What Better Time Than Now? - My Healthful Endeavor

Pre-Juice Fast

As Zack de la Rocha passionately whispered: “It has to start somewhere.  It has to start sometime.  What better place than here?  What better time than now?”  Recently, I've decided to embark on an endeavor and, with some friends, have created Fastest Men Alive.  I’ve decided to make a change, starting with a juice fast.  I’ve been thinking about that line a lot lately.  Especially as my inner voice is suggesting that perhaps we should wait and try starting this maybe sometime later, when we’re good and ready.  Instead, I've started it this week.

Why am I doing this?  A number of reasons.  Essentially I’m in my mid/late 30s and sick and tired of being sick and tired.  I’ve been suffering from acid reflux for over 15 years.  The last couple of years it’s gotten significantly worse.  Insufferable.  It’s really affecting my quality of life.  After trying every OTC medication that I knew of, I had begun  researching some natural treatments.  In that process, I asked Jeremy for his thoughts.  It was then that he suggested that I try doing a juice fast.  Eric followed by sharing his experiences of juicing and the idea was born.  I was going to give it a try in an effort to reset my system and change some habits.

I’ve been a chiropractic patient of Dr. Daniel Gonzalez for a  while and love his philosophy of “Move well, eat well, think well”.  I’ll admit, I never really been the epitome of health though I’ve gone through cycles of being more or less healthy over the years.  Thing is, I don’t eat vegetables.  I’m even allergic to some.  Others, I just don’t like.  I try (read: want but actually don’t) to eat those that I can because I know the more that I consume the better it will be for me.  I just don’t.  I’m really hoping that juicing will be a better, more efficient and consistent way to add a lot of veggies to my diet.

I’m somewhat of a “foodie”.  I like good food and enjoy appreciating the finer culinary arts.  Ultimately, I don’t want to give up food.  I can’t see myself becoming a “food is a fuel only” type person.  I do think I can be more selective; have more moderation.  I can learn to consume less of the “finer foods” and appreciate all the more when I do.

I’ve been “moving well” lately by adding a more structured exercise routine to my life.  I’ve been “thinking well” by focising on my overall outlook, relationships, and working to become a more integrated mane with more of an “outside-in” perspective.  Now I need to “eat well”.  Am I going to become a vegan or vegetarian?  Probably not.  I don’t think that’s for me.  But I am hoping to significantly alter my eating habits.  My standards are going to go up.  I want to eat only the best of the best.  And probably significantly less of it.   I might lose weight while doing this.  I most likely will.  Though that's not my goal or reasoning for doing this.  I'm looking for long term changes along with immediate relief.  I'm looking to shock my system and out of that, create a more healthful lifestyle.

I want to enjoy life!  Where is it written that that translates to eating as much crap as you want?  If I am nearing the second half of my life, I want to make it count.

How about instead of being subject to my condition and just "dealing with it", I control my health and happiness?
"We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution." -- Bill Hicks

How about instead of resigning to the fact that I am reaching middle age and accepting that I just get fatter, slower, more tired, sicker, my body breaks down, I lose motivation, I'm just accepting of the way things are and what everyone else tells me they should be, I take my power back?

How about I (pardon the expression) get my balls back and decide I'm actually going to live?  To borrow from and paraphrase Stephen King, I AM going to make the choice to get busy living instead of getting busy dying!

That is my hope, my wish, my intention for embarking on this endeavor.  I am prepared that I could get a lot more out of.  I could not make it through.  We’ll see.  I plan on documenting my experiences to help hold myself accountable.  I guess we’ll see.  What better place than here?  What better time than now?

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone." -- Pablo Picasso

My shiny new juicer with garden fresh fruits & veggies

You can track my (and the rest of the group's) progress as well as see what we're about here.  We're also on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

Meet George Jetson and his Iced Tea

I was always a big fan of the Jetsons as a kid.  I loved to see the new technology that they imagined.  It was always fun looking to the future and imagining what our life would be like.  Looking back, it's funny that it seems science fiction never really imagined the cell phone.

Technology always made the Jetsons lives better.  Arguably, perhaps "too better".  Since it is, of course, only a cartoon, everyone always looks happy and healthy.  The reality is that people of that world, or at least those in the US of that time, would probably be like those people floating in the chairs in Wall-E.

I'm a fan of technology that makes our lives better.  I know that there are some scary things about technology as well.  Facebook knows a great deal of personal information about us.  (Never mind that we willingly volunteered that information).  The big Google "boogey man" knows what city I live in and what web sites I might go to.  (I'm comforted by the fact that I'm not so interesting that anyone gives a rip about what I do).  Robots are being developed to mimic natural behavior, like the BigDog Beta.  SkyNet is a near reality, as evidenced by these freaky things that are completely autonomous.


But there are some technological that make our lives better.  The internet, for one.  Believing that it doesn't is like "guns kill people" and "credit cards get you into trouble".  It's people that make the bad decisions, and we always have.  (Of course, those with that belief are probably not online reading this anyway).  Cell phones have become an integral part of everyone's ensemble.  Yes, they can be a distraction but again, it's all in how you use it.  BluRay and HD TV makes us wonder how we did so long without them.  Watching 2001 on Blu-Ray and having the surround sound shake my windows during "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" is probably the closest I'll ever get to experiencing seeing that movie for the first time.  And, most especially, Single Cup Coffee Makers.  These things are amazing.  I have a Keurig  and there are many others like Tassimo and many of the major appliance makers have their versions of those.

I love the concept.  You simply place a single serve cup in the machine, push a button, and viola, hot coffee.  Just like on the Jetsons.  I like coffee, but I don't need a lot.  I drink a cup and it's usually on my way out the door.  I usually only drink a cup in a day.  My wife doesn't like coffee.  With the Keurig, we don't have to make a full pot.  Every morning it turns on automatically, I push a button, and we're in business.  My wife occasionally drinks a cup of tea and she doesn't have to boil whole pot.  Nor does she have to wait for water to boil since it brews in a couple of minutes.

This concept has now been taken to a whole new level.  It now goes to 11!  My single cup coffee maker now makes single serve sweet iced tea.  This is earth shattering for me.  I may only drink a cup of coffee in a day, but I drink a lot of iced tea.  Sweet tea, at that.  And I try to be pure about it by sweetening my tea with  all natural evaporated cane juice rather than artificial sweeteners.  I thought that I would be severely disappointed with the K-Cup sweet tea.  Surely it's high-fructose corn syrup, saccharin, or some other cancer-causing-terrible-for-you chemical.  It's bad enough I'm consuming all of that caffeine, I don't need to add to it.  To my elation, Celestial Seasonings Southern Sweet Perfect Iced Tea is sweetened with evaporated cane juice and stevia.

This truly is technology that makes our lives better.  Or, it makes mine better anyway.  Now, we're not quite to the level of Capt. Picard just stating "Earl Grey, hot!" and out slides a hot cuppa tea.  However, considering I can talk to my phone and tell it to get me "un-lost" or find a dry cleaners we can't be that far off.  And to you my new friend Celestial Seasonings Southern Sweet Perfect Iced Tea, I can only say "Eep Opp Ork Ah-ah"!