Spring Cleaning Part 2: A Post Cleanse Wrap

The most impressive thing about BluePrint Cleanse is this: You honestly do not feel like you are fasting for three days. And overall, I’m thrilled with the results. I’m definitely thinner, especially in my waist. In fact, I'm not sure it's ever been this chiseled. On the less vain front, I feel less run-down, and a nagging cold/allergies I’ve had most of the year are completely gone.

That said, as I wrote three days ago, I came in with high expectations given my friends who’d raved about BluePrint, and I didn’t share all of their experiences.

I’d gotten the impression from everyone, including the company’s Web site, that day one would be the hardest, day two would be easier and day three would even better. Julia Allison swore day three was absolutely euphoric. So I was pretty happy when I felt great on day one. I didn’t have a headache, didn’t feel hungry and didn’t even seem to miss the caffeine.

And, to my surprise most of the juices were delicious. The only shock was the green juice—which is half of the daily intake. At first taste Mr. Lacy declared it “the most disgusting thing he’d ever tasted.” (To be fair, he hates cucumbers and it’s very cucumbery. But I love cucumbers, and I could barely drink the first bottle.) But it got better for both of us with each bottle, and we barely minded it towards the end.I remember having the same reaction the first time I drank tomato juice, and I adore bloody mary's now.

But that was the only thing that got better! I felt great in the morning and afternoon of day two but as the day wore on I was hungry and irritable. The cravings for food were so bad by the evening, if I’d been at a party or a dinner it might have been too much to take. For sure, I wouldn’t have been pleasant to be around. (Just ask Olivia who for some reason picked this moment to cook the most fragrant meal she’s ever made, eat it in front of us, then leave the bowl on the table when she left the room. I felt like Stains.)

Day three got worse. I spent the entire day with a blistering headache and because I had to wake up at 5:30 a.m. for a Yahoo shoot, I had to space the juices out longer, making me feel hungry and out of sorts most of the day. Finally by late afternoon I got a few bursts of euphoria, but the headache kept coming back, putting a pretty big damper on it. And Geoff, sorry, I mean, "Mr. Lacy," felt really ill that night. And be forewarned, what you think is a three-day commitment is really more like a six or seven day commitment because there are huge restrictions on what your system can digest when you break the cleanse. A big disappointment as I really wanted a goodbye slice of Arinell's pizza before I left for Israel. :(

All-in-all, I would definitely give BluePrint another shot. One-and-a-half days of feeling “meh” is worth slimming down and bolstering my immune system, and the company does a fantastic job of coddling you through the process. Also the packaging is great. They clearly label your bottles and send you a little cooler to carry them with you so you don’t have to be tethered to a fridge. This was, after all, my first cleanse, and no doubt a bit of a shock to my system, as much as BluePrint tries to mitigate that with different levels and instructions to prepare for it. I'm sure it'd go smoother next time.

When will that next time be? The site recommends you do it monthly for best results, and that’s probably too much for me. But I plan to try it again in May. As for Mr. Lacy, he’s very prone to headaches and has a wickedly fast metabolism, so the fact that he could function during a fast is nothing short of amazing. He usually flips out if he skips a meal. He ultimately saw it as a good way to kick caffeine, but too much of a sacrifice to do more than a few times per year. Especially since you have to eat salads and steamed vegetables for several days after the fast. As Homer Simpson once said, "You don't win friends with salad."

I can’t say it’s changed my life the way Julia promised it would, but I recommend it to anyone wanting a quick and relatively pain-free way to feel thin and healthy.

Spring Cleaning

It's been a rough 2009 so far, at least for my health. Between the cold that wouldn't leave for nearly two months, some pretty severe sleep deprivation, and more stress than usual, I've turned to comfort foods and comfort wine a bit more than I probably should. Author-Sarah would hardly care about a few extra pounds. I am, after all, in my 30s and married. Isn't that when we're all allowed to get fat?

But on-camera Sarah has to care. About a week ago, I decided to go back to what's always helped me slim down and feel happier before: The South Beach Diet and a few hours a week sweating on the elliptical listening to loud rock music. But no sooner did I Twitter something about these plans, then a trove of friends all told me I should try a juice cleanse instead.

I had one initial objection: That just sounds way too California. I already do Pilates three times a week and eat more tofu than I do red meat. I have to keep true to some of my Memphis roots, or they may not let me back in for BBQ-fest.

As I did more research on BluePrint Cleanse-- the company that everyone from Julia Allison to Michael Arrington have gone to for cleansing needs-- there were a few other red flags.

Can I Make It at TechCrunch Two Weeks? Vote!

Duncan Riley over at The Inquisitr has a poll asking how long I can last at TechCrunch. It's actually an incredibly complimentary post. I mean, I want this on my tombstone:

"Here’s a woman (lady may be sexist, but more fitting) who isn’t afraid to share an opinion, but does it with grace, in a dress of teflon."

