10 Day Liquid Fast - What I Learned

Well, today is the first day that I am going to eat solid food in 10 days.

My wife and I are completing a 10 juice and broth fast.

I don't know where my wife found the plan and I didn't ask any questions.

But she told me that she wanted to try this plan.

She wanted to lose some weight and she wanted to detox her body.

Before I go into any further detail, I want to stress that I am not a nutritionist, I have no idea if what we just did was actually good for our health, and I am in no way qualified to recommend that anybody try this for themselves.

That being said, here is what we did.

We have a juicer and we juiced quite a lot of fruits and vegetables every day.

There was no limit to the amount of juice we were allowed to drink.

We were also permitted an unlimited amount of chicken broth. We used low sodium bone broth.

Lastly, we were permitted an unlimited amount of ginger and cinnamon tea.

Since our 3rd son was born 2.5 years ago, we have both put on quite a bit of weight.

About a year ago, I was called on to give a business presentation to a group of people and when I projected my computer onto the screen, a google search I had done that morning popped up.

I forgot that I had googled "how to get rid of a dad bod". Not my finest moment.

I was up about 15 pounds over where I should probably be.

And my wife was in a similar boat.

To be honest, I am fine with not being in great shape.

I'm a dad, I own a business, I am going bald. But I work hard and am a good person.

My looks don't really define me at this point.

When it comes to something like a fast, I am much more interested in testing my will power and understanding more about our relationship to food.

I think that for my wife, it was entirely about slimming down.

And so she proposed it and I decided to go along.

This is normally a 21 day fasting program but we cut it short because my dad is coming to town.

Although, it is pretty clear that we could easily hang on for another 11 days quite easily.

I lost 12 pounds in 10 days and my wife lost 11 pounds. Again, I don't know if it is healthy to lose that much weight that fast or not. It is what it is.

We both feel perfectly fine.

Plenty of energy, no headaches.

We have slept well the entire time.

We've done yardwork.

We've taken care of three little boys.

It was much, much easier than I expected to avoid food.

And I believe that in terms of dieting, a complete abolition of all food is actually easier than only eating some foods.

It is easy to cheat when you are doing a paleo diet or whatever, because you are in the momentum of eating and you might as well just grab something else and eat it too.

But if you are not eating anything at all, that is very cut and dried. You have to stay away from everything. There is something very clarifying about this approach.

Another thing I learned is that food is one of life's great pleasures and should not be taken for granted.

As a parent, I end up eating a lot of scraps. Whatever the kids don't finish, I kind of vacuum up as a matter of course to not be wasteful.

But I don't want to do that anymore.

I really want to cherish food. I want to eat everything that is delicious, but not as a vacuum.

Rather, I want to strive to make food one of my really enjoyable life experiences on a daily basis.

Another thing I learned is that we need to cook much smaller portions, especially for our kids.

It was fascinating to see how little food our kids really eat if we are just cooking for them.

And that made me realize that we are definitely overspending on groceries week in and week out.

All of this lends itself to doubling down on something that I am already passionate about: paying more for a smaller quantity of high quality, delicious ingredients.

Lastly, I noticed that so many of my eating habits are really unconscious and routine driven.

Nothing going on at the moment? Go over to pantry and grab this thing.

After dinner, I always eat a bowl of the other thing.

I think that I can be more conscientious about when and why I am eating.

To sum up my conclusions on the matter, I think the question that I will start asking about food is this: is it worth it?

Not worth it in terms of calories or health considerations necessarily, but rather is it worth it in terms of how much I am going to enjoy it.

If eating has the potential to be one of life's great pleasures, then it is worth it to try to approach that standard with every meal if possible....in my humble opinion.

After all, you wouldn't pay good money to go see a wonderful orchestra play twinkle, twinkle little star.

Anyhow, thanks for letting me bend your ear for a moment. 

I hope that you have a truly blessed day.

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