Photo by NOGG35
In a word—hungry, and vaguely reminiscent of a bleak, half-starved period I had in my early twenties. Yes, you do get a kick out of feeling virtuous, smug and a little bit Gwyneth Paltrow as you chug pints of pond-scum coloured nutrients, but frankly, I can’t help but notice the nagging recognition that I’m not eating. And if we’re really honest, it’s not about ‘cleansing’ at all; it’s just a legitimised excuse to not eat in the pursuit of getting skinny. If you wanted to be healthy you’d have a salad, probably some fruit and you’d steer clear of soft serve and chips and other things that are lovely. But you don’t. You want to look like some airbrushed South African genetic idol, so you don’t eat and you pretend that’s entirely normal behaviour.
Basically it seems like people are just choosing to eat with ridiculously restricted parameters so that they can feel special, as though choosing the gluten-free option opens you up to a level of self-control reserved for Jesus and supermodels and we should all be super impressed. As though self-control in itself is an achievement, like choosing to spend six hours a week cycling in man-spanx displays some sort of moral grit that makes the person more accomplished or better at making life decisions and therefore more justified in their smugness. You know what’s an actual achievement? Sometimes it’s having the balls to get raging drunk at two in the afternoon on a Wednesday because at times you hate everything and the idea of pretending that stretching for ninety minutes in a room full of Botox and latex is fulfilling enough to make you not want to tear your own face off doesn’t quite cut it.
It doesn’t help that the bastards that tout this nonsense as though it’s a good idea are everywhere—adamant that a diet of primarily bananas and positive affirmations is a legitimate nutritional paradigm and saying that they’ve never felt so wonderful despite the lingering likelihood of osteoporosis or just flat out mental health issues. I refuse to think anyone is actually that positive, or that anyone truly gives a deep-down shit about the state of their kidney’s aura. So much so that I’m willing to bet, in the way bastards always are about improvable scenarios, that if their healthy lifestyle had all of the wellbeing benefits but led them to be spotty, fat and sweaty that they wouldn’t do it despite pissing sunshine. I just want to grab those bendy yoga-doing sods by the shoulders and shake them screaming for the truth until their prentice crumbles and they admit they really they started the whole damn façade so people would think they were good in bed and deep down they’d really like a cigarette hand-rolled by a dirty homeless person.
Beyond hungry, juicing made me angry. I was angry because I realised I’d become an urban arsehole who can justify basically anything in the pursuit of thinness and social capital, including a self-inflicted hungry bitch-slap to the face of my own sensible judgment. Doing a juice cleanse is really just like succumbing to the laws of pop culture in such a way they you fling off your logic, common sense and any rational ideas about nutrition and self-respect so that you can maybe, maybe brighten that dank nothingness that defines your life by feeling smug when someone who is probably happier than you asks what the fuck you’re drinking with a half-disgusted glare over their coffee and you get to reply “kale juice” and feel, for a moment, vaguely successful as though this fashionable deprivation is really self-development. The thing is, for me this was quickly followed by a low blood-sugar induced rage and utter balls-out apathy as I realised it’s completely pointless and I’d rather have a pastry, or coffee or any damn thing because juice isn’t food and drinking it doesn’t make you a better or more interesting person—it just distracts you from the bullshit. You just get too hungry and carb-deprived to anxiously criticise your life anymore, which is nice, but still so much worse.
Written by Kate H. Jones
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