by Duncan M. McHugh

VANCOUVER (CUP)—I’ve been in a relationship with food for more than 24 years. It is a relationship grounded in joy, necessity and mutual respect. Of course, as with most relationships, there have been the good times and the bad times. Sure, I buy organic produce and take my vitamins, but I also once consumed eight McDonald’s cheeseburgers in an evening.

Nowadays food­especially the consumption of food­can be a total paradox. For many of us, food has become tied into cycles of guilt and pleasure, desire and revulsion: food is healthy and necessary, but it also makes us fat; dieting is important, but we can only be fulfilled if we are consuming the food that advertising tries to convince us we want.

Despite my deep love of food, I decided that I needed some time off. I wanted to take myself out of a pattern of eating that, at times, became unhealthy and expensive. I wanted to gain some much-needed perspective on the motivations behind my food intake: Why do I eat out so much? Why do I eat when I’m not hungry? How can I eat in a more healthy way?

I had friends who had tried fasting and I thought that it would be a good way to challenge my relationship with food. By taking food out of my life, maybe I could better understand the role it normally played.


The Cleanse

The Master Cleanser was written by Stanley Burroughs in 1976, although the diet that it describes, the Master Cleanse or lemonade diet, has been around since the 1940s. The idea is that by fasting for 10 to 40 days, with only a lemonade-type concoction in your system, you can detoxify your body. If you continue with the plan outlined by Burroughs, the diet “will prove that no one needs to live with his [or her] diseases. Lifetime freedom from disease can become a reality.”

Burroughs may be a bit optimistic, but the Master Cleanse does seem to be able to keep people from dying when they fast for up to 40 days, which is good enough for me. With my girlfriend Sara out of town for a week and my roommates Shaun and Hywel leading the way, I decide to try the Cleanse for seven days.


Saturday: Day One

I begin the Cleanse by playing Ultimate Frisbee for three hours, which I come to realize is a mistake. For the next few days, I can’t tell if it’s the Cleanse or the hours of physical exertion that leave my body feeling wonky and sore.

After the game, I have an enormous desire to consume eggs benedict, though this pales in comparison to the previous night’s gluttonous craving. Arriving at the airport for Sara’s flight, I decided my last meal would be a Burger King Whopper with poutine. As my sister later points out, that meal alone deserves a seven-day cleanse.

When I get home from the game, I am shocked at how confused I am with what to do with my time. Without a break to prepare and eat a meal, my day started to feel formless and I began to mope around, unsure of what to do with myself.

This is partly the intent of the Cleanse. Those who fast for spiritual reasons see the removal of energy devoted to food preparation as a way of clarifying and focusing the mind. For me, I’m just bored. Not being able to go for coffee or something to eat proves to be a major hindrance to my social life.

“Food is very social,” says Judith Prat, coordinator of the University of British Columbia’s Wellness Centre. “When we look at research on projects that are done in communities, the most successful ones were where there was food involved with a group coming together, whatever the project was. So eating and food are very social parts of our lives.”

Judith points to the potlatches celebrated by British Columbia’s First Nations people. Potlatches are Aboriginal festival in which whole communities exchange gifts.

“You’ll see this across cultures,” says Prat. “It’s one of the foundations of a society of any kind. Food brings people together.”

As if not sharing food was bad enough, the next morning I learn true solitude. Because I’m no longer ingesting solids, every morning I have to chug a gag-inducing litre of warm salt water to flush out any left over solids still hanging out in my digestive tract. Apparently, the large amount of salt water overwhelms my digestive system, therefore not absorbing, just “flushing” straight through.

Thus, I’m left alone, sitting on or in close proximity to a toilet for over an hour. I repeat this lonely shift for the next six mornings.


Monday: Day Three

Day three is the worst. For one thing, my tongue has turned white, which–apparently–is normal, but still disconcerting. Worse still is that day three falls on a Monday, which is production day at the newspaper I work for. This means that I’ll have to spend 18 hours in the Student Union Building (SUB), which–most Mondays–would mean snacking constantly throughout the day.

But my dilemma is not simply a matter of routine. For anyone who has been hungry, unable to eat and has been forced to walk through it, the SUB is a repository of grotesque eating, with mouth after chewing mouth shoveling more food into its face.

It makes me aware of how much consumerism plays into my food choice. Our modern capitalist world makes it all the more seductive to shirk the responsibility of cooking. When you have advertising trying to convince you to eat food that is both unhealthy and readily available, choosing the healthy route proves doubly hard.

