Day 2 started out on a hopeful note.
Headaches were gone and Joseph woke up feeling like he had more energy. It seemed like his body might be adjusting to his new diet. He and Matt started the morning with a Blackberry-Kiwi smoothie (it was delicious and very sweet!) and slammed a slightly disgusting "V28" juice afterward.
And then things went downhill. And kept plummeting down.
Joseph has a very fast metabolism, so his body processes sugars (and other things) very quickly. Shortly after their breakfast smoothie, he crashed. We skipped church because he just needed to sleep. He barely had enough energy to get out of bed and walk around the house. His eyes looked glassy and, if I'm honest, the whites looked slightly off-color. I don't know if it was just a coincidence, but it was worrisome nonetheless. We usually see his family for dinner after church, but he felt too shaky and sick to leave the house, so Diana and I went without him.
Lunch was basically a large salad and he perked up again after that, but was soon huddling under a blanket, shaky and nauseous. Both he and Matt spent a large amount of the first and second days dashing to the bathroom, but that was expected. Dinner was more filling (Roasted Acorn Squash stuffed with Mushroom and Sage and a Green Vegetable Soup), but even though Joseph was trying his hardest to pack as much food as possible into his (admittedly small) stomach, he never felt satisfied. His body was definitely craving other things. Shortly after dinner he started feeling terribly sick with pressure and tightness higher up in his abdomen but below his stomach. Eventually he threw up (sorry, people), and around 12:30 AM he started feeling a little better.
I wanted to support Joseph supporting Matt. I wanted to help him stick to his word and exercise his willpower. But that man was sick. I read somewhere on the Reboot site that symptoms like dizziness, fatigue and nausea are simply toxins leaving your body, but this kind of violent reaction just didn't seem right. I'm not sure I've seen him so sick in the five years I've known him. Plus, I (and maybe most women) have this incredible desire to care for people and nourish them by feeding them. It's hard to see someone starving when you can't fix things by feeding them. And it's especially unnerving as a wife to have your buddy and your rock being sick and miserable for days. I told him to just eat a piece of toast after he felt better. He struggled with some worries about being a quitter and not having enough willpower or being a man of his word. Luckily, when you hold a piece of toast in front of a starving man, internal moral struggles become very brief indeed. Afterward he even had some chili and felt oh so much better.
This morning (Day 3) he was mostly back to himself. Still a little shaky and tired to begin with, but throughout the day he ate toast with egg salad, a piece of pizza, and a taco, and now he's walking around with as much energy as ever. He even worked out tonight. I have noticed that when he gets hungry he is DESPERATELY hungry. I think his body may be trying to counter the perceived famine by demanding as much food as possible.
It's easy for him to feel like a little bit of a failure since he only made it two days, but I honestly believe that his body is just not made to cope with a diet like this. Obviously if this was something he really wanted to do and he had a very strong reason for doing it, he could make it work. But even vegetarians eat protein, and I think if he'd been able to eat non-animal proteins, this would have been easier. As it is, this diet is just not sustainable for him.
I think we've learned some good things, though. We know a little bit more about his metabolism and what kind of foods he needs when he's low on energy. I've learned that it's actually incredibly cheap and easy to keep many varieties of vegetables and fruits around and work them into our diet. I can throw some spinach/spring greens, romaine hearts, onion, tomato, carrot and avocado into a salad in no time. When I do, I'm more likely to snack on that than something easy and accessible like crackers. I've been doing much better with snacking- eating leftover salads and fruit instead of crackers and cookies.
The Reboot didn't go quite as planned, but we learned some valuable lessons anyway. Joseph may never willingly eat another salad in his life, but I think it will be easy enough to throw vegetables into our normal meals and we'd be more willing to eat them and try different varieties.
Matt is doing much better than Joseph and will continue with the 15-day Entry Program and then drink exclusively fruit and veggie juices for 45 days after that. He's already lost 6.6 lbs and while it's difficult for him to do his triathlon training on this diet (surprise! ;) ), he seems to have a decent amount of energy and be feeling fine. It's good to know that the Reboot can work for some people!
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