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!!!

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. 

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?

Thanksgiving Plans

I have been asked by quite a few people how I'm going to handle Thanksgiving.  Thankfully, I have a very uncomplicated, supportive and understanding family so I am under no real pressure to fix or even attend a big, fattening, American fat fest on Thanksgiving. Why do we Americans take everything sacred, every beautiful occasion and turn it into something kind of vulgar and all about consumption. MORE presents, MORE booze, MORE food. (sigh) I'm kind of over it. I want to be with loved ones, eating something that make me feel great and watching some football. For that, I will be extremely thankful. LOL I realize that some people have much more complicated family expectations but for me, it is simple. No traditional meal or comfort food is worth losing what I've gained. I was literally crippled with my weight and with disease so no way am I giving that up for a pumpkin pie or even my mom's stuffing. My Mom has passed and her stuffing is a big tradition for us.  But I promise if you put in a call to Heaven and ask her, she will tell you that my good health and the amazing new habits I have cultivated are way more important to her than any food.  I don't need that stuffing to feel close to her.  I have looked up amazing, beautiful and yummy recipes that will not damage my body that I can celebrate with. All that being said, if you aren't as lucky as I am in this area, you have to decide what is best for you.  A lot of people are juicing right up to Tday and then just letting themselves completely off the hook for a couple of hours during that meal and then getting right back on juice fast. At least that is their plan. I suspect it will be a struggle for a lot of people. I also know quite a few who are going to go to the family gathering and have some nice lean turkey breast and a big helping of salad and some fruit and call it good. Everyone has to make their own decision. For someone who was as bad off as I was and then given a miracle, it is an easy decision. My friend Jana posted a pic the other day that pretty much says it for me. "Don't give up what you want MOST for what you want RIGHT NOW." Natalie Michaele

Thyroid Cure?

I just picked up a Woman's World magazine because there was an article in it about a book called "Hormone Cure" by Sara Gottfried, MD.  Thyroid medicine is one of the few perscriptions I'm still supposed to be taking.  I say supposed to be because I have chosen to stop taking all perscriptions to give my body a chance to do what good it can with all this terrific new nutrition I'm giving it.  In a few months, I'll get checked out and then see if there is anything the doctor thinks I need to go back to using.  And I'll think about it;o)  So anyway, my interest was piqued and I'm not a fan of reading a magazine in the checkout line and then putting it back.  Feels dishonest.

So Dr. Gottfried outlines a sample days menu and describes the basis of her plan.  Imagine by surprise (read a heavy dose of sarcasm there) when I realized that basically she was just saying to go gluten free.  LOL  It was kind of cool to read her explanation though, since it isn't something I've had explained quite this simply before.  She says that "In the last 30 years, wheat has been genetically modified to have a higher gluten content."  The thyroid trouble occurs because "gluten is a sticky wheat protein so similar in shape to thyroid hormone that it can enter and block the body's receptors for thyroid hormone."

She basically says to swap things like sugar, bread, white rice and pasta for brown rice, beans and sweet potatos.  Hmmm, I already have! LOL  So now I stick to the plan and in a few months I will be very curious to see if my thyroid has improved.  I'll keep ya posted!

The Gluten Question

Well, for me at least, the question is settled. A few months ago, after some research and reading*, I decided to try eliminating gluten for a couple of weeks to see if it helped with how horrible I felt back then. It did seem to help and I was pretty much convinced that I was one of the unlucky few to have significant problems with modern wheat gluten. I was trying to keep it out of my diet as much as possible. 

Fast forward to October. After juice fasting for several weeks and then combining plant-based clean eating with juice, I was completely gluten free. And if you've read any of my blogs, you know I was feeling fantastic. My experiment during the Spring was done when my diet overall was a mess. I noticed a reduction in joint pain and stomach pain and brain-fog but any improvement was just a matter of degree. I had come to think that was all I could ever expect from anything so that was good with me. Well now, I know that I don't have to settle for a few degrees better; I can demand GREAT! So I decided to redo the gluten experiment. 

This past week, I reintroduced very healthy, limited portions of sprouted, whole-grain bread back into my diet. For the first time since I began my juice fast, I have had stomach pain, brain-fog and aching joints. Also (coincidence maybe? I kinda doubt it....) the first week I haven't lost a single pound. So that's enough proof for me to make a decision. FOR ME, the gluten question is resolved. No gluten for me. I don't settle for better any more. I want to keep feeling fantastic. I am not saying that everyone should eliminate gluten, but I would recommend that if you have a pretty healthy diet and are still struggling with weight loss and/or digestive issues, joint pain, brain fog, fatigue, etc, it might be worth it to at least try a couple of weeks without it and then put it back into your diet to see if it affects symptoms. 

*Wheat Belly by William Davis is a good laymans introduction to the issue but I always advocate looking up the research for yourself if you can.  The wheat we are sold today is NOT the same as the wheat our ancestors ate.  That much is fact.  You can have all the opinions your little heart desires but you can't have your own set of facts.  Wheat today barely resembles the wheat from even 100 short years ago.  If GMOs aren't remotely disturbing to you then...  wake up.

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.