‘Don’t forget your power juice!’

Lately, I’d been a bit annoyed with Mrs. Dijkgraaf a few times. It was incredibly kind of her to wash my clothes every week, of course, but it seemed she had made a habit of using a temperature that was too high. My T-shirts, polo shirts, and dress shirts seemed to shrink a little more with every wash. The wake-up call came one Sunday morning in the bathroom. “Can you actually still see it?” she asked casually, noticing that I wasn’t looking in the mirror for a moment, but looking down. “I don’t know if you ever weigh yourself, but I think you’re well on your way to setting a new record.”

Wham. Bam. Ouch. A few decades later, there was indeed nothing left of the lean, super-fit, and flexible badminton player (well, not every man can do kickboxing) who weighed a mere 60 kilos at eighteen. Or rather: there was actually *too much* of him left. No longer a sporty, rubber-like physique, but rather more than half as much weight again. The next time I stepped on the scale, I clocked in at 93.3 kilos. And I really couldn’t see it anymore. At rest, that is. And without leaning forward a bit—something gravity took care of for me, thanks to the solid B-cup I’d developed over the years.

I’m a bit of an oddball. When I flip the switch, I really flip it. So, from that moment on, I decided to start walking 10,000 steps a day again. I accepted that my carb-heavy diet—consisting mainly of bread (I’m crazy about bread), potatoes (preferably fried), cookies (lots and lots of cookies), and paprika-flavored chips (though plain ones were fine if we ran out of the other kind)—might be just a tiny, teensy bit suboptimal if I wanted to shed some serious weight. So, I finally said “yes” when my lovely wife suggested we try out some diet together. And I went to Fuerteventura for a week. With Health Holidays. Juice fasting.

That cheerful woman is Henny. She is the widow of Rob, the company’s founder. Henny handles the juices. Sitting next to her is Ilona. Ilona handles the muscles. During juice fast weeks—as I learn along the way—people go by first names only. Henny is sweet. Ilona is fun. So, I’m looking forward to it.

That urge is further fueled by Tanita. Tanita is a bitch. Unlike Henny and Ilona, ​​Tanita isn’t blonde; she’s a tough cookie—a ‘body composition analyzer.’ In other words: a scale. During the intake for “Jan,” she records the following figures: weight 88.5 kilos, body fat 26.3 percent, BMI 27.9, visceral fat level (fat around the organs) 13, and metabolic age 59. In short: too high, too high, too high, too high, and older than my actual age. And that was *after* I’d already lost nearly five kilos thanks to walking and the diet we were following—and I don’t even dare write down my blood pressure. So…

Tanita also reported that my ideal weight would be 69.7 kilos. But that struck me as excessive. The long-term goal is to reach my height minus one hundred (so, 78). Besides, Ms. Dijkgraaf had explicitly instructed me not to go overboard while on Fuerteventura (she knows me inside out)—meaning I had to make sure there was still something left to grab onto. I was willing to make that concession, but Tanita had certainly given me a wake-up call. If I wanted to make something of the rest of my life, I had to drain the poisoned chalice to the dregs. Well, the juice glass, anyway. And exercise until I dropped.

The daily schedule looked something like this. A brisk walk at 7:30 a.m. A glass of lemon juice at 9:00 a.m.—to shrink the stomach, and so on. A glass of tasty juice at 9:30 a.m. Then, grabbing the thermos containing the tomato-flavored ‘lunch’ from the fridge (Henny: “Don’t forget your power juice!” Me: “Shit, busted…”). Aqua jogging at 10:00 a.m. Another sports activity at 5:00 p.m., ranging from a boxing workout—grueling for me—held out of the wind in the blazing sun, to yoga on a mat by the sea. The final juice at 6:00 p.m. And then, ‘free time’. Oh, and throughout the day, you could drink as much water and herbal tea as you liked. In fact, anyone who consumed less than two liters was out. Furthermore, we were advised to spend the hours without scheduled activities sleeping, relaxing, visiting the beach, lounging by the pool, or spending time in solitude to process everything—because juice fasting brings a lot of things to the surface for people. “Both physically and mentally.”

General malaise

Let’s start with the physical side.

First of all: pooping (for Flemish female readers: *kakken*).
Anyone who consumes Henny’s magic potions—and hasn’t secretly stashed a pack of plain biscuits in their hotel room—stops pooping (or shitting, to put it bluntly) after just one day. That’s strange. Especially for a man. After all, most men spend a good chunk of time on the loo twice a day with their mobile phone or tablet to do their business. It’s a meditative moment—one that has prevented many a divorce. We need that. Or let me speak for myself: *I* do. Do you keep up the habit even when nothing comes out? Or worse: when that seemingly bizarre water intake means the only output comes from the front? Suddenly, you transform from a tough guy combining the useful (pooping) with the pleasant (peace and quiet!) into a man who sits down to pee.

