How To Fail At An Ayurvedic Cleanse

but end up doing okay at Life

Hey there! Thanks for stopping by this week! Here’s a post inspired by Real Life Events!

If you’d like to take a detour to see something different, try my YouTube channel, where I have posted 5 videos that are part of a short story project I’m doing on Instagram. They’re pretty cool stories, and narrated by my amazing cousin, musician Jen Furches.

But now back to our main programming so LET’S GO

How To Fail At An Ayurvedic Cleanse

When I was in yoga teacher training, we learned a little about Ayurveda. Which, simply translated, is “the science of life,” or the medical branch of yoga. Ayurveda tells us that “food is medicine,” and we can bring our bodies/minds/bank accounts into balance and harmony. Okay, it doesn’t do anything for your finances … or does it? If you’re feeling good, maybe you make more money?

The yoga teacher who came to school us in Ayurveda was sooooo cool that we became friends and recorded 23 episodes of a podcast together last year (not available anymore, sorry). She is a mentor and a pip of a lady! And she knows her stuff.

A lot of Ayurvedic principles make sense to me. You can balance your health through eating/avoiding certain foods, and you can be in harmony with the world around you by eating differently during each season. Yes! I’m down for that!

So when my friend announced enrollment was open for her annual Spring Cleanse, I signed up. Because I have been feeling crappy and it seemed like a good idea to clean out the winter funk and get myself ready for (baggy, long-sleeved, board-short) swimsuit season from the inside out.

The cleanse started the Friday before last. The first three days were tolerable and consisted of adding in a few foods to our diet and leaving a few others out. Then came the Monday—Friday plan. We were supposed to eat kitchari for five days. Kitchari is a flavorful, easy-to-digest comfort food from India consisting of mung dal (split mung beans), rice, and seasonings. You can add cooked veggies for variety, but basically, you eat the same thing for five days.

I knew by Monday afternoon I wasn’t gonna make it. I’d already cheated with oatmeal for breakfast. The thought of eating something with a ton of cumin in it for breakfast put me on edge. I did skip my usual scrambled egg, in hopes of being at least “more true” to the instructions. And I skipped my coffee. By 2:00 pm I was on the verge of tears. I couldn’t think straight, and the entire world seemed like a really sucky place. I staggered downstairs from my office and made myself a fried egg on wheat sourdough toast.

Fail.

I have food issues. Maybe everyone has some things around food? Like some people don’t like different foods touching on their plate. Some people can’t stand the texture of bananas. Stuff like that. Do you have one? Here’s mine.

When I was little, my mom loved breakfast! She used to love going out to breakfast. I would ask her for something to eat before we left the house to go to the restaurant, and she would refuse to give me anything. Why would I need food if we were going out to eat? That’s fair.

But she didn’t realize I was hypoglycemic. Without anything to eat beforehand, by the time we got to the restaurant, I was so grumpy and tired and out of it she’d have to almost drag me to the table. I’d lie down on the booth seat till food came. Which, since I was a kid, would be stuff like orange juice, a waffle or pancakes—all foods that spiked my blood sugar in the opposite direction. I turned into a wild child. The crash usually came by the time we got home. Not fun. Actually it sucked.

These issues followed me into adulthood.

To this day, I hate going out for breakfast. I don’t like restaurants in general. (The pandemic was great! It totally legitimized the to-go option.) If I walk into a restaurant and there is a wait to be seated, forget it. If I have to wait for food, there’s a 50% chance I will freak out and lose my shit. (Also I have better things to do than wait around to eat food. Like freak out.)

People have made fun of me for this “quirk.” An ex-husband. A former boss. My own mom, before she realized what was going on and apologized profusely for what she had done. Isn’t it strange that their “stop having a snack before we go out to eat” speeches never helped? No, it is not. That never helps.

It’s that old why-don’t-you-just-get-over-it thing. I am probably not going to get over it. And maybe it’s just me, but I think I can still live a fulfilling life even if I don’t get over it. Maybe not be a larger-than-life life, full of adventurous breakfasts in Greece or impromptu brunches in Iceland, but I’m okay with that.

And last Monday, all of that came up again. I didn’t have my egg for breakfast, and this threw me off my game. Whether it was my imagination or I really did feel bad from lack of protein, doesn’t really matter. It didn’t work for me.

This may not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things. It really wasn’t. But I felt like a failure as well as not being able to think straight. It was a devastating combo.

I’ll bet there were other people who didn’t follow all the instructions. I think lots of people lack the discipline to adhere to the rules of a 10-day protocol. My problem wasn’t discipline. It was … man, I don’t know what to call it. But it was not called lack of discipline.

On Tuesday, faced with doing it all over again, I didn’t. I decided to make peace with the fact that I am super sensitive to everything—weather, people, food, routine, medicine, noise, light, politics, scary TV shows, smells, desperation… etc. And I’m flat-out tired of feeling bad about it. The bottom line is, I can’t do a cleanse designed for most people. I’ll have to figure out my own version. Which I did.

I didn’t nail the cleanse. Or even come close. But I did change my eating habits, and I ate a lot of kitchari. And I learned something about myself, and turned a corner in terms of owning up to where I am in my life.

I’m okay with that.

And it’s not like I’ll never try anything new. But I’m not a fan of “pushing through fear” so if I’m going to expand my horizons at all, I’ll have to define what I’m willing to try and what I’m just going to say nope to. I might miss out on a lot of things. I might just have a really great life anyway. There will be plenty of things I won’t miss out on.

One part of the cleanse was to get rid of some possessions, and on the last day of the program, I finally pulled all my old “work clothes” out of my closet. The pantsuits and slacks that I used to wear when I worked at the bank. Holy crap, that was a totally different life! I have the ability to fit into all sorts of places due to my high-level masking skills, and I faked it at a bank for twelve years. I quit in 2015 and eight years later have never pulled a single article of clothing from my Conservative Financial Collection off a hanger.

So I took it all out and put it in this bag.

“Giving away my past,” original photo by Andrea C. Neil. Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription so I can finally get rid of this god-awful carpet. Thank you.

This bag holds the final remnants of my former life (except for the small cache of pilfered office supplies in the bottom drawer of my desk). Business suits and fancy pants. This bag also contains sexism, asshole bosses, harassment, and boring meetings. Plus some longing for 401(k) matches and dental insurance.

I have come a long way in those eight years since I left that job.

I have come a long way in the last week.

There is still a long way to go, and with every passing day I have a better chance of making the days I have left a really enjoyable journey.

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