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Fat Sick and Nearly Dead

Last night my wife, daughter, and I finally watched Fat Sick and Near Dead (our son wasn’t interested, playing Minecraft). What a great Dodumentary it was. The whole premise of the movie is the idea of doing juice fasts.

I am not sure if Juice fasting is really fasting as you are getting carbs and protein, and probably a bit of fat but you are in fact getting more micronutrients that you have ever gotten in your life.

What is Fat Sick and Nearly Dead about?


Fat Sick and Nearly Dead

Fat Sick and Nearly Dead

Joe Cross is the maker and how to this film and as it is setup he is suffering from an autoimmune condition where his immune system just fires up and gives him rashes all the time, in addition to this he is quite a few pounds overweight. Starting in New York and driving across the US to California, meeting people, talking about juicing, and not eating anything but only drinking juices for 61 days.

In the end Joe loses about 60 pounds or so and convinces a few people to try his juice with mixed results. One very interesting meeting on the road though was when Joe ran into a trucker with the same problem as him who weighed just over 400 pounds his name is Phil.

Once Joe gets back home to Australia he gets a call from Phil asking him if he can help. Phil has decided that he is very out of shape, unhealthy and scared for his life so Joe Cross flies back to the US to help him out. Phil is just another regular guy and tries that fast, starts exercising and I was super inspired by the way that he took hold of his life.

In the end we get to see two transformations through the power of juicing. I have a bunch of smoothie background now and had next to no juicing knowledge and the great thing about this documentary is that there is a lot of info about juicing, how it works, and why to try it out.

One of the things the movie really teaches us is that Juicing does not have to be a 24/7 lifestyle but instead it is a chance to do a 10 day or even 30 day reboot of your system to fix any toxicity in your body.

The three of us learned a lot and were really inspired by this film. Joe Cross is a really inspirational guy and we loved his story and seeing all the other success stories as well was great. If you have Netflix Fat Sick and Nearly Dead is on there. Watch it! It is really worth the time.


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Breaking through your Barriers

I was listening to a podcast today where the fellow was talking about comfort zones and how to picture them. The way that he explained it was that to be comfortable you need to have a top and a bottom level to your comfort zone and when you get close to either you start to feel uncomfortable.

I have never heard it explained this way. I alway think that we have barriers to break through but in this analogy the guy was saying if you feel pretty good you will grab that piece of cake, if you feel not so good compared to the top of your comfort zone then you will pass on it.

I like cake, but the example is great when we take emotions out of the equation.

So really what you want to do to break through your barrier in this example is to say – “I want to lose 5 pounds, this will be uncomfortable but I will pass on the next 20 pieces of cake to do this”

Does that make sense?

I sometimes stumble personally because I will break down things like this logically. Workout, eating, food type or exercise type decisions are all rational but when the time comes is when the emotion comes. The stress of getting out of that comfort zone.

Getting out of your comfort zone, the way I look at it is simply to hold your breath and jump. There is no way that we are going to avoid stress or discomfort and those really are the emotional side of breaking through your barriers, let that be, know you will be uncomfortable, and do it anyway.

I can give a great example and that is my workout schedule. I love to and know that I have to workout hard and heavy. These workouts make the difference between me being in ok shape and being in great shape. But to do these workouts means that I have to make it to the gym and then once there I need to lift as heavy as I can. I know that there are many excuses that I can make so I try to just set a time to go and then not even think twice about hitting the gym. I know that thinking twice about going to the gym means that I am going to be able to come up with great and useful excuses not to go. Very easy for me to skip with a huge headful of excuses.

Once I hit the gym there are still chances not to give it my all and I have to admit sometimes I don’t get that last rep in our skip the last set.

The important thing to remember though is that everything you do is the most important thing at that moment. If you can just make the little change, just this once, it proves to your brain that change is in fact possible.

So in the end I say this. Figure out what is truly important to change, find out what your real challenge is, you know the thing that makes you scared and nervous, and push through. Prove to your emotions AND your brain that you can push your boundaries that one inch farther.


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Freaky Eaters TV Show

I don’t know how, but my daughter found the Freaky Eaters TV show this weekend on Netflix. I had never heard about this TV show before but it is a classic shocking TLC TV show.

Freaky Eaters TV Show Setup

Freaky Eaters is a 30 minute show that starts with a strange eating problem. The idea is that a freaky eater is someone that eats only one food almost exclusively and do not eat anything else. Some of the episodes we have seen include people that only eat French Fries, Coca Cola, pizza, cheeseburgers (and hid it from his wife), and even not eating any solid food.

The show has two hosts, a psychologist, and a dietician. Dr Mike Dow works on the inner problems that the person deals with and JJ Virgin counsels on what nutrition the person needs to eat to be healthy. They are a great team and have their own people skills that compliment each other so that each can have a great influence on who they are working with.

How an Episode of Freaky Eaters Works

JJ Virgin

JJ Virgin – Nutritionist

The show starts with a family member describing the persons problem. In the case of the person addicted to eating french fries (I just watched it so it is fresh in my mind), the guy eats nothing but french fries and his wife is nervous about it, kids think that he is allergic to all other foods so it does not seem strange to them.

Next Dr Dow and JJ Virgin use “shock therapy” by showing in a warehouse just how much fries and how much fat and oil he was eating in a month or a year. Although the guy was shocked and grossed out about the grease and oil but seeing bags of frozen french fries just made him hungry and thinking about lunch.

The french fry guy has a blog about french fries and wasn’t overweight and skateboarded a lot so when they did some medical tests he was shocked to find out that he had mild heart disease and was more than willing to give up his french fries if that would help.

The team of two goes into action, why don’t you eat other foods? What would you like to eat? Why do you eat this way? In the end they were able to find that he was oversensitive to food tastes and because of this he had a lot of trouble with various foods. By trying little bits of different foods and by experimenting every day the french fry guy was able to kick his single food habit.

A lot to cover in a 30 minute show, isn’t it?

What we get to learn from Freaky Eaters

Dr Mike Dow

Dr Mike Dow – Psychologist

Although the plot of the show is the same every time, problem, shock therapy, confrontation, experimentation, fix! It does not ever go the same way. In the first place almost all the people that have a problem are able to explain it away or do not want to change as they see no problem, by the time they see what they have put in their body they are usually less resistant to change but not always, and usually the medical tests are enough to push people over the edge. In only one case did we see someone not want to change. The thing is though that there is always an underlying issue causing the freaky eating.

One of the things that I have really been able to take away from this show is the idea that people do not want to change but once they have a very good reason they are willing to push through. Support is critical, most of the people have a husband or wife, kids, or other family member that is really hopeful and supportive. Support is so critical and is so often missed by all of us.

Also I like the shock therapy. I have mentioned before that for years I drank a coke and just quit one day when I realized it was bad, this is not normal though, I still eat a chocolate bar every day and if I saw a real visual image of how much crap I put into my body in a year I could quit pretty easily, but now, day to day, I don’t see any good reason to quit chocolate.

Finally is self identity. Most of the people with a problem with a food just look at themselves as a person that is tightly defined by that food. You have probably seen this all over around you, the coffee guy always drinking coffee, the donut eater, the pizza guy, even the water people (not bad but the ones drinking lots and lots of water every day). People need to define themselves so that they know where they stand in the world and to show their individuality, the foods that we eat can easily define us.

I am not sure how I feel about Freaky Eaters. The show itself is interesting and shocking and fun to watch but in the end after a few episodes I think I have seen enough. I am so glad to see that their are people like JJ Virgin and Dr Mike Dow around to help people change their lives for the better.


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