Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness

And we want to be clean young men....

We recently decided to go on a twelve day ayurvedic cleanse, where you gradually eliminate various kinds of food until you are consuming nothing but clear vegetable broth and parsley tea. Now I like parsley as much as the next guy, but it does not make for a satiating meal. And every time we decide to do something like this (can anyone say "cabbage soup diet"?) we end up drawing undue attention to our meals to the point where it becomes so stressful that we wind up buying a leather coat off the back of the truck of an Italian albino with a glass eye outside of the 63rd St. Starbucks because milk and bananas are not the foodstuffs upon which to build rational judgment.

Also, we are busy people during the week and our weekends, when we were scheduled to be consuming nothing, we like to be active. The puppy needs running and her daddies need to get off their fat asses and exercise (well, I speak only for myself; Emerson still manages to run 4 or 5 miles nearly every day). And the cat needs some precious alone time. Oh man, does the cat need some frickin' alone time.


So we modified our plan. We are going non-grain vegan for a couple weeks to clean out the system. I am, of course, terribly incredulous about the value of fasting and the dubious prospect of not eating any animal products for the next two weeks. But we are using it as a jumping off point for a year of healthy eating so both of us can drop a few inches off our waists so we look good in pictures on the big day.

At least that's why I'm doing it. It has nothing to do with the massive beef recall, since the chance of non-organic meat crossing my palate are equal to or less than the chance I will end up with a successful modeling career. Regardless, it does make sense to give your body a break every now and then. I am under no illusions that I will be clearing out an "toxins" or some such nonsense, but given that we spent the first three months in Durham eating every meal off the grill (and hanger steak is a lot easier to grill than mung beans), a little non-grain vegan might be just what the holistic doctor ordered...