Juice-ly 24th - FLASHBACK: Bumps in the road.

NOTE: These entries were originally posted on Facebook during November 2014, a month in which I embarked on my first super-extended juice. I began the month with some significant health problems and ended it some 40 pounds lighter! 

Since then, I have eaten a whole-food, plant-based diet and lost a total of 125 lbs. and counting. I hope you are able to benefit from my struggles. Enjoy, and feel free to leave a comment! 

As I remember this time, things got exponentially more difficult for me, all of a sudden. Reaching the halfway point in a juice fast is a huge accomplishment, but then you realize that all it means is that you have just as long to go as you've already done. For someone who had never juiced for as long as I had at this point, it seemed like a pretty daunting task. All kinds of doubt crept into my head, especially since the scale stopped moving (for a day, but it seemed like much longer at the time).

I had originally said that I was going to juice for 15 days, so I started to question my spur of the moment decision to extend the fast all the way to 30. Maybe my body just couldn't handle not eating solids for that long? Then, of course, I remembered that Joe looked none the worse for wear in the first month of his fast in the movie Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. If he could do it, then so could I!

This is about the point when I stopped emphasizing the scale so much, and began to look for non-scale victories in an effort to get myself mentally healthy, to go along with my increasing physical health. Enjoy!

NOTE: I'm including the morning weights I recorded in my planner on these entries going forward. I started out the month at 309.6 lbs. (after weighing in at 335 in early October), so I'm already down almost 22 lbs. by the middle of the fast!

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Juicevember 16th (287.8 lbs.): I was wondering when this day would come. So far this month I could rely on stepping on the scale each morning and seeing another 1.2 pounds disappear from my large but shrinking frame. This morning was the first morning where my weight did not budge from the previous day's measurement.

Of course, a thousand self-defeating thoughts shot through my brain when I saw the same number from the day before. What if I'm done losing weight? Does that mean I should just start eating again? What if I'm just destined to be stuck at "borderline morbidly obese" for the rest of my most likely short existence, whatever I choose to eat or not?

The accuser will sit on your shoulder and hiss all kinds of lies into your ear if you let him. Instead of listening to all of that noise and feeling defeated, I just looked back at the beginning of this journey, and how much different I feel already.

It doesn't hurt to know that I'm down over 40 lbs. since October 12th, either! Of course, I have a long, long way to go to reach my goal weight. But as I've said quite often, this isn't solely (or even primarily) about what that scale says. I want to be able to play 18 holes of golf with my grandchildren someday! Among other things, of course, but that's a pretty nice mental image that won't come to fruition unless I fix the way I think about food.

For me, that's going to require that I string together a whole bunch of good decisions, over an extended period of time. One day - a day that might not come as soon as I want it to, but that's okay - the scale will say what I want it to. Mind, body, and spirit will all be agreement at that time, or close. I'm not overly worried about that distant future, though. Focused on winning the battle of the covers tomorrow morning, how wonderful that next juice is going to taste after an hour on the treadmill, and defeating that next craving.

Everything else will take care of itself! ‪#‎juiceon


Juicevember 17th (286.8 lbs.): snow day. The first major snow of the season gave me an opportunity to stay home and see what my wife goes through on a daily basis as she tries to get work done while taking care of three small children, each with his and her own specific set of needs. I didn't even contribute much to the child-rearing and I got basically nothing done, so I don't see how she does it. To my dear wife, and all the moms out there trying to balance full-time work with full-time child care...whew. Keep up the good work!

I could also empathize with my wife with the almost constant temptation to eat, and eat poorly. Whether it's getting meals for the kids or planning out dinner (again for the kids, since I'm just juicing), a lot of the day's thinking goes fridge-ward when you're at home. In order to combat any cravings that might have arisen I've been sipping on hot water and lemon all day, occasionally adding in some herbal tea I got from Lucky's Market, which supposedly is good for fasting. So far, so good.

Another small but significant victory today came after dinner, talking about the kinds of meals we're going to be eating once I start adding solids back into my diet. For one, there was a pretty amazing meal of spaghetti squash and pasta sauce on the table (with that processed grated parmesan cheese that I always end up pouring on by the large cut-out side, rather than the small holed side), and the food we discussed is all relatively healthy stuff. Food I could easily have eaten tonight, without any negative repercussions on my diet or new outlook on eating. Made it through that unscathed, praise the Lord!


Juicevember 18th (284.4 lbs.): in which I try to avoid the idolatry of the scale. Yesterday I went without juice after noon, staying hydrated with lots of water and curbing any cravings with hot water and lemon, and herbal tea. I wanted to give my digestive system a bit of a break, and gauge whether I could simply go without food for a more extended period of time. As a result, I ended up losing a little more than I'm used to.

Of course, the father of lies tried to take that victory and twist it to his own ends. "If not eating after noon nets you that kind of loss," he hissed into my psyche, "then not eating at all will get an even better loss than that!" Which, in my estimation, is just the pendulum of addiction swung in the exact opposite direction. It is nice to step on the scale to see myself shrinking ever so slightly by the day, but my physical, mental, and spiritual health transcends a number. Especially a number reached in the short term but not sustained because it was achieved in a way that would ultimately cause me to fall short of my overall goals.

This time around, instead of toggling addictions (which I've done quite effectively over the years), I'm aiming for experiencing the joy of moderation and meeting my base cravings with discipline. Since I know the other way does not work in any positive way, maybe this will bring me a lifetime of health and a completely new outlook.

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Since this time, I still actually dread making meals for my kids a little bit, but the food I prepare for them is slowly but surely losing its ability to pique my sense of smell. I do still pay pretty close attention to the scale, but I stop short of calling it idolatry. I need all the safeguards I can get, and the daily accountability of stepping on the scale to see how my cumulative decisions affected my weight has proven to be an extremely effective one.

Thanks again for reading!