Juice Feasting – Day 26

The past couple days have been interesting to say the least.

After my spa day on Monday, I felt more relaxed, but I still felt pretty aggressive. I woke up Tuesday morning feeling hostile and belligerent. Later in the day, the anger went away, and I was left with this incredible feeling of power and energy, which also carried into today.

Weight Loss

I weighed 171.0 this morning for a net loss of 8.0 pounds in 25 days. I haven’t lost any weight in about 10 days now. That’s pretty lame.

Microsoft Easy Transfer Wizard

I recently bought Erin a new PC, one of those HP all-in-ones. The new PC is pretty cool and works great. The only problem is trying to transfer her data from her old Windows XP PC to her new Windows Vista PC.

We tried using Microsoft’s “Easy Transfer Wizard,” and we’ve concluded this software is somewhat misbranded. It’s clearly not easy, unless you consider easy to be a synonym for broken. It doesn’t actually transfer anything — other than PC users to the Apple store. And the only way it could be a Wizard would be if it conjured Bill Gates at my front door to apologize for wasting my time.

Seriously, I could write a better piece of software in BASIC overnight.

I miss the DOS days sometimes. At least DOS worked.

So now all the friends who tried to convince me to get Erin a Mac are saying, “Shoulda bought a Mac.” I guess it would have been a better idea to pay more for software that runs than to save money on software that doesn’t.

Of course we can transfer Erin’s files manually, which is what Erin is doing now. But that sorta defeats the purpose of an Easy Transfer Wizard. How hard can it be to rewrite “Copy *.*” for Windows Vista?

Now if Apple were really smart, they’d seize upon this opportunity to send me and Erin free Macs in exchange for us blogging about the experience of switching over. I’d do it if I were them. 🙂

And if Microsoft were really smart, Erin would already be up and running on her new PC instead of still using her old one.

Phone Call With David Rainoshek

I talked to David Rainoshek for more than two hours yesterday. He’s like a human health Wikipedia. He asked me a lot of questions to assess how I’m doing on the juice feast and to help determine whether it would be wise to break the feast or keep going. I can’t share every detail of the conversation — there was just too much — but his ultimate recommendation was that I begin breaking out of the juice feast around Day 30.

In Ayurvedic terms (a system I’m not particularly familiar with), David said it sounds like I’m experiencing something called a Vata imbalance, and there isn’t a good way to correct that on a juice feast, so the imbalance is likely to continue or worsen if I keep juice feasting. This isn’t necessarily a dangerous condition, but it indicates that the current cleansing physiology I’m inducing probably isn’t the best choice for me at this time. My body seems to be resisting this kind of imbalance instead of fully cooperating with it.

I’ve been craving fat like crazy lately, which seems to be a strong signal from my body that I need more fat in my diet. But if I add more fat to the juice feast, then I’m unlikely to remain in a cleansing physiology, so I might as well break out of the feast altogether.

I had a similar problem with the 80-10-10 raw food diet (less than 10% of calories from fat), which I did for 30 days in January. I made it the whole 30 days, but in the end I had no interest in continuing to follow that diet. One problem I had was very bad dry skin, including cracked, bleeding knuckles on my hands. I’m also experiencing dry skin on the juice feast, and the skin on my hands is dry and scaly now. I’ve been rubbing coconut oil on my hands often, but it doesn’t seem to help much. A juice feast is actually another variation on 80-10-10 in terms of the nutrient ratios, so my body is giving me strong indications that it needs more than 10% of calories from fat for optimal functioning. These results will likely vary from person to person, so my results may be atypical.

My weight loss followed a similar pattern during my 80-10-10 diet trial as well. I lost 8 pounds quickly and then stalled. I’d probably lose more weight on the juice feast eventually, but it’s certainly not as rapid as what most people experience while juice feasting. Someone who (coincidentally) started juice feasting on the same day, at a starting weight only 4 pounds above mine, has lost 20 pounds already. That kind of result seems to be more common.

When I adopted a raw diet with more fat in it, I got great results, especially when I included lots of greens, mainly in the form of green smoothies and salads. I added some superfoods like maca as well. I had lots of energy, I didn’t have any dry skin problems, and I felt grounded and not spacey. I loved that I could eat as much as I wanted and not gain weight, and I loved the foods I was eating too. There was no deprivation at all.

Even on a raw diet with more fat, I was actually losing weight, albeit very slowly. After I did my first colonic, however, my weight loss accelerated. I lost a pound a week for 5 weeks straight, dropping from 184 to 179 pounds. That’s the point where I started my juice feast, so I might have continued losing weight if I just maintained my previous raw diet. I’m sure the juice feast sped things along, but it seems to have done so in a rather unbalancing way.

Masculine vs. Feminine Energy

Another problem David and I discussed is where the juice feast is taking me energetically and what I’m likely to experience if I keep going. I’d thought the juice feast would induce a period of higher productivity, inspiring lots of action. But actually it’s had the opposite effect.

Instead of getting a boost of action, I’ve been getting a boost of creative ideas and insights. However, I really don’t need that right now. I’ve never had a shortage of ideas. I have an overabundance of great ideas already — for new articles, projects, books, etc. So getting a boost in this area is absolute overkill for me.

