Rebooting my life!

I never used to consider myself out of control, until about a year and a half ago, when through a combination of bad decisions, financial stress, lack of work, and overwhelming stress, I began to gain weight almost exponentially. Food became my escape, my comfort. Many of my daily spending decisions centered around eating and planning what I wanted to eat for the next meal or two.

Now, I had always been an emotional eater, but what happened here goes beyond comfort and into addiction. I ran up tremendous credit card bills and spent money that I could have used for other things, like bills, on food and eating out. I have spent many hours in therapy and in various support groups ranging from Overeaters Anonymous to online support groups. Sure, there were times I felt like I could make a change, and there were even times I started to lose weight, but in the end my will wasn't in it.

Flash forward to June 2012, I'm at my Doctor's Office, and we are going over my blood work and my health overall. He tells me that my cholesterol is 149, which is pretty good considering my size, which we will get to shortly. I had some elevated sugar levels so he recommended that I consult with the Endocrinologist. Now, this means that it's likely that I'm either Pre-Diabetic, or that I have full blown Type II Diabetes. It's also around this time that my lower legs and feet began to swell up dramatically.

Flash forward to Mid-July 2012. My health is shot. I have Sleep Apnea, Hypertension, Lymphedema, Type II Diabetes, and weigh in at over 440 lbs. which makes me morbidly obease. At this point I couldn't walk very far without being in either pain or discomfort nor could I stand up for very long without feeling pain in my back. My quality of life was abysmal to say the least. Little was I to realize that the switch that I needed, the motivation that I so desperately wanted would flash on TV.

During the last week of July, I finally got around to checking out this website www.jointhereboot.com where, filmmaker Joe Cross posted "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" a documentary that chronicled his journey towards a healthy lifestyle. I cried as I watched this movie as there were parts of it that clearly hit home, especially during the story of Phil Staples and his journey towards better health.

So I made a commitement to myself, and my family, and now to you. I would follow in the footsteps of Joe and Phil and begin a juice fast setting careful goals along the way to help keep me motivated. I am very proud to say that on Saturday, August 4, I purchased my Breville Juicer and prepared to say farewell to solid foods for 60 days.

Sunday morning, August 5, I began my journey down the road to better health. As I write this, it is currently 12:30 pm on Wednesday August 8, and I am going strong. Still there are the things I was prepared for. I am at times very hungry, and at other times I can feel the cravings for fast food and junk food very intensely. To deal with that I keep checking in on the Join the Reboot Forums and read what everyone else is doing and it steels my resolve to make it though another day. I know it will get easier, I've been dealing with the effects of detoxification and the occasional feelings of doubt, but I know now matter what, it's better than living in pain and not being able to do the things that any normal 35 year old man should be able to do.