ONE YEAR RESULTS ON JUICING and WHOLE, PLANT-BASED FOOD

So it's been a year.  In some ways it seems that it can't possibly have been that long but mostly it just seems like it has to have been longer.  Not in a bad way...  in a "this is just how I live and completely normal" kinda way.  I can't imagine not eating this way.  Yesterday my 18 year old, Harmoni, saw some horrible food advertised on tv and said, "I sometimes wonder why we ever wanted to start eating like that to begin with.  Now it feels like I should have always wanted to just surround myself with fruit and salad and juice.  Why would I NOT?!"  Made me a proud and happy mom, I'll tell you that.  (You should hear her go OFF when pharmaceutical commercials come on. LOL)

So on my one year anniversary I completed a 5K with my gorgeous and amazing oldest daughter, Bonni. It was literally surreal.  This was me, Natalie, at a 5K in the late August heat!  I won't go all into just how sick and in pain I was one year ago, I described that pretty thoroughly in my early posts.  We all know I was headed for a wheelchair and an amputation and not long for the world the way I was headed last year.  This post is my victory song.  This post is about JOY.  But standing there in the heat, waiting in line for my packet for about 2 hours, the old Natalie couldn't have even been outside on a day like that much less on my feet the whole time.  Here is a little vid I took while standing in line and a pic of the goofy gear we put on for this GlowRun.  A year ago my main focus when out in public was to remain as invisible as possible.  I didn't want to subject anyone to noticing me any more than necessary.  As you can see, that doesn't exactly describe me now;)

The little glow tubes we made our glasses and necklaces out of came in our packets but they were duds.  No glowing:(  So I bought the dreads and the bracelet and got my face painted.  We then had another hour to wait in 95 degree heat in a big park for them to start lining people up for the start of the race.  So we go looking for someplace to get some water.  Well, no luck.  They only sold beer.  At the 5K.  In AUGUST.  No joke.  I am thinking of writing to them about that because that is dangerous.  Most of us brought a bottle of water but only one.  We assumed water would be available at a 5K!  That is not only foolish but dangerous.  Thankfully I am very conscientious about staying well hydrated.  The only water available that entire hot afternoon and evening (nearly 5 hours altogether) was one 12 oz bottle at the halfway point and one at the finish line.  And many people stayed for the after party as well so even longer for them with, I'm sure, plenty of beer:/  But enough griping about that.  Once it got dark, they lined everyone up at the starting gate and boy were there a LOT of people!  They had people start in waves and since I'm pretty slow compared to most of these youngsters, we joined the last wave - wave 6.  So that means we stood in line for another half hour. LOL  In my old life I was extremely claustrophobic and a bit agoraphobic and really, really needed my personal space.  I couldn't stand to be in big crowds; couldn't stand to be bumped and jostled.  I would have full blown panic attacks.  But there I stood in the middle of the road with hundreds of people crowding up to the starting line and all I could do was thank God for bringing me there.  For allowing me to fulfill the dream that began a couple of years ago when my Bonni took up running and, one day after watching the Biggest Loser, she said to me, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could do one together some day?"  Inwardly I wept because I fully believed that it would never be possible.  I knew how rapidly I was declining but I hadn't told my children.  It would become obvious to them soon enough.  But my God wasn't done with me yet.  And when he placed the way before me, I took it without hesitation and guess what...

There  you have it.  My celebration of my rebirth.  My declaration to the world that I am back.  That August day in 2013 when Fat Sick and Nearly Dead popped up on my suggestions in Netflix, I knew immediately that everything was about to change.  I NEVER EVER took pictures of myself.  But I took one that day.  I had my kids help me out to the yard and I took a picture.   I knew I would need the proof one day of how far I had come.  I knew I would need to remind myself from time to time of just how bad off I was.  I usually didn't write doom and gloom in my journal but I had written very openly of my despair just the week before.  God knew I would need to remember just how far I had sunk into that despair.  The way was prepared before me in so many big and small ways.  It is really amazing to look back on.

I still have a long way to go.  Anyone want to put money on how far I will go by next August?  I'll be riding horses again on a regular basis I can promise you that.  I'll be completing more 5Ks with and even without my daughter and this time I will run them the whole way.  Me with the tore up, bone-on-bone knees and the leg with damaged circulation that would need to be amputated and TWO crippling bone diseases in my back WILL be running 5K.  Running is actually starting to feel good to me now so I know I'll get there.  I feel like I have probably lost about half the weight I will eventually need to but I know that as long as I keep my tunnel vision locked on my health that the weight will take care of itself.  Over the past few months there have been periods where I maintained my weight loss for a while and then got into "reboot mode" and lost some more and then maintained for a while again.  How fantastic and liberating to know that I have the tools I need to do both. To lose and to maintain.

I knew I would need to put together a new progress picture when I hit one year.  My last one was done at about 9 months I believe.  I was a bit worried I would feel let down as would my friends and family since I haven't lost all that much weight in the last 3 months.  I don't know exactly how much since my scale quit working and I'm not going to replace it for a while.  I need to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and focus on health and joy instead of numbers on a scale.  But I dutifully went into the bathroom to take my progress picture.  As I was taking it I thought, "I should probably change into some nice tight jeans to hold that gut in.... except my jeans are all baggy so I'd have to borrow some from my daughter, Gini. ... Oh ugh that double chin is just never going to go away...  Wow my hair has gotten long!"  And then I looked at the picture.  I pulled up the picture next to that one I took last year and I wept.  I look like me again.  I am excited about losing more weight, sure.  Big time!  But I really have to stop under-valuing what I have already done.  A few observations... my hair has NEVER grown very fast.  I couldn't believe how much it had grown in that year.  And because of hypothyroidism, I didn't have any outer eyebrows at all and now they are coming back!  And best of all... sorry if this is TMI, my boobs stick out further than my gut again!  Been a long while for that!!  LOL

So even though I had intended for that to be a test run and I would fix my hair and put on cuter clothes and then take the one I would share with people, I just used that one.  It's real.  It's me.  And for today I'm 100% happy with that.  Now bring on year number 2!  Life is good on da juice!!!

Wheelchair OR 5K... I think I'll RUN!

So let's review.  Last August, I was writing goodbye messages to my kids in my journal and challenging The Almighty to finish up anything he had for me to accomplish in this life because I was done.  I was in constant debilitating pain.  The doctors had long since let me know that there was nothing to be done to improve my lot, they could only treat the symptoms.  Since I clearly didn't have the "willpower" to lose weight and I wasn't a candidate for weight loss surgery due to my history of blood clots, I would just have to try to manage the symptoms and accept that I would be in a wheelchair soon.  There was talk of amputating my leg because of the damaged circulation from a massive blood clot 20 years ago.  My knee had been a mess since 1982 when I shattered the knee cap and it was now bone-on-bone with bone spurs and arthritis and scar tissue.  My right shoulder was also "permanently" compromised from multiple tears in the rotator cuff that they couldn't operate on so it also had scar tissue, bone spurs and arthritis.  I had undergone physical therapy which helped a lot.  I was able to effectively use my right arm again at least.  Couldn't do overhead tasks with it and it caused me a great deal of pain but it was at least functional.  The stated goal of the PT with my shoulder and knee were to give me enough mobility to perform basic personal tasks on my own.  Like dressing myself and going to the bathroom. 
I also had ruptured discs in my back twice and had others that were deteriorating.  I was told I had "degenerative disc disease."  And then, in early 2013 came Paget's.  The pain in my back started becoming really unbearable over the 2012 holidays and I was afraid I had or was about to rupture another disc.  It turns out I actually had developed a disease called Paget's disease of the bone.  It was causing the bones in my pelvis and hip to become very soft and the combination of that with my severe obesity (I was about 320 at that point) was causing remodeling (deformities) in the bones.  It caused excrutiating pain to even have to sit upright in a kitchen chair or the seat of a car.  Walking was...  torture.  I had become effective house bound.  Rarely left my bedroom.
I had other medical issues; autoimmune disorders - Hashimoto's thyroiditis, myasthenia gravis, fibromyalgia - high blood pressure, irritable bowel.  Needless to say I took a number of perscription pills each day.  In July of 2013 I was a serious mess and had also started having symptoms of congestive heart failure.  I hid this and avoided my doctor as I had made the decision that I wasn't going to seek treatment.  That I was, in fact, going to stop taking ALL the pills and let nature take it's course.  I figured a stroke from the blood pressure would put me out of my, and everyone else's, misery quickly enough.
On August 17th, I was watching movies on Netflix and a movie came up in my "recommended for you" section called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead and the rest is history!  That was a Saturday.  Thursdays were my husbands paydays so on the 22nd I cleared out every single thing in my house that couldn't be juiced and stocked up.  I started my juice fast on August 23rd, 2013.  I consider that my "rebirth-day."  I don't live in pain anymore.  I swim and walk for exercise and have no issues with sitting, standing, walking, getting up and down off my knees, squatting.  But I haven't run yet.  I haven't run on land in over 25 years, maybe closer to 30.  I used to jog in the water, which I'm sure looked pretty crazy, because I didn't want my body to lose the muscle memory of HOW to run.  
So yesterday I was on Facebook and my oldest daughter, Bonni, posted that she had set up a team for the Tulsa Glow Run.  If anyone wanted to join her, it would be on August 23rd.  It took about a nanosecond for me to say, "I'll do it."  WHAT?!?!?!  Nine months ago I could walk across my yard without my son or husband to lean on! Even when I was active in my teens and twenties, I was into horses and swimming.  Never ran a race in my life! Was I crazy?!  Well, maybe so.  But just watch me run, baby.  I have 100 days to train.  I will be doing the Couch To 5K program 3 days a week and swimming 2-3 days.  
JUICE ON YA'LL!  I GOT THIS!!

