Twas' the night before JuiceFeasting......

I am feeling a lot like a kid on Christmas eve –excited, nervous, baffled that it is REALLY tomorrow, anxious to know the outcome, yet a little nostalgic that today is almost over and my life as a chewer as I know it is done –for now.

This month I have been trying to “bulk” up knowing that I don’t have a lot of extra weight to spare for the feast. Well, as liberating as it has been on many levels to be actively TRYING to gain weight, it has come with some other not so nice consequences too. I have been mostly raw (average of 80%) since June 1st, which for the most part has been working really well for me. However, I do live with a non-raw person who happens to enjoy many tasty snack and sweets that are not raw (curse Trader Joe’s!). This past month I have been finding my fingers diving into the tortillas chip bag and cookie jar and even or spoon into the ice cream all in the name of “preparing for the juicefeast.” Hello? Is this the biggest contradiction ever? Definitely! And I have to say I feel HORRIBLE. Actually mildly poisoned would be a better description. I feel as though my head is floating in a foggy existence and there are little weights on each eyelid. My thinking and comprehension is dull, my nose and ears feel slightly clogged, and my body is overheated and inflamed. If nothing else, this little walk on the “other side of the tracks” has reinforced the fact that my body is a temple not a garbage can and thrives on a raw diet. If I didn't need to detox before, I sure do now!

So that brings me to why I am a doing this extreme cleanse in the first place and what I am hoping to get out of it.

There are SOO many reasons why I have decided to do this cleanse. I have been slowly manifesting my way here for some time now –mainly with the desires to take my health to the next level. Like I said before, raw eating has served me very well and relieved a lot of skin, anger, acidity, digestive and food issues I have been working through with various methods and modalities for years now. But, while raw foods have helped relieved the symptoms to my problems, the roots remain deeply embedded in my cells.

The biggest challenge is my addiction to sugar. Essentially, I came out of the womb a sugar baby – 10 solid pounds of it! My mother claims that she only craved sweets when pregnant with me and with no malintent she indulged herself completely for 9 whole months. So here I am, 28 and feeling like a junkie. When I was a kid, I used to spend all my allowance at the candy store, and when my money ran out I would steal quarters, dimes, nickels, whatever change my dad would dump into his change pile for another fix. The entire process of getting the sugar to eating the sugar was my mission in life. I felt out of control and out of my skin –completely disconnected from what my body was telling me (usually-STOP!). And this out of control, sneaking something sweet into my mouth without anyone watching, noticing, witnessing has carried through into my adult life. As a kid its one thing to be eating a bunch of junk, but as an adult and a health care practitioner no less, the guilt, shame, frustration and utter disgust I have with myself has lead me to the mother of all detoxes, juicefeasting. Nothing is worse than feeling like a hypocrite and I am SOOO over it!

The other major pattern I am attempting to bring to the surface and then heal with juice is chronic overeating and my food possessiveness tendencies. I am not entirely sure when this all started for me, but I do remember one distinctive moment as a child when I first felt like food was not a guarantee and I might not always get enough of it.

My parents adopted both my brothers when I was 3 and 4. Up until then it was just my older sister and I. (My older sister, by the way, was the total opposite with me when it came to sweets. She was the type of kid who could have Easter candy still in her candy bowl when Halloween rolled around. Me on the other hand, consumed ALL of my Easter candy by the time breakfast was being served.) When my youngest brother, Zac was adopted he arrived very malnourished and ravenous, to say the least! A few days after being with us my mother made spaghetti for dinner –a staple meal and one of my personal favorites --that is with butter and cheese, NO SAUCE! So Zac was sitting right beside me scarfing down his food at a very fast pace as he had never “feasted” before. Next thing I knew he reached over and with both hands grabbed all of my spaghetti off my plate and proceeded to eat it very quickly. At first, everyone, including myself was in complete shock by what had happened! But seconds later my parents erupted with laughter. Had I not been the victim, I am sure I would have laughed too, but seeing as I was the only one without food on my plate, it was no laughing matter. Up until that moment in time, it had never occurred to me that I might never have enough or get enough food in my life. I felt so unprotected by my parents; I mean how could they have let this happen and then laughed about it? I am sure soon after the inncodent they got me more spaghetti, but that part of the story I don’t remember—the damaged had been done and living with two brother and a sister all 2 years apart meant survival of the fittest.

Now, when we get together for family dinners, nobody speaks about what happened that faithful dinner some 25 years ago, but rather my never dieing reputation of being the ruthless “Food Nazi” of the family. My food possessiveness was not to be messed with, especially around sweets and snack foods.

My mom used to make us Pillsbury dough-boy cinnamon rolls on Saturday mornings— you know the kind that would come out of the tube and be topped with thick, white, sugary goo? Anyways, I used to watch those buns bake in the oven like a hawk. Once they were done I would without shame grab as many rolls as I could get away with, and ALWAYS without fail the middle one with the most goo. No one dared take the middle one or else they knew they would suffer from my screaming fits of rage. It sounds silly, but it was serious business and my siblings still bring it up to this day! So it is high time I confront my fears around food, which has lead to chronic overeating, over-stuffing and under-chewing.

I have to say though, as much as I don’t want to be addicted to sugar or over-stuffing myself anymore, I am really fearful about letting these parts of me go. They have been with me since the beginning of ME and the unknown of what letting go of these comfortably miserable habits is super scary. Sugar makes me feel terrible, but it also connects me to “mother.” Overeating makes me feel gross, but it also makes me feel safe and grounded.

What will I feel like without these safeguards? And who will I be and what will I become?

Having grown up with so much instability and uncertainty, I claimed food as my personal territory and sugar as my “drug of choice." The unknown of what life without them will be like is terrifying.

And yet, I am so ready to stop giving all my power away ever time the sun goes down and dessert is served. I long for the day when I can savor just ONE bite of sweetness, on occasion, for the pure joy of it and nothing more.

xxkyle