Day 1: Some Snapshots

Hi everyone. I figured that the first thing I should do while waiting for the chance to get my juicing ingredients is to share some snapshots for the beginning of my journey. First, the juicer!

Jack LaLanne Power Juicer

So the juicer I'm starting out with that a friend at church lent to us is this one, the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer. I think my girlfriend and I both ultimately would like a nice one like the Breville models used in the "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" documentary, however apparently Breville doesn't make a juicer that costs less than $299 anymore. And in the stores around here the cheapest Breville I can find is $400. We don't have that kind of money, but we do know that ultimately we'd like a juicer that has at least dual-speed controls and a micro mesh filter. If anyone knows of a good one for $150 or less let me know.

For those that don't know, juicing is basically taking combos of fruits and veggies and running them through the juicer to separate out the pulp and fibers and getting just the pure juice. You are getting more bang for your buck that way as you can pack in the nutrients without cooking anything and loosing vitamins and such. Reboot Your Life is a good place to learn more, and it has links to order the doc "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" which I highly recommend checking out.

Now for the hard part. Of course the traditional thing to do when you start a journey like this one is to take the before pictures of yourself. Most people usually then hide those pictures in shame until they lose their weight, then do a grand reveal where the show the before and after pictures and everyone congratulates them on how much they've lost and how great they look. Well I'm going to do things a little differently. I'm going to start showing pictures now, though I'm going to go back in time a little as well. My goal will then be that once a month I will post a progress report picture so we can see if there's any weight loss. Considering I don't have a scale to use the visual evidence will really be all I have to go on with this. For now at least.

So to start off with, this is a pair of pictures of me from the night of my senior prom.

My high school friends out there with better memories might be able to correct me, but these should have been from April I believe of 1996. You can't really see too much, but these are about the only pics I have of me back then. My best recollection is that my weight was likely around 325 - 350 lbs at the time, so about half what I weigh now. That's my mom with me there on the left. Sometimes I forget how short she is. Love you mom! :-) She's lost a lot of weight though and is looking great now days.

Next we have a picture that I'm not too sure about on the age.

This was from the backyard of the last house I lived in with my family before going out on my own. My best guess would be around 2004 - 2005 in the early spring or the fall based on the trees. I have no idea what I weighed at the time, but an educated guess would be in the 450 - 500 lb range.

And now for the worst part of this step for me, what I look like now. I hate so much how I look. My life has so often been defined by how others see me, and how they judge me based on what they see. Within a few days at a new job for instance I can tell how many people just see me as a disgusting blob instead of a person, somebody they don't want to talk to or even sit near, as if being overweight is something you can catch if you touch me or get too close.

Ok, so to be honest, I did actually try to make myself look a bit miserable. :-) I hopefully don't walk around looking that sad every day. But that body is unfortunately all me. It's horrible, and I hate when I have to see it. When I take a shower, shave, etc I always do my best to avoid looking at more than my face int he bathroom mirror. I avoid getting my picture taken as much as possible, and if I have to get my picture taken I try to make sure it's cut off as high on my chest as possible to limit how much of my stomach shows.

This is what I'm fighting against, this weight that's dragging me down. When I close my eyes I still picture myself as that kid from the first pictures, and the sad part is I was already having to shop at big & tall stores at that age. I'm forcing myself to look and accept what I'm seeing now. Not accept it because I want to be happy and content with where I am, but because I can't beat this thing if I can't even admit to myself where I am. So for any haters who might see this at some point when they are trolling the internet, any petty insults you might throw at me have no power. I already think everything about myself that you could say. How could you think you have the power to shame me any more than I already have been in my life. At the age of 30 I had some little kid walk up to me at a 4th of July fair, call me a fat blob to my face, and ask me how I could go out in public, while his parents watched on without a care. Because people who look like me can still be universally reviled and insulted without anyone calling you out for it.

So I say now that I'm not letting any of it have power over me ever again. The negative people can do nothing to me, the negative stereotypes have no hold on my, and that body can't hold me back any more. I will do this, and nothing will stop me, because I know that with my family, my friends, and my God there's nothing I can't do.