Physically I’m feeling fine, but my will to continue juice feasting has been weakening a lot. My heart isn’t in it as much as it once was.

Weight Loss

I weighed 170.4 this morning for a net loss of 8.6 pounds in 22 days.

I’m now wearing my belt one notch tighter.

Feeling Unmotivated

Aside from the weight loss, I honestly haven’t noticed any significant breakthroughs or serious benefits thus far, at least not the kind that would justify the effort.

I’m relying on willpower and self-discipline to get through each day. The task of making each day’s juices still feels quite tedious to me. I can do it, but it’s not something I look forward to. It basically amounts to 60-90 minutes of tedium.

Also, drinking the juices has become pretty boring. I’ve been looking at each quart of juice thinking, “Blech.” Even straight pineapple juice doesn’t thrill me anymore.

I’m not really craving solid food at this time, but I am attracted to eating a wide variety of raw foods again. I keep thinking about all the different salad combos I’d like to enjoy. I miss the experience of eating. The thought of not eating anything for another 69 days feels very depressing.

Feeling Disconnected

The way I feel now reminds me a lot of how I felt near the end of my polyphasic sleep experiment. I kept it up for 5-1/2 months and then went back to monophasic sleep, largely because I began feeling more and more disconnected from everyone, especially my family. Our lives were totally out of sync while we were on different sleep schedules. I ended up spending a lot of time alone at night while my family slept. I’m glad I did the experiment, since polyphasic sleep was an incredible thing to experience, but I’m also glad that I returned to monophasic sleep.

It’s been bugging me that I’ve been largely out of sync with my family for the past 3+ weeks. While juice feasting I’ve been feeling more disconnected from them. They’ve all been very supportive of what I’m doing, but I feel cut off because I can’t share meals with them anymore. It’s very unpleasant for me to watch them eat while I’m sipping a juice, so I don’t like doing that. But then we never share any meal times together. It’s beginning to feel like I’m a live-in guest in some other family’s home.

Before the juice feast, I gradually learned to be okay with the rest of the family eating cooked food while I ate something raw. It took a while, but I eventually got used to it, mainly because cooked food no longer appealed to me. On a few occasions the whole family would eat something raw together, like a big fruit salad for breakfast. Also, we would often go out to eat together, especially at local buffets, since then everyone could get what they wanted. We haven’t gone out to eat together since I started juice feasting, so those experiences are gone too.

This would be different if I were a bachelor doing this on my own, but it’s pretty hard being a juice feaster in a non-juice feasting family. I’ve been pondering whether it’s a good idea to continue juice feasting, given that it’s having the negative side effect of making me feel more disconnected from my family.

When the kids ask me to make them something to eat, that’s pretty hard for me to do now. It doesn’t feel right to prepare solid foods during this time, but nor does it feel right to deny their requests or tell them to ask Erin all the time.

I don’t have a good solution for this right now. I’m glad the juice feast is temporary no matter what, but I can’t shake the feeling that I may be sacrificing too much by continuing this experiment. I’d have to do Thanksgiving and Christmas on my own as well. As a bachelor, I could handle that. But as part of a family, hmmm… not so sure.

At this point I don’t know if this is a temporary emotional blip that will soon pass… or if these feelings of discontent will continue to grow stronger. Right now I suspect it’s the latter.

Is It Time to Break the Juice Feast?

David Rainoshek lists six criteria for when to break out of a juice feast. If you meet any one of these criteria, that’s a sign that it’s time to break the feast and transition back to solid foods again.

1. If your heart is not in it, has not been for 3-5 days or more, and you are definitely about to eat something.
2. You have no guidance from a health professional, and/or are feasting with feelings of fear.
3. You are not drinking enough juice or the right juice to provide your body with all the calories it requires, and do not feel that you can maintain the discipline of doing so.
4. Your weight hit 10% below your ideal, and by virtue of drinking 5-8 quarts of juice per day with increased superfoods, has risen back steadily over at least 4-10 days.
5. Your weight has hit 10% below your ideal, and has continued to trend downwards. You are feeling hungry, and are not feeling compelled (which is totally cool) to drink 5-8 quarts of juice per day to increase bodyweight.
6. You have reached 92 Days of Juice Feasting, and are ready to move back into eating, to Juice Feast more at a later date, once you have had a chance to regroup from this significant life event.

Items 2-6 don’t apply, but I do meet part of the first criterion. My heart hasn’t been in this for several days now. Am I definitely about to eat something though? Not necessarily. I could probably keep going on willpower for quite a while longer — the whole 92 days if necessary — but I’m not sure if that’s wise. I’ve built some pretty strong self-discipline muscles over the years, and this has served me well in many situations, but I recognize that it’s not always a good idea to over-rely on it.

I’m glad to have made it 23 days on just juice, which is more than I’ve ever done before, so I can’t consider this experiment a failure no matter what happens. I haven’t decided what I’ll do yet, so by default I’ll continue the juice feast for now and give this some more thought.

What Would You Do?

In the meantime I’d like to invite your feedback, in the hopes that other people might be able to see this situation more objectively than I can. I’m so close to this situation that it’s hard for me to see the big picture clearly.

Do you feel that I should carry on and push through these feelings of disconnection with my family and go the remaining 69 days no matter what?

Or is this a sign that I should back off and begin to transition back to solid foods?

What would you do if you were me?

I really haven’t made a decision at this point, so I’m genuinely interested in your opinion. Time to use my “Ask the audience” lifeline. 🙂