Plateaus, Set Points and Other Boogeymen

I have said many times that even if I never lost another pound, I would continue to eat a plant-based diet and drink green juice because it has given me back my health.  I would reassure others who hit weight plateaus for a week or two to just keep at it and the weight would start to go down again.  Our bodies sometimes need time to adjust to this new way of being and doing, especially if we have been very overweight for a very long time.  I had been from 280 to 340 for a couple of decades.  So mid-March when I hit a plateau, I had to put my money where my mouth is so to speak.  I hit a plateau.  I hit 265 and my body froze, looked at me in horror and said, "Are you kidding me?  We're melting like the wicked witch after she got watered down by Dorothy! This ain't right!!!  Do you WANT to disappear?  What if there's a famine?  This is dangerous!  You can't just go losing weight willy nilly I tell you!"  
It didn't help that I had several extra-curricular stress activities pop up during this same time frame.  If you don't know or understand what the stress hormone, Cortisol, can do to weight loss efforts, look up Dr. John Bergman on youtube.  He explains it better than anyone else I've seen.  
So for a couple of weeks, I was totally zen about this plateau.  Seriously.  I really didn't let it bother me because I understood what was happening.  I had hit a lower weight than I'd seen in at least 15 years.  When it had been a month, I started to get worried in that scared, secret, small place inside me that has always feared this new found health and energy will be ripped away.  Right at this same time I was getting super busy trying to pack and clean to move out of this house finally.  After several months of planning to move, we are finally actually moving.  We HAVE to be out of this house by the end of the month even if it means camping out at the lake until we can find something else.  Long story....  anyway, I was extremely busy and having to use every coping mechanism I had not to let the stress get to me.  We had a very, very hard winter financially along with some other life stressors so it was no surprise, really, that the weight loss stalled.  Knowing and understanding that and dealing with seeing that number stay the same every day are two different things.  Actually, it didn't stay exactly the same.  My weight, as with most people, can fluctuate 3-5 pounds in any given week which is the main reason I usually weigh daily. So I had hit that 265 for about 2 days when my weight started doing a gentle rollercoaster up and down and up and down from 266 to 269 for weeks.  So I put the scale away.  I didn't want worry over that number to pull my focus away from the main thing which is my health.  I just played Dory and kept on swimming... and eating my plants and making my juice.  As Spring came on strong, I did what I had always planned to do and shifted more to raw fruits and salads and less soups and starches. Not a big shift but just a bit more of this and a bit less of that.  It felt right.  I felt a boost in energy almost immediately.  
I was out of town for over a week and got home last Wednesday night.  Thursday morning I decided to pull out the scale and see where I was at and it said 266.  Okay.  Saturday morning, 264.  Hey!  Monday morning, today, 261!  Yeah!  Bye-bye plateau!  I learned from you.  I let you be and you let me be and now we must part ways.  See ya!
That plateau lasted nearly two months.  I learned that I really do have the power of my convictions within me to put my health first.  I really felt that my body would eventually begin to seek a healthier weight once again.  But I knew that if it didn't or if it took a year or two for that to happen, I would be okay in the meantime as long as I continued to flood my body with real nutrition.  I learned some valuable lessons about myself.  I have said many times that how I feel is far more important than how I look and I proved to myself that this was true.  I've said that I have learned to trust my body.  Now I've proven it.  I've also proved to myself that if the scale becomes a detriment, I can just put it away.  
I recently watched a video shared by my friend, Lori.  It was posted by a bariatric surgeon and explained how our bodies will establish "set points" at a very high weight.  He went into the anthropology of it all.  His point was to make us feel hopeless to lose the weight without surgery.  FALSE.  The problem is that most people hit those points where their body is trying to adjust to the changes you've made, the weight loss slows or stops so they tighten down on the calories even more.  They starve their cells which makes the body freak out even more.  "Starvation!  She's trying to kill us!"  If you hit your plateau - or your new "set point" - and you just keep FLOODING your body with amazing nutrition, your body WILL relax and realize that it is safe to allow more of that weight to go.  Truth.  Doctors selling hopelessness to line their pockets make me sick.  Right up until I drink my green juice or eat my bowl of fruit or salad.  THAT makes me very, very well:)
JUICE ON YA'LL.  WE GOT THIS!!

Is It My Amazing Willpower? BHAHAHA!

I am in an online group who set a goal each quarter of the year to lose 25lbs with the goal of ultimately losing 100lbs in one year.  I started my journey in August of 2013 so I didnt start this particular challenge until the last quarter of 2013.  So from Oct 1 to Dec 31, my personal challenge (it is NOT a competition) was to get from 310 to 285.  I did that.  Nearly exactly that.  So now for the first quarter of 2014, my goal is to get to 260 by March 31st.  I'm already to 274.  I KNOW that I will reach my goal.  The sad fact is, I won't have much company.  Very few reached their goal last quarter and very few are looking good for this quarter.  The MOST important thing, of course, is that most participants lost some weight. And equally important is that they are mostly still trying as we all know my policy is that you don't fail until you quit.
The thing is, I have to sometimes remind myself not to feel guilty for succeeding where so many others who are trying SO hard fail.  Does that sound crazy?  I find myself downplaying or just very quietly recording my success unless someone else in the group brings it up.  I've made no secret of my methods but I don't try to "push" them on anyone else.  So there are people on there using all different sorts of approaches.  I mean some of these people count every bite, track it on their calorie tracker and work out like a beast and make sure they have a "calorie deficit."  They work hard for every pound lost!  Each person has their own idea of what a "healthy diet" looks like and that is fine.  The thing is, I honest-to-goodness have to fight feeling guilty because what I'm doing is so easy to me.  I don't feel like I'm having to really "fight" for it anymore.  It is comfortable and easy.
On the other hand, I do occasionally have to fight off mini waves of panic that at any time now it will all be ripped away.  My plant-strong diet will suddenly stop healing my body.  My body will suddenly stop seeking a healthy weight and releasing the fat.  I will once again find myself "fat, sick and nearly dead." The great thing is that the scared little girl who fears these things is growing paler, weaker and quieter with each passing day.  I know that this fear is just born of a sad, sick past.  It isn't real.  It isn't a part of my today or my tomorrow.  I can ignore it and it will go away.  Once in a while "ignore it and it will go away" actually works in our favor! LOL  Seriously though, if we don't feed our fear, it will wither up and die.  If we indulge in it and feed it (with our time and attention) it will grow stronger.  Don't feed the fear!
So, the qustion is, how can I succeed after all these years with my abysmal track record when so many other are failing?  Am I smarter? No.  Am I blessed with a better metabolism? BAHAHAHA!!  Do I work harder? Not in most cases!  Some people I know work super hard at doing everything "right" with painfully little to show for it.  Do I have more willpower? No.   Only two things come to mind to explain this.  One, I hit my own personal rock bottom which put me in the perfect position to be truly willing to do whatever is required.  Most people look at my life style and only focus on what they would have to give up.  They immediately zero in on whatever their particular weakness is.  "No steak?!" "No doughnuts?!" "No McDonalds?!"  NO WAY!!  Whereas my focus is on NO PAIN! NO WEAKNESS! NO WHEELCHAIR! NO STROKE!  NO HOSPITAL! NO MORE SIZE 28!  So when someone asks me if I'll never have a cookie cake or a pizza ever again, I can calmly, truthfully and with no regrets say, "Not if you paid me!"
The second thing is much simpler for me but resisted by so many because of the pervasive lies we have been fed as a society about diet and nutrition.  It's the plants.  That's it.  Beginning, middle and end.  It's. The. Plants. Plants heal and nourish.  Fake foods and chemically and genetically modified crap posing as food destroy and damage and disease.  Plants heal and nourish.  It. Is. The. Plants.

