Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It! (33 page)

Do you need to fast in order to cleanse your body? No, at least not at first. Depending on your current diet, abstaining from meat, dairy, processed sugars, and starches while adding alkaline food and drink may be all you need to help eliminate the garbage in your system. Once you’ve leaned into a better diet, then you can kick it up a notch with a fast. If you go from 0 to 60 too quickly, you may find the experience overly intense (more on detox symptoms in a jiffy). Fasts are not a quick fix or a magic bullet. You know how I feel about those—they don’t work! You’ll fall flat on your face and gain the weight or dis-ease back. Are we on the same page? Fasting only works in conjunction with a better overall diet that’s consumed on a consistent basis.

Hydrate, nourish, hydrate! This is the mantra for a healthy fast. Drink lots of green nourishment, purified water with lemon and herbal teas. When I fast, I drink about 64 to 92 ounces of fresh, organic green juice—about 16 ounces at each sitting. This may be too much for you. If your fast includes smoothies, you probably won’t need as many ounces since smoothies are bulkier than juices. Just make sure you get enough and that you’re not too hungry. A little pang is fine, but no meltdowns! If your belly gurgles, drink more water or have a cup of herbal tea. After twenty-four hours, ease out of the fast with a green smoothie or a blended raw soup made with veggies, herbs, and spices.

A teaspoon per serving of good fat—such as hemp, flax, or olive oil—makes soups rich and creamy. If you prefer, you can use half an avocado instead of oil. Some people find raw soups to be more palatable if they’re slightly chilled (see the recipes in
chapter 10
for ideas and inspiration). If you prefer warm soups, blend them in your Vita-Mix until the veggies start to heat up. This rapid stirring raises the temperature a bit without losing many nutrients. You can also warm your soup slightly on the stove. Use your finger as a thermometer. If the soup’s too hot for your digit, it’s too hot for you (and the enzymes, vitamins, minerals, etc.)!

The ingredients used in my simple sexy juice fast can vary; you don’t need to stick to them exactly. Just as in life, variety is the spice that makes us sing. So switch your recipes around to avoid mindbending boredom, screaming at public utility workers, or grand theft auto! Drink as much as you like and remember to not only change the menu to suit your palate, but rotate your veggies to make sure you’re getting all your vitamins and minerals.

Though you will be drinking
lots of green nutrition, don’t be surprised if you hit a few icy patches. The more toxins you’ve accumulated, the more you’ll have to eliminate. Detox symptoms occur because toxins are leaving the cells and tissues faster than the body can eliminate them, and for many that can spell discomfort and a lot of toilet time. This is natural, but if it gets too intense you can easily dial it down. Folks living on McDonald’s, Dunkin’s, and Doritos might have a lot of discomfort as the demons exorcise.

In all honesty a one-day fast shouldn’t cause too much drama. Uncomfortable symptoms are a bigger problem on longer fasts. That said, expect some mucus, skin eruptions, headaches, stinky gas, a thick white coating on the tongue, and fatigue. You may even experience some nausea. Once you get over the healing hump, you will feel much better. When symptoms arise, remember to drink lots of water to help flush you out.

Here’s something else to remember: Poisons drain your energy. When you release them, you also release their patterns—including the mental, emotional, and spiritual chaos they cause. Emotional swings are common during juice cleansing—yes, even within a twenty-four-hour period. As with the physical symptoms, grab a box of tissues and ride them out.

It’s also a good idea to follow a fast with an enema (or a colonic) to keep the pipeline clear, allowing for better evacuation going forward. For a good sweat, sit your cute butt in the sauna, too! If you think fasting is too extreme for you, then honor that feeling. But I ask you to pause for a moment and consider what many of us deem normal—gallstones and gallbladder removal, blood pressure medicine, insulin pumps, debilitating arthritis, steroids, and other medical miseries. A plant-based diet and some periodic housekeeping seem pretty easy to me!

Some folks do longer fasts, but keep in mind that longer is not always better. Long-term fasting must also be accompanied by regular colonics. My longest green drink fast was twenty-one days. It was a detox dump-a-thon! My liver deep-sixed garbage, my lymph yacked, and my butt exorcised the demon. As my colon hydrotherapist said, “Here come the mummies!” But it was also a physical and emotional roller coaster.

My energy level went up, down, and back up again. Ultimately there were definite pluses and it served me well, but I do not recommend a longterm fast for most people, especially without expert supervision. Particularly because you really have to be careful about electrolyte imbalance and how you come off the fast. I’ve seen a few fasting enthusiasts replace one addiction for another. This isn’t a marathon and there’s no such thing as ultimate purity. In fact, let’s not forget that stressing about perfection is as bad as booze, cigs, animal toes, and white crap.

Some people should avoid fasting. If your current health is too weak or if you have an eating disorder, are underweight, or are being treated for a chronic disease such as cancer, if you have heart problems or are pregnant or lactating, fasting of any kind is not recommended. Also, children should never fast. Be realistic and honest. If you have any concerns, check with your doctor. Water fasts are not recommended. Water fasting will dump far too many stored poisons into our bloodstream at a rate that most of us simply cannot tolerate. The same goes for those popular water, maple syrup, cayenne, and vinegar fasts—that ain’t nutrition.

Drinking purified water
is like giving your insides a bath, a good rinse, a happy shower. Refreshing! Besides, water is the best drink to quench your thirst—if you can get off the diet pop kick and replace it with water, you’ve accomplished a great deed. Our bodies are made up of over 70 percent water. Your brain is roughly 80 percent water. Remember, you’re electric—when your cells don’t have enough fluid, they lose their conductivity. Water helps nutrients flow into our cells and acid wastes flow out. Water is the main component of blood and lymph. It regulates body temperature. Water is absolutely essential to good health. Because we lose nearly 3 quarts a day through respiration, sweat, and urine, it’s important to replenish daily.

Ideally, we should be consuming half our body weight in ounces of pure water each day. For example, a 140-pound person should drink 70 ounces (about nine 8-ounce glasses) throughout the day. It may seem like a lot, and certainly when you’re juicing on a regular basis, drinking herbal teas, and eating lots of raw veggies, you don’t need as much. To keep up with the demands of your inner ocean, it’s best to pace yourself and sip throughout the day without waiting to feel thirsty. By the time you feel the sensation of thirst, you’re already dehydrated. And hunger is often just a sign of thirst.

Oh, and guess what? Coffee is not water. Neither is black tea, soda, bottled juice, “vitamin water,” or bullshit Red Bulls. These beverages actually pull water (and minerals) from your body. Don’t have any illusions that you’re quenching your thirst when you drink them.

Can you overdo it? Yes. If you act like a frat boy in a hazing ritual and chug an insane amount of water all at once, you can develop what’s called water intoxication, also known as hyponatremia. It’s extremely rare, with most cases occurring to overheated athletes. The point is, don’t go crazy—just stay hydrated with moderate amounts of water at regular intervals.