Engineer, Life Hacker, Traveler, Entrepreneur

I love this video especially this re-edit of this video. It adds so much perspective to life on our lonely little planet called earth.

I never thought I’d make it this far, it’s been 27 days and I’m still kicking and going strong. I feel amazing, and I’m able to wear clothes I haven’t worn in a long time. It’s Friday here and on Tuesday I’ll be getting myself bod-podded, so I’ll be going a couple days “over” 30 just for completeness. As you can see it only take approximately a couple weeks to make your cholesterol numbers change dramatically on this Juice Fast, Juice Diet whatever you want to call it.

After my 30 days I plan on eating veggies, fruits for two weeks and I’m going to start eating salmon. Carbs and sugars (other than the stuff that’s in smoothies are out). I miss lifting weights and am anxious to see how much strength I’ve lost. As with anything, I’m going to have to ease into lifting and working out intensely again, but that’s to be expected whenever you take a long break from doing a routine.

I highly recommend everybody at least trying this, and I know I’m going to incorporate “fasting” as part of my yearly routine. Religions practice it out of habit and devotion, but maybe there’s something to it? Maybe they found out early on that people that practice fasting actually live longer than those who don’t? (Science HAS proven that). Anyways I’ll keep people posted as to the overall results of everything when that day comes. (3 days!)

Huge update on the “Juice Fast”. While the weight and body mass stuff was interesting, I think you’ll be shocked more about these numbers.  I was eating a typical diet of Subway and Chipotle for 2 months when I got these first numbers:

9/3/2013 (start of juice diet 2 days before)
Total Cholesterol: 246 Needs to be <200
Triglycerides: 190 Needs to be < 150
LDL (bad stuff): 176 Needs to be <100
HDL (Good stuff): 33 Needs to be >40
A1C: 5.7 should be below 6.5

9/20/2013 (20 days in)
Total Cholesterol: 153 Improvement of -93..
Triglycerides: 88 Improvement of -102.. LDL (bad stuff): 104 Improvement of -72…
HDL(Good stuff): 31 loss of 2 points…
A1C: 5.4 getting better (that’s a measure of the amount of sugar in your blood levels.

My HDL levels have always been low, most likely a genetics thing. (and it’s tied closely to activity level, and I haven’t been doing anything “activity” wise).

Take away: In 20 days of “juicing” I’ve lost 8lbs of fat, made my blood amazing, am full of energy. So looks like the guys on Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead aren’t talking out of their asses. There might be something to this.

I’m sure that everybody is excited to hear from me. I am also excited because I got bod-podded today. I know I outlined some of my expectations in my earlier posts, but one of the real reasons I wanted to try this “juice diet” or “juice fast” or whatever you want to call it, was to see exactly what happens to a human body when it goes through this type of diet. I’ve read tons of blogs and tons of people who say they’ve done it and they love the feelings and they feel great and cleansed but what is the cost? I mean other than not being able to eat the candy bar of meats (yes, bacon). There had to be some sort of cost, it can’t be all just beneficial. So that’s why I decided to look at this a little bit more scientifically.

I respect Timothy Ferris (author of The 4-Hour Workweek) and his way of turning everything into an experiment and trying to figure out things empirically. I think that is one of the best ways to live life. So I decided to tackle my weight loss in the same manner. What I was doing before wasn’t working so I decided after watching Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead to see what would happen to me on the juice diet. On thing that really bothered me was every blog and every video only did weight, not body composition.

So I started off on this juice journey full bore on September 1st, and 3 days in I got bod-podded, and I decided every two weeks until the end of the month I would get bod podded again to see what had happened to my body. Below you can see the results between my first bod pod and my second:

I was a little ashamed to show the results because having a 46% body fat percentage is pretty embarrassing, but it is what it is. What’s interesting as one can see is that while I did lose fat, I also lost lean mass. While this was surprising, I was disappointed at what I had seen. Before this “diet” I was approximately 2% higher than average when it came to lean mass, (a feat I give credit to the 5×5 strength training program) but only after 2 weeks it seems like I lost that.

So take all of this with a grain of salt, I’m not counting calories as maybe I should. I’m also not exercising. So there’s a lot that can explain that lean mass loss, one possibility is that it could be the excess “waste” that was still in my system from before but only time can tell what will happen to me. For the next two weeks I do plan on jogging and doing light cardio and weights to see how that affects the results next time. I also plan on continuing this “juice diet” for the entire month of September so we will see how it works out when I get bod-podded again.

Wow, I can’t believe that it’s been 9 complete days where I haven’t had solid food in my system. It’s pretty nuts.

So when the people in the documentary say that after the first couple days you have tons of energy, that’s actually true. I have tons of energy, and when I sleep I sleep for a good while. I have started experimenting with various juice flavors as I still haven’t found a “green” mix that I can tolerate for large amounts of time.

So I have been losing weight and according to my fitbit scale it seems to be mostly body fat. I started with ~43% body fat and now it is sitting at ~38%. So it does seem to not be effecting my muscle mass. I will post the real numbers from my bod-pod session next Tuesday.