February Plans and Some Reflection On My Weight History

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!

There Are No Magic Bullets, But There Are Miracles

Every time I find myself describing my journey to someone new, I realize just how much I sound like an infomercial or like I'm just caught up in the pink fluffy honeymoon cloud of a "new diet" but I've never in my life stuck to a diet for this long much less been in the "honeymoon" phase of it for several months and going strong.  This has most definitely settled into lifestyle mode.  

 So that begs the question, how can a simple change of diet create the incredible changes I've experienced.  Well, lets look at a few things.  First, getting the disgusting mess the local grocer passes off as meat and animal products that I was eating - hormones, puss in the milk etc - out of my body.  Just removing those has to help. If I had changed to homegrown, grass fed, lean cuts and healthy prep and still ate the meat, I would be better off but still not as good as just getting the animal protein out of my diet. (If you aren't following me here, read the China Study and/or watch Forks Over Knives.)  I'm 90% animal protein free.  I still eat a serving of fish 2 or 3 times a month, have a bit of organic chicken or turkey in the crockpot soup once or twice a month and I have an organic, cage-free, hormone free, preferably locally grown boiled egg a couple times a week.  I don't know if I will eventually eliminate those or not.  Even the China Study noted that the cancer growth and other bad effects weren't triggered with a low intake of animal protein.  So I'm good with this for now.  

 Next, let's note that my diet went from very near zero fresh fruit and veggies to a good 75% freggies.  That alone had to be a huge shock (of the good variety) to my system.  At this point, every system and cell in my body has to be singing for joy.  It's like, "Halleleujah! She's finally giving us something to work with!"  
Now let's add the fact that I juice and blend a lot of freggies and add really nutrient dense, natural additives like ground flax etc.  Now you are taking the great nutrients that your average healthy eater would consume in a day and putting all those nutrients into one serving.  You are literally just FLOODING your system with nutrients it's been deprived of for decades.  

 Our bodies are amazing self-healing machines but we take a machine that has the ability to repair itself and even regenerate on its own but we deny it the building blocks it require to do that.  And then we wonder why we fall apart.  So what do we do?  Instead of handing it those high-quality, sound and solid building blocks that God gave us in abundance, we give it man made imitations made of cardboard and chemicals.  And then we wonder why we fall apart!

 One last thing to consider that really just makes our body sing is that even when I was eating a salad or drinking juice before, it was made and packaged and stored and shipped and stored again before I ate it.  If I had ever gotten ground flax in something, it had probably lost most of it's nutritional value before it got to me.  Now, I grind my flax seeds, throw that into the soup or smoothie and consume it.  No nutrional loss there.  Again, tons more nutrients hitting my body than it is used to.  And next year is really going to take it up a notch as I will be able to just go to my own garden and pick the veggies as fresh as fresh gets:)

 So if I sound like a crazy infomercial sometimes; if it sounds crazy to say that I went from depressed, barely able to walk across a room, in constant pain and a mental fog every day of my life and then literally became pain free, regained my energy, improved health conditions dramatically, started losing weight at a steady pace and regained a much higher degree of mental clarity all within days of starting a juice fast and now I'm still feeling fantastic just as much after 4 months of a clean, plant-based diet, you can understand that I'm not promoting the latest fad or a magic bullet or even a "diet."  I'm just saying to eat the way God meant you to.  Eat the abundance of things he gave us to thrive on.  If that includes meat for you then at least make that a smaller ratio of your calories and make it fresh, untainted by a disgusting industry and prepare it in a healthy way.  
 It's not a miracle... and yet it is the biggest miracle of all.  How miraculous that those plants include all those crazy nutrients that really can heal, regrow, vitalize and maximize the potential of every cell in your body.  The things your doctor throws his hands in the air over and just writes another script for?  Your creator gave you the cure.  When the few doctors who have actually studied the topic of healing through nutrition say, "Sure, a plant based diet would help my patients but they won't follow it so I just give them a pill instead."  You can shout, "I'll do it!  I'll heal myself with nutrition!"  Maybe more doctors will seek out that information and share it with their other patients if they have patients coming in with dramatic improvements and telling them, "I don't need those pills, doc.  I stopped taking those months ago."  I am praying that by the time my grandkids are grown, they will defy all those predictions about the newest generation of children dying younger than their parents did. 