But Duncan details how tough of a battleground that blog has been for women. He aptly sums up every reason Mr. Lacy didn't want me to help Arrington out. I, for one, can't imagine any comments worse than the ones I got at SXSW or get daily on TechTicker. I think Duncan underestimates how much people already hate me!

But he is right that I don't mince words or opinions. So, readers, you know me pretty well. What do you think? Can I last two weeks? Head on over and vote!

Another Great Girls in Tech Event

For those women starting companies you won't want to miss this workshop!

Attn Girls in Tech: An Excuse to Have Fun

Girls in Tech-- one of my favorite organizations-- is hosting a mix-and-mingle event featuring me, but more importantly the amazing crew of smart girls who go to Girls in Tech events. The invite is below. Please pass it on and please join us!! (Please RSVP to the email address below)

It's Not Often I'm Speechless.

I really don't know what to say about Michael Arrington and the whole spitting thing. Let's start with the fact that the clip of me throwing water on him is no longer as funny to me as it was yesterday, even though it was clearly staged and you can hear me laughing as I walk off.

I thought about penning a quick column for BusinessWeek about the topic, but it was just too close to home. After all, I've got some experience here. I haven't ever been spat on (yet), but I have had a few very disturbing physical things happen to me over the last few years, and more than a few threats. And at least once a day someone, somewhere online says something brutally mean about me. Notice I didn't say "something about my work"-- something about me personally. And 99.99% of the time, they've never met me.

But more to the point, Michael is a good friend of mine and I know him. I know him well enough to know the characterization of this ValleyWag post is utter bullshit. Michael didn't seek out being famous. That doesn't even make sense. He started TechCrunch at a time when startups were utterly unsexy, and no one thought you could build a huge media business off a blog. Michael eschews the limelight more than he seeks it. He spends most of his time at home, working hard, not out talking about it. He does a fraction of the press and appearances he could do. (Trust me, he's bailed on me more than a few times!) And even at Valley parties, he's usually off to the side or sitting in the back somewhere talking to entrepreneurs. And he's turned down many funding and acquisition opportunities for TechCrunch. He's stashed away at least a year's worth of revenues, so this is hardly some Web 2.0 pony he was trying to run until it died, and now having failed, he's looking for an out. Please. Michael is hardly a saint; if you're going to say something mean about him, why completely make it up?

On the flip side was Paul Carr's column in the Guardian. Paul-- like the Gawker crew-- is outrageously snarky. And really, he's far better at that game than most of Gawker Inc, his excellency Nick Denton aside of course. Paul brilliantly writes about the online currency of mean, which I've written about a good deal too, but he writes about it from the point of view of someone who profits off of doing it, not being the subject of it. Paul and I are good friends, which strikes a lot of people as weird, since I'm one of the people he has profited off trashing. But if you read that column, you understand why.

The reason I'm so speechless given all the strong feelings I have about this issue, is that I fear there's no solution and that worries me. If Ivory Tower print media is truly dying, and we're all going interactive, it's going to severely limit the pool of people willing to be journalists. It's one thing to expect this kind of abuse and scrutiny if you're a Hollywood celebrity, a public company CEO or a politician. But someone writing about startups? Why? That shouldn't come with the territory. We shouldn't even be that interesting!

If Michael stays away longer than a month--which I don't think he will--it will be a huge loss for Silicon Valley. Look at TechCrunch50; look at the Crunchies; look at the daily blogging of a broader swath of tiny unheard of startups than any other site. TechCrunch is the best friend entrepreneurs have had over the last few years, and no offense to the team there, but Michael is hands-down the best blogger on the site.

As for me, I have no intention of running away. For one thing, a lot of the abuse I get is because I'm a woman. (Trust me, you just don't want details here.) For the sake of other women, I'm not letting anyone get away with that kind of gender bullying. But there may well come a time, as it has for Arrington for now, where my safety and the toll it takes on my loved ones is just not worth writing another story.

Gender Blindness: It's a Nice Idea...Or Is It?

Patricia Handschiegel has an interesting piece on the Huffington Post today about women in business. The idea is the new power women ignore gender completely. I've been trying to blog about this post for a while now, and I'm struggling. Part of that is some angst about an unresolved issue in my life, part is a nasty head cold I'm trying to shake before I leave for CES and part is that I just can't decide how I feel about it.

Obviously, being a woman doesn't consciously enter into my professional decision making. I never think, "As a woman, should I write this story or accept this speaking gig or interview this person?" Who would? And I agree with the sentiments in the post that an accomplishment is an accomplishment and, like Patricia, if you asked my business role models, it'd be a mix of men and women-- although heavily skewed towards men. I work in a male dominated industry, and I tend to pick role models who I know personally. A decade of business reporting has taught me that the public rap sheet on who someone is and what they've done doesn't always square up with reality.

