Lean and Hard

Inkfish - 1.15.13 by Elizabeth Preston

BluePrintCleanse claims that the energy you save on digestion by not eating any real food gets diverted to "other metabolic processes." But Swoap says this is false. Your whole metabolism will slow at once, not just the tasks attached to digesting food. This will make it harder to lose weight.

Before I learned that it costs $65 to $90 to starve yourself for a day, I considered trying one day's worth of "juice cleansing" to put myself into the proper cranky fog for writing this piece. But if I'm going to eat no calories, I prefer to spend no dollars.

What did I give up by fueling myself on solid foods instead of liquefied produce? Really, one day would have been merely dipping a toe into the celery water. If I were a serious client of a juice cleanse company, I would pay for anywhere from three to ten days' worth of bottled juices, delivered to my doorstep in a cooler every morning.

The first few days of deprivation would, in theory, "cleanse the blood" and release toxins from my tissues that have been slowing me down and making me sick. I'd give my colon a break while "sweeping" it out. The latter days would boost my immune system and "fight off degenerative diseases." After all that detoxifying and boosting, I would feel energized and restored. I might even have lost a few pounds—but it's about health, not weight.



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I'm always fascinated by pictures from the Depression era. You know, that time in the 1930s when the economy crashed and people had very little? If that sounds like today, think again. There was no safety net provided by the government then, and people literally went hungry. That's why in pictures from that time people look so thin. They didn't have enough to eat. And they didn't have cars and machines to do everything for them. They actually had to expend energy!

Fast forward to today, when you can easily afford far more calories than you need, and you can make a living and live your life almost without moving at all.

It's no wonder that we have an enormous problem with obesity and its many related diseases.


When I started my fitness lifestyle, I started thinking about calories and money. Let's say I have a limited supply of money so that I can only afford to eat 2000 calories a day. And let's say I'm smart, and want to get the most bang for my buck by making sure those limited calories have as much nutrient content as possible. What would I be eating? And how much would it cost?

I realized that all the excess food I ate over the years was still with me, stored as fat. I had thousands of dollars of calories saved up! I could spend less now by eating fewer calories than I was burning, and make use of all that stored energy! So that's what I did and my excess fat lasted about a year. Since then I've increased my intake, but it's still limited, and I'm still saving money.

The idea that I need to spend more to lose weight seems wrong to me. Why should I pay someone to give me less food? I can eat less food and spend less money all by myself.

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