Juice-ly 3rd - Introductions.

Here I am at the end of June, 2014.

I'm bringing my newborn son home from the hospital, and I've never felt less healthy, or cared less about my own health. I tipped the scales at 335 lbs. at this point, I think. Most likely I was closer to 350. Shortly after this picture I got a real wake-up call. My wife told me that she was worried because I would stop breathing at night. I thought the reason why I felt her kick me was because my snoring had become too much for her to handle, but when she told me the real reason why I knew I had to do something for my health.

I went to the doctor and got some bloodwork done, and the results were not pretty. My total cholesterol was at 326; anything below 200 is normal. My LDL (bad) cholesterol was at 252; anything below 100 is normal. My triglycerides were on the high end of normal, and my doctor said that my liver numbers indicated a fatty liver. And ohbytheway, she threw in at the end, your kidneys don't appear to be functioning properly, either. Have a nice day!

Fortunately for me, she didn't just brush me off with "have a nice day." She basically got in my face and said "You have to knock this off." And I agreed with her. With a wife and three young kids depending on me to be around for much longer, I needed to get it under control. And the only way I could do that, history told me, was to do something drastic.

"Drastic" involved going on a juice fast for the entire month of November (which I called "Juice-vember" in daily Facebook posts). I started recording my thoughts daily as a way to keep myself honest. I figured, the more people I told about what I was doing, the less likely it was that I would either cheat or quit before it was over. People began to write me privately or talk to me in the office about how they had been following my posts and rooting for me, or how they struggled with food in their own lives, and that gave me even more strength to persevere when it got tough to do so on my own.

Writing about my experience regularly also gave me the time to reflect on the nature of my relationship with food. I already knew that I was a food addict, but I finally came clean and let other people know about the depth of my addiction. I was so used to feeling like I looked like I had it all together, when I was falling apart from the inside out (and didn't really look like I had it all together). In November I let some things out that I had kept under lock and key for the longest time, and reveled in my freedom.

And it worked wonders! I stuck it out to the bitter triumphant end. Just six short weeks after my initial bloodwork, I basically cut my cholesterol levels in half! My total cholesterol plummeted from 326 to 181. My LDL (bad) cholesterol sank from 252 to 115. Still above normal but much, much better. My triglycerides fell from 148 to 106, and my liver and kidney numbers snapped into the normal range. As an added bonus, my weight dropped from a high of 335 (that I measured) in mid-October to 270.8 on December 2.

All the while, my weight continued to drop. Here I am in March 2015, standing behind size 48 pants that used to fit me rather comfortably, 112 lbs. lighter than I was when I started my journey:

Another huge change involved what I eat. Somewhere along the way I made up my mind that I would no longer eat animal products or by-products. Since December 2014 I have been a full-blown vegan, for personal health reasons more than ethical or environmental reasons. That said, eating more plants and less animals would have an unmistakable impact on the environment. That, though, is another story for another post. Cutting out animal products has been a huge reason why I have been able to maintain my health and, even when I've been a little less strict with my diet, I haven't packed the pounds back on as rapidly as I have in the past when I have gone back to quote-unquote normal eating.

I rode the Success Train through April, with no end in sight. I signed up for a couple of weight loss contests via DietBet and did fairly well. I weighed in at 216.6 lbs. at the end of my second challenge. In my mind, I was on the way to One-derland.

So you’re probably wondering why I’m back here preparing for another extended juice fast. The answer is simple: for the same reason why I started my first juice back in November. Things didn't go according to plan - which is another way to say that I hit a plateau, got bored, stopped forcing myself to work out, stopped holding myself accountable, and started making a ton of excuses for doing things I knew would lead to weight gain, declining health, and a medicated, pain-filled life followed by a premature death.

I need to get my diet and exercise back under control. I've been under a lot of stress in my grad school program since the end of the spring semester. Most of it self-inflicted. I seem to be running in quicksand as I try to dot the last few I's and cross the last couple of T's on the way to my master's degree. Since the beginning of May I have been eating a lot more processed foods and not working out basically at all, unless you count swinging a golf club and chasing a little white ball around as a workout. As a result, I haven't really gained a whole lot of weight, but I feel much less vibrant and healthy than I did in, say, mid-March. My problem has not been what I eat, because I'm still eating mostly plant-based foods, but how much I eat, and when. Whole bags of lentil chips have been known to disappear on car rides from lunch to the library. Whole jars of peanut butter, gone in three days (or less). I can feel my addiction taking over meal time, and it's terrifying.


But only terrifying in enclosed, dark spaces. This is the kind of fear that flees in the light, or when confronted directly (as I know from recent experience). My family just returned home from a week's vacation in Florida, and I made the decision to give my alimentary canal a bit of a break before I hit the big Four-Oh. I'm at the start of an extended juice fast that will take me right up to my fortieth birthday in the middle of August. So far, so far.

The first day was just as I expected it to be. Hard. My body almost immediately rebelled against the idea of juicing. "Hey," it seemed to say, "aren't you going to continue to feed us massive quantities of vegan junk food?" When it heard me say, "No," it responded by giving me a blinding headache and general lethargy. Nothing that some Aleve and a full night of rest couldn't cure, but I knew the battle had begun at that point.

Yesterday was fine, except that I basically crashed right at 8pm. I helped a little bit with our kids' bedtime ritual, but as soon as the younger two were tucked away I sacked out on the couch and didn't rouse again until after 11. Fatigue just comes with the package in the first three days of a juice fast. I'm not a doctor, but I know from experience that my body rebels in a big way, then just surrenders somewhere between Day Three and Day Five. I know I've turned the corner when I began to rationalize feelings that I used to interpret as hunger either as thirst or as nothing worth my time.

I'm not quite there yet, but I know that as long as I keep stringing together good decisions that day will come. Meanwhile, the battle rages. The food dreams started last night, but were so preposterous that I recognized them almost immediately. One had to do with eating a huge turkey leg while watching Urban Meyer interviews on ESPN with old friends; another found me in the AYCE cafeteria line in a university dining hall, trying to decide between hot dogs and footlong brats. I took a bite of the turkey leg before one of my friends reminded me that I was a) vegan; and b) on a juice fast. I just said, "Oops!" and put it down before the dream shifted to something else. Funny how my conscience is working overtime in these critical first few days of the fast!

One of the biggest lessons I learned from my first two juice fasts was that I’m going to need to return to these every now and then, just to reboot my system, and that there is no shame at all in that. So, welcome to my journey! I won't always be this long-winded, but I will write as much as I need to express my thoughts on any given day. Thanks for reading!