The Full Circle Detox: A Lesson In Consumption
We did a little experiment at the Full Circle office this week and a few of us tried the Arden’s Garden 2-Day Detox, a juice program that is supposed to cleanse, rejuvenate and detoxify the body while allowing you to lose a few pounds. Over the course of 48 hours, you ONLY consume 2 gallons of diluted 100% fresh citrus juice, which you can buy pre-mixed or you can whip up their recipe yourself. We were lazy and bought it. So, that boils down to drinking one 8 oz glass of the juice concoction just about every hour that you are awake.
Now, I’ve never gone an entire day without eating something, let alone TWO whole days, so I was a bit leery of how I would survive this extreme test of my willpower and endurance. I was assured by my cohorts that if we banded together and formed our own tiny support group, we could do it! I have always been a sucker for peer pressure. If one of my friends told me to jump off a bridge, I would probably do it, as my mother would say.
We started Day 1 excited to rid our bodies of those evil toxins and gulped our juice down with a smile on our faces. I’m not a fan of grapefruit juice, which makes up the majority of this cocktail, but in its diluted form combined with lemon and orange juice, I have to admit is wasn’t bad. It would have been better with vodka, but we weren’t allowing our minds to go there. We were detoxing! Day 1 was no sweat.
By the middle of Day 2, we were all chugging our juice but with a bit less fervor. None of us ever felt REALLY hungry, though, which was surprising and we had all lost a few pounds. This detox thing wasn’t so bad.
The end result? Each of us lost 5 lbs and felt really good! I bragged to everyone that I would totally win Survivor if that show didn’t involve sleeping outdoors or bugs. I surprised myself with how easy it actually was to go TWO WHOLE days living on nothing but juice. We all agreed our experiment was a great lesson in consumption. We all eat (and drink) way more than we need to every day. According to recent stats, Americans eat 815 billion calories of food each day - that's roughly 200 billion more than needed - enough to feed 80 million people!
After filling up on healthy juices and feeling really good, the thought of putting anything greasy or fattening in our mouths made us kind of nauseous. What a great way to kick-off a better diet and healthier way of living. It just proves that sometimes you need to strip everything away before you can realize how excessively you are actually living. Not a bad lesson to incorporate into all facets of our lives. We might not be where we are today as a country if we had realized that earlier.
28 August 2009
