Sunday I get back from the mountains and haul ass to the Sunday yoga meeting. Daniel and Trudi ask us all about our week, and I am comforted to know I’m not the only one who has pretty much taken the week off from the 40-Day practice and felt guilty about it. Trudi comforts us by saying that maybe this acceptance of not getting to the some of the practices (in my case, ALL of them) is our practice. I knew I liked that Trudi! Justification. My new best friend. Anyway, Daniel lowers the boom on our group and tells us this is the start of Week 4 and we’re going to be doing a fruit fast. I’ve been dreading the fruit fast for weeks now and thought maybe we weren’t gonna do it, but apparently we are. I like fruit, but hate restrictions. But here we are. Fruit for three days. Yeehaw.

Daniel tells us to read the chapter in the book that tells us how and why we should be doing this and then asks if we have questions. Of course, we all start asking, why we are doing this (to clean out and refresh our systems), if nuts count as fruit (no), canned fruit (only fresh), can we drink coffee (no-coffee is a bean, not a fruit), does it really matter (Daniel says it does). My favorite was when several of us decided wine was a fruit since it was made from grapes. If that’s the case, then I was cool for the fruit fast, but Daniel killed our buzz and said wine (or any other alcohol) is not a fruit. Damn! But “Avocados and tomatoes are fruits,” he said encouragingly. That’s really nice, Daniel, but honestly, what good are avocados and tomatoes if you can’t stick chips in ‘em? I’m not sure how committed I am to this. Do I really need to do it? My diet is pretty good. Surely this is for the other people in the class who are clearly junk food addicts. Unlike me, who prefers to eat her Oreos in the closet and only on days ending in “y.”

I go home and read the chapter about the fruit fast in which Baron tells about a woman who brought protein bars with her on a boot camp trip she attended with him in Mexico. She ended up regretting her decision because she saw the people who were doing the fruit fast go through positive changes that she did not experience. OK, fine. Thank you very much. I decide to commit to 3 days of fresh fruit and take a trip to the Taj M’Teeter (you know, the huge Harris Teeter?) and spend $70 on fresh fruit and another bottle of Beano. This yoga thing really makes me gassy.  

~ Sheri Joseph