There was an energetic, youthful, and healthy woman. The ravages of time, and a typical American diet took their toll. Until that young woman found herself Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. Yes, this is me - look just to the right, and there I am. It aint pretty. My name is Rachel. I live in Rhode Island. I want you to know that it was VERY difficult for me to post the "before" images you see on the right. I wasn't always so hard on the eyes. I have a great deal of shame about my appearance, but underneath the poor health and fat is a good, kindhearted and generally all around decent person.
I run from cameras. Its difficult to find family photos of me since I have put on the weight. If you are struggling with a weight problem, I'm sure you can relate! I built up the courage to put myself out there and bare all in the hopes that my struggles can help others.
The title of this blog is an allusion to the recently released documentary movie "Fat Sick and Nearly Dead" by Joe Cross. In this movie, Joe, a wealthy Aussie with health issues of his own, leaves the Land Down Under and comes to New York to embark on a 60-day fresh juice fast to reboot his body and taste buds. Why did he choose New York City to take on such an ascetic, albeit temporary, lifestyle? My opinion is that the man has a masochistic streak! Surrounded by hot dog stands, big greasy New York style pizza, food trucks, and gourmet food of every kind wafting through the air, Joe starts his juice fast. At one point in the beginning of his juice fast he even walks into a pizza place - just to look! Yep... masochistic tendencies!
I've read piles of books on food and its consumption. The psychology of food, the sociology of food, the politics of food, the science of food, and the diets. Atkins, South Beach, Ornish. All have thier merits. But there has always been one big issue. My own ability to make the change. As you know, changing habits is hard. Very hard. I have been having starts and stops towards my weight struggles now for about two decades. I wasn't always overweight. It started in my mid 20s when I started soothing negative emotions, ANY negative emotions - with "comfort food". A diet heavy on carbs and processed foods and practically devoid of fruits and vegetables, started to kick in, despite my active lifestyle.
So here I am now - 42, and my life is a complete disaster. I am on disability due to depression, I have the start of Type II diabetes and neuropathy (my toes are numb), I have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high triglycerides. I have a compromised immune system due to my overall poor health. This compromised immune system allows bacteria that is common and all around us to wreak havoc with my skin (slow healing lesions on my face, arms, and back), and has also caused me to be on an intravenous line for two months to fight off an infection that was eating away my shoulder joint last summer. An infection my immune system should have been able to fight off.
Well, enough is enough. In my early 30s I tried to add a bit of fresh juice in my diet with a high speed juicer popular at the time. It was loud, and very wasteful. It ejected too much "juicy" pulp. But the juice was delicious, and I did notice improvements fairly quickly. My health wasn't as bad as now, and I gave up the juicer due to the noise (I had housemates) and the wastefulness. There are new juicers today - they are very quiet. They are called slow-juicers. They do not heat up the juice, and the pulp that is extracted is very dry - like play-doh.
The juicers used in Sick Fat and Nearly Dead are fast juicers. There are better juicers on the market for a comparable price. I am hoping to get my hands on a Hurom slow juicer to start my 60 day juice fast. I cannot afford to buy this juicer (retails at appx. $360.00 on Amazon.com) because I have very little money and am unemployed and on disability (to be discussed in future posts). I live on $700 a month, and an additional $200.00 a month in food assistance. This is why I have put up a donation link. Please, dear reader, any small donation would be greatly appreciated to get me towards my goal. Once I have earned the money to purchase the juicer, I can start my journey and blog about what it is like living on juice for 60 days, post neat juice recipes, and post updated photos of my body as it changes. I do hope you can help, and I hope I can inspire you! Until I have raised the money I need to purchase the juicer, I will post about my food battles.. about how I came to be here and where I have been. Thank you for reading, and stay with me. I hope I can help you in some way to regain YOUR health! Your friend, -Rachel
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Fears
This is the first day I post to this blog and I find myself obsessively looking at stats and any comments, to see if anyone is visiting. I have fears that I don't know what I'm doing, that the blog looks amateurish, that people won't read or care. I have urges to continue to change things around, and feel downright incompetent when I look at the blogs of others. I'm driving myself to distraction trying to figure out how people will even find this blog to read it! I've looked at the blogger site for ways to search for other people's blogs, but can't find a way to do it. Is finding other peoples blogs just a hit-or-miss thing? More questions than answers right now about the technical aspects of being a proud new owner of a bouncing baby blog! Any suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Also, just because Im not sure how this works, and I hope to post several images in the future, this is just a test image within this posting... here goes!
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| The Answer to the American Obesity Epidemic |
Well, that was easy enough! Can't wait to juice these babies and then figure out how to make veggie crackers with the dried out pulp!
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