Day 7 - The Gwyneth Paltrow post Christmas 7 day Detox Diet

Well … it’s all over!!  I feel really confused tonight.  I was just asked the question ‘so, would you recommend the Gywneth Paltrow detox diet to anyone?’ and the answer is, ‘I don’t know’.  As lame as that sounds I am finding it difficult to reflect on it tonight.  I feel better, healthier, more energetic for sure, but if I find that tomorrow morning when we weigh ourselves that I’ve not lost any weight, I will most definitely feel cheated. 

I’m not going to lie, this week was bloody hard.  And the only thing that got me through it was humour.  Bruno and I laughing at ourselves, at the people who wrote this diet, at the people who take it seriously and do this kind of stuff all the time and most of all the food that was in front of us.  It was, at least, mostly edible and not too terrible.  There were aspects that neither of us liked but on the whole not too bad.

There is no way in the world that I could have done this had I an office job.  Most of the time I wanted to kill anyone who came anywhere near me, except of course, my comrade Bruno.  It did feel a bit like us against the world, the whole world, eating what they want when they want.  Having to be civil in an office environment would have been beyond me.  Also, it’s just not practical, you need to eat weird stuff at weird times and i presume most people don’t have a kitchen at work, let alone a steamer and a juicer.  It also cost rather a lot of money.  So ideally you need to not have a job, a lot of money, a lot of time, someone to support you through it or do it with you and preferably a chef.  No wonder Gwyneth Paltrow finds it so easy … not the diet for the masses.

Rigamoon

“I’m going to toast the bread lightly before buttering it so that it has a crunch on the top and bottom, but is still soft in the middle.”

Come on, Gwyneth! Do your worst! I’ve sipped and nibbled your torturous regime for a memorably-sized fraction of the year, and I am still conscious enough to use a keyboard. Smoothie for breakfast? Child’s play. Miso soup for lunch? I’ll take two. This is the final hurdle, the last hurrah, and my two erect fingers are aimed directly at the dirtbag who makes a living composing these violently merciless food plans.

I am too excited about tomorrow morning to really mention our final menu. I will spare some time to discuss my experience with quinoa, however, which literally left the final taste of the week in my sad and damaged mouth. To say I would rather eat the soiled wood shavings at the bottom of a bird cage inhabited by a copulating pair of budgerigars with overactive bowels is too kind. Akin to mouthfuls of soggy, midget popcorn, the taste was so obscure that even my spell-check does not recognise the word. If quinoa was a music genre, it would be whale song. Soft, distressing, consistent moans of mouldy flavour. Never again.

And what of my mental faculties? Well, reading back on my entries over the past few days I spot telltale signs of the onset of insanity through starvation. I would recommend the plan to revolutionaries or protesters who are looking to show their mettle. I can just see a dainty plate of crudités and ginger dressing passed around amongst the anti-war placards and dreadlocked beehives. Nothing says “I mean business” like a goblet of coconut water and portions of green beans the size of cotton-reels.

I somehow feel less alive, less interesting. Friends apologise for bringing elegant sandwiches or humble kebabs into our home. Nobody smokes in my face. Bitchney even tried to conceal a scotch bonnet from us earlier in the week. There is also the small issue of acting like an African dictator for much of the week. The dependency and kinship I felt with Rigamoon increased correlatively to the spiteful and ignominious way in which I behaved with everyone else. Luckily, in my experience, people prefer good-looking friends to nice ones, so if the results go our way tomorrow I am sure all will be forgiven.

And until we find out whether it was all worth it, I will in my final few sentences applaud the way this diet has played havoc with my energy levels, patience and mind. Proof enough that it really does matter what you put into your body, which secretly I have needed convincing of for a number of dairy-resplendent years.

And do you know what the best thing of all is? Better than the clearer skin, the heightened sense of smell and the more pronounced jaw-line all rolled into one? Thanks to the early mornings, I am now accustomed to waking before 8am. Which, after this week, seems like the perfect time to open a bottle of wine.

Bruno