Life, Simplified - Part 2: Go Juice

I don't think there is one among us humans who has not benefited from being told of, or who hasn't stumbled across a technique or process or a trick that makes life simpler. Sometimes it's an evolution of steps in an activity that we tend to pare down into a more streamlined way, only to be shocked some time later when reminded of how we used to do it. Other times it's a sudden realization that we could do a task in a totally different way that shaves time or effort from our day. Or sometimes it's much, much bigger than that.

In a series of posts — because I think one post to cover all of them would just be too long ...like that ever stopped me before — I will highlight the things I have discovered on my own which have made life better.

With a V8, You Can Really GO!
Back in the aught decade, when Oprah! was still on the air, the Chicago affiliate ran it twice a day: once in daytime, and then again at night after the local news. I was still married then, and we would lie in bed and watch Oprah! 'til we crashed, or until Nightline came on. On one particular Oprah! in 2005 or 2006 she featured one of her regular visitors, then up-and-coming daytime talk TV superstar, Dr. Oz. He came on and made the audience squirm by talking about things we are too embarrassed to talk about to our doctors, one of them being our poop.

I'll warn you right now, this post will briefly get a bit graphic, so you may wish to skip to the end and work your way back....

Dr. Oz talked about how some patients had asked him how their poop should be, what it should look like. He said that it shouldn't be hard nuggets, nor should it be really soft or semi-liquid. What it should look like, he said, is a semi-firm, long, unbroken, S-shaped poop. To my relief, he didn't show photos. And to yours, neither will I.

But I lay there thinking, "Mine aren't like that. They vary wildly from one far end of that spectrum to the other and back." He babbled on about the way to achieve the S-shaped poop, but it all sounded like much effort, and I fell asleep.

Flash forward to 2009, and my earnest effort to lose some weight and get into shape. I hired a personal trainer who tasked me with keeping a journal of my diet. Of course, he gave me guidance along the way, with a focus on balancing the food groups and cutting out the sugary and high-carb things. What I had not been eating with any kind of regularity prior to his influence was vegetables, but he changed that with a stern expression and some kindly advice. Soon I was eating vegetables in two meals daily.

And, before I realized it, I was making two poops daily that were perfect Dr. Oz S-shaped poops. So easy, and so regular! Dr. Oz was right — as were about a billion other doctors! A healthy diet is key!

But, after a while, I hit a wall vegetable-wise; there were (are) only so many vegetables I like or know how to cook, and it had become expensive since the portions on offer at the grocery stores always seemed to be more than I could eat in a week — especially if I was trying to vary the menu — and I was losing a lot of vegetables to mold and decay in the refrigerator. I had to find an alternative.

After reading lots of labels in grocery store aisles, I finally decided on the low sodium version of V8 Juice. Each bottle is a cocktail made of eight different vegetables (in case you didn't know why they call it V8), and the ingredients list — at least for a major brand — is pretty brief. There is some added citric acid, "natural flavoring," and potassium chloride, but they make up less than two percent of the whole. So I switched completely over from buying and storing and cooking and eating vegetables to having an eight ounce glass of V8 juice with every meal.

My body didn't miss a beat. I still squeezed out those S-shaped poops!

I included V8 in my daily food journals, and my personal trainer said nothing about it until I asked him. Though he said he would prefer if I cooked and ate vegetables, he had nothing bad to say about substituting low sodium V8 for vegetables on my plate.

So, eight years later, though I've fallen off the workout wagon, I still suck down a glass of V8 with dinner. It never gets old. I never get tired of it. ...or of easy poops! Sometimes I forget, and sometimes I'll go out for dinner that is light on the vegetables, to an almost immediate and uncomfortable result in the bathroom. However, it takes only about three days back on the V8 regimen to get me back in that groove.

I suppose, with all the money I've thrown in to V8 in all that time, I should buy stock in Campbell's or General Motors or whoever it is that makes the V8. It has certainly simplified my life and it makes my life better.



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