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So a few months ago, the wife and I are in bed, her with some huge text on obscure British literature, me making her look bad with Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and she drops the book on her lap and turns to me and offers a suggestion that freezes the blood in my veins:
"We should try to get back into shape."
Now, we're neither of us the unhealthiest people on the planet, but we don't always have the volition to head out and exercise for the hell of it, and our jobs and school eat up enough time that we don't always cook. I smoke like a fiend, too, and I read that working out helps kill the craving, so I nod my head and say, "Sure, why the hell not."
We start with the usual ****; she gets back into aerobics, I hit the gym alongside a horde of high schoolers who look like they could kick The Hulk in the balls then step on his neck, and we do our best to cut the crap out of our diet. Fast food, pop, anything fried, etc. goes out the window. It sucks ass setting aside an hour to cook and eat dinner every night, but we manage. We start to trim up again and we feel better.
Then.
I come home from work one night and Wife is already home, reading something on About.com. My right eyelid twitches involuntarily. I HATE About.com.
Why?
Because every time the little lady jumps on there, I end up involved in some harebrained activity that she wants to try out after reading one damn article written by a bleeding expert that makes it sound as easy as breathing. Don't get me wrong, I love my woman, but she's the impulsive type all the way, so she adores that damn site. We've tried mountain climbing (resulted in: injury to His Majesty's clavicle), traditional Chinese stir fry (resulted in: destruction of a newly-purchased wok, paid for from His Majesty's royal coffers), and sexual positions straight out of the Kama Sutra (resulted in: needing to purchase new sheets for the Royal Bed and a bunch of bananas for potassium after cramping up for three straight hours). I don't NEED to do anything else written about on About.com. I'm fine with how things are now.
She turns to me with a grin on her face, so I know I'm in for some pain. "Check this out," she says excitedly. I look.
It's a page titled, "Detox Diet and Digestive System Cleanse". The eye-twitch goes into overdrive. "What's all this?" I ask.
She explains it. Apparently, you follow this strict diet and supplement regimen for two weeks and it totally flushes your body of impurities. The article uses a lot of terms like "free radicals" that gets my suspicions up and the whole guide is pockmarked with warnings to get a medical consult before trying it, which makes my sphincter tighten, but there're plenty of user-generated testimonials on it, and the Queen's really interested. She's convinced it might improve our long-term health.
I'm worried about how much internal damage I may incur if we go through with it.
In the end, though, she talks me into it; it doesn't help that she's much smarter than I am, and she holds the Power of Sex above me. I relent, and tell her we'll go out and get the necessary supplies in the morning and start come the weekend.
Now, let me preface the next portion of this story with the following: this may sound like something meant for the granola munchers (and it is, to a certain degree), but the warnings and advice some folks gave in their reviews of the program gave me the chills. "Start on the weekend," one person wrote. "You won't want to do anything for the first few days because you'll be in so much pain."
Wait a second. Hold the phone, hit the brakes, professor-can-you-please-repeat-that? "Pain"? I thought this thing was meant to make you feel better, not WORSE. Well, turns out that the pain comes from your body expelling all that crap you've built up. According to what the guide says about what this flushes out of you, I've got so much crap in my body that my pain should be on par with that experienced by chemo patients. After getting t-boned by a semi going 70. Then lit on fire.
I realize, coming home from the fifth health food/supplement store we've visited, that I may be in for a significant amount of bother.
When we get home, I take stock of what we've bought: almost entirely veggies and fruit to eat and seven (SEVEN) separate supplements to take thrice daily, ranging from a multivitamin to iron (no meat allowed. NONE) to probiotics to help break everything down. Then I scan the list to see what we're actually permitted to EAT during this thing.
The short answer is, not ****ing much. Rice and other simple starches are but only to a very limited degree. No coffee, tea, or other stimulants (****, no ciggies), no crap food obviously, and nothing to drink at all, save for two things:
1. Water (cool! refreshing!)
2. Lemon Water (cool! lemonade!)
Wrong. WRONG. NOT lemonade. Lemon ****ing water. Read the fine print, idiot.
How does one make lemon water, you ask? Simple. It took me three minutes while Wifey was putting the supplies away.
Get a lemon, peel it, and squeeze its juice into some water. Stir, chill, drink, enjoy.
No, no. Wait. That last one...that's not right. What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah...
VOMIT.
