My name's Greg, and I'm a 41 year old guy living with my partner Mathew in Portland, OR, USA. About 6 weeks ago, Mathew and I started having some serious conversations about our weight, and about our health in general. We had watched the documentary "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead", which has garnered so much attention lately. The filmmaker, Joe Cross, documents his dramatic progress through a 60 day juice fast. I won't go on about it at length here, but I'd definitely recommend giving it a view.
Anyway, we decided to give it a try ourselves. Outside of being overweight, both of us are in good health. I had done a 12-day juice fast a couple years ago, and felt amazing, so I felt ready to dive in. On 7 October 2011, Mathew began his, and I started mine the next day. Our agreement between ourselves was that we would continue as long as we felt good. Over the next few weeks, Mathew and I had radically different experiences. He felt amazing, refreshed, and full of energy. I did too for the first week, and lost 13 pounds. Then, I started losing energy, feeling depressed, and my weight loss completely stopped, even though I was taking in less than 400 calories a day. I sought medical advice, and was told that my resting heart rate was so low that it was clear that my metabolism was flatlined. I was told to either increase my calories and/or to begin eating solid food.
Before anyone says "you were doing it wrong", or "you should have increased your caloric intake" or "juice fasts are bad for you", or any other helpful, well intentioned advice, know that I already went over every possible angle in my head, and spent a few days beating myself up as a failure. However, and this is the reason I'm starting this blog, I think I made the right decision. I transitioned back to solid food slowly, and have been keeping my caloric intake to between 1000-1500 calories a day. I've been eating lots and lots of vegetables, very small amounts of meat, and limited carbs.
Here's the cool part...
A little over 2 weeks after going back to eating (and eating CLEAN), and a week after starting workouts again, I feel fantastic. I hate to repeat myself, but often do (something I attribute to age), but my Facebook status today captures it:
"Sometimes the gradual change becomes noticeable and thus dramatic. After a 13 day
juice fast and 5 weeks of "eating clean" and starting to exercise again, I'm starting to see real transformation. I was out on my walk/jog through my very hilly neighborhood, and found myself STORMING up the hills. At a jog. This would not have been possible in September. I'm not losing weight at a quick pace, but it's coming off, and I feel a little better, and better about myself, each week!"
So where the hell am I going with all this? I want to be able to document my progress for starters. It's all kind of in the formative stages now in my head, but after weeks of procrastination, I wanted to finally kick in and just f'n do it. I'm going to also start doing the videos I had planned on doing weeks back (a terrifying prospect, both in terms of my dislike of filming myself, and my cascading technical nightmare from the first times I tried. Yes, times. Plural.)
Anyway, let's see where it goes!
Love!
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