As all 3 readers of my blog are aware, this past summer (starting on June 24, or on July 1, depending of how the date is calculated), I embarked on a personal journey of a reboot of my nutritional intake. You can go to the top of this blog to read past entries, if you are unaware of the approach that I took.
In private conversations, I referred to what I was doing as “this crazy thing I’m doing.” Such language scared my mother to no end, until she watched the documentary that kick-started my journey, Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. After she finally watched it, she understood the context of that crazy thing I did. I guess I should refrain from giving such mixed messages. As I was describing what I was doing as crazy, I believed it was what I must have been doing, which made it anything but crazy.
At any rate, I began eating sensibly on June 24, as a preparation for a juice fast. As it worked out, my juice fast continued from July 1 through August 30, a full 60 days, as was featured in the documentary. Joe Cross, featured in the documentary has a website and a community, titled Reboot with Joe. As I began my juice fast, I was aware that his website features less radical reboots, which include fresh vegetable/fruit juices, but also solid food. Though I had not arrived in the 300 lbs+ neighborhood (like Joe Cross), I was heavy enough to make myself sick of myself, and believed I needed to make a radical, call it crazy approach to change things.
When I started the fast, I didn’t really know how long I would do it. I started with an initial, in my mind goal of at least 10 days. If at the end of 10 days I wanted to continue, it would be at least 5 more. If I made it to 15 days, and wanted to continue, I planned to arrive at 30 days. If I made it to 30 days, and wanted to continue, I planned to go another 30, which is what I in fact did.
Friends who were aware of what I was doing responded with things like, “I could never do that.” My inner response to such statements was something like, “YOU don’t NEED to do something like this!” I went through the 60 days believing that what I was doing was what I needed to do. In reality, it was easy.
As I ended the 60 days, I went back to eating food. I still make and drink fresh juices, and enjoy them. I was aware that the period from June 24 through August 30, though many people said they could never do such a thing, was the easy part of my reboot. The hard part would be what was going to happen after that. You see, I have probably lost 500 pounds in yo-yo fashion. When I was younger, I would get serious about my weight issues, and could drop pounds so fast it would make the women in my life envious. In more recent years, I was aware that the pounds were getting harder and harder to shed, and when I would stop my dieting, the pounds would come back so much more quickly than they used to come. Musing along this situation, making a comparison to the news topic of the week, the US debt ceiling, my weight ceiling was reaching ever higher. I decided that I had to do something radical to lower that ceiling. Perhaps politicians in Washington DC could learn something from me, as we need to do something more radical than what has ever been done, to address our national debt issues.
This post really is to let my 3 readers know what has happened since August 30, when I resumed eating. At the end of my 60 day juice fast, I had dropped 63 pounds since June 24.
I began eating solid food rather judiciously, probably taking up to 4-5 days to get to the volume of food I have been eating for the past month or so. My weight went up slightly, but dropped back down, stabilizing at pretty much my ending weight. I continue to weigh myself (and record the weight) nearly every day, as I don’t want to slip back into old patterns. Until a week ago or so, I was fluctuating at the same weight where I ended my juice fast, and called that good. It has now been 47 days since I resumed eating. I follow Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s nutritarian diet approach, consuming mainly a plant-based diet, with lots of veggies, less fruit than veggies, not a small amount of legumes, nuts and seeds, even less grains, and a minimal amount of meat and dairy. I have had trace amounts of meat only, not really volitionally eating meat at all. Small amounts of meat would include trace amounts in the soup at Kinnaree Thai Restaurant, trace amount of ham in a vegetable plate meal at Cracker Barrel in September, when I ordered pinto beans, and upon consumption realized it had some ham in it, and just the other night, when I had some faux Olive Garden style minestrone soup, and found trace amounts of ground beef in it. I have volitionally eaten some cheese (very small amount) and have consumed 6 eggs, though my daughter thinks it is hilarious when I have confessed to having eaten 6 eggs.
Ready for the drumroll? The weight on the scale today was at an all time low (for 2013, anyway), down 66 pounds since June 24, (Sammy Sosa’s juiced HR total from 1998) 1. I can almost hear Aussie Joe Cross say, “Good on you, Mate!”
Notes:
- I can already imagine Bill Shewmaker, Gary Hardy, and other fellow Cub fans complain that Sammy never tested positive for PEDs, but I would ask them if deep down in their heart of hearts they believe he was innocent ↩