BRRRRR and Some Embarrassing Truths About My Life

So here in Oklahoma, winter is making up for how mild it was the last couple of years by icing on us and leaving us in the single digits.  I'm freezing and pissy.  I HATE ICE!!!  I don't mind snow, I kinda like it.  And when it's cold outside, it can make you appreciate your warm house and your fuzzy slippers (or in my case, hand-knit wool socks) even more, right?  Yeah right!!  We are doing good to keep it over 40 degrees in this place. My house is old.  Really old and falling apart.  They found problems with the gas pipes so they won't allow the gas on.  Some nonsense about the danger of explosions or fumes... whatever.  (Yes, for those who might not understand me yet, I'm being sarcastic.)  So we have no hot water and only space heaters.  We are supposed to be moved out by the end of the month but it may realistically be January something.  We rent, by the way.  The windows and doors are so poorly installed that you can literally pass things through to someone outside around the edges.  Seriously, we've done it.  The sliding glass doors have about a 3 inch gap on one side because they don't fit the opening!  We've filled that with foam but it still lets in air. There are holes that you can throw a cat through, as the old saying goes.  Although nobody better be throwing my kitties anywhere;o)  I know the holes are that big because possums keep sneaking into my house.  Yes, literally.
Totally off subject but I have to tell this story now, since I mentioned the possums.  They live under our house.  I'm cool with that.  Well, this one is so comfortable living with us that he likes to stroll through in the night.  We would usually just yell at him or the dog would bark or a cat would hiss and he would take off back out the hole.  (It's not a hole I can get to - the landlord made the holes last year trying to fix the gas problem.)  Possum wasn't aggressive, in fact he was quite shy and nervous so we just ignored the problem.  I grew up in the country; critters don't bother me.  My cousins had a pet raccoon for years. Well a couple weeks ago, Cameron woke up and the possum was strolling across his body on his bed as he slept!!!  He screamed like a little girl and the dog came running and started barking and the chase was on.  Well, possum realized he had screwed up big time (even though he was considerably bigger than the dog) so he did what possums do.... he played possum.  He had made it to my room by this  time.  So Gadget dragged what he presumed to be his "kill" behind my love seat.  Possum still playing dead.  Cameron moved the love seat, put a bucket over it, took it outside and THREW it across the yard.  Still playing dead!  He came in the house and we watched out the window.  About two minutes later, he gets up and casually strolls back under our house.  Yup, it's like that around here.
I've mentioned that I had given up on life until last August when I watched Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.  Well, I'm admitting to all of this so you can understand just how low I had sunk.  We were living in a house that should have been condemned.  We can only plug use one appliance at a time in the kitchen other than the frig.  Throwing a breaker is a very regular occurrence.  Basically if you turn on the toaster without unplugging the juicer, bam.  This neighborhood isn't great either.  Oh and my beloved old truck (I LOVE old trucks - especially Fords; I would rather push an old truck than drive a new car) has been neglected and left in need of repairs for over a year.  I had to have someone to help me in and out if I went anywhere anyway and I couldn't do my own shopping anymore as I couldn't walk unassisted and was too proud to use an electric cart.  So what did it matter if I had my own transportation.  My poor family could do nothing to pull me out of this downward spiral.  It was actually quite telling that I was even willing to live in town.  I have always hated living in town.  I need to be in the country surrounded by nature and critters and air.  I feel trapped and claustrophobic in town and it sets off my PTSD something fierce.
So this really does relate to all my healthy life changes.   I hated myself so much that I didn't care how I lived.  I don't now.  Juicing and WFPB eating has not only given me back health, energy, weight-loss and independence (which is so important to me I can't even express it here - I am independent to a fault by nature) it has also given me back my self-respect and my desire to live the life I choose.  We are getting out of this rat trap.  We are looking for land to buy out in the country.  We are going to buy a large RV to stay in while we pay off the land because once you have 50% equity in your land, there are a couple of companies that will either put a double wide on it or  build a prefab home on it for no down payment.  Your land serves as your collateral.  The RV will also allow me to do another thing that I've always yearned to do and never been able to - travel.  And buddy, let me tell you... we are going somewhere warmer for the winter.  We should have the RV by the end of January at the latest - probably a 32' 5th wheel, haven't decided for sure.  Getting the truck fixed by the end of the month as well - that's my Christmas present.  I have friends in South Texas I'd like to see as well as a sister in Arizona and brothers and tons of cousins in California.  I am most definitely going somewhere warmer for at least a good chunck of this miserable, cold, icy winter that Oklahoma apparently has planned.  I love Oklahoma but I HATE ICE!!  (See how I brought that back around.  I really did have a point!)
Oh and lest you think I'm too off topic on this post, let me just say that as long as I have to literally bundle up in several layers including hat and scarf and mittens inside my house, I will probably not be losing as much weight because I'm not drinking cold juice and eating cold salad today.  If I can see my breath in my bedroom, I'm having hot lentil soup and warm broth and baked potato with salsa and oatmeal and anything else that is served nice and hot!  Don't get me wrong, still plant-based and clean but not much raw.  And I have really come to believe in the power of raw.  I'm not getting involved in all the drama going on in the raw community these days but I do believe that eating as much raw, fresh foods as you can manage will always benefit you.  Except when it's 8 degrees fahrenheit outside and you only have a space heater.
Oh and as to my weight, I have lost a bit more.  I'm down to 293 which means I've lost 47 lbs since August 23.  I'm really curious to see how much the weight loss slows with these changes or if it will surprise me and keep going at 2-3 lbs a week.  Stay tuned!

Three Types of People You Meet in Juicing Communities

I have watched all the youtube videos and read all the blogs I could find by and about people who lose weight juice fasting and/or a whole food/plant-based diet/high raw diet etc. Yes. A lot of people do regain the weight but the ones who have the courage to come back and tell you what went on will tell you exactly why. (Check out Steve Crider's latest videos STEVE CRIDER YOUTUBE CHANNEL- love that guy because he is honest and never gives up!) They regained the weight because they went back to eating whatever they used to eat that made them fat in the first place.  If you do what you've always done, you will end up where you've always been. I read and watched and researched and read some more.  I saw that many people regain the weight with juicing and WFPB diets just as they do with WW, Atkins, South Beach and Weight-loss surgery.  I took all that in and used it to motivate me to really research and plan so that when I was finished with my first actual juice fast, I would have a solid plan in place for what I was going to eat for the rest of my life to continue to lose weight and eventually maintain a healthy weight, feel great, live an active and joyful life and love my food all at the same time. And I have. I NEVER would have believed that I would love eating like this and I sure as heck never thought I would LOVE eating like this. I grew up a country girl. We raised our own beef, chickens, and pork. I showed livestock in the shows and went hunting with my dad. Vegans and vegetarians were extremist nutcases. (Note - Personally, I still think PETA is nuttier than fruitcake.) Well, call me nutty because I am now very near vegan and I LOVE what I eat every single day. And my two teenagers have gone along for the ride and are losing weight as well and they love the food too! And my 19 year old was one of those kids who never touched a veggie other than a tomato or canned corn EVER before we started this. (No! I'm NOT counting french fries.  That is a fat, not a veggie, in  my book.)

Here's the thing. I really believe there are three types of people around juice fasting communities. Those who think they want this, try it and, within days or maybe a couple of weeks at most, decide it is too hard. Even though detox has been explained to them, they may become certain that juice is making them sick.  They drop out and are never heard from again.  Then there are those who throw themselves into it and white knuckle their way through a nice long juice only fast while counting the days til they can once again hit the Burger King drive through or pat themselves on the back for having more veggies on their pizza than they used to. They lose a ton of weight and then promptly gain it all back. It is absolutely true and can't be repeated often enough; If you do what you've always done, you end up where you've always been. One hundred percent accurate!  Funny how that works:/  

Then there are those who use the time on juice fast to allow the process to fundamentally change them. If you are one of these people, you come to realize that this doesn't just change what you are doing for a few days or weeks or even months; it changes everything. It is physical, mental and emotional. You discover things about yourself that you didn't know before including inner reserves of strength. You educate yourself. You discover that your weight gain had nothing to do with lack of willpower and that you've been duped by a huge industry into becoming addicted to things that harm you in order to make them richer. You get pissed and You. Change. Everything. And you love it! Free of all the salt and sugar and chemicals, your taste buds come back to life! You rediscover that the foods given us by our creator actually are wonderful to the taste without all the chemicals and that foods that aren't over-processed and overcooked and genetically modified taste better and sustain our bodies the way they were intended to be. You relearn what healthy feels like. You rediscover having energy to burn.  You realize the miraculous thing that the human body really is!  It begins to heal itself!  I have a number of friends who have gotten off of blood pressure medication just as I have and off of asthma meds and acid reflux meds like my daughter has and even off of INSULIN!  The body can and will heal and regenerate itself if you flood it with all the nutrients it needs.

I'm NOT saying everyone has to give up meat or dairy or gluten as I did. But it is certainly wise to very cautiously add those substances back in and pay attention to the effect on your body.  Most of the ones I know who are still losing or maintaining after a long period of time have definitely made whole-food/plant based foods the center of their diet. And I literally do not know one who has maintained while still eating a processed, junk-food based diet. I really, really recommend you check out Dan Miller's web page here: DAN MILLER WEB PAGE  or go to DAN MILLER JUICING & PLANT-BASED FOOD  and look over his discussion thread there.  I'm in there as Natshell:) Dan has been at this a long time and has more knowledge and information available on this topic (not to mention succes at losing and maintaining for a long period) than anyone else I know of and he is great at answering questions.

I assume most people who find my blog have already watched Fat Sick and Nearly Dead but if you haven't, do so!  I also strongly recommend anyone who hasn't already, please watch Forks Over Knives. If you are a reader, read The China Study, The Pleasure Trap, Wheat Belly and Clean. Check out youtube videos and websites by Dr. McDougall, Dr Fuhrman, Dr Esselstyn and Rip Esselstyn, Douglas Lisle and Robert Lustig. Let one discovery lead to another. Make it your business and your top priority to discover what food/long-term diet will best serve your weight and your health once you aren't juice fasting anymore. Shouldn't your health and well-being be a top priority?  Lots of people do regain weight after juice fasting. But YOU don't have to be one of them. 

Dear Doctor, Why?

