Day Zero

So... Tomorrow begins my quest. I'm jumping into this a little bit earlier than the rest of the Global Juice Feasters because I've got a couple of events coming up in March and I want to be well into my journey by then.

I guess, the question is: Why a 92 Day Juice Feast? I've done several fasting regimens in the past but ultimately returned every time to the dairy rich, processed vegetarian diet that led to my weight gain in the first place. Not this time. I want to give my body plenty of time to detox and I want to give my mind plenty of time to process the physical & emotional changes.

I first stumbled upon the concept of "juice feasting" when I was researching a raw food diet for my 14 year old dog. She was diagnosed with heart disease and a little over a year ago began to deteriorate very quickly. It seems that the valves to her heart had been leaking fluid into her lungs for years until it finally got to the point where she could hardly breathe. Almost overnight she went from being a little bit stiff and tired to barely able to get up to go outside. And I had never given her grocery-store variety dog food either. I was buying the good stuff. I had read about the benefits of raw food for humans here and there over the years but always thought it a little extreme. Now I had to do something extreme because my old girl was fading fast. I switched her to Natural Balance frozen raw canine diet immediately after reading about it. And I am happy to report that after about a year on raw I can really see the difference. She still has a chronic cough and she's a little tired & stiff. But she's not debilitated anymore and she's still with me. I expect she'll have a good quality of life into her senior years. There was even a month when I went back to her previous food due to the Natural Balance raw food being discontinued and her symptoms got worse again. I found a new manufacturer of raw pet food, Primal Pet, that is stocked here in Hawaii and got her back on schedule quickly.

Sorry for the long-winded intro. But if this sort of thing can work for an old dog going through a pretty severe health crisis, then why not for someone who is healthy to prevent those problems from ever developing? And it was in these online searches for resources on raw food that I came across Angela Stokes Raw Reform website. I was amazed by her before and after pictures and could totally relate to her personal story. Many of the emotions around food that she describes are ones I know far too well. But I guess I wasn't ready yet. Then one day at Borders Bookstore I picked up Natalia Rose's book, "The Raw Food Detox Diet" and read it cover to cover the same night. I went on to read Carol Alt's "Eating in the Raw" and Alissa Cohen's "Living on Live Foods". I went back and read through Angela Stokes' old blogs documenting her own 92 day juice feast and all three of her e-books. But, apparently, I still wasn't ready.

About the same time that I first started really studying the raw food lifestyle I also tried Bikram Yoga for the first time. This specific style of yoga was popularized by Bikram Choudhury in the sixties and seventies. It's a 90 minute series of 26 postures done in a hot and humid room. Pretty hardcore, but I absolutely love it. It feels like a shower from the inside out. My practice has not been consistent over the past year, but that is something I plan to change during this 92 day experiment. I will probably not be going to Bikram studio classes because I think that experience may be a little too intense for me during the feast. However, I am committed to do the series at home at least 3 x per week for the next 14 weeks. ;))

Anyway. That's my lead in. It all begins tomorrow. Friday, February 8, 2008. That day will go down in my personal history as THE day I stopped reading about it and thinking about it, and began to actually LIVE it for myself.

Aloha and thanks for reading.

Ellen