I’ve been receiving louder, deeper versions of ideas that I’m already clear about. My response is, “Okay, I got it. No need to keep rehashing the same ideas I’ve already received.” It’s like cleaning a window that’s already clean.

There’s also been a significant increase in my psychic/intuitive abilities. I didn’t notice this at first, probably because I was distracted by so much emotional detox, but Erin recently pointed it out. She says there’s been a noticeable increase in the frequency and accuracy of my intuitive hits. For example, I’ll say something and she’ll complain, “Hey, that was my line,” because I said the exact sentence she was about to say. I’ve also been getting a ridiculous number of synchronicities to confirm some of my ideas; however, I didn’t need extra confirmation because I was already confident that I was on the right path. More overkill.

Now that I think about it, other people have been like open books to me lately. I can read their surface thoughts very easily, even over the phone. The signals are so clear. However, this isn’t really a skill I cared to boost. I’m sure some people would love it, but it’s just not what I was looking to do at this time.

I’m getting major boosts on the feminine energy side, but I’ve been experiencing a matching decline on the masculine energy side. I’m getting less done than usual, and my productivity has dropped a lot. Instead of sleeping about 6-1/2 hours per day, I’m sleeping about 9 hours. My energy is contracting and pulling inward. I feel deeply connected with other people, but I’m not making much progress toward my goals. I’m spending a lot of time in introspection. I’m doing a lot of reading too — I’ve read maybe 10 books during my juice feast already. I’m soaking up new information and ideas like a sponge. But when I sit down to work on a project, I just can’t seem to focus on it. I feel strongly pulled in other directions.

Unfortunately, this is the exact opposite of what I wanted from a juice feast. I wanted a boost on the masculine energy side. I wanted to boost my creative output — my ability to take action and complete projects. I didn’t want to generate more ideas, and I didn’t think I needed more clarity. I already felt clear enough. I wanted to pour more energy and action into my existing ideas. I wanted to get more done. I thought that was one of the benefits a juice feast would deliver. For some people that does seem to be the case… but apparently not for me. This juice feast is boosting parts of my life that don’t seem to need boosting, while simultaneously shutting down parts of my life I wanted to raise up.

Experiencing a boost on the feminine energy side isn’t bad in general. It’s just that I don’t desire what I’ve been getting. So that leaves me a couple options. I can embrace the results I’m really getting and go with the flow of this experience. I can put my other goals on hold and allow my energy to contract and turn inward, exploring my emotions and intuitive abilities in much greater depth. Or I may decide that isn’t what I want and break the juice feast to return to a lifestyle that’s more compatible with my current goals.

So I wanted the juice feast to help put me into an even greater expansion phase, but instead it launched me into a contraction phase. Now I can accept and go with the contraction, or I can dump it and return to an expansion phase.

My initial reaction was, I’m just not interested in wallowing in feminine energy right now, so if this is likely to continue, I should break the juice feast. David suggested taking 5 more days to be sure, which would take me to Day 30. I think that’s reasonable. During this time I can turn and embrace those feminine energies that are swirling through my life without resisting them so much. I think an additional 60+ days of this would likely be a bad choice for me at this time, but I can handle 5 days easily (only 4 more days after today). Then I can make a more informed choice on Day 30.

Some readers also recommended that I drop the goal of 92 days and turn this into a 30-day trial instead. I’ll decide what I want to do on Day 30, but for now I’d say there’s a 90% chance I’ll break the juice feast starting on Day 31. It will take me 3 days to break it. I need to do it very gradually to avoid getting sick, so I’ll still be doing a lot of juicing for several days afterwards.

This juice feast has been a major growth experience to be sure, so I don’t regret doing it, but I think I went into it with mismatched expectations. If I’d known how it would affect me, I probably wouldn’t have done a juice feast at this time. If there comes a time where I really want to dive deeply into exploring my creative, intuitive side, and I’m willing to put my active projects on hold for a while, I might return to juice feasting at another time. But for now I’m feeling a strong call to return to the masculine energy side. Perhaps some of the gains I made from juice feasting will stay with me after I return to solid foods though. One person told me that he noted major improvements only after he ended a two-week juice feast — he seemed forever changed by the experience in a positive way.

As David and I discussed, juice feasting would be an awesome undertaking for someone who felt creatively blocked, who lacked clarity about their life path, who needed to lose a large amount of weight, or who was suffering from major health issues. That just isn’t me though. So where a juice feast would help re-balance an unbalanced person, for me it seems to be turning balance into imbalance.

I can still do the liver and parasite cleanses by the way, so that part is no problem. In fact, I’ve already started on the liver cleanse by taking Chanca Piedra. This is an herb that helps break up liver and kidney stones. I’ll be taking that for about 30 days, and then I’ll begin the parasite cleanse. If anything interesting happens as a result of those, I’ll be sure to let you know.

It was really great talking through these issues (and many more) with David. He helped me see this with a lot more clarity. Sometimes when I’m in the midst of a personal growth experiment, I get so immersed in it that it’s hard to see it objectively.