.

Glimpsing New Peak Experiences

I’m just now starting to get a glimpse of what some of these juice feasters were talking about. I’m sure my experience isn’t the same as theirs, but the general idea of reaching new states is what’s important.

Earlier this afternoon I had what I’d have to label a psychic flash of instant knowing. It felt very different than my usual intuitive impressions. I can’t even describe it — it was just a flash of awareness that something had happened. Fortunately it was easy for me to verify that the flash of insight was accurate. Here’s what happened — the event itself isn’t that exciting by the way:

Today Erin drove from Las Vegas to Phoenix for a conference she’s attending. The drive is more than 300 miles and requires crossing Hoover Dam, and it usually takes 5-6 hours. While I was working on some random task in my office, I had an instant flash of knowing that Erin had just walked into her hotel room. We hadn’t spoken for hours, but I just knew she’d walked into her hotel room in that very moment. I called her cell phone, and she answered, slightly out of breath. She told me that I had great timing because she’d just walked into her hotel room right before I called. I wasn’t surprised because the feeling of certainty was so strong.

I saw improvement in my intuition after going raw, but this experience had a different quality to it. It was like a bell went off in my mind to alert me to an event as it happened in real time. I can’t be sure this is due to the juice feast, but I’m on the lookout for new experiences while juice feasting, so there’s probably a connection of some sort.

Earlier today I also felt my mind shifting into unusual patterns. It’s hard to put those experiences into words, but it’s like I was picking up a jumble of instantaneous impressions, like I was tuning into something more expansive. I couldn’t hold onto that state for more than a few seconds at a time, but I’m hoping I have the change to explore it further.

Eating for Growth

If you have issues with negative emotions coursing through your life, take a good look at your diet and health habits. If you think there’s no connection, you’re absolutely deluding yourself. If you don’t believe me, just try eating nothing but raw, unprocessed foods for several days, and notice how quickly your physiology changes. I’ll bet you don’t have to go longer than 48 hours to notice that something has shifted in you.

It’s pretty hard to feel inspired and motivated when your own physiology is actively working against you. If you feel like something inside you is always holding you back, it may very well be your own cells. Look no further for the cause of the problem than what you’re putting in your mouth each day.

The connection between the different diets I’ve eaten and my dominant thoughts is very clear to me. Back when I was into shoplifting in my late teens, I ate lots of animal foods. For breakfast I usually had a bowl of cereal or some eggs and toast. For lunch I’d have a sandwich, or I’d get a bacon double cheeseburger from Burger King. Then for dinner I’d make some baked chicken, or I’d buy a few slices of pizza.

While I ate this way, I wasn’t overweight, I exercised a lot (mainly biking), and I didn’t get sick often. I had no idea that the foods I was eating were hurting me in other ways. I thought that if I physically looked and felt okay, it meant my diet must be fine. I didn’t realize how those foods might be affecting my thoughts and feelings. My dominant thoughts at the time were so petty it’s ridiculous to look back and see where my focus was. I could barely think a few weeks ahead when making decisions. My thoughts were jumbled, unfocused, and internally conflicted. I had no idea what a clear mind was supposed to feel like. My emotions were often my enemies. I had frequent problems with boredom and apathy, and even when I felt strong and positive, it was totally manic and unstable. I was often trying to distract myself from something unpleasant.

Whenever I’ve made a leap forward in my diet, I’ve enjoyed a corresponding improvement in my thoughts and feelings. These mental and emotional shifts were far greater than any physical changes I experienced. My mind became calmer and more centered. The big picture of life came into better focus. My feelings grew more positive. I felt naturally motivated and inspired. And I was able to see ever more clearly the kind of damage my poor dietary choices had been doing to my life — not so much to my physical body but to the holistic totality of my being.

By forcing all the cells of my body to deal with suboptimal nutrition, I became something less than the human being I was meant to be. No wonder I so often felt like I was being blocked from within. My own cells were trying to tell me they were clogged and couldn’t perform at their best… and that I needed to address that problem first. I saw great improvement after going vegan and later raw, but now I’m interested in doing a serious purging cycle (albeit a temporary one) to try to move the cleanup process along.

If you can’t seem to get your life headed down the right track, look to your diet. Make changes there first. You’ll find it so much easier to set and accomplish inspiring goals when your physiology is actively supporting you with high energy, positive emotions, and a sense of resiliency that allows you to easily overcome setbacks. Once you get a taste of what life at each new level feels like, you won’t want to go back. And even if you do backslide from time to time, you’ll always remember that higher level of being and will have a desire to return to it.