The Screaming Belt Loop

It is hard to believe that I have not updated my blog in so long!

August 15, 2012

Well as you can imagine when someone is not updating their health/fitness blog the wheels have fallen off.  That is exactly what happened to me after I got back from the resort after my nice weight loss.  There is no rhyme or reason to it, I just let the stress and anxiety and life take the wheel and as usual I ballooned up.  It has been going on for quite some time and I have been in and out of trying to figure out what to do about it, to just getting depressed and letting the spiral continue.

Why are you updating this now Dwayne, did you find an answer for yourself?

Well the answer to that is “maybe?”

I recently watched the documentary “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead,” and it inspired me to try something really difficult.  The man in this documentary (Joe Cross) was all the things in the title of course and his answer was a juice fast for 60 days to reboot his health and move forward with his life.  Spoiler alert…. It worked for him.  Joe also helped another man find his way in the movie and it was all very inspiring.  A juice fast is an extreme way to gain balance back in someone’s life as far as I am concerned.  However, as I have read before, to create a balance sometimes you have to tip one extreme to the other to find your balance.  Right now my life is unbalanced on the eating/binging side.  I have been medicating all of my problems with food and I think we all know how useful that is.

Another thing that has been building up my desire to change has been listening to the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.  I know that may sound weird to quite a few people, but the guests that Joe Rogan and Brian Redban have on are diverse and almost all are inspirational and interesting in their own way.  Recently they had Mike Dolce (of the Dolce Diet fame, and MMA nutrition consultant) on to talk about health and to help motivate their friend Joey Diaz.  I take something away from all the podcasts which range from crazy conspiracy theories and drugs, to health and wellness and just about everything in between….  Including Sasquatch! Seriously though, one of my rewards when I get to my goal is I plan on treating myself to a trip out to see Joe and Brian perform at the Ice House, and hopefully sign the new shirt I fit into.

My biggest problem mentally right now to losing weight is that I have lost 60 lbs a year for the last 3-5 years… However, guess what?  I gained it back each damn time!  We all know that cycle right?  Well the problem is now losing weight does not motivate me.  The number that I see is a number I have seen 3-5 times now and means I am just re-treading water.  I know this might not make sense to many, but in my mind it makes perfect sense.  I have done this, and failed so many times that the is no sense of success in my first 60 pounds and thinking about re-losing it seems like climbing the same mountain again and just being doomed to fail.  This is the reason the juice fast and reboot methodology is appealing to me.  It allows me to BURN through those 60 pounds and get to some real new territory in the fastest amount of time possible.  I know many of the diet purists out there probably think this is a bad idea, and I hear you.  That is part of the reason I am writing blog posts now and not publishing them since I want to be my only initial critic.

By the time you read this I will be at least 10 days in on my fast.  I  am currently at the beginning of my third day of fasting and I am down to 344 pounds.  HOLY CRAP DWAYNE,  HOW DID YOU GET BACK UP to 344, you were at 300 when you left UTAH!  Exactly people, I gained it back with a gusto!!  On Day 1 of this fast I started my journey (Louis hate word!) at 352.8 pounds.  I have lost almost 8 pounds in two days essentially.  This will slow down to .5 to 1 pound a day by the end of the week, and that is fine.  I will take that.  I am not going to be able to do a full 60 day juice fast because I want to enjoy the family vacation I have planned in September.

The plan is to do this fast for 30-35 days and break my fast for 3-5 days before I go down to Seaside, Florida for a vacation with my wife and children.  My goal is to loose at least 30 pounds and be within striking distance of 300 pounds by the time I get to Seaside.  I think this is possible given the extreme nature of my fast.  The plan for the vacation is to juice 1-2 times a day and eat bad food sensibly while on vacation.  Having a piece of pizza with the kids, or going out for a nice fancy meal with my wife will not get in my way that week.  Once we get back from Seaside is when things get a little tricky.  I plan on juicing AT LEAST until the wedding I am going to in the beginning of October, but logistically I am not sure how I can juice every meal while in Brooklyn for 3-4 days.  Especially considering all the friends and activities of the wedding.  I may go to the juicing breakfast and then try to eat salads for my meals mostly to get through it.  October is going to be rough because we are traveling a ton, but I have bought some external power supplies and stuff so I can juice out of my minivan like Joe Cross did in the movie.  If he can do it I can.  Anyway, that is the broad plan!  My wife has agreed that I can go back to the resort at fitness ridge for 2 weeks when I get to 280 and that is very motivating.  I think I will go to Malibu, but I am not exactly sure yet.  I will cross that road when I get to it.

So onto the fast and how that is going and what exactly I am doing:

I drink 3-5 juices a day which I make with my Jack Lalane juicer!  My morning juice is 16-20 ounces of mostly fruit juice.  A couple of apples, a mango, a carrot or two and some grapes.  I just mix and match, sometimes an orange, whatever it takes to get to the 16+ ounce mark.  That is the best juice of the day usually.  The PLAN calls for an 80% vegetable 20% Fruit mix for the remaining juices of the day.  This is very difficult for me (and others I have read doing the same thing) as I hate the taste of green veggies with no dressing.  Most of the recipes call for celery which I simply am unable to eat in any way.  So far I have been juicing spinach, ginger root, carrots, cucumber and one apple and I have to chug it to get it down.  I am going to start experimenting with some tomato juices without celery in them and cross my fingers.  I fear that until I get used to the veggie taste I am going to be leaning on fruit more then I should.  That is ok though because I am not worried about calories at this point.  A big point of the reboot is to get as many greens in your system as possible to help your system “reboot” and get energized with a ton of healthy chemicals.  I will get to that part, will keep trying to get more of the green in.  It is tough though, don’t let anyone deceive you on that point!  I have also done a few naked juice drinking in a pinch when I was out and had a huge hunger surge.  They are almost all fruit, but no added sugar or bad stuff so it works for the plan.

Now that I have covered what I have been eating as far as how I have been feeling… Well I have been hungry, tired, pissed, stressed and hungry.  Yeah I mentioned hungry twice, what of it?  Also, at the end of my second day I developed an INTENSE caffeine headache from no more coffee or diet cokes.  I miss those drinks a ton.  I hav e allowed myself one green tea a day (REBEL!) and that helps some, but only in the social gratification I get from going to Starbucks to type things like this up.  It at least gives me something to look forward to, as I do not look forward to meal times anymore.

As far as exercise I am taking it easy my first week trying to get through the bad 3-5 days that everyone says you experience in the beginning.  Have you ever started a diet and not had a bad first 3-5 days though?  This is similar to switching to Atkins for me and it feels like a mild flu/cold.  I have to admit that I took some excedrin to get over my headache this morning.  Hope that doesn’t prolong the caffeine withdrawl.  Next week I plan on doing some short kettlebell workouts and working on hiking for our trip in October.  I still do two personal training sessions a week and plan on keeping that up.  It is jogging and basic weight training which is a good base.  I need to push my endurance up and start working on inclines again or I will have zero fun at Natural Bridge!

Anyway, I think that is it for now.  I plan on doing these daily with this being the first.  I am taking daily pictures as well of my progress.  This is the beginning of day 3, which is August 8th.  Not sure if many people will read this when I post all of my updates at once, but at least I have a chronicle of my thoughts and feelings.  To everyone that believes in me still, thank you.

Here is my start photo in my 3XL stretchy shirt.

 

Entry filed under: weightloss. Tags: 30 day juice fast, brian redbad, diet, fasting, fat sick and nearly dead, joe cross, joe rogan, joe rogan experience, joey diaz, juice fast, juicing, kettebell, mike dolce, weight loss, weightloss.