I have spoken many times about all the medical issues I faced before starting my journey to self-healing and weight loss.  It was pretty grim.  Over the last few decades, I (and my insurance companies) have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to make my life bearable.  In all those years, I found pretty much zero help or relief.  I just got progressively worse and worse.  The answer to many if not all the problems I was having was as simple as changing my grocery list.  Yes, I spend a little more on groceries now but, recall that "hundreds of thousands" I mentioned?  Not hyperbole folks. So there's expensive and then there's expeeensive.  And there is more than one sort of "cost."  Basically, what's it worth to you?  Expensive is a relative term  A $50k house is a bargain basement find!  But a $50k car is expensive!  What's the value of the thing is a a better question that what is the cost.  So to me, my new diet is not expensive.  For it's value, it is quite cheap.  How much do you spend on perscriptions?  What if your food was your food and your medicine?

First off, I find it laughable when people say to me that they can't afford all this "expensive" produce but it is actually a serious issue for many so let's talk about that for a moment.  I understand tight budgets.  No really, I do.  We have been on the nothing-but-ramen-noodles-all-week diet more than a few times.  I know from broke.  But most of the time in recent months, before becoming whole foods/plant based and juicing (WFPB from now on) we spent around $125-175 per month on food for the family.  We also ate out at least once, often two or three times every week.  It was our payday ritual.   We usually got pizza or Sonic or Arby's or Taco Bell.  Taco Bell and Little Caesars are cheap for those weeks we had a more limited food budget.  But that was an additional $15 to $60 per week or more.  And then let's add up all the stops at Quick Trip for soda and a "snack."  Am I the only one who would routinely spend $5 on #%$!* every time I filled up the gas tank of my car?  I think not.  So I was spending $150-200 per week on crap that was killing me.  Literally.  Literally crap and literally killing me.  Not to mention the money I was spending on medications I no longer need. Nowadays, I routinely spend $180 a week on food.  I haven't spent a solitary dime on fast food, packaged junk or convenience store snacks in 4 months.  Yup, that WFPB diet is just too expensive.  Still think it is too expensive?  Check out Ellen Jaffe Jones.  You can find her on facebook and youtube.  I am not sure if her website is working but she also wrote a book called Vegan on $4 a day.  And then there is this blog: http://homelessformyhealth.blogspot.com/.   Go read it.  Seriously.  AFTER reading that blog, you come tell me that a healthy diet is too expensive.

Now, on to the things that are really on my mind today.  A couple of things I have been hearing lately really have me pissed.   Both have to do with doctors.  First off, why the holy heck in all the years I've been to doctor after doctor, spent many weeks in hospitals and had dozens of very expensive tests done and been lectured about my weight continuously, has no doctor ever, once suggested that I had a leaky gut or gluten intolerance.  Never once has any of them suggested I try eliminating sugar or dairy.  Not ONE medical professional has ever suggested that people who eat primarily a plant based diet have little to no heart disease, cancer or diabetes.  You know why?  Because they know squat about nutrition.  Seriously.  They can't tell you what they don't know.  There is, of course,  the problem of  the bought and paid for research they are being fed by USDA, FDA and Big Pharma plus there is the absolute absence of any real education.  In medical school, our future physicians get a few hours of training in nutrition.  Hours.  NOT class hours or credit hours.  As in your history class counts as 4 credit hours.  No.  A few actual clock hours of their entire education.  Don't believe me? Check this out:

The approximate time devoted to nutrition science over the first two years of my medical education is a measly 6 hours....  James Haddad  [http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/12/nutrition-taught-medical-school.html]  After the first two years they are in actual medical settings as interns and residents.  With live patients.

Your doctor was not taught nutrition unless he went out on his own time and dollar and researched it himself.  Since doctors in training have all that.. ya know... spare time.  And since becoming a doctor, he is consistently fed the SAD conventional wisdom that is killing us all by degrees.  So when people ask me if my doctor is on board with me going WFPB and all the juicing, my response is, "I don't give a rat's tail."  My nutrition is up to me.  

The other thing that set me off was several instances of hearing that what few doctors actually got the memo that WFPB diets can prevent a host of diseases dropped the ball anyway.  Mostly.  There are those few voices in the wilderness but your average physician in your average town or city?  Well, the prevailing attitude seems to be that they don't bother recommending any radical change in diet because patients will likely find it too challenging and won't follow through.  Changing your way of eating is too hard.  Why bother when weight loss surgery is so much easier.  And heck, many insurance plans are starting to cover it now too!  Bonus!  (In case you missed it, insert heavy sarcasm there.)  So if even one doctor over the years looked at me and thought, "Damn woman!  All you need to do is make salad the main dish!  Throw out the cheese and the bread and eat some veggie stew instead."  he or she then decided that I couldn't possibly have the physical or mental fortitude to deal with such advice so they just scheduled the next MRI or bone scan, filled out another perscription and sent me home.  We are being treated like idiots and fools by the people we trust with our lives.  Weak idiots and fools.  Sure lots of people say, "Oh I couldn't do that!"  But the problem is that they don't really believe in it.  If our doctors were educated enough and committed enough to our health to really teach it to their patients, a LOT of them would say, "It will actually give me my health and energy back?! I can do that!"  Some wouldn't.  So for them, doctor, go ahead and schedule that next scan and write that next prescription.  Do what you can to prepare them for the fact that their lives will be shorter and more painful and miserable.  But at least learn what you need to know to give as many of us as possible a shot at real health.  I know the first rule is supposed to be "do no harm" but shouldn't that be closely followed by "do as much good as you possibly can?"  

11 WEEKS IN - An Update

It is pretty crazy to think that we only started this new lifestyle 11 weeks ago.  I haven't blogged as much lately because I tend to think I don't have anything interesting going on.  I'm just a mom and grandma dealing with day to day life just like anyone else.  I forget that certain things about our lifestyle nowadays are considered "non-norm."  I forget that it is not "normal" to find no meat and no dairy in the average kitchen.  I forget that not every mom hears their teenagers arguing over who took all the mushrooms in the salad.  "I want mushrooms too!"  LOL  The average home probably doesn't have 10 pints of beet/apple/carrot/ginger juice in the frig.  For about a minute; until the teenagers discover it.  Not every house on the block contains 3 ladies who have lost a combined total of 115 lbs in the last 3 months.  Is it normal for you to spend 90% of your grocery shopping time and money in the produce section?  I used to barely glance in there; maybe to grab some bananas for the grandkids or a bag of potatos.  Is the average families trash made up almost entirely of juice pulp and peelings?  Where are all the cans and boxes and plastic containers?

Here are the problems we have lately:
Honey, should we sell the microwave?
No!  I heat up my lemon/ginger water in there in the mornings!

I am NEVER going to finish my holiday knitting if I don't find some time to sit and knit!

Mom! We're out of celery!

I can't BELIEVE I was dumb enough to consume gluten again!  Gluten makes me ill!  What was I thinking?!!!

So life around here is just the same old boring routine as anyone elses.... With a few twists;o)  And the most beautiful part is that I am actually participating in that routine.  I'm not sitting in my room watching life go on without me.  Yes, I am still on the program.  Yes, I am still losing weight although it isn't beating any speed records.  I have broken through to the 200s again but since I hit 299 last week, I haven't lost any more.  The scale likes to screw with me  like that.   I'm not worried.  I am giving my body what it really needs and trusting it to do the rest.  Meanwhile, I feel fantastic!
A few things have changed.  I no longer have to mindfully create positive dialogue about my food. I don't have to say to myself, "Those foods are poison to me.  I am not the sort of person that eats whatever is easiest.  I nourish my body."  I don't have to mindfully say those things any more than I have to mindfully say, "I am a mom.  I am a wife."  They are just who I am.  And did I mention I feel fantastic?

Guest Blogger - Reynolds

I am a member of the fantastic community of juice nuts at rebootwithjoe.com based on Joe Cross and his experiences as seen on "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead."  My friend Reynolds is the guy that everyone in our group turns to for wisdom and inspiration.  He is in the middle of this same journey that I am on and, like me, feels that nothing in this world is going to offer the things that juice fasting can.  Another friend on the group had had a pretty significant slip-up on day 6 of her first juice fast and wondered if she should just give up and "pig out for a few days" or jump right back into juice fasting or maybe just try to transition onto a healthy "diet" instead of juice fasting.  She got tons of great advice and support but Reynolds words really hit home for many of us.  I asked him if I could post his reply here and he agreed so here it is.  Someone out there needs to hear this.  I just have this feeling.

