Day 8 - 281

Fell off the wagon last night.  Well, - i had a chicken salad ;)  I was just tired of feeling light headed.  I woke up this morning a bit wiser.  You have to be very careful that you're drinking regularly throughout the day on these juice fasts - i've found that i feel wonderful as soon as i drink juice, but yesterday i went way too long between drinking.  I had breakfast of blueberry juice around 9am and didn't drink again until about 3pm - that really messed me up for the day and by the time i got home around 5:30 I was feeling pretty bad and more juice didn't really help much.  Waking up today though i still didn't have a strong urge to eat anything and actually felt a bit lost in terms of what to put in my mouth.  I had an apple and it felt pretty great but now i really feel like juicing some more.  I'll just listen to my body this week and try to keep going.

Day 7 - 279.0

So I weigh in the morning every day - that's just the habit i got into.  Today i only lost .2 pounds.  Which also isn't bad.  But i will admit i had a protein shake yesterday - i was getting a bit dizzy.  Today i feel great though and i'm going back to raw, fresh produce this week and preparing better for meetings by going with a thermos of juice.  We'll see how this goes.  I feel pretty fine to keep continuing and we'll see how it is once i'm at day 10.

Sunrise Hotsprings - Heber

Last night i spent an hour or so in Sunrise Hot springs.  I thought that the levels of Calcium and Potassium in the water would definitely supplement the juice fast nicely and who doesn't like a good soak in a hot springs.  I mention those two minerals because those are 2 that are hard to come by with juice.  When i got in i almost immediately started to feel the effects.  Almost a high - i could feel the energy going through my body and when i finally got out i just stood there enjoying the effects for a good 15 minutes.  It was like nothing i've felt before.  I know that having nothing in my system and being so sensitive to almost any mineral/nutrient intake had a lot to do with that.

I woke up this morning and the effect was still there.  My skin was completely energized and the effect lasted until around noon.  I have a feeling hot springs and juice fasts are an excellent combo and will have to see if i can get up there at least once per week while fasting.    

Exercise vs. Juice Fast for the overweight & Obese

So this is definitely nothing close to a scientific study.  I will say though that I've run the gamut  of weight loss/health/exercise experiments.  I've trained with body builders & fitness gurus, been a wrestler at 3% body fat, trained for triathlons, and tried a lot of different things with diet.  Here's my experience.

Diet is Everything


No matter how much exercise i've done all significant weight loss comes from what goes in your mouth, not from what goes out your pores.  Just to give you an idea let's do some math.  A guy my size burns roughly 2200 calories per day just by being alive.  Now if i'm eating 3500 calories a day the math says that i'm going to gain weight.  Let say i wanted to keep eating 3500 calories a day but maintain that 2200 calorie level.  That means i need to burn 1300 calories to maintain that intake - every day.  Here's a list of how much excercise that takes for a guy my size:

• Race Walking: 1.5 hours ~ 1200 calories
• Aerobics- General: 1.5 hours ~ 1200 calories
• Bike Racing - .5 hour ~ 1000
• Boxing (in the ring proper fighting) - 45 minutes ~ 1100 calories

You get the picture.  Is it easier to carve out 1.5 hours of walking per day to MAINTAIN a proper body weight and eat whatever i want, or is it easier to simply eat less.  Eating less is a ton easier - i've tried both ways.  

Permanent Change

The real thing here is permanent change.  The juice fast is putting that into perspective. When i diet i usually do really well one week or one day then not so well the next so it's hard to keep that calorie count down - especially during deadlines - mostly because emotionally i eat food to handle a lot of the stress in my life.  The juice fast puts that into perspective.  To successfully push through it you must conquer all your demons.  So far i've been forced to conquer:

• emotional eating
• stress eating
• social eating

In the last 7 days i've come accross all of these and it's been painfully obvious that much of my eating is based on response to external stresses rather than real internal needs.  This is helping me to develop my long term strategy while in a place where i don't even have to think about food.  I think this is one of the really important thigns about juice fasting for overweight and obese people.  The fast gives you a chance to really figure things out while removing food from your life for a short time.  

Day 7 - 279.2

I want to talk about the added benefits i've seen from the juice fast today.  yes, i'm dropping weight like a mad man, but a lot of other stuff is goin on as well.

1. Increased clarity
2. Increased awareness of what i'm putting into my body
3. Increased will power - i've made it through 4 days of amazing food spreads in social situations without eating anything but juice, that's been fairly incredible for me - a huge step.
4. My desire to eat bad food is fairly minimal.  I honestly can't imagine downing a burger at the moment - it's like i think it'd taste really good but am scared to death of how crappy i'd feel after sticking it in my stomach.  
5. It's been a great way to just sit back and take a break from everything for a while.  

Now the question is moving forward what do i want to do.  I'll definitely finish the 10 days.  And i'll see what i want to do from there.  I guess the one drawback i feel at the moment is that I don't feel like I could go out and exercise heavily on my current regime without getting severely dizzy.  I'm not sure if i need more than walking/casual bike riding through this process though.  I'm sure becoming an athlete again can come in its own due time. 

Day 6 - 281.2

So I lost a bit less weight this morning - don't know if that's due to the "Naked" juices or not - we'll see how today and tomorrow go and compare - the books say i should be loosing less weight per day from this point on so it doesn't surprise me that i only dropped 1.5 lbs.   But then again "only 1.5 lbs" is fairly relative, i'll go a week without loosing that much normally.

I'm starting to notice now that people make little comments about the diet - like "you'll gain it all back" etc...  The truth is i might.  But i'd much rather gain weight back from something reasonable, than continue to gain weight when i'm just on the cusp of 300lbs.

I'm feeling great at this point - little dizzy sometimes - 7-9pm is hard for me for some reason, maybe because a lot of my social eating is associated with those hours.  I think a great side effect of this fast is going to be helathy eating in general moving forward.  I don't really know how long i'll do this but hopefully long enough to get me down to a weight where sports are manageable, i stop snorring (that only started when i topped 270) my asthma goes away, and my clothes fit again.

Day 5 - 282.8 - 116.5

Still going good - today was pretty hectic - i drank mostly the "Naked" brand juice as i was in business meetings all day long.  We'll see if that has any effect on my Weight loss tomorrow.  The "Naked" juices are actually decent for an alternative to fresh juice when you're on the road etc...  They do have a lot of pureed fruit - not only fruit juice in them, but other than that i felt fairly good today.  I drank 3 Green Machine and 1 fruit one.

The thing i was very excited about is that i'm actually loosing inches.  My pants are getting big on me - like to the point where they're falling off.  So i'll just keep on trecking forward.