Day 10 – The First Milestone

Well every day is a milestone on this juice cleanse. Every day has been an opportunity
to show myself that I can do it. Every day has been an opportunity to show myself that
I can’t do it. This truly is a battle of wills. I believe the hard part is over, where my
body is actually feeling the difference between my regular food intake and this new
regime. I think my body has learned now how to run on what is really a significant
increase in nutrients and vitamins and a significant decrease in calories and fat. I think
that’s the biggest misconception, that we are starving ourselves or somehow we aren’t
getting enough nutrients. Yesterday for lunch I had a beet (which I would never, EVER
normally eat), 3 carrots, a cucumber, a handful of spinach, a knuckle of ginger, 2 apples,
some pineapple, and little lime for taste. A completely balanced meal, even with a little
protein in it. How many of you can say you ate that well for lunch yesterday? So we are
not starving ourselves, we are re-training our bodies to function on things that are good
for us, and getting all the crap out of our systems.

You may be wondering where and why we got this crazy idea to subsist on juice from
fruit and veggies for 60 days. Ismael stumbled on a documentary called Fat, Sick and
Nearly Dead. It’s about a man who went from being a champion swimmer in college, to
being, well, fat, sick and nearly dead by the age of 40. He was over 300 pounds and had
an autoimmune disease where he would get rashes and ulcers on his skin from people just
touching him. He was on a litany of medications. He decided to do something extreme.
He consulted his doctor and was on his way. The first 30 days he spent in NYC checking
out all the millions of juice bars. The second 30 days he spent on the road with his juicer,
traveling the country, not trying to convert or proselytize, but to inform people about the
benefits of juicing and trying to get them to taste his weird little green concoctions. It was
amazing to see the resistance and sometimes anger he would bring out in people. How
set in their ways people were and how convinced so many of them were that they had
no control over whether lived or died and just wanted to eat what they liked in the mean
time. He met a truck driver along the way who had the same disease he had and was
even more overweight. The truck driver was resistant as well but after thinking about for
a few months, decided to try it. He was in very poor health and was so ashamed of his
lifestyle and his weight that he wouldn’t even visit his kids. Long story short, in 60 days
these guys were each able to lose over 80 pounds, not just juicing, but exercising every
day! But more importantly they got off all their medications, their illnesses disappeared,
their skin just glowed and they looked at least 10 years younger by the time they finished.
And of course the story ends with the much smaller, much healthier truck driver playing
football with his son. Sappy, I know, and certainly not rocket science (we all know
we need more fruits and veggies and to take better care of ourselves), but it hit home
nonetheless. While Ismael and I are crazy gym rats, our diets had gotten out of control
and we felt we could be on the road to where these men were.

So here we are, we both lost over 8 pounds in our first week, but we are noticing having
significantly more energy and that we surprisingly are not missing a lot of our favorite
treats. I am still in utter shock that I have survived this long without precious, precious
coffee. But it’s Day 10, the first opportunity to turn back, and we haven’t even discussed

the possibility of not pushing through for the full 60 days. Next big milestone, Day
30 (and every day in between, especially Superbowl GO NINERS!!!) And Go Team
Mendoza!!!