Heathie: I read your post then went offline to compose a thoughtful response. When I came back to post, Katie had posted her very sage advice gleaned from numerous reboots over the last 6 months where she trimmed over 100 pounds from her frame. My words are very similar to hers, I'm just more long-winded. But the common points on which we both touch, we hope resonate with you. Here is mine:

ROFL..... Heathie your number three, "pig out a few days and then start back?" had me splitting my side. You probably don't get it but Natalie, Katie and Jana do for sure.

You are likely saying, "but I wasn't trying to be funny." Exactly! You were asking the SAME question every Fattie asks themselves when they get a mouthful of mud... "so do I just go back to being who I was for all those years?" Every single one of us in this forum have had huge doubts when we stumbled and we asked that same question.

Here is the whole enchilada wrapped up in a long thought :

All fat people got that way for a reason, maybe three. Once fat, we had family, friends and society send us mixed messages about our rising weight. At some point we became obese, and while we learned a host of excuses to push back anyone who cautioned or criticized us, we never managed to get around to accepting responsibility for STAYING fat. It is one thing to get fat over our teenage and young adult years, but it is another thing to keep gaining in our twenties, thirties and forties. Jana, Natslie, Katie and I are all near or above 50. Sure, we'd tried to lose weight every year or two. But we never found a way to get it off and keep it off. Until we ran into Joe Cross and juice fasting.

Heathie, what happens on a JF is a fundamental change in the mind. It doesn't come with most any other weight reduction plan. During a prolonged JF the mind is allowed, yes even forced, to put some distance between food and ourselves. Not having reason to be so intimate with chewed foods for a period of time allows us to reduce, and even remove, the emotional bonds that exist between EVERY Fattie and food. Finally, the stranglehold food has had on us is broken, literally, for the first time. It is not a permanent break up, necessarily, and yes that is the challenge of every Fattie that has gone through an extended JF must deal with.

I can't tell you how many days you have to be on a JF (10-45?) before the brain makes the switch and the mind sees things like it has NEVER seen them before. That change has as many looks as there are people doing a JF. But most JFers come to the realization that they have been lied to by the commercial food companies, but worse they've been egregiously lying to themselves as well.

During the JF the combination of detoxing, losing lots of weight and stepping back some distance from food synergizes together to give the person a birdseye view of food, addiction, compulsion, cravings and binging. I guess it is akin to seeing a ghost or Bigfoot. -- you might later question what you saw, but at the time you were unmistaken in what you saw. It is that pronounced of an awakening. The trick is to live out what we know. But we have 10-20-30 years of bad habits and only days/weeks/months at having a deep appreciation of vegetables and juicing.

So it is hard at first to win every single fight with our compulsive/addictive self. We'll lose once a day, then once every third day, then once every week, until finally ... finally the body relents and goes along with what the mind has been saying! Then, the struggle is cut to a fraction and the person is "over the hump." Will he or she struggle occasionally? Most certainly. But the struggle isn't at 10:42am, 2:39pm, 6:05pm, 8:47pm -- it is once every week or so.

The addiction is broken, but no immunity is created or a magic shield thrown up around the person. The lust of the eye is still there. The difference is that the new mind sees food differently. It no longer is a surrogate lover as it was. Now it is something to use as needed to meet a basic nutritional need. Sure, enjoying food is fine, but seeking pleasure from food no longer controls your every chewing decision. Most critical for the typical JFer out living in the chewing world again is the ability to master perceptions of food and thereby strictly controlling what goes in the body. There is no longer a free-for-all where just anything goes. We cant kid ourselves anymore. When eating again, every meal is a considered decision. Do want me to say that again? Every meal is a considered decision.

So why this loooong post? Well, what I'm telling you is this, it is so US. So fattie, to flop off the horse and then say, "oh what the hell, I think I'll just go eat a pan of peach cobbler." That is what fatties do routinely.

But in the near future, maybe within only a week or two, you too will recoil from the thought of going and pigging out with every stumble. Soon, you'll want to flee from pig outs as you will see them for what they are -- compulsive , uncontrolled bouts of mania. Yep, as part of JFing the mind changes its perceptions and with the changed perceptions comes a changed behavior. But! It is possible to slide back into the abyss, so vigilance is required for a long time, usually for more than a year.

Have you ever talked with someone that has climbed a massive peak like Kilimanjaro or Denali? Invariably they will mention that besides being staggeringly difficult dealing with all the adversities, it was a very specific system to summit and return to base camp safe. Freelancing was tantamount to death. The many that had gone before had spelled out all the problems and obstacles threatening each climber. While only thousands had done it before, nevertheless all the perils, risks, pitfalls and dilemmas any climber could face were very well articulated and defined by previous climbers writing about their experience.

So it is with a JF. There are no new wrinkles to be discovered by a new JFer. The struggles are all well known and written about here and in many blogs. It is important to know that what each of us are going through on our JF, is completely commonplace. It is predictable! Really!

Oh, not everyone has the exact same issues of headaches and diarrhea, or like. But your weaknesses, cravings, panics, listlessness and other symptoms experienced in your JF are the same ones the rest of us have experienced. Promise! So you see where I'm going with this -- learn from climbers that have summitted and come down to tell about it. Don't think for an instant that you , or me, or Natalie, or Katie, or Jana or Danielle -- can beat the established path that has been blazed ahead of us. We simply can't do it. Knowing the regimen and then sticking to it is imperative. We just aren't smart enough to find a new, better route up the mountain. Stick to the known, proven routes. Going rogue has bad consequences.

So what! You fell off the horse! You did it. Now that is history. Are you going to live in that momentary failure or instead jump back on the horse and ride. I hope you choose the latter, and choose it immediately.

Heathie, you have inside you a champion. But you'll have to find that champion. Usually the champion doesn't show up in the first couple of days as that time is so full of confusion, angst and flailing about.

But she will show up if you stay on the horse. But, before she does, it seems like you are about to expire. The body throws a fit, and then capitulates finally in day 4, 5 or 6. This gets lots easier. We are sure rooting for you and want you to ride with us on our journey to get healthy and lose weight. We hereby grant you a full absolution of your face plant! Now c'mon, go with us. You can only fail if you quit. So don't quit! :)

- See more at: http://community.rebootwithjoe.com/discussions/topic/100-lbs-or-more-starting-a-9113-30-day-reboot?p=83#sthash.AEETWGPg.dpuf

Just One Bite?

If you have tried a few (or many) diets like I have, you have at some point encountered a certain school of thought that has been on my mind a lot lately.  For example, there is currently a weight watchers commercial where the lovely, thin woman says she WILL sometimes have a cupcake, just not the whole cake.  Many diet books/gurus will tell you that you should not eliminate any particular food.  "Don't tell yourself you can never again eat cookie cake because then you won't want to stick to it."  Right?  You follow me?  That is a very common belief.  If you try to think you can never have this or that special yummy that you love then you'll quit because you can't face life without pizza, or Snickers or whatever.

I understand where this train of thought comes from.  I do.  And I understand that if we talk in terms that are super rigid and unforgiving, some people won't ever start and others won't last long.  Many believe that they are setting themselves up to fail if they don't allow for the occasional indulgence.  I'm not saying that we should never indulge in something diet-naughty ever again.  I'm not saying I won't ever indulge again.  I AM saying that my idea of what is an indulgence has changed.  And I think that for long-term success and happiness in this new lifestyle, that is what has to happen.  And after talking to many, many juicers and recently converted vegans and raw-foodists, etc, that can and WILL happen if you give yourself half a chance.  Pretty much everyone says the same thing, "My taste buds really HAVE changed!" And we all say it with the same tone of wonder and disbelief in our voices and on our faces.  Lets face it, for those of us weighing in the 300s and 400s, we didn't get there by having an appetite for loads of raw veggies.  Those were the things we didn't mind having a bit of with our meat and butter laden mashed potatos and before our cupcake... or whole cake.

