Recommit

I ate so many things that a gluten-free vegan would not have eaten over the weekend. So. Many. Things.

And my gut knows it. I don't feel exactly fabulous. 

So last night I decided to watch yet another food documentary. You know, there are dozens of them, these documentaries that go on and on about the evils of corn and wheat and meat.

But the documentary I found last night was different.

It was about something near and dear to my heart: Juicing.

It was called Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. It was made by an Australian dude, Joe Cross, who has an autoimmune disease that requires him to take prednisone and other awful medications, and which causes hives to break out all over his body.

So he decided to go on a 60 day juice fast.

First of all, hats off to Joe. I did 21 days on a gluten-free vegan cleanse, and nearly went mad. What I'm wondering is: Is it easier to just do a juice fast? Because then you're not eating; food is not an option so why even bother thinking about it. I don't know.

So anyway. Joe starts off pretty overweight -- I think he weighed in at 309. By the end of the 60 days he'd lost 70-something pounds, and then after continuing on with a veggie/nuts/legume type of diet, he'd lost more than 90 pounds. He felt great, looked great, and most importantly he'd basically "cured" himself. He was off his medications and wasn't suffering any of the hive breakouts.

In the documentary, he gets a couple of other people to try the juice fast, and they have spectacular results as well. Not just weight loss -- they seem happy, energized, and their faces are glowing.

Their doctors say this is a perfectly healthy thing to do. Back in the caveman days, we weren't feasting on three meals a day -- we were just eating food when it was available. The body would store fat to live on in dry times. Not to mention that getting food was a much more strenuous exercise than it is these days, when I park my car at the accursed Whole Foods and lazily browse well-stocked aisles for my next snack.

It's making me realize that juicing should probably be part of everyday life for me. Even though I don't LOVE green juice, it's loaded with so many nutrients and makes you feel pretty damn good. If you drink green juice first thing in the morning, it goes straight to your intestines and the nutrients get absorbed right away. And it will scrub out all the dirty nasty junk that's been rotting in your colon. 

It's also making me realize I'd been going about weight loss completely wrong, for years. About a decade, actually. I'd subscribed to the low-carb, high-protein method of weight loss for so long, and completely ignored the fact that my body probably needed and wanted nutrition it wasn't getting.

Yeah, I managed to lose a ton of weight eating low carb, high protein meals, but I hardly ever had a salad and I honestly felt terrible. I've wondered for years why I never felt quite right when I was the most "in shape" I'd ever been. I was depressed, exhausted, and suffering from heart palpitations and occasional hives. It's only a guess, but I think maybe it was because my body wasn't getting the micronutrients it needed. 

Should I follow that sentence with a big, "Duh"?

Some day I might have it all figured out. I feel like I'm closer. But even if I do know all the tips, the tricks, the secrets to thinness and energy and longevity -- can I stick to a plan that will result in those things? When there are chocolate cupcakes and lasagna in the world? I can't, strictly. Obviously. But I hope to achieve a "most-of-the-time" lifestyle. 

(Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead is streaming on Netflix. You can also watch the trailer here.)