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.

Day 4 - 284.6

Got up this morning still lost quite a bit more weight.  Can't complain about that at all.  My body's getting much more used to the juice fast at this point as well.  Yesterday was fairly good - i felt good the entire day.  When i get hungry now it's not a big deal anymore either - i just drink some water and i'm good usually - otherwise i grab some juice. One thing I've noticed though in these 3 days.  I haven't really been pooing much.  For a dude my size - going on a juice fast the stuff should be rocketing out of me - at least that's my assumption. Going to do some research today on some juice that'll act like a diuretic - cause i think there's quite a bit in there for me to eliminate.  The first couple of days my pee was like water as well - now it's looking more normal.  Not sure what that's all about either.  At the end of it all i feel really great and it's really nice to have a break from food.  I hope i can continue on this course for the 10 days and from there on to the 30 days.

Day 3 - 288 lbs - 119 cm

Day three is here this is supposed to be the last of my hard days and i'm excited for that.  I'm excited to see if I feel that increased energy I read about.  To be honest i felt a bit of that yesterday - from about 10am-2pm i felt fantastic.  3pm-7pm not so much.  I got on the scale this morning and I'd lost another 3 pounds which is fantastic - i think they say after the first 3-4 days the weight loss slows to about a pound per day which is also going to be just fine with me.  I have to say though there are a ton of benefits to fasting this way other than physical.  I feel my mental abilities being cleansed, my judgment and my spritiuality.  There's something amazing about being forced to say no to a lot of the excesses we usually participate in on a daily basis and i'm hoping i can make it much much further in this journey.  I have been trying to be fairly active this summer but dissappointed how hard it's been I mean I struggled with wake boarding when i've never really struggled before, i feel like i can't breathe that well most of the time and i know when i topped 260 i started snoring.  There are a lot of things i'm looking forward to leaving behind me as i continue on this journey.

Breakfast

Apple Juice

Just went straight apple this morning


Shooting


Sport shooting is in my blood.  My grandfather taught us how to shoot on the range at his house growing up - he was a professional sport shooter - even grabbing the world silhouette shooting title in 1984.  Before him we've got a long line of marksman - dating back to the Berdan sharpshooters in the civil war.  So upon returning from New Zealand last year i was just kind of drawn to it.  Never really had the desire before then.

So  today I shot some of the best groupings i've had since we got back from New Zealand. Here's some photos from the day.  I seriously think the fast is helping me to focus, pretty amazing.  All at 25 yds

Smith & Wesson Model 17-4:  I usually warm up with this gun - it's my mom's gun, inherited from my grandfather and it's really fun to shoot. Today i went to the 25 yard mark and i was very surprised at my groupings.  I seriously think that this fast is doing wonders for my ability to focus.  This is 18 rounds.  

Glock 17: This is what i finish off with.  There's something i really love about the Glock.  It's a fairly simple gun and it's a lot of fun to shoot.  It's also incredibly light - entire thing's made of plastic basically.  Now this one got even crazier as my focus got honed in.  After about the initial 10 rounds the next 20 all went into the same hole basically.  So above is 30 rounds of ammunition.  I was very pleased with that. But excited to get that grouping even smaller.

Lunch:

Watermelon Juice


Dinner:

Beet Juice

Omega J8005

The Omega J8005 is my favorite out of the juicers i've used and owned.  I bought this juicer for my wife when we were in New Zealand and I can't say enough how much i love it but the outlet differences between USA and NZ forced us to sell before we came back.  It's a slow turning mastacising juicer which means that according to hippies it keeps more of the original nutrients in the juice.  I just like it because it can do anything and everything - it even does wheat grass!  It's also very easy to clean and care for.  It doesn't look too shabby on the counter either in all its chrome glory.  These run for around $240-260.  As I start getting back into production in the next couple of months I'll likely buy one for the office. 

The Good:

• Masticating
• Easy to clean
• Comes with a lot of handy parts and cleaning tools
• Looks great in chrome
• Extracts a lot of juice
• Extracts juice even from wheat grass

The Bad:

• None that I can see - at $230 it's right at the sweet spot for a quality juicer

The Champion Juicer

I've got the Champion Juicer. I love it.  It's actually the second Juicer I bought - back in around 2006.  I got home from working on King Kong and I used a juicing/healthly diet to loose about 20 lbs of production weight in 2-3 months.  It was my first real introduction to juicing.  

The good:

• extracts a LOT of the juice from whatever you put through it
• very powerful - can juice almost anything - even grind peanuts!
• if you switch out the strainer for the plastic sheet you can make sorbets, nut butters and a ton of other stuff

The bad: 

• pricey (around $290)
• some people say there are a lot of parts to clean (although honestly it takes about 30-45 seconds to clean it)

The Goal

Where I'm at:

Weighing in at between 295-300 lbs over the last couple of weeks.  

