I’ve always considered New York to be one of the greatest cities of the world. From the Financial District and Lower East Side to the Upper West Side and Harlem; the buzz of power, creativity, and possibility is palpable. As a businessman, I’ve ventured there many times for many reasons: to work, to play…to eat. I could write a book entitled eat, Play, Work dedicated entirely to the island of Manhattan, which has afforded me all three in giddy abundance. But I think my favorite thing about New York has always been the food. Oh, how I loved to eat in Manhattan’s finest sushi restaurants and two-bit pizza joints, sometimes twice in the same day. And so it was with great trepidation that we returned to the Big Apple after spending ten days sequestered on Long Island, far from my biggest food demons (not that the Hamptons doesn’t have its share of temptations). But now I also had a different kind of fire in my belly, not one of the hunger sort. I was revisiting NYC and challenging myself to discover a new way of being there, as in being healthy.

The smells seeping from the bagel, empanada, and falafel shops, and the swishing, clanging sounds of happy hour cocktails were still seductive, of course. Smoke, on which rose scents of hot dogs and roasted almonds, billowed from the carts of street vendors. But never mind. I had my juice. Okay, I won’t lie. It was hard to window shop and not buy a cup-cake or six at the Magnolia Bakery. Nevertheless, I was neither hungry nor really all that tempted. A curious thing happened when I revisited New York. I began to see a completely different side of it, one that had nothing to do with eating, playing, or working.

I was able to reconcile myself to this vastly different way of inhabiting New York by setting out across the city in search of the best juice bars and farmers’ markets. I stumbled on nooks and crannies of the city I’d never noticed before, and had a couple of big “Eureka!” moments about places I hadn’t previously paid a lot of attention to, like the Greenmarket in Union Square, off 14th St. That place is amazing. To my astonishment, I found it offers about 1,000 different varieties of fruits and vegetables grown by local farmers. Turns out, the place attracts about a quarter of a million visitors each week, and chefs from many of New York’s best restaurants—including Momofuku, Butter, Union Square Café, Koi, and Angelica Kitchen—create their menus from what they find there.

The whole idea of eating three meals a day, for example…says who? Who had made it mandatory that we eat “three square meals” a day, or else?

Right around the corner on 16th St., I discovered a great juice bar where I often stopped to order a fresh apple juice or what I call a “Mean Green,” which consists of kale, apple, ginger, carrot, celery, and lemon. During the course of my Reboot, this was my staple.

I became familiar with a number of health food stores and organics retailers. I also learned a lot about the fruits and vegetables in my juice, like, for example, celery, which is high in magnesium and nourishes the nervous system. Tomatoes are rich in potassium, which is shown to help lower blood pressure, and are full of the antioxidant lycopene, which has the potential to lower the risk of prostate cancer, for one. Kale is the vegetable that offers the most bang for your buck in terms of pure nutrients: it’s super-rich in vitamins A, C, and E, all of which support immune function. Cucumbers and their phytosterols can help lower cholesterol, while carrots can contribute to the slowing of age-related eye problems like macular degeneration and offer cancer-fighting antioxidants. Lime juice is high in potassium and calcium, and pineapple is high in the enzyme bromelain, an anti-inflammatory nutrient. Apples are delicious and promote intestinal activity, while protecting “good” HDL cholesterol levels in the blood. How much of this can be said of french fries or hamburgers?

WHAT GOES INTO MY RECIPE FOR “MEAN GREEN”?

6 LEAVES KALE
1 CUCUMBER
4 STALKS CELERY
2 GREEN APPLES
½ LEMON
1 PIECE GINGER

At this point I was two weeks into my Reboot. My thought processes were clearer than ever before.

As much as I’d struggled with the Reboot at the beginning, now I was feeling great and loving the effects it was having on me. As I began to relax and really get into it, I had some fun pondering food myths I had always taken for granted. The whole idea of eating three times a day, for example…says who? Who had made it mandatory that we eat “three square meals” a day, or else?

It just so happens that the three-meal-a-day custom is really a modern idea for rich, industrialized countries. Most able-bodied Africans and Asians today eat only one main meal a day. Prior to the emergence of the three-meal-a-day ritual in sixteenth century Europe, around the time of the reign of England’s Queen Elizabeth, most people ate only one meal a day, two at the most. For more than a thousand years the one-meal system was the rule, and that one meal, which occurred toward the evening, was considered the reward for the arduous labors of the day. It is well documented that the Greeks and Romans ate only one meal a day at the height of their power, and Herodotus wrote that the invading Persians only consumed one meal in the course of the day as well. Some speculate that as those cultures got richer and more powerful, they began to indulge in eating a lot more, and this over-consumption might have had a hand in leading to their eventual declines.

