Just around the bend

This is part 3 in a series, find part 2 here

The sec­ond half of this adven­ture has become increas­ingly dif­fi­cult. Every day it is a chore to choke down my healthy bev­er­ages. I am assum­ing it has been because this is the longest that I have ever stuck to a strict diet. In fact, the only other diet that I have ever fol­lowed was the Atkins diet — but that’s far eas­ier to adhere to.

I have had lesser suc­cess in the lat­ter days of this social exper­i­ment as far as weight loss. I believe that this was partly because of the hol­i­day sea­son and partly because I started exer­cis­ing more. After all, mus­cle does weigh more than fat (higher den­sity). I was also not as strict on my food intake because I was sur­rounded by tasty treats on all sides, both at home and at work lead­ing up to X-mas.

With this set­back, I was back to the same weight I was at after 30 days. This being said, I still feel as though I am con­tin­u­ing to get health­ier. I don’t have any sci­ence (BMI mea­sure­ments, etc.) to con­firm this sus­pi­cion, but I have a feeling.

Not only have I felt health­ier, but I have been sick less this fall than in most recent years. This is fairly sur­pris­ing to me since I work at a doctor’s office and reg­u­larly deal with about 30 dif­fer­ent patients a day. If that wasn’t enough, the doc I work for is an ENT (Ear, Nose & Throat) so there are an abun­dance of cougher’s and con­t­a­m­i­na­tors that cross my path every day.

I believe that my health has been improved in com­par­i­son to some of my fam­ily mem­bers, who also work in the same office. On the aver­age, I get sick just as often as they all do. This is the first win­ter that I can recall not hav­ing been sick at all. Usu­ally, I get ‘the crud’ once a year and ton­sil­li­tis once a year or more. I am cor­re­lat­ing my increased over­all health to being affected by my more micro-nutrient rich diet, which my other fam­ily mem­bers lack. We all eat a fairly bal­anced diet, but mine is the only micro-nutrient sat­u­rated diet.

It could, just as eas­ily, be a placebo affect that I have noticed from my diet, but if it is – I have been fooled com­pletely. I’m cool with that. So, three-quarters thru the exper­i­ment and I am down 11 lbs. Not nearly the extreme results of our friends from the doc­u­men­tary, but I only half-assed what they were capa­ble of. My goal may take longer to reach than our new friends, but I think that it is the right way for me.

When mak­ing healthy juices, be sure to anchor it with some sweet juices. I use a sta­ple of apples with pears or can­taloupe with hon­ey­dew for every juice. To spice it up a lit­tle, I add pineap­ple to the mix once a week. Some berries and softer fruits don’t con­tribute much juice, but ‘to each his/her own’. I wouldn’t rec­om­mend straw­ber­ries, blue­ber­ries, or bananas for the juicer. They are bet­ter off in the blender. As far as veg­gies go, each per­son has to find what works for them. Keep it as green as you can han­dle, but be care­ful not to gross your­self out. It can and will hap­pen occa­sion­ally. Spinach was in every juice and usu­ally cel­ery was too. I had started using a bunch of car­rots with my juices, but as time wore on the tex­ture from the car­rots was dif­fi­cult to palate. Some rec­om­mended adding beets or gin­ger in my juices, but I find them both disgusting.

Best of luck in your micro-nutrient rich adventures!

A fat guys skepticism

This is Part 2 in the series. Part 1 is here.

I have taken the easy road for the first part of my jour­ney to become slim­mer. Tak­ing the easy road hasn’t been a cake­walk by any means. It’s not only the dietary changes that have made life a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult. There’s also the time that is con­sumed by prepar­ing more foods con­tain­ing fresh produce.

Unfor­tu­nately, the ‘Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead’ fast­ing the­ory also pro­hibits the con­sump­tion of caf­feine and alco­hol. At first there was no way I could do this, but after I got used to the produce-heavy rou­tine I suc­cess­fully elim­i­nated both drugs from my sys­tem. The alco­hol was a lit­tle tough because I love a cold, frothy, adult bev­er­age before Wyoming Cow­boys foot­ball games, but I have been able to com­pletely elim­i­nate con­sump­tion (not that I drank much before­hand). Ditch­ing the caf­feine was far more of a dif­fi­cult process. I am not, at all, a morn­ing per­son so it became a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to get the wheels mov­ing in the AM sans morn­ing cof­fee. After two days of nag­ging headaches from caf­feine with­draws, I no longer desired caf­feine to the same extent and it has been eliminated too.

