Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Food & Life My nothing-but-fruit diet
Posted by Besha Rodell @BeshaRodell on Wed, May 9, 2007 at 7:13 PM
Last year Frank Bruni, the New York Times restaurant critic, wrote an article for Men's Vogue detailing the measures he takes to stay healthy while consuming vast quantities of restaurant food. I can only sympathize and admire his willpower. The man spends half his life eating and the other half exercising.
I have struggled with the problem ever since I started at CL – how to stay healthy while eating for a living. I’ve heard other critics weigh in, saying the secret is to just taste the food rather than eat entire meals. Yeah, right. I do this job because I love food, and I’m not about to let a perfectly good plate of dinner go unfinished just because that’s the healthy thing to do. Besides, I feel as though eating a meal as it was intended is part of the experience – sometimes the first bite of a dish can seem gloriously flavorful, but by the time you get to the fifth bite, you realize that the food is simply too rich to sustain through an entire entree. Likewise, I’ve had a lot of first spoonfuls of soups that seem lovely but become bland and boring by the bottom of the bowl.
The obvious answer is to spend half my life in the gym. Unfortunately, I have found neither the time nor the budget to achieve that. Without sounding too much like a complainer, my schedule is busting the seams of my planner – because I edit the food section, I am in the office for the regular work day, then I eat out at night and on the weekends, and if I’m really lucky I manage to squeeze in an hour here or there to see my child and maybe even my husband. I know I need to do it, but I haven’t managed to squeeze in truly regular exercise. I play with my kid, I go for walks, but nothing that is up to the task of combating the multiple restaurant meals I eat every week.
And so, I cleared my eating schedule for a few days to attempt a cleanse. Specifically, I decided to attempt a “fruit cleanse†in which you eat only fruit for three days, supplemented by some protein shakes and a large raw-vegetable salad at night. No fat, no carbs, no salt, and perhaps worst of all, no coffee for three days.
As I write this, I am halfway through day three, and I am miserable. I’m not hungry, but I feel as though one more bite of fruit and I’ll die (the plan is to eat one serving of fruit every two hours). My head hurts from caffeine withdrawal as well as what the material calls “side effects from detoxification.†I never want to see another strawberry for the rest of my life.
How sad! I love fruit! I don’t want to have this kind of suspicious, ornery relationship with the food I eat, even for three days. Part of why I’m cut out to be a professional eater is because I am wholeheartedly enthusiastic about eating. I feel like a star-crossed lover, who for the sake of her health has to make a pact to take a magic potion and be repulsed by her beloved for three days.
So it’s back to the overworked planner, trying to search out a few hours here and there that I might be able to make it to the gym.
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