“I think the issue goes back to the choices they are making,” says Judith. “I think there’s a lot of choices out there and you can have a really healthy meal or you can have a really high fat meal. So it depends what you put on things. Are you adding butter and oil, and are you getting deep fried stuff versus the vegetable, fruit, salad and that sort of thing. I think there are a lot of choices there and a lot of the time you don’t choose the right one.

“It’s okay if you want to have a cheeseburger and fries–nothing wrong with that–just don’t do it every single day because those calories are really going to add up.”


Wednesday: Day Five

On day five, tragedy strikes: Hywel caves. The lure of vegan banana bread, coupled with his fear of losing too much weight, proves too great. Having my closest comrade drop out is hard, but not terrible.

“My break of the Cleanse was pretty anti-climatic,” says Hywel. “Something snapped in my head and I bought a piece of vegan banana bread and sat down in a café and casually ate while reading the paper. There never was a more casual surrender. I tried to eat a big plate of greasy pasta afterwards and blew chunks.”

Hywel’s cautionary tale only serves to steel my resolve. By this point, I’m in a zone. The hunger and cravings are now non-existent, though I do begin to go a bit crazy. I start to feel like I will never get to eat again, as if–because of some terrible food-related sin of the past–I have been banished to a life of non-eating. Shaun is also keeping with the Cleanse. He finds he has more energy than normal, though he has difficulty concentrating. This may have something to do with his working in a restaurant.

Still, Hywel serves as an example of the importance of paying attention to your body when fasting.

“I have kind of mixed feelings about [fasting],” says Judith. “I wouldn’t want to give a blanket statement. Some people are going to get into trouble quicker than others because of their general health status. Everyone is going to react differently depending on body size, structure, health status.”

Judith worries about students who try fasting without proper guidance or a professional regiment.

“I know students that have fasted,” says Judith. “There’s certain religions where it’s part of the culture, part of the religion and you would fast for several days. There’s periods when you fast and eat...and while that might be okay for some people...for others they’ve run into problems with that.”

Judith is sympathetic to those who fast for religious reasons. “I know that people fast for different reasons so, for example, there’s apparently spiritual states can be awakened through fasting and I wouldn’t want to argue with that.”

Many religions practice fasting. During Ramadan, Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, avoiding eating, drinking, smoking and sex. For Jews, fasting happens on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. For many people of faith, fasting helps focus their spiritual life and brings them closer to God.

However, this isn’t the case for all religions. According to Orai Fujikawa, resident minister at the Vancouver Buddhist Church and a follower of the Jodoshinshu tradition, for Buddhists, fasting, though a central part of their faith, should only be done for others and never oneself.

“You can sacrifice, even risk your life, for the benefit of other people,” said Orai. He cites Buddhist monks who burned themselves to protest the Vietnam War. “Fasting is another aspect of becoming Buddha.”

When Orai has fasted himself, it has been to better understand the plight of those who cannot get food.

“As long as you have a…feeling of hungry people, you understand yourself and you understand other people.”


Friday: Day Seven

Day seven is a strange day indeed. With the end of the Cleanse so near, I begin to obsess about tasting and chewing solid food again. Not that food lust hasn’t popped up throughout the week.

On the first day of the Cleanse Hywel bought a cookie just to be able to watch his friend eat it. Shaun began collecting pizza menus. Hywel and I spent inordinate amounts of time investigating Krispy Kreme’s website.

After a few days, I take to sniffing a jar of cashews I’ve selected to end my fast with. Hywel and I debate whether or not sucking on a nut and then spitting it out would constitute a breach of the Cleanse.

On Friday morning I decide that it isn’t.

When the clock finally strikes midnight, I am terrified of food. My body actually does feel cleansed, almost pure, and I can’t even imagine eating anything other than nuts and fruits. The thought of eating meat or dairy, or even pasta or bread turns my stomach. Shaun takes a different approach, ordering a pizza the night he comes off the Cleanse. He generously offers me a slice, but I turn it down.

An unexpected outcome from the Cleanse is the way I feel about how my body looks. I did not do the Cleanse to lose weight, though I do drop 20 lbs (five of which I subsequently regain). For the first time in a few years, I feel comfortable wearing tighter T-shirts. And while I’m still somewhat overweight, I feel skinnier and it’s a reassuring feeling.

As nice as it feels to fast and then feel skinny, I like eating. My vacation reminded me of how much fun food and I used to have together. The relationship is even better post-cleanse. Food and I haven’t fallen back into our old, unhappy habits. I could get used to this.