Introductions

This is my first post on this Blog, so let me introduce myself.  My name is Randy, I just turned 54 years old, and I live in a mid-western metropolitan area.  I grew up around here, and now live in a neighboring town to my 'hometown'.  When I was young, I was a nerd - but enjoyed sports anyway.  I played tennis on my High School team, and soccer on a travelling youth league team.  That was a long time ago.  Now, my health is poor - I have type II diabetes, I have heart disease (4 MCI's over the past 6 years), I am way overweight, I had a bout of pancreatitis that nearly killed me a few years ago, I'm out of shape, and experiencing the onset of what may be psoriasis, arthritis, and other maladies.  I have to take insulin, and 9 different pills daily.  I am married, with 3 fully grown kids (meaning out of the house and on their own), 2 kids still at home, a bevy of grandkids, a large extended family and a church family.

The reason I am starting this blog is really due to my health.  In the past couple of weeks, it became very clear to me that I HAVE to change something.  Things are only getting worse and if I don't' change things it will end up killing me.  Maybe not next week or next year, or maybe so.  I want to enjoy a life full of activity, family, friends and all that joyful stuff.  Right now, it is getting more and more difficult to do that, because my health continues to suck more and more deeply.

Triggers

So, what kicked me into deciding to do something about it ?  If I have been slowly getting fatter and less healthy over years and years, made numerous trips to the hospital, and so far this hasn't been enough - then what impacted me enough to say "I'm going to change things" ?  Well, it was a button, along with other things that all happened within the span of a few days.

The Film

A few weeks ago I watched a film over Netflix called 'Fat Sick and Nearly Dead'.  In it this guy is just like the title, and he goes on a 60-day 'juice fast' to combat his condition.  Now, I"m not going to be blogging about juicing because I dont' think that is the right answer for me (but my mind could change on that matter). I was very impressed, though because of one thing - this guy lost SCADS of weight in 60 days - but at the end he didn't look like anyone I've ever known who crashed their weight quickly.  The people I've known have come out of the end of those high weight loss periods looking like they are half-dead, gaunt and ashen.  This guy was practically glowing with health at the end of his 'fast'.  Not normal.  The ideas about healthy eating this film promoted kind of percolated in the back of my mind for a while.

The Weight

A week or so after my 54th birthday, I went to a physical at work.  Routine yearly kind of thing - they took blood, urine, BP, etc.  I was shocked when I got on the scale and it read 248 pounds.  This was they heaviest I had ever been.  Maybe that isn't a shocking number to most folks, but I thought I was doing OK.  But every year, my weight has been increasing.  What I was doing (which admittedly wasn't much) was not turning it around, it was only getting worse.  My tummy looks like an inverted punch bowl.  I've got man-boobs.

The Numbers

Later that same week, the numbers came back on my physical.  I have been pretty used to seeing things like high cholesterol, high blood pressure and high triglycerides, and I'm on medication for all of these things.  So I had low HDL (23), High Total Cholesterol/HDL (6.3), and my A1C was 8.2.  Not good.  I've been worse, but this wasn't any better than my last physical.

The Friends

A family we are friends with at church had a serious medical problem.  One of their boys was diagnosed with Lyme's Disease.  It took a long time to get the diagnosis, and the disease had progressed.  Once they had the diagnosis and medical treatment was underway, they also (having seen the film 'Fat Sick and Nearly Dead') started their son on a vegetable and fruit juicing diet.  This has had amazing results - easily seen by anyone who has known this family for a while.  Their boy is thriving, regaining much of what he lost and just casting off the negative symptoms of the disease.  They have tried to impress upon me how significant they believe that the diet has been in his recovery.

My Cousin and The Book

I heard from my cousin that she was trying this plan from a book called 'Eat to Live' by Dr. Fuhrman.  She thought it was helping her health issues.  It seemed it had a lot of the same things to say that the film and my friends had to say.  So I looked into it, then bought an electronic copy to read on my Android Kindle app.

Reading this book has re-enforced the ideas of the movie, but in a less radical way.  I liked the fact that it said that starting out by replacing some of your diet with the plan was OK. That you could ease into it, transitioning from your 'toxic diet' as Dr. Fuhrman describes it, to a 'nutritarian' diet (a word Dr. Fuhrman claims to have coined) over a period of time.  That sounded like something I could do, and maybe get my whole family on board with it, to boot !

Biblical Evidence

I also remembered, during the course of these things happening, that there is a biblical account that corroborates this eating plan.  In Daniel 1:8-16 the story of Daniel and his tribe-mates and their diet is told.  I'll let you look it up if you wish, but I found this also working together with the other events in my life to lead me to making a decision.

The Button

After all these things had happened, and there were thoughts of completely changing my diet churning around in my head, my family was getting ready for church one Sunday morning.  Our church is pretty casual, and wearing a good pair of jeans is normal for a worship service.  One of my pair of jeans is a little tighter than the others, but it was the only clean pair I had.  As I was getting dressed, I found that I was having difficulty drawing the waist together in order to button it -I just couldn't quite get it closed.  So I requested assistance from my wife.  She added her efforts to mine and we got it buttoned !  I buckled my belt and we went about our normal Sunday AM bustle of getting ready.  When I collected my shoes, sat down and bent over to put them on, an unusual thing happened: the waist of my jeans suddenly got looser ! The button had pulled apart, the rivet had given away and now there was no button at the top of my fly - just a piece of brass that no longer had a purpose.  Boy, was that embarassing !  At least it happened while I was still at home and had a chance to change into something else !

That pretty much did it - I was going to change my health.

Thank you for reading.  My next post will talk about the challenges of selling this idea to my family, and what obstacles I encounter along the way.

Hope you come back !