Where I should be:

I'm a fairly big dude - lean body mass is right around 200.  When i trained for a triathalon in college and was in the best endurance shape since i wrestled in high school i weighed about 225 and that's where I'd like to get to again.    In a perfect world I may just continue this juice fast until I get there, but i don't know if i can make it that long. I think that'd be about a 60 day juice fast.  Which is nothing compared to the 4 years of abuse that eating to compensate for the stress of my job has caused.  So we'll see how it goes.  

Day 2 - 291

Woke up and weighed myself - i've dropped 5 pounds overnight.  That's a little bit crazy.  The books said that the first week or so would be drastic weight reduction as you detox and if you continue after that it'd be about a pound a day - i definitely wasn't expecting 5 pounds over night.   Likely "water weight" but that's still a little impressive.  That's a motivator to continue for sure.

Breakfast

Pineapple/watermelon Juice

Watermelon is incredibly sweet and tasty - it's like drinking a vitamin water that doesn't taste like chemicals.  Seriously you juice a watermelon, dilute it down with water and there's not much tastier - i'm very surprised at how sweet it is.

Lunch

Raspberry/Blueberry/Banana

So Audie made this one for me on my way out to a meeting and i didn't realize it was a smoothie rather than juice, but i drank it anyway cause i didn't have much other choice - delicious, but I'm not sure if it's kosher for a juice fast.

The Mexican challenge


We had a business lunch today at a Mexican restaurant - i thought that might have been harder than it was but it wasn't too bad.  For some reason when i decide I'm going to do something, and there's not a lot of wiggle room for error in it I do much better. So i made it through the Mexican lunch without much incident.

Later today we went to the movies - at this point i was fairly tempted.  But made it.  Lots of water helps quite a bit.

I've noticed that i don't really feel too bad to be honest, around 3pm things get a little hairy - so i usually find something to do to distract me like go shooting but other than that it's going great.


Dinner

Pear/Kale/Spinach/Cucumber

The pear really made this green drink not quite as disgusting as the one i had the night before - it was incredible.


Day 2 reflections


The hardest part of this entire thing is the social aspects of a juice fast - that's much harder than the physical constraints of not eating for me.  Chevon was having a hard time tonight because she misses eating dinner together and feels like she's left out of what i'm doing.  With that in mind we're going to continue to have family meal times, but i'll just have my juice while her and Siena have something else. hopefully that'll work.  I also think once we make it through the first few days things will get better. But that brings me back to my biggest worry - the social pressures.  If anything causes me to fail it'll be that, so mentally that's what i'm trying to prepare myself for.

Day 1 - 296

Breakfast


Apple/Pineapple Juice 12 oz

"Apples are also intestinal brooms.  They contain malic acid and galacturonic acid both of which help remove impurities and pictin which prevents the putrefacation of protein."

Pineapple is a strong solvent - it has a purging effect on the liver and gall bladder


Lunch

Carrot/Spinnach/Celery 12 oz

Spinach - protein, vitamin A
Carrot - carrots are great for you, a recent study in the Neatherlands has shown that they can reduce risk of cardiovascular disease when people eat at least 25g per day

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=21

Inbetween Lunch and Dinner

1 liter of water

Dinner

Spinnach/Kale/Carrot/Broccoli 12 oz

Notes at the end of the Day

Today was moderate - around 5pm i REALLY wanted to eat pizza or something but i kept pushing forward. I knew that it was more my habits that wanted food rather than me actually needing it.  I did find that i didn't want to be around anybody after 5pm or so and i mainly just wanted to lie down and relax.  I'm assuming the next few days will be like that as my body adjusts to the new regime.  All in all though it wasn't too bad.  I think i can definitely do the 10 days.

Intro

My name is Tom Mikota.  I'm a VFX/Animation professional and have worked on films like District 9, King Kong and Avatar.  You can see my imdb profile here to see a full filmography.  Anyone aquainted with the vfx industry knows that the production environment isn't the greatest for your health.  A lot of people tackle that in a lot of different ways, and there are many companies out there that really do what they can to offer healthy snacks and meals in the facility.  When it comes down do it though humans just aren't made to work long sessions of 60-100 hour weeks and everybody has their own way of dealing with it.  Mine is consuming high quantities of food to stay awake, motivated, and to forget how bad the situation sucks.

My short term goal is to embark on a 10 day juice fast (which if effective i'll try to extend to 30) to accomplish some of the following:

1. Detox
2. Change bad eating habits
3. Mental and spiritual advantages of a "fast"
4. Kick start the weight loss process
5. Create good eating habits
6. Increase my understanding of properties of different fruit and vegetable juices

I've experienced great results to all aspects of my health through juicing before (this was my method after King Kong as well) but I haven't done a proper juice fast for more than a day or two up until now.