August 1, 2013

I’ve been “on the juice” for over a month now. Not the Biogenesis kind, so I anticipate no suspension from MLB. I’ve hit zero home runs since I started juicing. If you missed the back story, you can check it out here: Radical Decision, or the later updates. I weighed myself this morning, and I am down 40 lbs since June 24!

Actually, today is DAY 32 of what could become a 60-day juice fast. I went to the doctor on Day 30, primarily to accomplish 3 things:

• confession of making such a drastic decision, and implementing it for an entire month without consulting a doctor
• get an order for blood work to let the numbers tell a more complete story of what is going on in my body
• get an Rx to treat what appears to be an infected insect bite

His reaction was not unlike what I expected. He had neither seen nor heard of the documentary, Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead (this link will allow you to watch the documentary on YouTube), which inspired my radical decision, though he liked the title. Initially, he said, “I’ve never been one to argue with success.” I told him that the largest number ever on the scale provided the motivation, and that I knew I had to make a radical change in my eating habits. I spoke of going from being a couch potato (really an office desk potato) to nominal activity (at least a mile to a mile and a half every day on the treadmill). He was concerned about the possibly negative effects of losing too much weight in a short span of time, vitamin deficiency, etc. For that reason, he included an analysis for vitamin B12 and folic acid in the blood work.

August 2, 2013

I wanted to post this yesterday, but waited, because I planned to add a comment about the results of my blood work. I called the Dr yesterday afternoon, to get the results, but got sent to voice mail, where I left a message with the nurse, but did NOT get a call back. His office is closed today (Friday), so I’ll have to wait until Monday to get the results.

By the way, the weight loss today is up to 41.8 lbs!

I did plan to mention that I hit a bump in the road, in that my juicer quit last weekend. It is under warranty, but a hassle while waiting for a replacement. We shipped it to New York on Saturday (I had enough juice to get me into Sunday. Knowing that I would be without a juicer for a while, but planning to continue the juice fast was a problem. The solution? I used a 20% off coupon to buy a NutriBullet at Bed, Bath & Beyond. With that machine, I have been pulverizing veggies and fruits, though you have to add water. I had thought I might be interested in that machine past the juice fast anyway. The NutriBullet machine has gotten me through this week. I did not expect my replacement juicer to arrive until the end of next week, but . . . it arrived today! Now I can use mainly the juicer, for real juice, and add the use of the NutriBullet for fun stuff, like the spinach-pineapple drink I had for an early lunch. By the way, spinach has become my go to green leafy vegetable. The nutrient density of spinach is not as high as that of kale and collards, but it is still pretty high. The scale is based on Dr. Joel Furhman’s ANDI scale, rating the nutrient density of a number of foods. I’ve preferred spinach to kale, as it seems to be juiced much easier.

I’ll update a report on the results from my blood work next week.