It eventually became more common, at least in the Western world, for people to eat two meals a day, breakfast and supper. There’s an English proverb from the sixteenth century that says: “To rise at six, dine at ten, sup at six, and go to bed at then, makes a man live ten times ten.” But as England became more industrialized and prosperous, people increasingly began to eat three meals a day, more as a convention reflecting social status than as something necessary from a nutritional or physiological point of view.

Anyway, long, ponderous walks in Central Park will do that to you, and I liked the idea that my Reboot was prompting me to ask questions about our most basic assumptions. What I loved even more was the sense of clarity and my vastly increased level of energy. Optimism was oozing from me and I didn’t feel at all tired or lethargic. I was making sure to stay hydrated, drinking lots of water, which also helped me to control many of the food cravings I was having. I purposely said “cravings” and not “hunger.” I was getting the nutrition I needed and filling my stomach with juice and water, but that didn’t mean I didn’t crave the things I wasn’t indulging in anymore.

Here I am preparing to celebrate Halloween dressed as Elvis. My costume is still a bit tight, as you can see.

Soon enough, I needed to find ways of releasing all that extra energy the Reboot was producing in me. That meant I felt like exercising, and I went on even more long walks around the city. The hunger had left me, and yet my taste buds were coming to life in appreciation of the natural flavors in the various fruits and vegetables I was ingesting through my juice. I indulged in more than a little window-shopping in New York City, the home of the hamburger and the heart of pizza country (sorry, Chicago). I even sauntered into a pizza parlor on Astor Place in downtown Manhattan and inhaled, thinking: Just two weeks ago, I would have had two of those, and I’m not talking about two slices—I’m talking about two entire pies! That smell of pizzas baking in the oven is almost irresistible, but walking back out into the crisp autumn air, I felt somehow satisfied with just taking a long whiff.

By Day Twenty-One, still under Dr. Fuhrman’s observation, I had lost nearly fifty pounds and was down to 7.5 mg of Prednisone. Halloween was upon us and I vowed to get into the New York Halloween spirit by marching in the annual parade through Greenwich Village, which is typically pretty outrageous. I’d never been one of those people who dress up on Halloween, but this year, I decided to suit up as one of my favorite American icons, Elvis Presley.

Although I’d lost a nice chunk of change around the midsection, my body still resembled the King’s during his Las Vegas period. So that’s the look I went for: an unforgiving, tight, white jumpsuit. The costume was more than a little snug, but I felt confident that the following year I’d be rocking the early-Elvis, Jailhouse Rock look.

After the parade, I wandered through Washington Square Park and marveled at the natural exuberance of the NYU students and others who set out wearing angel’s wings and all manner of wigs and costumes. I had to admit, I felt as energetic and full of possibility as they looked. I wanted to tell them to do whatever they could to retain that feeling forever, maybe even saving a specimen of it for those dark days when it will feel like their bodies are rebelling against them. I even wanted to say: “And if that fails, kids, Uncle Joe’s got the Mean Green for you right here!” This being Washington Square Park, and me being a middle-aged foreigner in an Elvis suit, I didn’t say as much for fear of getting arrested. Instead I sat, watched, and wondered, When did I stop feeling so young and energetic? Why? I knew now that things didn’t have to stay that way.

We all die eventually. Our brittle, elderly bones might break, we could have great difficulty getting around or end up bed-ridden; maybe we’ll suffer from dementia or an assortment of other syndromes associated with old age. Such is life. But must sickness be a given?

I couldn’t help reflecting on the life of the man whose likeness I inhabited for the night. Elvis was fat and sick like me and died at forty-two, around the same age I was that Halloween. He’d reconciled himself to living a life dependent on pharmaceutical medications because he could think of no other way to cope with the ailments of his body and soul. He died before his time, but he was also quite simply living before his time. In the 1970’s, the prescription drug was still a bit of an anomaly.

Now in the new millennium, we live in a culture where it’s common-place to dispense drugs like they’re candy. New drugs are always being created and marketed to counter the effects of our self-destructive eating and lifestyle habits. The problem is that our bodies always pay a price for taking these medications. They may have toxic side effects that may be known, or are yet to be determined. Further, these medications don’t usually cure. Instead, they serve as enablers, permitting us to continue our bad habits while lessening or controlling the effects of those behaviors.

I’m by no means blaming America for this because I admire her and her people too much. It’s become a global social disease, in any case. Sitting on that bench in Washington Square Park, I thought about Elvis and I thought about New York and I thought about America. My Reboot was well underway, aided in no small part by all that was available to me in this vast city. But what about the rest of America? I thought about the lyrics to an old Simon and Garfunkel song, “America.” Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were songbirds who had once hung out in Washington Square Park. With my juicer in tow, I was determined to “look for America.”

The time had come for me to get this show on the road.