For that matter, most of my friends are men. My husband and I even joke that many of the traditional male-female roles in our marriage are swapped. In fact, with almost all of our close couple friends, I relate more to the man, and Geoff relates more to the woman.

So clearly, like the women Patricia interviewed for her post, I'm not intimidated by men, and I have no problem relating to them in the business world.That is a non-issue. In fact, there's nothing in that post with which I explicitly disagree.

But implicitly I have a huge problem with ignoring my gender. I embrace it. I love being a woman and everything that comes with it. I usually wear jeans, but when I have to look nice, I love wearing dresses instead of lame, boxy suits. Sure, I wish more women were at dinners and invitation-only tech events I attend, but I love that at least I'm one of the ones there. I even secretly love that my husband gets "spouse gifts" like floral monogrammed soaps when we attend conferences. It's all evidence that I've accomplished something unique and that makes me proud. It's like I've hacked the system. And that means others can hack it too.

As the gender blindness idea suggests, I never considered I couldn't achieve things in business because I was woman, and that was probably part of my success. But at the same time I don't think there's anything wrong with being proud of the fact that I can hold my own in a male-dominated world. That I've been able to make it a non-issue.

I also think that in some unknown, unquantifiable way part of my success has been because I'm a woman. How could it not be? Being a reporter and a writer is an incredibly individualistic career. It's like an episode of Survivor. You're dropped into a jungle and you have to use whatever you've got to fight your way out. Not even a great editor can cover for you for long and whatever you've accomplished is in tangible black-and-white at the end of the day for everyone to see. I've long felt like weird personality traits of mine that were pretty annoying from a human point of view, actually wound up being hugely helpful as a reporter. It was as if I was designed to do what I do.

Because it's so personal, I'd be naive to think none of that has to do with being a woman. Women connect with people in a different way, listen better than men on average, are non-threatening and are naturally nurturing.  A lot of people tell me things they don't tell other people, and all of that is probably part of why. My gender is part of me, so why would I treat it as something I somehow have to subvert or ignore?

There's incredible power in being a woman in business that we've had to deny so long to prove we're "equal." Most of the powerful women I know and respect are increasingly embracing it and using it to their advantage. To me, that's truly breaking the glass ceiling.

Glamming It Up (Apparently, Pirate-Style)

Sarah Browne has a post on Facebook about Girly Glam being back, and yours truly is cited for my fashion sense, in particular one pair of boots I own. Although, here at TechTicker, said fashion sense only gets mocked. Mocked in the form of graphics no less!

Here's Howard and Brad's commentary on my lovely DVF outfit today:

Is it me or do I look like some host of a children's show from the 1970s?

Ahem. Back to Sarah Browne's post. Beyond the shout out, it is an interesting one, and hopefully the link above works within FB's digital walls. If not, here's an excerpt:

"So does all this girly glam mean that voila! women have finally achieved so much equality that we can now afford to literally let it all hang out? That women no longer need to dress or behave like men? That we have choices — every permutation of chic from chictini to Hillary’s custom pantsuits to Sarah Palin’s much ballyhooed booty from Saks?"

It's a thorny issue, as I've written about before. But I'm a big believer that it should be a non-issue. The key isn't "Oh, now we're all wearing dresses." It's that women are free to wear whatever they want: jeans, dresses or VC-esque khakis and blue shirts. Sometimes--gasp!-- professional women rock different looks depending on the day. At Yahoo I wear a dress almost every day; when I was writing my book I wore jeans and a t-shirt almost every day. Paul Carr-- never missing an opportunity to mock me-- calls it the difference between SarahLacy.com and Sarah Lacy. But I think they're both me.

Sure, I dress a little girlier than your average CNBC host when I'm on camera, but that's because I think suits are unflattering. I mean, really, if someone wants to count me out because I wear a dress and not a boxy 1980s suit: Go right ahead. As far as I'm concerned, that only gives me more of an advantage. 

BitchBuzz: The British Sarah Lacy Weighs In

So I wrote about the launch of BitchBuzz two days ago. Olivia-- who reads Jezebel more regularly than I do-- did her review yesterday. But we still felt something was missing in our comprehensive BitchBuzz coverage. So we reached out to our sister blogger Paul Carr. Carr is -- as loyal readers know-- the British Sarah Lacy, and the site is British so it seemed fitting.

Somehow I didn't realize the Pandora's Box I was opening...

BitchBuzz v. Jezebel

Another post by Olivia, who promptly helped paint SarahLacy.com's office pink once she was done:

So as Sarah mentioned a couple days ago, the ladies across the pond launched the feminist blog Bitchbuzz, which their manifesto exalts as the arrival of  “a funny, informative, feisty website for women.” Groan. One could definitely say they are a bit late to the game, but within each sassy blog hopefully lies a completely unique, yet equally sassy, angle. As an ardent Jezebel reader, I am well aware that snark goes a long way, so let’s place both the cool kid and the new kid under a microscope shall we?