In the begin­ning my juices were about half fruit and they were fairly enjoy­able regard­less of the com­bi­na­tion of pro­duce. Not only did I skip the veg­gie heavy juices, but I had to allow myself to eat meat for din­ner. With­out it, I reg­u­larly got a bit light-headed. I wasn’t totally a cheater. I did toss in high amounts of green veg­eta­bles with my din­ners. As the first ten days came and went, I began exper­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent leafy greens and have kept them in my juices from then on.

The first ten days of the social exper­i­ment were pretty dif­fi­cult, but I was deter­mined to make health­ier choices into the future. As I added more green veg­gies (spinach or kale) to my juices I started to get the ‘Popeye-pump’ for about an hour or so. Yes, I ref­er­enced an out-of-date car­toon. When I got the pump, it was only com­pa­ra­ble to how you feel post-weightlifting. I could feel my blood pump­ing through­out my body and became very warm and flushed. It was not a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence, I assure you. One of the other ben­e­fits from con­sum­ing all this pro­duce is that I don’t feel like I am car­ry­ing my last four meals around with me. (Prob­a­bly because I’m not any­more) All my food moves thru the sys­tem with greater speed and I never feel bloated or stuffed.

One thing that really sur­prised me was how I felt when I didn’t have my juices and ate a typ­i­cal higher-fat diet. I felt lethar­gic and com­pletely unmo­ti­vated. Is this why Amer­ica relies on caf­feine? I enjoy a good caf­feine buzz as much as the next per­son, but I can get a sim­i­lar jolt by bom­bard­ing my sys­tem with healthy produce.

Day 10 – 241 lbs 4 lbs down and my energy level has been increasing a bit.

I am skep­ti­cal about the pos­si­bil­ity of los­ing mas­sive amounts of weight since my start­ing point was so much lower than Joe and Phil. Only time will tell. Just try­ing to stay pos­i­tive and roll with the punches. I will be writ­ing new edi­tions after day 21, day 30, day 45, and day 60. I would be hon­ored if you returned to read the rest of my social exper­i­ment results. To all you read­ers out there – wher­ever you are, thanks for read­ing and safe journeys.

The man in the mirror

In an odd twist, I am a fat guy who is tak­ing advice from a man halfway across the world whom I have never met. It’s curi­ous thing when new ideas can have a pro­found effect on how you think about your own life. It’s even more inter­est­ing to have that per­son actu­ally affect your world. I am about to embark on a jour­ney that I have been on before. Well… Sort of…

I am a movie fanatic with a Net­flix obses­sion. In case you don’t know, Net­flix has a lit­tle of every­thing and can lead you into some great fea­tures after you have rated other movies that you have already seen. It bases the sug­ges­tions on what you like and what you don’t like from your rat­ings. I started my sub­scrip­tion after a His­tory of Doc­u­men­tary class that I had taken in my senior year at the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming. It was an amaz­ing course and I would rec­om­mend it to anyone.

My taste in doc­u­men­taries has taken an inter­est­ing turn on my Net­flix account. I have most appre­ci­ated the huge num­ber of doc­u­men­taries that high­light nature and anthro­pol­ogy. Recently how­ever, I have leaned more toward doc­u­men­taries about food and health (both phys­i­cal and men­tal). One of my most recent finds has led me to try some­thing that I would have thought to be ridicu­lous in the past. It is a lit­tle extreme for an admit­ted fat guy, but I felt the need to try to improve my health.

Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, directed by Joe Cross

In the movie, “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead” the sub­ject and direc­tor, Joe Cross, makes a trip from his home­land of Aus­tralia to Amer­ica for a period of two months. Joe has decided that his health is so poor, that he needed some­thing dra­matic to help him make a pos­i­tive change in his life. He decides to make a trip to the US to talk to peo­ple across the nation about their health and food choices. Our sub­ject is an almost-40 man who is obese and has a chronic skin dis­ease for which he must take oral steroids. He had noticed that his over­all health had rapidly depleted in recent years and he was ready to make what­ever changes were nec­es­sary to improve his fail­ing health. Joe took a dra­matic approach with stu­pen­dous success.

