How to lose 14 pounds in 14 days and make your mom crazy!

Last November I decided to do a juice detox cleanse diet thing.  I got my husband to do it with me, and he signed on for a week.  I decided to talk about the cleanse on my Facebook page, so "if I talk about it, then I will do it." 

I bought the book, 21 Pounds in 21 Days, The Martha's Vineyard Diet Detox.  I decided I would do the entire 21 days.  For this detox, you drink a berry juice in the morning, a "green drink" at 10 a.m. and

4 p.m., a home-made juice from a juicer for lunch and a puree vegetable soup for dinner. You also ingest a ton of water and hot tea. 

I will say it works, it works great and you don't get hungry. I felt great, my head was clear and I had more energy than I have EVER had!

There are two main premisses to this diet detox. First, you are constantly ingesting quality nutrition so your body never feels it has to slow down the metabolism and second, if you stop the digestion process, (chewing, breaking down food, fat, proteins) your body has all that energy to detox and heal the body.  

Digestion is hard on the body. Yes, it is a natural process and exactly what your body is suppose to do, but there have been countless studies that when a person or animal reduces it's food intake by 30%, they live longer and age slower. 

While doing this detox I learned a lot. I learned that there is food EVERYWHERE! It is on TV, billboards, signs, buses- everywhere! You can't escape the constant reminder that "now would be a great time for a burger!"  I was actually thanking God for the DVR so I didn't have to watch all the food commercials!! 

I can't imagine what it would be like to be a literal "food addict." It would be exhausting trying to combat that.  Can u imagine being a meth addict and seeing billboards of meth and people enjoying meth everywhere?! The problem is, you don't have to be a food addict to be stimulated to eat because of these images, you just have to have a pulse. 

I quit smoking 2 years, 10 months, 23 days and 12, ok, 13 hours ago.  I thank God that you can't smoke in bars, restaurants or anywhere. I thank God that you can't really advertise cigarettes anymore, it is a blessing to an ex-smoker because I don't have to see it. I don't have to be constantly reminded that I am not smoking right now. I don't know ONE smoker where I live so I don't have to contend with seeing all my friends "getting" to smoke. How do you do that with food? Everyone has to eat, everyone's friends are eating and you are suppose to eat in bars and restaurants? Quitting the food habit is impossible! Or is it? Maybe we just have to break some habits? Maybe we need to see where we fall within our food habits?

I know quite a few people who have had the gastric bypass surgery, and to be honest, if there was a way that I could get it, I would think about it.  I look at it like the "food border patrol." The problem is, like America's border patrol, if you want to get by the patrol, you get past 'em.  If you want to eat, you eat. 

For everyone food is something different.  For me it is an experiment, for my husband it is an extension of his day, for my son it is sustenance.  For others it is a way to disconnect from reality.  My detox taught me that we don't need even half of the calories we eat in a day. We could live off of so much less food and be better off for it. We are programmed to breakfast, lunch and dinner, coffee, wine, soda, dessert...food food food. Getting hungry yet?

My dad was not happy I was doing the detox. My mom was not happy I was doing it and it irritated my brother that I was doing it.

I lost 14 pound in 14 days, I didn't give a darn what they thought... sort of. 

I couldn't help but hear the voices telling me that what I was doing was wrong, or nuts. I couldn't  help but hear them. But like everything in life, everyone is doing something nuts in their life, and if the wackiest thing I do is drink vegetable juice for 3 weeks, how is that bad?

Not eating can teach you a lot about yourself.  It can teach you a lot about your food habit.  I am not saying to starve yourself, I am saying that doing a healthy juice detox, or abstaining from meat, or dairy or alcohol for a period of time, puts you in touch with how programmed you really are to the way things are in your life.

I wanted to do the full 21 days but Thanksgiving, visiting my mom and pretzels, got in the way of that goal.

I will do the detox again and I know that next time I will make it the full 21 days. Next time, however, I will make sure and not schedule it during Thanksgiving, and next time, I'm not telling anyone, except maybe my friends on Facebook!