Well it's day 3 of my 10-day juice fast. Which is also day 3 of my 100 days of He@@, my focus on fitness and nutrition. Since I'm getting into the flow of juicing (no pun intended), I thought it would be a good time to blog about juicing.
Juicing is not for everyone, let me just say that first off. Too bad, though, because there are a lot of health benefits related to juicing. One of the absolute best things that juicing does is to give our digestive systems a "rest" from all the stuff we've been throwing down into it. Think about it, if you have a sore shoulder, you try to give it a rest, right? But not our digestive system. We keep pouring crap down into it, year after year. No wonder the antacid market is booming. Now some of us eat better than others, but even good things make a digestive system have to work. Juicing requires very little work by our digestive system. Within roughly half an hour, the nutrients supplied by a juice have been readily absorbed into our system. Barely enough time for our digestive system to have a cup of coffee. Which incidentally, probably would take longer to digest than a juice. This is why juice fasts are often called "cleansing detoxs." Juices aren't adding any harmful foods that lead to toxins.
Also, our bodies are like machines. Just the normal activities that we do expend energy and burn calories. Digesting food takes energy. A good meal can take several hours to digest. As mentioned before, a juice takes about 30 minutes. So now the hours that were expended before to simply digest the food are now off doing great things, like burning fat. That's how juice fasts help one to lose weight.
What I do hate about juicing, however is the clean up. One thing that the unhealthy western diet has over the healthy diet is convenience. But in the long run, it's more than worth it. The best time to drink a juice, for nutritional value, is immediately upon juicing. Juices that sit do lose their nutritional content. One way I combat this is to freeze a lot of my juices. Today I did enough juicing for two days, and froze all of the juices that I'll be drinking tomorrow.
I first started juicing after watching the film "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead." I would encourage everyone to watch it. It's very true to life and quite moving. I was touched by the stories of both Joe Cross, and especially Phil the trucker. You don't have to be juicing or thinking about juicing to enjoy this film. My first 10-day juice fast surprised me in how quickly I lost weight, and how good I felt afterwards. I thought it would be a perfect way to start out my 100 days, and it has been. I plan two more juice fasts along the way, only they will only be 5 days each.
I bought my Breville juicer on Amazon for $100, and a second one too. That one is back in Colorado. I was quite concerned about some of the reviews I read. Not about the juicer, but about juicing. One reveiwer spoke of the health risks people face when coming off a juice fast, even resulting in death. That was scary. What you have to remember when coming off a juice fast is that your digestive system has been pn a vacation, and it has to be eased back in its 24/7 job. Your first few days back should have easily digestable foods. For me, that was oatmeal.
As I mentioned, weight loss seems to easily accompany juice fasts, when I make sure not to cheat by eating nuts or other fatty (but healthy) foods. In two days I've lost 7 pounds and I look forward to getting on the scales tomorrow. Thanksgiving will soon be but a pleasant memory.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Experience, Confidence, Selfishness?
I am in a bit of a recovery period. I had thought by now I would be well into my plan of "100 days of H-E-*-*," plan to go extreme into diet and exercise. Unfortunately, I was sidelined by a little thing called a kidney stone. Instead of increasing my time spent working out and intensifying my efforts to eat correctly, I had to back off. Way off. Exercise? I was told to take it easy. Diet? Believe me, when you feel the way I felt, fixing food is an effort. You eat whatever you can, that which is easy. And usually easy just isn't that good for you.
But I'm starting to make my way back. Today I did 50 good minutes on the elliptical. As a reference, usually I do 60 minutes a day, and my all-time high is 88. But 60 is what I like to do, as it does not leave me depleted and I can even return to work out on weights later in the day.
There are several times when my workouts have been interrupted, usually due to travel. This is the first time, and hopefully the last, that it was interrupted by a physical ailment. So instead of blogging about the 100 days, or fish oil pills (that'll come, I promise), I instead will take advantage of this unique opportunity about the psychological effort required to start up again.
I've said this time and time again, that starting (or re-starting) is so much more difficult than just continuing with a program. I know it's sounded strange to some when I'll say the 30 minutes I did on a start up day were so much more difficult than the 80 minutes I might have done last month, but it's true. So I hope what I might take from this is to never discontinue my efforts. Usually travel is what causes an interruption, but I now believe I must make accomodations to continue my efforts. Starting up is a bear!
But because I've had to stop and start again so many times, I do have extreme confidence that I will be succcessful in my endeavors. Experience leads to confidence. Confidence leads to success. Simple enough. But here's the caveot: Experience is the sum of both our successes and our failures. Experience is learning what's working, what's not, dealing with our failures, and pushing on through. Nobody likes to fail. But how you deal with failure ultimately will dictate your future. Take your ball and go home? Well, good luck having any success with that attitude. Learn what adjustments you have to make to turn failures into successes. That's the winning plan.