I don't need people telling me that it's okay to have a cupcake.  I got to 340 lbs telling myself that.  If I eat really healthy food 90% of the time, then a cupcake won't hurt anything, right?  Well, of course it won't.  But here's the problem: nobody who has gotten to be fat, sick and nearly dead (thank you Joe Cross;o)  has the ability to eat "healthy" by conventional wisdom standards and then occasionally treat themselves with a frigging cupcake.  Truth.  I know I'll take some heat for this view but it's truth and sometimes truth hurts.  If we COULD do that, don't you think we would have already?  Would you tell someone who is a few months after having their last cigarette that just one cigarette won't hurt. It'll make you feel like you can keep going!  Hello Ms Alcoholic who spent a couple years in jail for DUI and got sober 6 months ago, have a drink.  Just one won't hurt anyone and it'll make you feel like you can stick it out longer.  IT'S THE SAME.  IT'S THE SAME. IT'S THE SAME!!!!!!!

If I could have done this the "conventional wisdom" route, I certainly already would have.  Certainly tried often enough.  I tried with Weight Watchers, I tried with Atkins, I tried with tracking and balancing the key nutrients on Sparkpeople (NOT dissing Sparkpeope - it is a FANTASTIC tool/resource that I use every day) and I tried Nutrisystems where they sent me prepackaged meals... including ittle-bitty "healthy" cupcakes.  I tried cabbage soup and some email "pre-surgery" diet that involved lots of tunafish and bananas.  I lost weight with every single plan I tried.  And then I gained weight.  I didn't throw my hands up and just give up and turn around and start going to McDonalds again.  (At least usually I didn't... there were times.)  Usually, it happened something like this:  

Day 12:  I think I'm really going to have to have a little treat at the birthday party or I'll feel too deprived and give up.  And of course, I can't turn down Aunt Mary's special recipe macaroni and cheese or I'll hurt her feelings.

Day 13:  I really shouldn't have had that 3rd piece of cake.  I'll be super, extra good the rest of this week.

Day 14: One little piece of pizza isn't so bad.  I'll eat just salad for supper.

Day 15: What do you mean I gained a pound?!  I have to get down to business and stick to the plan perfectly this week.  Right after I pout with this Sonic meal that I really can't avoid because I don't have time to do anything else today because of x, y and z.

Fast forward to Day 21 by which time I have gradually phased myself right back into eating whatever falls into my hands the easiest.  

Here's the thing, the one thing, the MAIN thing.  We super-fatties don't do Just One Bite.  We don't even usually do Just One Piece.  We might stick to just one at the party (because we fatties aren't supposed to let anyone else see us eat) but then when we get home, we'll have another and usually another.   We "just one piece" ourselves into guilt, shame, rage and yet another 25 or 50 or 80 lbs by that time next year.  And it isn't lack of willpower or lack of character or pure-dee old gluttony; it's addiction.  Addictive substances are added to almost everything the modern American eats.  Yes, even those tasty little weight-watcher's entrees.  It is also a big heaping dose of misinformation.  The people we should be able to trust to tell us what we need to know to feed our families and ourselves in a healthy manner, you know who I mean, the FDA and the Department of Agriculture etc, they lie.  They pander to the money and they lie to us.  Straight up.  

So is it hopeless then?  Do we accept that we can't moderate our own eating.  Fall into the shame and blame trap?  Fail to even try because life is no fun without sugar and deep-fat fried everything? No because we can CHANGE what we crave.  We CAN change what constitutes an indulgence for us.  For real.  I'm not talking about pasting on a smile and pretending that we are just loving having this salad at Olive Garden while the family all eat lasagna and eggplant parmesan.  I'm talking about really, for real finding ourselves loving the taste of clean, fresh, whole, veggies that are not slathered in butter or cheese sauce.  Feeling that we have really treated ourselves to a splurge when we have banana/berry sorbet from our blender.  There really IS a magic pill.  Go cold-turkey on EVERYTHING processed, packaged and made by man for a while.  Become a strict whole food junkie for just a while.  Or do what I did, watch Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead and then watch Forks Over Knives and then do a juice fast.  After just a week on nothing but fresh-made veggie/fruit juice, I stopped craving things.  After a couple of weeks on juice, I literally found the taste thought of over-processed junk posing as food (like those little frozen weight watchers dinners and cupcakes) repulsive.  And after several weeks of an almost exclusively juice diet, as we test the waters of what foods work for us and figuring out what we actually like now, we really truly don't like the taste of the same crap that we used to feed on all the time.  When my grandkids were over the other day, their mama brought some food with them since they surely couldn't survive the day on just fruits and veggies.  Harmoni (my 17 year old) and I tasted one of the "chicken strips."  I looked at her and she said to me, "I can't believe that used to be chicken to me.  That's disgusting."  And today, she tasted a little taste of the kind of peanut butter we used to buy and said that it didn't taste good... in fact, it didn't taste like peanuts!  (We use Smuckers Natural peanut butter now.  It's the best stuff!  Nothing in there but peanuts.)  We have found that salad actually tastes really good with some herbs and a tiny bit of vinaigrette on it.  We really don't have to smother it in ranch dressing.  (Read the ingredients on that little bundle of joy sometime.  Ugh!)

So, the point of this not-so-short rant is that, yes, I am pretty hard line.  No I'm not okay with the idea of a bit of birthday cake to show solidarity.  No, I'm not going to pretend it's okay if I ever DO slip up and eat something disgusting.  It's not okay.  I'm not going to beat myself up and dwell on it but I'm not going to say it's okay and I'm certainly not going to plan ahead to do it.  People don't regain all the weight they lose on any eating plan by just turning right around and heading back the way they came, they turn around little by little by little.  They turn around by taking just one bite.  And then a few more.  We all have choices in life.  Every day I make the choice to ONLY eat things my body truly needs.  Think about that for a minute.  How much of what you eat does your body truly need? Answer: Very. Damn. Little.  Every day I make the choice to find comfort, entertainment and pleasure in other ways.  It doesn't have to be through my food.  It sounds so trite to say that feeling this healthy is better than how any food out there tastes.  What's that saying?  Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.  Well, there sure as heck isn't anything that tastes as good as healthy and energetic and getting thinner every day feels.  Nothing.  And I refuse to just-one-bite myself back into the trance of processed, poisonous, addictive crap that 99% of people think is food.  News flash: McNuggets aren't food.  Food is the carrier of the nutrients our body needs into our system.  McNuggets and Totinos pizza and Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup carry a few nutrients on the back of literal poison.  Addictive poison.  I'm over it.

This:

Or this:

My Motivation? It Couldn't Be Simpler.

My 5% Challenge team gave an assignment to write out our motivation for losing weight. Mine is, on the surface, a variation on the same theme as many other people. Health, legacy and looks. In that order. I used to care a lot more about the looks aspect and I still care but not NEARLY as much. I used to say that losing weight for my health was important but inside, I just wanted to look good and not be ashamed to be seen in a pair of shorts. I didn't want to look like a supermodel but I wanted to feel confident in my own skin. Nowadays, I tell people I am motivated by how my girls are learning such healthy habits now and how much more energy I have and (a big one for me) by my desire to be a horsewoman again. Oh man, I can't tell you how much I miss making horses a huge part of my life. But in reality it is much, much simpler. 

After facing life as a near recluse and very nearly bedfast, having to have other people take care of my needs, my home, my chores, etc, I have a very different perspective. When I say the number one thing is to regain my health, you can bank that. I had given up on any hope of getting much enjoyment out of life any more. I was hoping I would have a massive coronary so that my family (and I ) wouldn't have to suffer through years of my gradual decline. I felt that I was a very poor example to my teenagers of how to live a life. I wasn't able to be the kind of grandma that I wanted to be so I pretty much avoided spending more than an hour or so at a time with my grandkids. I had accepted that the "fun" portion of the program was over and I didn't particularly want to hang in there for the sad ending. I've never been into sad endings. 

