So after a VERY depressing Superbowl and yummy and healthy but overly plentiful game day snacks, I am ready to get this ball rolling again. I was planning to just flatout juice fast through the month. But since the weatherman has revised our 2 week fore cast to stay below freezing the entire time with lows in the teens and single digits, I'm not sure I can face how cold I feel on just juice. My house only stays about 50degrees when it's this cold and I have no hot water now (long story) so I have to heat up water in an electric pot to clean my juicer and jars. We will be out of here by the end of the month but, of course, it will probably start to warm up by then. And I've spent too many years waiting for the perfect conditions to do what I need to do. So I WILL juice in February in spite of all the challenges I face. But I will probably also have a bowl of veggie soup now and then when the cold gets to me.
I'm predicting that my weight will start with a 2 and a 6 by the end of the month. Oh, I'm 278 today. I haven't seen a 260-something in about 8 years. Maybe 10? I know I got down into the 240s in 2000 when we lived near Grand Lake which was the lowest I'd been in many years at that point. I hadn't been below 220 since the 1980s. And I hit the 260s I believe within a year or two of moving away from Grand Lake. I know I was battling to get out of the 280s from '05 if not longer. So even being in the 270s is a huge victory. For nearly 2 years I fought hard to lose the weight and get healthy but I didn't realize yet that the food I was eating was making that impossible. When the doctor sent me to physical therapy in Spring '09, I had been fighting the 280s for a while already. I found renewed hope in the progress I made with my physical therapist and started really trying to "eat right" according to conventional wisdom and I was working out like a BEAST. When the PT maxed out on my insurance, she told me I should start swimming. So I did. I joined the Y and went swimming 3-5 times a week and was going upstairs and working out on the machines for 30 minutes 3-5 times a week as well. In spite of all that work, I never got below 280. I got in good enough shape to go to work again which was awesome. Started doing cell-phone tech support. I fought my way through the MG flareups and the increasing pain in my back, hips and legs. In February of 2012, my truck broke down and I walked the mile and a half to work when I couldn't find a ride. The walk home was all uphill and was killer on my pain areas. I could only take that for so long and had to quit my job. I was having more and more MG flareups and the pain in my back and hips was getting unbearable. There were times I couldn't stand in the mornings until pain relievers took effect. Those times became more and more frequent until that was my everyday condition. In early 2013, I had already been diagnosed with high blood pressure and hypothyroid and was on medications for those. The doctor convinced me to go back on blood thinners to postpone the amputation of my bad leg as long as possible. I was giving up. I figured I had hit my wall and my good years were past. When I was diagnosed with Paget's and told that the combination of the location of the bone disease and my weight, which by this time was about 320, the bones in my pelvis and hips were becoming deformed, I was trying hard to accept that a wheelchair was in my near future. That was about a year ago. I put on another 20 pounds to top out just over 340, became seriously depressed and just gave up on life. Last summer, I had become so weak and in such constant pain that I rarely left my bedroom. I began having symptoms of congestive heart failure. That's when I decided to stop fighting and just die.
So that brings us up to where I started this blog. I saw "Fat Sick and Nearly Dead" and "Forks Over Knives" and decided to live. And in 5 months, I've undone the damage from the last 5 years of rapid decline, gotten off of all medications. And I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the next year will undo more like 20 years worth of damage.
I turn 52 a week from tomorrow and I will hit that day feeling better than I have in years. And I'll hit 53 feeling better than I have in decades. I was planning to do another progress picture on my birthday in my new jeans just because it felt so amazing to be able to wear jeans again but... my new jeans are already too big!! Maybe some size 20 jeans will be my birthday gift to myself;o) I started out in a 28 so that isn't too shabby. But I won't buy any if I can't find them discounted because I know I won't be able to wear them for long. Now that is my kinda dilemma.
JUICE ON!! PLANT-STRONG FOREVER!
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