EP 3: What Comes Easy, Doesn’t Last. What Lasts, Doesn’t Come Easy

Made an impulsive decision to write a quick blog post to conclude the year. Am currently on the airplane from Osaka to Singapore and my goal is to complete this blog post before I land in Singapore. Had an amazing last meal lunch at Pierre Intercontinental Osaka (one star Michelin French restaurant) earlier and this has provided me with sufficient fuel to push through in-flight. Also, managed to get some Christmas shopping done the day before. As usual – pardon my grammar and sentence structuring.

Over the past two years of running Cold Press Index, every new customer has had apprehension about the difficulty of a juice cleanse – be it one, three, five or even seven days: beginner or advanced.

Guess what? Your intuition is spot on. It is gruelling and difficult. I want to start off with a counterintuitive mantra that I believe no juice cleanse company has ever said – going on a juice cleanse is for the minority.

Let me share with you why going on a juice cleanse is for the minority:

1. Scheduling a juice cleanse requires commitment. You need to free up time in your schedule and dedicate those 72-120 hours to be ultra-disciplined.

2. When the juice cleanse arrives – your second hell begins. The reduced caloric intake starts to kick in – starvation mode is activated. You become 'hangry'. The first day is always the toughest as the body is calibrating to the new caloric intake and the detox begins. Fatigue, vomiting, and headaches strikes.

3. During the juice cleanse – we naturally curtail social interaction; tune down our work schedule, lie in bed and isolate from communal eating. It forces one to shift from outward stimuli to inward. Also – it is only day 2? Pain and suffering causes time to slow down – there’s still 36 hours more to go!

4. During the second half of the juice cleanse – I feel like giving up! It is way too difficult. I have received text messages from customers adding meals in between – some even fried chicken to quench their insatiable hunger. Some with better discipline consume fruit and light veggies. I would say that statistically, 75% of customers deviate from the optimized juice cleanse instructions that we provide. It is important to strive to follow our juice cleanse guides to your very best – but it is also important to show yourself grace when deviation occurs.

5. I’m finally done with my juice cleanse! It’s time to go crazy and celebrate. Devouring the next steak, heading straight to MacDonald’s takeaway at the exact minute that the juice cleanse ends. It is humorous what customers share with me. This unwinds a lot of the benefits of the juice cleanse.

Let me invert some of the above-mentioned points. This is my two cents.

Point 1: Commitment and discipline is essential for high performance. I believe that modern society is wired erroneously. Our brains are wired to love shortcuts and we crave novelty. We change jobs like underwear, we have commitment issues to relationships/marriage, we stop and start diets, we sign up for gym memberships and go once a month. You get the drift.

- Let me share with you the routine of one of the world’s highest performing athletes; Kobe Bryant begins his daily morning workout with the most basic of foot drills every single morning. These foot drills are typically done by beginners/amateurs and when asked why? Kobe Bryant said ‘I don’t get bored with the basics. Going on a juice cleanse forces you to relearn about commitment and to focus on the basics.

Point 2/4: An advanced mind doesn’t give up easily. Physical and mental discipline can be forged on a juice cleanse.

Point 3: What happens in the unseen hours creates champions – being disciplined when no one is watching. Curtailing social interaction and digging inward is where the magic happens.

Point 5: After winning the Rugby League World Cup, Jamie Peacock, the absolute legend in the sport said that he celebrated the victory for less than thirty seconds. He immediately went back to the drawing board and turned up at the gym the next morning.

Completing a juice cleanse is like conquering Mount Faber. Want to complete Mount Everest?

This is what I think it will take:

- Mediterranean diet, consuming your 5-10 daily servings of fruits and veggies, eating complex carbohydrates, and getting in good sources of protein

- Good sleep (heading to bed when the sun sets and rising when the sun rises). I wake up at 6am daily.

- Heading to the gym every morning before sunrise.

Want to be at your highest performance? It’s all about the world class basics. Work hard, work smart and be consistent.

I’m uncertain if I deviated from my original title. In case the parallel to the juice cleanse got lost in translation – let me try and make it easier to understand! Going on a juice cleanse is for the minority. What Comes Easy, Doesn’t Last. What Lasts, Doesn’t Come Easy

‘Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth’. Henry David Thoreau

I want to test a new formatting style: BOLD = Important (for quick take-aways + if you’re lazy you can just skim through these)