When I watched the videos that lit that flame of hope once again in my heart, I didn't hesitate. I KNEW it was my last chance. I knew that this was what God wanted, no expected, from me so I did it. The change has been so dramatic, so fast and so unquestionable that there is just no turning back for me. Eating healthy, whole, clean foods and juicing fresh veggies in order to flood my body with the nutrients it has been longing for is the only option for me. 

People ask me how I can avoid my trigger foods or temptation or whatever and they don't understand when I tell them it just isn't an option any more. They think, "Oh sure, easier said than done." But it is easily done now. Yes, I meant what I said; it is EASILY done now. I have faced situations where huge triggers from my old life were offered to me on a platter and I was looked at askance for refusing. Was it hard to say no? Do I deserve a medal for having the courage to look that old favorite straight in the eye and then walk away? NO. Because it was EASY! Would it be hard for me to say no to Meth? Or crack? Or heroin? NO. I don't put poison in my body no matter how much fun someone tells me it is because I value my health, my integrity and my future much more than any momentary pleasure. Yes. It really is like that for me now. I can't say that I will never feel that pull again. Forever is a long time and it is asking for trouble to say never. But for now, by the grace of God, it is easy. I can walk on my own and I can swim and I HAVE NO PAIN. So I can eat a big beautiful salad or a bowl of yummy, homemade veggie soup and keep feeling like I have a future or I can eat a hamburger and fries and a cookie and climb back into my deathbed. 

So what is my motivation for sticking to the program? It's pretty simple when you boil it down. I. Want. To. Live. 

The Beginning - A Near Death Life

This is the story of how I came back to life.  About 6 weeks ago, I wrote in my journal about giving up.  About losing my faith and believing that all that was left for me was a not so gradual decline into death.  I told God (no I wasn't raised to try to tell God what to do but I was that low) that if He had any more plans for me He had better get on with them.  My mother had the faith of a giant and instilled the faith of generations of women into me.  It was not easy to admit that I was losing that.  But my condition was such that it was just a simple matter of common sense to see that I wasn't going to last long and that the journey to the end wasn't going to be much fun.  

Now this is a story of hope and triumph and victory over obesity, illness, premature death and loss of faith and hope.  It is about learning to be my own advocate, do my own research and take charge of my health and my life.  But to give you an idea of what a miracle this has been, you have to have a clear picture of where I started.  I know it will sound crazy.  I know that some will not believe how bad it was or how good it is now but that isn't my problem.  I am writing this blog in case anyone, any one person, might be helped or encouraged or inspired by what has happened to me.  I make two promises to whomever may be reading this.  I will blog at least once a week, usually more, and I will be 100% honest.  I will try to figure out how to do an occasional youtube video but I'm a total newb at that so give me a chance to figure it out.  I will post before pictures that I took on August 23 when I started this journey and I will post during pics every few weeks and eventually, I'll post after pics although "after pics" is a bit of a misnomer since I don't believe this is a journey with an ending.  This journey is how I've chosen to live my life from now on.  But once I reach a healthy weight, BMI or whatever, I'll post something we will call an "after" pic;o)

So, let's go back a few weeks.  The following are word-for-word excerpts from my personal journal.  I am usually a very private person and NOBODY would ever see this but, as I said, if it helps one person...

July 30, 2013
"I'm not sure what the catalyst was but I've just sorta stopped living.  NOT suicidal; not stopped caring... Just don't have any hope of anything ever getting better for me personally.  ...I need hope and I need it now.  Whether there is life after death or not, I am not done with this one; or at least I don't want to be. There are so many things I don't want to leave this life without having done/seen/experienced.  Sort of a bucket list but SO much more important. ...Mostly I don't want to die with THIS being the mom/grandma/example that my kids and grandkids are left to remember."

"I don't DO anything with my days anymore.  I just vegetate.  I have physical issues; real, medical, painful, frustrating, physical issues.  I am in serious pain All. The. Time.  So I don't do much which makes me weaker.  So I sit here weak, in pain and feeling helpless and hopeless, getting weaker and more hopeless every day."

"Here is my pathetic daily routine:
Noon - wake up and take meds. Sit in bed for an hour while meds take effect so I can make it to the bathroom and then back to bedroom loveseat.  Harmoni brings me coffee and breakfast from the microwave.  I then get on the computer and play a couple of facebook games in three different profiles so I can feel "busy."  I also watch a few shows on Netflix or Hulu while I knit.  Knitting is my therapy.  It keeps me sane.  Sort of. 
Harmoni will later bring me lunch.  I will make it to the bathroom a couple more times in the day and once in a while even make it to the kitchen to get my own sandwich or can of something for dinner.  If it has to heat for more than a couple of minutes, Harmoni will bring it to me.

Once a week, I go to Walmart and ride the 'electric chair of shame' because I can't walk through the store.  This is the store I used to work at so it is especially humiliating.  I stop at the Post Office and a couple of places to pay bills where Gini or Harmoni will run in for me since getting in and out of the van is so hard for me.

I go to bed around 3 am and might get to sleep before dawn.  I sleep very poorly and am still exhausted when I wake whether it is 9 hours later or 3 hours later.

The end.  That is my day.  Every day."

Wow is it humbling to write that in a public forum.  Those who don't know me personally can't imagine how amazing it is that I would share that with anyone.  ANYONE, much less everyone.  Now for a few facts.  At the time I wrote that stuff, I was a 51 year old mother of 5, grandma of 9, married to a sweetheart of a truck driver since 1987, in small town Oklahoma.  I am 5'6" tall and weighed 340 lbs.  I have Myasthenia Gravis which is an autoimmune disorder, and the tumor in my chest that often accompanies it, as well as a history of blood clots, bone on bone knee, completely trashed shoulder from tearing the rotator cuff several times and not getting treatment leaving it with scar tissue, arthritis and bone spurs, high blood pressure, hypothyroidism, high cholesterol and Paget's disease of the bone in my pelvis.  I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia years ago but the pain and fatigue of that little joy-pill was so buried in the pain and fatigue from all the other stuff that I forget about it.  And to kind of top it all off, I had started having some pretty scary symptoms of congestive heart failure.  I didn't realize it at the time but that is often a complication of Paget's. 

So now I think you have the pathetic picture of where I was a few weeks ago when suddenly, very suddenly, everything changed.  EVERYTHING changed.  I have tried most of the diets that everyone else has tried from Atkins and Weight Watchers to tracking my food and activity on Sparkpeople.  Sparkpeople was by far the most helpful.  I highly recommend it for the tools and fellowship available no matter what path to health you choose.  

Now on to the POSITIVE stuff because, trust me, nowadays, my life is a very positive place!  I'll make this part brief and then just get to posting the progress blogs.  I started a blog on Sparkpeople and I'm going to start by reposting those here to bring you up to date and then I'll take it up from there with current blogs.  So when you see a blog that is dated September 24 but the title says it is August 25 - Day 3, you won't be confused hopefully.

So what happened was this.  I got on Netflix like I usually did.  For no clear reason at all, since I am NOT usually a viewer of health or food related documentaries, Netflix "recommended" Forks Over Knives and Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.  VERY unlike myself, I watched them.  And then I watched Hungry for Change and Vegucated.  I then read Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, The China Study by T. Colin Campbell and Clean by Dr. Alejandro Junger.  I also looked up every bit of research for and against a plant-based diet, The China Study, Veganism, Raw-food living and Clean eating.  I have ridiculed and condemned vegetarians and especially ethical vegans my whole life.  I grew up eating fat-fried everything.  But I knew by the end of the first documentary that God himself had led me to this path and that I could abandon it at my peril.  I KNEW it.  It was a really strange feeling and almost beyond description.  You will just have to trust me that it was different from any path I had ever entered upon for weight-loss.  I actually felt, REALLY felt for the first time that it was "all about health dummy!"  Weight loss was to be looked forward to but definitely secondary.  It was an immediate transformation the likes of which I have never before experienced.  I haven't had a single moment of doubt since.  

So that brings us up to where my Spark blog began so I'll let that tell the story for a bit and then start up again with current blogs.  Sorry this first one was so long.  They won't usually be this long.  If you've read this whole thing, thank you for joining me.  I'm enjoying the ride more than I can say.