Finally, you have to be selfish when dealing with your own health. You have to be. Few like to consider themselves selfish in any area, but in this arena you must grant yourself that. You have to give yourself the time and the resources to be successful, whatever they may be. Some may be extravagances, some might not work, but you can not deem yourself too selfish to not even give it a try. Your health is the one thing you have to be selfish about. Here's the reason why. Without it, you can do very little of the things in life you want to do, and that may include many unselfish things you want to do or have to do for others. So if you consider yourself an unselfish person, then back that up by being selfish about your health.
But I'm starting to make my way back. Today I did 50 good minutes on the elliptical. As a reference, usually I do 60 minutes a day, and my all-time high is 88. But 60 is what I like to do, as it does not leave me depleted and I can even return to work out on weights later in the day.
There are several times when my workouts have been interrupted, usually due to travel. This is the first time, and hopefully the last, that it was interrupted by a physical ailment. So instead of blogging about the 100 days, or fish oil pills (that'll come, I promise), I instead will take advantage of this unique opportunity about the psychological effort required to start up again.
I've said this time and time again, that starting (or re-starting) is so much more difficult than just continuing with a program. I know it's sounded strange to some when I'll say the 30 minutes I did on a start up day were so much more difficult than the 80 minutes I might have done last month, but it's true. So I hope what I might take from this is to never discontinue my efforts. Usually travel is what causes an interruption, but I now believe I must make accomodations to continue my efforts. Starting up is a bear!
But because I've had to stop and start again so many times, I do have extreme confidence that I will be succcessful in my endeavors. Experience leads to confidence. Confidence leads to success. Simple enough. But here's the caveot: Experience is the sum of both our successes and our failures. Experience is learning what's working, what's not, dealing with our failures, and pushing on through. Nobody likes to fail. But how you deal with failure ultimately will dictate your future. Take your ball and go home? Well, good luck having any success with that attitude. Learn what adjustments you have to make to turn failures into successes. That's the winning plan.
Finally, you have to be selfish when dealing with your own health. You have to be. Few like to consider themselves selfish in any area, but in this arena you must grant yourself that. You have to give yourself the time and the resources to be successful, whatever they may be. Some may be extravagances, some might not work, but you can not deem yourself too selfish to not even give it a try. Your health is the one thing you have to be selfish about. Here's the reason why. Without it, you can do very little of the things in life you want to do, and that may include many unselfish things you want to do or have to do for others. So if you consider yourself an unselfish person, then back that up by being selfish about your health.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
You Have To Own It
There are many places I could start on this blog. So many things to talk about, from what kind of veggies we should all be including in our diet, to the exercise we do, to managing our time, the list just goes on and on. But I want to start with a conversation I had just a few weeks ago with my dear sister Paula. Once again, she lamented my situation with my eyesight, and how unforunate it was that I had become (legally) blind in my left eye, and had lost some sight in my right eye as well. My sister is a very sweet person, both sympathetic and empathetic. She has said the same thing to me several times over the last few years, just wishing that something would come along to alieve my ailment. It was, she said, so unfair that I had had this happen to me. This time, I tactfully disagreed. No one did this to me, I countered. I did this to myself.
I went on to explain that I believed, in large part, that my condition had been brought on by my own diet. No one had forced me to eat fatty foods, for years, that would only clog and harden my arteries. No one but me had opted to ignore all warning signs. No one but me chose to ignore maintaining any type of exercise program that might have lessoned the effects of a disastrous diet.
No one wants to be fat. No one wants to be unhealthy. However, few look towards themselves in accepting the responsibility for getting fit, for getting healthy. So many want to find a secret pill, read the diet book that unlocks the mysteries. From my point of view, this basic human weakness has resulted in a billion dollar industry that preys on the weak. And when the pill fails, when the book fails, we have a convenient scapegoat. This pill didn't work at all---they just ripped me off. That book made no sense at all. So we try another pill, read another book. And the cycle continues.
Here's how I view my own condition. I made myself this way. I ate the food. I ignored the signs. I rationlized and excused myself from doing the exercising. It took years, but I finally made it to 252 pounds. I did that. And it was up to me to undo it. No a pill and not a book. Me.
I went on to explain that I believed, in large part, that my condition had been brought on by my own diet. No one had forced me to eat fatty foods, for years, that would only clog and harden my arteries. No one but me had opted to ignore all warning signs. No one but me chose to ignore maintaining any type of exercise program that might have lessoned the effects of a disastrous diet.
No one wants to be fat. No one wants to be unhealthy. However, few look towards themselves in accepting the responsibility for getting fit, for getting healthy. So many want to find a secret pill, read the diet book that unlocks the mysteries. From my point of view, this basic human weakness has resulted in a billion dollar industry that preys on the weak. And when the pill fails, when the book fails, we have a convenient scapegoat. This pill didn't work at all---they just ripped me off. That book made no sense at all. So we try another pill, read another book. And the cycle continues.
Here's how I view my own condition. I made myself this way. I ate the food. I ignored the signs. I rationlized and excused myself from doing the exercising. It took years, but I finally made it to 252 pounds. I did that. And it was up to me to undo it. No a pill and not a book. Me.
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