The Downward Spiral of 2008, Part IV: The Moment of Truth

The hypocrisy of my existence came crashing down on prime time TV. It was ‘The Moment of Truth’, metaphorically and quite literally. Yes, i was actually on Fox TV’s ‘The Moment of Truth’, that universally abhorred ‘reality’ show train wreck where contestants are hooked up to a lie detector and asked extremely scandalous questions that the producers of the show dig up by probing the contestant’s friends, family, and enemies. The questions are then framed in confusing ways that make the person on the stand look like a real asshole.

It’s a real family/relationship killer. Blessed be that I wasn’t actually the main contestant (I would never have done it). The brave/crazy one here was Russia, my beautiful juicer assistant from the celeb gift suite at Sundance. They had me on as one of Russia’s support network. I was her ‘boss’. I agreed to do it with mixed feelings. For the most part, I was vehemently opposed to being involved with what I consider to be one of the final nails in the coffin on exploitive, heartless, sleazy entertainment and business. This was the death knell of the old paradigm. But of course when I started thinking of it in those historically epic terms, who was I kidding?! I HAD to experience this, at the very least from an anthropological standpoint.

I was an actual witness for the taping of the end of the world, live ON stage, ON camera! Super freaking weird! It was like being ringside at a lion’s den in Ancient Rome. We were in the bottom-center of a 4-floored cylindrical coliseum filled with demographically-sorted groups of screaming spectators, delirious for blood. The experience left me feeling violated and weird all around. Russia proved to be a very entertaining contestant, but after walking the brink of insanity through the first two rounds and admitting on national TV that she wouldn’t be sad if her step-mom died, she blew it on the $100k round.

I couldn’t even watch it the night the show premiered (taped in mid-late February though). It was Election Day and I was watching Obama’s acceptance speech the very same moments I was apparently on the air. I hadn’t told anyone, not even my mom. I was embarrassed. But within minutes of being on the air, my mom was taping it, alerted by one of her friends. I had figured most of my friends would miss it cuz they were watching Obama win, but a substantial number gingerly stepped out of the shadows to say they were ‘flipping through the channels and saw my face on The Moment of Truth’. ‘Uh huh. And why weren’t you watching that other guy make history?’ What is the world coming to?!

It just so happened to be that my experience of this taping was my own personal Moment of Truth. It was catalyzed by an amazing occurrence. Mark Walberg, the unashamed provocateur host of the show asked Russia about her job, and Russia had a good 30 seconds where she talked about the iZO Cleanze. What an infiltration of the mass media! I was certainly pleased with the exposure. And yet, I was sitting there uneasy in my own skin, knowing that I was mistreating and disrespecting the iZO Cleanze and living out of integrity with my cleanse mission. In that Moment of Truth I realized that I had to just come clean with the whole story, warts and all. I had to turn the knife in on myself and reveal my most intimate weaknesses and then operate quickly and professionally to remove the blockages causing the weakness. I had to blog it and video blog it and get a PR firm behind it, and get in all the major weekly magazines, and hit the talk show circuit, culminating in Oprah, demonstrating to the masses how to heal oneself through nutritional cleansing and other amazing modalities. This story needed to be heard. It’s the story of a regular Joe who took control of his own health by learning and practicing fundamental nutrition strategies, such as raw veganism and juice-fast detox cleanses. It’s a story about a path that hasn’t always been easy, one rife with challenge and turbulent ups and downs. It’s a story about intense growth. It’s a story about sharing the message of how to accelerate total health Transformation. ?

A sufi mystic named Bayazid Bistami, once said "The thickest veils between man and Allah are the wise man's wisdom, the worshiper's worship, and the devotion of the devout." May I add to that ‘…the detox cleanzer’s toxicity’? I was out of integrity, and it felt shameful. But that was not necessarily a ‘bad’ thing. It’s the pain that comes from the ignorance associated with being out of integrity that kicks us into high gear in elevating our present situation. Without the pain of mutation, evolution would be stagnant. Without a reason to grow, there would be no growth at all. The key is to be aware of how the tough experiences are lessons that need to be learned in order to evolve, and to then be grateful for them. We need to appreciate and love the challenges. Turn the lemon into iZO Lemonade. Everything happens for a reason, everything is meant to be. And a big fat ‘whatever!’ to all the arm chair judges out there. If you see someone faltering, don’t bring down a verdict that imprisons them or labels them as outside your scope of help. Instead give them the love and support needed to help them overcome whatever hardship they are enduring. I’m certainly guilty of judging myself and others, so please know that I’m not preaching from on high. If anything, right now this is my penance, live from my own personal gutter.