Secondly: detox dementia

Did you spot those two d/t spelling errors in the previous line? ‘Verenigd’ should, of course, be ‘verenigt’, and ‘verandert’ should be ‘veranderd’. It just goes to show that during the first few days of a juice fast, you can become completely scatterbrained. I didn’t go quite as mad as my grandmother—who once placed her coffee maker on a lit gas burner—during my time on Fuerteventura. But I’m not exaggerating when I say that, during the first half of the week, I spent my time looking for my key card, checking what time our aqua-jogging session was, and wondering what day of the week it was—at least 469 times. There was a different reason, however, for why I forgot to take my ‘lunch’ out of Henny’s fridge. I think tomato-cucumber juice is gross. Almost as gross as pea juice. But she was such a sweetheart and had put so much effort into making it that I didn’t want to disappoint her. So, claiming it was due to ‘detox brain’ was just a little white lie.

Thirdly: general malaise

If you get a splitting headache, feel nauseous enough to throw up, and feel completely washed out—without having downed two dozen beers—then, during a juice fast, that doesn’t mean you need to call emergency services. No, it means things are going great! It means you’re detoxing.
Well, things were going pretty great for me, then. I didn’t have a headache, admittedly, but for the first few days, I did have a constant sense of general malaise (in a men’s magazine, I’d write: I felt like shit). And I could have slept all day. So, things were moving along nicely. My aging body was purging the junk and getting ready for a fresh start for the rest of the century. That idea took even firmer root from day four onwards, as a different path appeared on the horizon: I started feeling energetic. By day five, I was even tempted to ask Ilona for an extra hour of aqua jogging, but since I don’t like being the loudest voice in a group, I decided to keep that request to myself after all.

Fourthly: muscles

If you decide to go on a juice fast (I’m mentioning this now, just in case my stories about toxins, poop, and pee have got you excited), there’s a good chance you’ll burn more muscle than fat. And that’s obviously not the goal. To prevent that, you need to exercise. Now, the five to eight kilometers we walked as a group didn’t amount to much in terms of a workout for me—an experienced former Four Days Marches walker. But I got hooked on a different kind of ‘sport’: the aforementioned aqua jogging. I never knew foam rubber props could make your muscles ache the way they did during that week on the Canary Islands—provided, of course, that you participate enthusiastically and don’t let yourself get distracted by an overly conspicuous Spanish lifeguard, or by the woman next to you getting annoyed by that same conspicuous Spanish lifeguard. Fortunately, I’m good at tuning out Spanish lifeguards and irritated neighbors. So, I discovered muscles I’d forgotten I even had. That pretty much covers the ‘physical’ side of the “both physical and mental” equation. Now for the mental side.

Iron discipline

Let me start with the most important piece of good news.

• Bonus #1: at no point did I feel the urge to quit my job or get a divorce.

The fact that I’m self-employed helps with that first point, of course, but it’s the idea that counts. In the second half of the week, I actually came up with some great new ideas for the rest of 2018. And whenever I’m away from home for more than three nights, I always miss my wife. This time was no exception. So that’s a good thing.

• Bonus #2: when it comes down to it, I still have iron discipline.

I know this because, every evening after ‘dinner,’ I go for an extra walk on my own—from the hotel to the center of Corralejo. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Corralejo (if not: keep it that way), but it’s a place where you’ll find a hundred restaurants… and about two decent shops. So there you are, walking past all those restaurants in the evening on an empty stomach; you smell all that delicious fresh fish (and that fast-food junk), and at every single place—despite the euros jingling in your walking shorts—you decide: I’ll keep walking. I can do it. I’m strong. After all, what is a week of living like a monk in the grand scheme of a human life?

• Bonus #3: happy camper

Perhaps it was because I had nothing specific to process, but I didn’t feel depressed for a single second during that entire week with Henny and Ilona. Or lonely. Or sorry for myself. Or otherwise out of sorts mentally. I found that week of juice fasting a fantastic way to give a power boost—on a warm island—to the ‘Less Jan’ project I’d started a few weeks earlier in and around the Frisian hamlet of Eesterga. If I did shed a tear, it was because I had been orphaned a few months prior and was writing a book about it during my juice-fasting week (I really am *always* working); but I did that just as much at home. In fact, even more so. The distraction was actually welcome.

• Bonus #4: going home!

It’s strange, but as much as I love the sun, the sea, and the occasional solo getaway, I had never before been so happy to return to windy, rainy the Netherlands. That’s not to take anything away from Henny, Ilona, ​​or the other participants (an all-female group—plus one man, thank God), but man, oh man, was I glad that—after the daily “open your heart” ritual Ilona used to wrap up the aqua-jogging—I could finally open my mouth and actually chew on something. Because if I learned one thing during my juice-fasting initiation, it’s this: to be truly happy, I *need* to chew on something several times a day. That habit was drilled into me by my mother back in my breastfeeding or bottle-feeding days, and I can’t do without it. So, if the time ever comes when I’m permanently dependent on liquid food, you can go ahead and pull the plug.

But it doesn’t come to that. Why? Because of Tanita! Weight down 4.2 kilos, BMI down 1.3, visceral fat level down 1, waist circumference down 9 centimeters (!), and metabolic age (measured three weeks later) down 7 years (making it lower than my actual age). It leaves me wanting more—or rather, wanting *less*. Tanita might not see me hit 69.7 kilos, but I’m going to reach 78 thanks to my walking and diet regimen. And if I don’t? Then, as a self-imposed penalty, I’ll simply go back again later this year!