Joe decided to do a fast where he com­pletely cut out all ani­mal prod­ucts in exchange for noth­ing more than fruits and veg­eta­bles, all-day every day. In the doc­u­men­tary he talks about how, for thou­sands of years, we had a cycle that our bod­ies are still pro­grammed for. It is the win­ter fast, when meat was hard to come by and so were fruits or veg­eta­bles of any kind. In these lean times, he explains that we are meant to lose a per­cent­age of our body weight as part of a nor­mal cycle. Cross talks about how with­out this part of the yearly cycle, our body’s rhythms can be dis­turbed and our health can suf­fer because of it. Cross decides that a cleans­ing, or fast, could poten­tially reset his hay-wired bod­ily sys­tems and put him on the right path for a health­ier life in the long-run.

Much of the first sec­tion of the movie explains the idea of a micro-nutrient rich diet ver­sus a macro-nutrient rich diet. Cross goes on to dis­cuss how many nations with weight issues con­sume diets that are high in macro-nutrients. Micro-nutrients are found in plant mat­ter (fruits, veg­eta­bles, nuts, and roots) while macro-nutrients are found in ani­mal prod­ucts (meat, dairy, eggs, and bread).

Our sub­ject pos­tu­lates that by imple­ment­ing this fast­ing cycle into his life, his body will have the abil­ity to fully recover and heal itself from the many years of a macro-nutrient bom­bard­ment it has received. He also believes that if his health sta­bi­lizes, he will be able to wean him­self off of med­ica­tions and will no longer suf­fer from his skin dis­or­der. I thought that it seemed like a bit of a stretch for chang­ing your diet to have an effect on every mal­func­tion­ing body sys­tem, but the proof is there.

Joe sets off for Amer­ica for 60 days to prove that any­one can reju­ve­nate their health by hav­ing a whole foods diet, with­out any processed food. Cross plans on fast­ing by juic­ing large amount of fruits and veg­eta­bles (mostly green). He decides that his jour­ney will have two parts. For the first 30 days he stays in New York City and talks to a wide vari­ety of peo­ple every day about their own health and what kind of foods they eat on a reg­u­lar basis. He also keeps some of his juice mix­tures on-hand for peo­ple to sam­ple when he inter­views them on the street. Largely, peo­ple are not inter­ested in the health juices but some of them give it a taste with mixed reviews in regards to fla­vor. On the sec­ond 30 days, he gath­ers his juicer and heads out on the road. He leaves NYC on a mis­sion to reach the west coast and spread his story to all of those whom he meets on his cross-country jour­ney. In this sec­tion, he meets a mor­bidly obese man with the same chronic skin dis­ease whom he offers to help after a lengthy and friendly conversation.

In the first 30 days Joe makes many com­ments on how he is feel­ing dur­ing each day of his expe­ri­ence and he takes the time to ask seri­ous ques­tions to com­plete strangers. As with any change in diet, his body puts up some resis­tance as he begins his two-month adven­ture. Despite what I had expected, his new diet shows mas­sive results in a short period of time with rel­a­tively lit­tle exer­cise other than walking.

Joe Cross meets Phil River­stone at a middle-America truckstop

The sec­ond half of the jour­ney sends him on the road to see the coun­try and talk to peo­ple about his quest to con­trol his own health. Halfway thru his jour­ney he meets Phil River­stone. Phil is a trucker who was once a scrawny kid but when he met Joe he tipped the scales at over 400lbs. Phil is a spe­cial case for Joe because he is the only per­son that he has ever met with the same chronic skin dis­ease. After the men have a heart-to-heart, Joe offers his new friend Phil any help that he might be able to con­tribute. They both leave to fin­ish their jour­neys, but Phil will soon play a major role in the film as a sep­a­rate case with even more pro­found effects from Joe’s fast­ing process.

Phil was not the only per­son that found some form of heal­ing from Joe’s meth­ods, but his expe­ri­ence is the most dra­matic. Another woman, who suf­fered from chronic, debil­i­tat­ing, migraine headaches, finds some relief from her symp­toms after a 15-day period with micro-nutrient rich juices. She con­tin­ued to enjoy the juices twice a week after she had fin­ished her ini­tial 15-day fast and she was able to kiss her migraines goodbye.