After the moment of truth, my eyes were suddenly wide open. I observed what was ‘happening’ to me, and how I was ‘happening’ with the world. I started to get to the heart of what this eating disorder was all about, using my intuition and research on Self. I analyzed my relationship with food and cravings, and got to the root of it all for me. Besides the fact that I was totally burnt out on cleansing, I felt the most important origin of this vicious yo-yo was my unintentional fall off the cleanse and the sudden void that I felt which needed to be filled. I decided to write about breaking the cleanze as an adjunct onto the main LA Yoga article on the iZO Cleanze in May, and touched lightly on macrobulimia, laying the groundwork for this blog right now in which I could tell the whole story. http://layogamagazine.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&task=view...

It took a few months more of failed re-starts and self-introspection to arrive at the first order of business that needed to be done: I needed to STOP the cleanze! For the past year, I was either on a cleanze or in between cleanzes, and most of that was in between. The in-between stage was supposed to be temporary which distracted me from employing any good habits when I was off the cleanse. Who needs good habits when they can cleanse again and make everything all good? This was Self-deception at its finest, and I was done with it! Beginning in September, I ate the intentional veganic solid foods that I love and got into a groove of eating well, preparing most of the food myself. I was even in a routine of sprouting my own lentils and quinoa! Feeling good, eating solid veganic Wholefoods, 85% raw, I was starting to feel solid balance. I also began to finally cultivate a regular Yoga practice with Julian Walker at Santa Monica Yoga, something which had been sorely lacking on previous cleanzes. For a while I was really good.

Actually I was good until my trip to Ireland for my friend Ben’s wedding October 25. Damn! It was tough eating healthy over there. It’s meat and potatoes everywhere you look. And they serve heart attacks for breakfast. I compromised at fish and chips as my staple. Fry-food-orama! That coupled with double-digit pints of Guinness per sitting means I did a real number on my body. You gotta realize that this was my best friend from college and I was like the ‘silent’ best man. (I hadn’t confirmed until the last second so he couldn’t bank on me being the best dude in the ceremony.) So there was just no way we weren’t going to drink Guinness like rock stars at what was essentially Ben’s bachelor party and wedding rolled into one weekend. That coupled with 4 full days of traveling (2 days flight and 2 days of solo driving from the airport to the northern-most tip of Ireland in Donegal and back) within a 7-day trip was just a bit too much on my body. I was still jet-lagged from my way to Ireland when I was leaving to come back to California.

When I came back, I did a much-needed 5-day iZO Cleanze to clean out the cholesterol-laden Eurotrashed pipes. I was very respectful of the cleanze and used it well, and I maintained my healthy diet after the cleanze was finished. But at that point of the year though, one faces an uphill battle in maintaining health. It was late November and the holidays were upon us. I had an especially health-challenging upcoming itinerary: Aruba for Thanksgiving and New York City for Christmas.

My parents have been going to Aruba for Thanksgiving since I moved out to LA four years ago, and so my Dad and I surprised my Mom and i unexpectedly showed up at the Divi Divi All-Inclusive resort. Talk about being a fish out of water! I love my parents and their friends are pretty cool people, but the fact was that almost 90% of the guests at this resort were obese, and eating pizza and drinking all day long, including me. I did bring superfoods and was adding iZO SuperFruit to my strawberry daiquiris, but nonetheless, I was drinking a lot. It was a ‘When in Rome’ situation. What in the Divi Divi, eat pizza and play ‘Bingo Frenzy’, taking a drink every time you don’t have a number called.

New York City wasn’t too bad of a binge situation, but it wasn’t anywhere near as health as my California regimen. Back in LA for the New Year, at the dawning of a new age of hope and transformation, I felt the time had come for me to finally take my transformation to the next level. I was healthy and balanced enough to go the distance. It was time to do the 100-day cleanze once and for all.