2013 did not feel like a good year to me. Every high was tempered by the blow of losing my husband to lung cancer in April. Grief takes a toll on mind, body and spirit in a way in which I totally understood how, when the elderly lose a spouse, the grieving survivor often follows soon after.
I have spent many months working on mind and spirit, but still have trouble sleeping, getting only four or five hours a night. And my diet has been a steady stream of restaurants. I haven’t cooked once since he died, down from three to four times a week.
I wanted to start the new year clean, so headed to Blue Tree Cafe, where a five-day “Renew A” juice cleanse is one of handful they offer. This particular one is geared toward any newbie to detoxing. You get six smoothie/protein drinks per day, at about $40 per day. Pick them up your jars in the morning and you’re set. There is a bottle deposit you get back when you return all the bottles.
For me, the day after Christmas was the perfect time to start. It’s the slowest time of year for me, and I haven’t gone out on New Year’s Eve since I met Chris more than 20 years ago. He always said he didn’t want to risk being out on the road on “Amateur Night.” I just have to keep friends at bay with promises of going out after the new year, and in cases where there is a party or getting together with a friend moving to Korea, I’ll just not eat or bring my smoothie along.
I’ve never been on a liquid detox diet before, so don’t know how my body will respond. I think I’ll be OK because when I do drink smoothies, I feel full for hours.
I decided to have one last hurrah on Christmas Day. After heading to the movie theater to watch “The Wolf of Wall Street”—a good movie but perhaps an hour too long due to all the gratuitous sex, orgy and drug scenes (We get it OK! Has every director caught Peter Jackson fever and become overindulgent on the editing?—my friends and I headed to Likelike Drive-Inn (one of the handful of places open late Christmas Day), where at 10 p.m. I ordered the oxtail soup.
I didn’t think it was that heavy, but as happens when I have a heavy late-night meal, I woke up starving. Usually, I don’t feel hungry in the morning so don’t eat breakfast, but with my stomach already rumbling, I hoped the detox drinks would be enough.
I had called in my order on Christmas Eve. They told me they had five other pickups starting the day after Christmas and had already put in their produce order, but it would be fine if I could arrive after 9 a.m. Perfect.
When I got there this morning, the numbered bottles were already sitting in the refrigerator, ready to go and arranged nicely in a recycle bag.
First up was the light green “Perfect Start.” I didn’t have a menu, so everything would be a surprise. It was a sweet surprise, a refreshing, eye-opening blend of pineapple, cucumber, green apple and mint. So far so good. I started drinking at 10:30 a.m.
It was a work day at the paper, and at a certain point, I had to leave my desk and talk to someone about a deadline. Of course the day after Christmas, there were new boxes of candy around, and while talking to the person I mindlessly picked up a Mauna Loa milk chocolate-covered macadamia nut. I took a 1 centimeter bite of the chocolate before realizing I wasn’t supposed to eat anything outside my Blue Tree drinks.
Realization 1: It just demonstrated how much mindless eating I may be doing throughout the day. I wasn’t even hungry. I was just standing around talking, and it was there within reach. I toss the uneaten candy away.