Lemon water is damn disgusting, not because it's sour like you might think, but because it's BITTER. I'm not sure how much sense that makes; when you think "sour", what's the first ****ing thing you think of (besides those Crybaby candies back in the nineties)? Yes, thank you. LEMON. And we're supposed to drink five glasses of it a day, along with five more glasses of regular water. According to the guide, the average person participating in this two-week traipse through Hades needs to drink that much per day just so they don't dehydrate.
Okay, okay, WHOA. Back it up, there. TEN glasses of fluid a day or dehydration? I used to do NO fluid in a day back in college, unless you count WHISKEY, and now you're tellin' me to down that much or I'll shrivel up? Christ , next you'll tell me I need to strip naked twice a day and lash myself with a cat 'o nine tails, or wear a coat made of human hair, for as much punishment you're telling me to endure.
All right now, deep breath. Superwife wants to do this, you said you would, so you're in this, thick and thin. Deal with it. What else?
Apart from that, actually, there's only one other thing we're required to consume during this thing: a vegetable broth which, as it turned out after I made some, is fairly tasty. Drink three times a day.
In all, it seemed pretty simple. Lots of prep work to keep all the staples made, but otherwise not so bad. We got started. What follows is a (mostly) shorthand account of the first seven days because after that, things evened out (sort of):
Day One: Feel fine; bit hungry but otherwise hunky-dory. Have to piss a lot, but chalk that up to the supplements and all the liquid. Begin to understand the need for so much fluid.
Day Two: Feeling a bit worse; muscles and joints ache, like having the flu. Laid around, watched Titus on DVD, backed up music collection, *****ed to Wife-a-rama while she *****ed back to me. Didn't work out today out of lethargy.
Day Three (A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY): All intestinal hell breaks loose, and I'm not kidding. Awoke with horrible stomach cramps and made a run to the toilet, whereupon some substance resembling hundreds of those little green jelly blobs you get in one of those vile bubble teas goes hurtling into the porcelain bowl. There's no muscle contraction required; it just falls out. There is no possible way this is ****; it looks more like some kind of petroleum byproduct. It goes on for almost twenty minutes straight; at minute twelve I consider waking Queen Bee and asking her to contact medical help, but refrain out of humiliation.
I'd rather **** myself to death than have paramedics meet me in the privacy of my own bathroom and fit me with an emergency colostomy bag.
Eventually, it stops, but I stay on for a few more in case I leak out (UGH), then struggle to my feet. I feel as though I haven't eaten a thing for a month; my muscles are rubbery and a five year-old could push me down and sit on me. I crawl back into bed, curl up into a ball, and whimper.
Queenie doesn't pity me because the same thing happens to her fifteen minutes later. Her meek invocations to the Lord for aid and guidance are answered only by my laughter and chanting, "Sucks, don't it?" Had to go to work afterward; contemplated photographing what my body expelled and sending it to my boss with a sick note, complete with frowny-face. Decide to err on the side of better judgment.
At lunchtime, I pull up the guide again and discover that apparently what my rectum gave birth to this morning was a large amount of concentrated impurities being purged from my system. I haven't been able to drive by a fast food joint without feeling that xenomorph-being-birthed-in-my-gut nausea since.
Day Four: Repetition of day three, three times over. I think I should be dead by now. Some greater force must be sustaining me. Shiva, protect me!
Day Five: (blank. I literally don't remember this one. Wifenstein says I mumbled something about meeting my ancestors soon before I left for work. Apparently went through the motions without anyone noticing I was nearly comatose. First thing I recall is waking up for...)
Day Six: Starting to feel better. The ass explosions have ceased, and my aches are fading. Worked out today, but only a little.
Day Seven: Incredibly, I feel better than normal. I leap out of bed when the alarm goes off, and there's a spring in my step and a general alertness about me the whole day. Have one of the best lifting sessions I've ever had, and run a mile afterward.
After that, everything just stayed the same until the detox was over. I felt ****ing fantastic; my productivity was through the roof and my fat ass dropped five pounds in two weeks, basically from doing nothing but the above. Marry McWifeWife did better; she lost seven.
Were we happy with the result? You betcha. Will we ever do it again? Not a chance in hell; three days of the most unimaginable war going on inside my body isn't worth any amount of extended life expectancy. It's no longer any surprise to me how drug addicts ****ing bite it when they have to detox. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're really that committed to your health.
And, if you are, you may need to be another kind of committed, as well.
lol
