Nobody can understand why you would do it unless they’d walked a mile in your shoes. Maybe you’ve always struggled with being overweight. You have spent years in your “traditionally built”, thick body with curves and a little something extra in all the right places. You’ve had more gym memberships than pounds lost, and you’ve tried your fair share of diets. The cycle is an all too familiar one.
On Monday you start with all the hope and promise of self-improvement, but by Friday you don’t just need to have a “cheat day”, but a weekend off to satisfy all the week’s stifled cravings after days of deprivation and self-denial. It is at this emotionally low time that you find yourself awake watching late-night infomercials and they come to one that is selling juicers. You may be familiar with the product, but tonight you are also intrigued as the TV glows and the spokesperson begins their sales pitch, a siren song, complete with the requisite number of testimonials and before and after photos. Some of the success stories shared feature individuals who are bigger than you, and some like you, wanting to have the chance at happiness that you are certain would come with a smaller size and a lower number on the scale.
It makes perfect sense and sounds almost too good to be true. You suspend doubt and disbelief in favor of accepting the hype of their late-night simple message in their marketing spiel: “If you don’t want to gain weight, cut down on what you consume, but replace it with liquid forms of the healthiest foods: fruits and vegetables in the form of juice.
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Just one juice can replace each meal, and you can sip all the water you want in between.” Pushing aside the now empty pint of lonely girl’s ice cream in the flavor of “what’s it matter”, you abandon your spoon that helped you mindlessly eat away your emotions after it makes contact with the container bottom for what you promise yourself is for the every last time.
Educated and empowered, reaching for your phone and your wallet, you make the purchase, then you’re all in. You buy the juicer at a bargain cost of several payments of $19.95 (because you can’t put a price on health, right?) and set your expectations on miraculous results. You can hardly wait until it comes in the mail. You need this to be a gimmick-free, game-changer that will allow your inner thin girl to finally come out.
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You buy loads of produce and start juicing away, skin and all, with a smile on your lips at every sip of juicer juice. You find that you are already imagining yourself in the possibly attainable image of your dream body from an air-brushed model with a picture of your face, straight from your dream board and kept on your fridge door surrounded by cute magnets and sticky-note affirmations. Goodbye, big butt! Hello, flat belly! You set your course for a fabulous body with a final destination of becoming something you think you’ve never been with the extra weight you’ve carried as far and long as you can remember: beautiful. Although everyone tells you that it’s what’s on the inside that matters, you know from experience that nothing tastes as good as thin feels. The juicer is the price and sacrifice that will get you there, where everything is better, inside and out.
Weight loss experts suggest that the weight comes off faster and stays off longer if you have a personal reason for wanting to lose weight. You know why you are doing this—juicing for weight loss. You want in. You want acceptance in that exclusive club where no one is obese and the days of being judged for your extra weight are a thing of a never recurring past. So, maybe you are less rational than you should be, but once you make it to the other side of your weight loss journey, you tell yourself that you will be judgment-free. Some call it a “detox”, or they choose to make a juice fast for health or beauty. These are all good reasons. The reason for your juice cleanse is for weight loss. Your eyes are on the prize that finally seems within your reach. The juicer juice is your key to control and the means of access to becoming one of the beautiful people who are never obese, but always slender.
You decide to give it the three days suggested in the infomercial. Your daily caloric intake is lower than you’ve ever thought you could survive on, at about 1,310 calories per day, almost 300 calories less than what is recommended for females and 700 calories less than for males. By reducing how many calories are a part of your daily intake, weight loss is certain to follow your three-day juice fast.
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With your full commitment and focus on ending obesity, you stopped caring about the pros and cons of such a restrictive health regimen when you grabbed your charge card and committed to doing whatever it takes to lose weight. You struggle through increasing hunger and decreasing energy, ignoring feelings of fatigue and irritability or incredibly strong and frequent headaches. You are sure that juicer juices are healthier than store-purchased juices, a thought that brings with it some pride and a strange superiority. You have bought into the marketing. You find an odd peace in telling yourself that you are juicing the healthiest way, by avoiding juices with high amounts of added sugar leading to weight gain, obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay or an increased risk of eating disorders according to some studies and correctly cautious health providers.
The three days pass and you made it through. You lost weight, but it was mostly water weight. You’re surprised that you were starting to lose a little muscle mass, but with the reduced energy, you were more focused on how much you weighed each day and how many calories you took in, than in being toned or keeping what muscle definition you may have had going into the process. Staying active took a back seat.
Monday rolls around and you’re back on solid foods again. You look at the scale in your bathroom and sigh, having thought the number would be far lower. You look at the juicer on your kitchen counter from over a bowl of processed cereal and unsweetened nut milk and decide to put the appliance in the lower cabinet for a while “until the next time”. You return to your breakfast of champions and notice that there is cold, crunchy cereal, hard toast, and lukewarm coffee, but no juice.