The story picks up a few months after Joe has returned to Syd­ney, Aus­tralia. Phil decides that he needs help and asks for help from Joe. Joe feels as though he can’t refuse to help some­one that has the same prob­lems that he had. Joe heads back to Amer­ica in an effort to make Phil’s tran­si­tion to a health­ier lifestyle eas­ier. The new friends head to a neu­tral loca­tion where Phil can relax, fol­low the pro­gram, and increase his phys­i­cal activ­ity. Phil jumps in with­out giv­ing it a sec­ond thought and his results show his deter­mi­na­tion to have a health­ier life.

At the end of the film you see, with a fresh eye, two men who have decided to change their lives for the bet­ter and have done so vic­to­ri­ously!

This cinéma vérité style of this film makes the viewer a part of the entire jour­ney that Joe has under­taken. As a mem­ber of the jour­ney, I think that the film has the poten­tial to have a much stronger effect on the audi­ence. I too believe that there is a nat­ural order to our health that has been altered by our envi­ron­ment and our food intake. There­fore, I have decided to try and take a jour­ney of my own to find myself with a bet­ter qual­ity of life then I cur­rently possess.

I am tak­ing steps to change where I cur­rently stand in regards to a proper bal­anced diet. I didn’t think that this change would be all that dif­fi­cult since I enjoy fruit and nearly all veg­eta­bles. I am just get­ting started on my new jour­ney and would like you to come along for the jour­ney too. So please, stop back by — as I will be keep­ing tabs on my jour­ney to bet­ter health over the next 60 days. I am not div­ing in head first into the deep end like Joe and Phil, but instead eas­ing into it from the shal­low end. I fig­ure that eas­ing into it will give me a fighter’s chance at leav­ing my fat­ter days behind me.           Day 1 – 245 lbs

[RECAP] New Mex­ico Bowl Stunner

In case you missed it, the Wyoming Cow­boys fin­ished their sea­son in spec­tac­u­lar win­ning fash­ion. In one of the first games of Bowl sea­son, the Cow­boys took on the Fresno State Bull­dogs in Albu­querque, NM. In front of a national audi­ence on ESPN, the Cow­boys came back in the fourth quar­ter and sent the game into over­time. Lead­ing the Cow­boys back into con­tention was fresh­man quar­ter­back Austyn Carta-Samuels. Carta-Samuels used his head, his legs and his arm to keep the UW drive alive on mul­ti­ple fourth down con­ver­sions, which brought the Cow­boys into scor­ing range.

The over­time period was even more dra­matic than the fourth quar­ter had been, if you can believe that. In over­time, the Cow­boys hog-tied the Bull­dogs on four con­sec­u­tive downs inside the 5-yard-line to pre­vent Fresno St. from scor­ing. Wyoming then scored on a per­fect touch pass to the cor­ner of the end­zone to give the Pokes the advan­tage of forc­ing Fresno St. to also score a touch­down. The defense did exactly what they had done through­out the fourth quar­ter and first over­time pos­ses­sion. They com­pletely smoth­ered the Bull­dogs offense.

The Cow­boys came away with a thrilling Bowl vic­tory for first sea­son Head Coach Dave Chris­tensen. The MVPs of the game were fresh­man quar­ter­back Austyn Carta-Samuels for the offense and senior line­man Mitch Unrein on the defense. With an incred­i­ble start to a Head Coach­ing career, Dave Chris­tensen is already among some of the most élite coaches that the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming has had in their 113 years of existence.

A Step in the right direction

I have had a myr­iad of health issues in the past few months even though I am a rel­a­tively healthy guy in my late 20s. I exer­cise a few times a week, I ride my bike, and I eat my veg­eta­bles. Nev­er­the­less, my wal­let has now been crip­pled by the debts I have accu­mu­lated due to my unex­pected
health issues.

Even though I only spent less than 24 hours in a hos­pi­tal, I am respon­si­ble for some con­sid­er­able bills. I can barely even keep up with the bills that seem to come to my home every day. An emer­gency room bill. A CT scan bill. An overnight hos­pi­tal stay bill. A vas­cu­lar surgeon’s bill. A hematologist’s bill. A credit card bill that I have had to use for pre­scribed meds. Then I have to get blood tests once a week and so I incur another bill to get my blood work done every sin­gle week. It’s insan­ity! … Con­tinue Reading