And So It Begins...

Introduction:

So this blog entry will hopefully be the first of many to chronicle my journey to a healthier life.  I'm trying two things with this blog that I've never really tried before.  First, I'm going to be completely open and honest about just how messed up my health and habits are.  This is going to be painful for me, and it opens me up to be mocked, but I need to get myself out from behind my walls and admit to what is dragging me down.  I might make it even easier for all the immature people on the internet to insult me, but I can't live in fear of that.  Too much of my life has been defined by how others treat me because of my weight.  I won't let those people kill me, and I know that if I don't make these changes then I likely won't make it to see another 10 years.


The second thing I'm doing is making this blog, and trying to get people to read it and share it with others.  I want people to read, comment, and share with others.  Not because I want some kind of fleeting internet fame, but because I need people to be accountable to, but also people to support me.  I'm not looking for negative reinforcement because I don't respond to that.  I've been beat down so much in my life growing up that all negative reinforcement does is push me deeper into the dark places in my mind that have caused me to get to where I am now.  So I will be removing any comments that don't contribute to the positive atmosphere of support I'm trying to make here.  I'm trying to do everything I can to give myself a fighting chance at this.


I plan on using juicing as my catalyst to change.  I hope that I can use juicing to retrain my pallet to like vegetables, and from there can lead to making healthy choices when not juicing.  That should then get my losing weight and getting energy so I can start with cardio exercise to really get to work on getting healthy and keeping it off.  That's the grand plan at least.  But I have a long history filled with failures to overcome in order to make this work.


History:

So to begin the brutal honesty, I need to talk about how I got to this point in the first place.  I'm fat, and as far as I can remember I was always overweight.  Even in my oldest memories when I was 2 or 3 the best that could be said of me was that I was chubby, and I was always conscious of the fact.  I always knew that I was the outcast in any group, and was always aware that kids at school or kids in my neighborhood didn't really want me around.  I had friends, but it always seemed difficult to get most people to ever look past my size and actually consider me a worthwhile person to know.  So I have no concept of what it's like to be skinny.  I have no memory of healthier times to look back on.


And the weird thing, from my perspective at least, is that I was always an active kid.  I was constantly on the move, running or biking around my neighborhood, swimming, etc.  I was never lazy.  I think that's why I can be the size I am and yet am still mobile without any need for assistance.  I've seen shows on TV with guys around my weight or even less who are bedridden and can't ever leave their room without help, let alone their house.  Yet accept for some knee or back pain now and then, depending on the weather and the time of year, I get around just fine on my own.  I figure having an active life growing up built some muscle up that other people don't have.  It's weird to say, but I wonder if growing up overweight was a little bit of an advantage because I was working harder than others my age to do everyday tasks and so I probably have a good amount of muscle under all this fat.  Gotta look on the bright side, eh? :-)


So I've been overweight my entire life, but it wasn't until I got into college that I feel I started to truly spiral out of control when it came to my weight.  My activity level dropped to almost sedentary levels.  At first it was school all day with no time to get any activity in, then work, etc.  Life has always seemed to give me excuses.  And then there have been various emotional triggers over the past few years that have made it worse.  I've had multiple ex-girlfriends cheat on me, girls that I was very much in love with, and feeling that my weight was the main reason for it just pushed me more into a depressive eating state instead of giving me any kind of motivation to change.  I definitely have a deeply ingrained emotional eating instinct, but even though I know that about myself I don't seem to do well at fighting it.


So even though I'm with a wonderful woman now who makes me happy, and have a really good life, my body has been put through the ringer for so long that's finally starting to break down.  I have diabetes and am insulin resistant, I have high blood pressure, and I'm beyond obese.  I take a total of 9 pills a day, 6 at night and 3 in the morning.  2 at night and 2 in the morning for blood sugar, 2 at night and 1 in the morning for blood pressure, and then a low-dose aspirin and an OTC generic version of zyrtec at night.  And now for a brutally honest and painful admission.  I honestly have no idea how much I way as I pretty much have to go to the hospital to find someone with an electronic scale that goes high enough to weigh me.  I would not be surprised to find out I weigh over 600 lbs.  So I'm going to estimate myself at 650 lbs so I have a number to start with.


Motivation:


So after all I've gone through in my life with my health, you might ask what it is that has brought me to finally make a serious effort to change by taking radical measures and resort replacing meals with juice as well as going on full-fledged juice fasts to really reboot my body.   The reason is that I have people who need me.  I have a girlfriend with health issues that I may need to take care of some day.  I have a nephew I haven't seen since I moved across the country who misses me, but I can't fly out to visit him very easily at the size I am now.  I have friends and other family who seem to actually want me to stick around.  And then at church a couple of weeks ago I felt the need to go up for individual prayer during communion.  I just had this urge to ask to be prayed over for my health, and after doing so this feeling came over me that now was the time.  I could hear God telling me that the time for putting things off is done, and that if I intend to live out the life that He intends for me it's about time I started kicking my arse into shape.


The Plan:


And so that brings me back to the previously mentioned plan from up top.  Juicers are really expensive, for a decent one at least, but thanks to the generosity of some people at church that problem may be solved.  I have a juicer that will hopefully do the job.  I'm doing my first test run of a juice tomorrow (or today, depending on how you see it as I haven't gone to bed yet), and of course I'll post about how it goes.  Because of my dislike for veggies of almost every kind I'm going to try easing into things with a fruit & veggie combo juice to start.  2 apples, 3 carrots, and a little ginger.  It worries me how many carbs are in something that innocent sounding, but this is mostly just to try out the concept and the juicer.  I don't have to drink it all right now, just enough to determine if I like it or at least can choke it down.  And then also if the juicer will work for what I need.


Once my initial foray is done then the next step is to try a green juice.  That will be the big challenge.  I have no illusions that I'll actually like the taste of it to start, but as long as I can choke it down then that's fine, even if it means drinking a ton of water after to try and get rid of the after-taste. :-)  Once those two steps are done, then the real test will begin.  I'll try what the Reboot Your Life website calls a "Long Weekend" juice fast plan.  It's a three day juice fast meant to help jump start your body and get your system introduced to the juicing thing.  I understand the body's reaction can get a bit bad when you first start, so this will require me taking either a Monday or Friday off from work so I can have that long weekend it will need.


Assuming all goes will with the intro weekend, then I'll take a week to stock up on food and then I'll start a 15-day juice fast program.  I'll then once again evaluate how my body is handling things, and if all is going well then the next step will be a 30-day juice fast like you see in "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead."  After that I will hopefully be ready to bring the veggies into my solid food diet and will then begin the cycle of eating healthy with juice fasts every couple of months.  That combined with exercise should keep me moving toward my goal.  I still need to do more research on how often you should do the juicing as well as some meal plan ideas for both the solid food and the juice, but there's lots of good stuff out there.


So that's more than enough rambling for now.  I've got to get some sleep eventually, so I might as well get to it now, and I'll report back later to let y'all know how the first juicing experience went.