I’m sure some of you are wondering about other bodily functioning, and I will have to say that my pooping cycle has slowed now. Where I was ejecting waste approximately twice a day, it it more like once every 2 to 3 days if I’m lucky. Also now my stools are a lot more solid and they aren’t as scary. The first three weeks after juicing beets and drinking that stuff down your stool will literally scare the crap out of you (pun intended).

Another thing I have experimentally determined is that this diet is a ketosis style diet, but I think it’s not as ketosis inducing as say the atkins diet. If you don’t understand what ketosis is then I suggest you go over and look at the Wikipedia page it gives a pretty good explanation, but basically when you’re body is in ketosis it uses up stored fats to run of off. I know my body is in ketosis because I use keto-styx throughout the day to measure my ketosis levels. I noticed this around day five, as I wasn’t in ketosis yet during the first weeks. I’m sure this explains the rapid weight loss after the initial five days.

So there you go, I’m still kicking, exploring different juice variations and I even have a system now. I’ve learned that harder fruits and veggies like apples, oranges, lemons, carrots can last in the fridge for three weeks while softer fruits like pineapple, tomatoes, red peppers, kale, celery, etc can only last in the fridge for one week or less. So my system now is everything below the bottom shelft I replenish or throughout every three weeks, everything on the top shelf in my fridge i gotta use up quickly. Makes life easy, also when I get around to actually setting up my safeway account I’ll just have it auto shop for me at set intervals freeing up more time to do other activities like clean my juicer.

Anyways, there you have it days 5 to 9. I’ll make sure to post how everything is going and if I hit any snags, but it seems like things are pretty smooth right now. If any of you are juice fasting out there, I wish you the best of luck, and would like to hear from you down in the comments section.

It is day four of this wonderful experiment that I have decided to embark on. I’m not really sure what to say, other than it’s incredibly weird knowing that I haven’t had solid food for over 4 days now.

So lets talk about some things, like energy level, feelings of hunger and any other weird feelings that I’ve noticed.

First of my energy level is about the same, as when I was eating “normally” sometimes I’m a little tired and sometimes I’m full of energy, but overall I would say I’m about the same.

When I sleep, I sleep like it’s my job and it feels like the most amazing thing in the world to wake up. I didn’t expect that to happen so soon on this juice fast.

I will mention it cause I’m sure it’s on people’s minds. My bowel movements were pretty regular for the first 3 days, today on day 4 I pretty much didn’t have one so I think maybe the food that was in my system might’ve worked its way out. In the name of science I will definitely keep people updated on that stuff as it occurs. UPDATE: Yep, just had one. So that’s good.

Now my weight has definitely went down some and I’m not going to post numbers just yet cause I’m not quite sure what type of poundage it is and it fluctuates between the mornings and nights. Let me talk about the general trend tho, for the first three days my weight was going down slowly but steadily but also my fat percentage on my scale was going up. I don’t know why this was happening but my thought processes lead me to believe as the food that I had in my body was leaving it was giving me a more accurate picture of fat to lean mass ratio on my scale. Now as I believe the majority of the solid food has left me, I am noticing that the fat percentage is going down as well as the weight. This is all speculation from using my fit-bit scale, but that is my guess right now.

So some things about testing. On day two I did a AC1 Test to check my levels, yesterday (day three) I went in and got Bod-podded (to check my true composition), and today I had my cholesterol checked at my local Walgreens. In two weeks I’ll be getting Bod-podded again to see how my body compositions has changed and hopefully I haven’t lost to much muscle mass. At the end of the month I will test my A1C and Cholesterol levels again to see how this was affected.

So that’s what’s been going on so far. I haven’t died, just been busy with work and school. I shall keep everybody posted when I hit the week mark!

Juice Fasting. So now that I have some time to write about this I’m going put down my thoughts and reasoning behind why I’m going to do a Juice Fast. Honestly I’ve heard of juice fasting before, I mean there’s 3 day juice cleanses, and 10 day detox juice fasts, etc. Those have been around forever and as sure as Jack Lelane has been around I’m sure everybody and their dog has seen the old infomercials growing up. No I’m doing a Juice Fast for different reasons, yes this juice fast was highly influenced by watching “Fat Sick & Nearly Dead” a documentary where Joe Cross an Australian goes 60 days without any food other than freshly juices fruits and vegetables. He ended up losing 16 stone and getting off his medication for a debilitating disease. So I figured what the hell why not, if one man (and in the documentary he actually had a partner in crime do it as well and he ended losing alot more than Joe) then I figured I could do it as well.

While weight-loss is possibly a benefit from doing this juice fast, I’m more doing it for scientific inquiry and I’m not just trying this juice thing without some forethought. First, when people say juice I’m not talking about orange juice and the stuff you get off the shelf. This juice is mainly fresh vegetable juice approximately 90% and then only about 10% fruit. We all know too much sugar is bad for your as it raises your glucose levels, so I don’t want any spikes or sugar high’s lows. Second, I’m getting bod-podded tomorrow, midway through and at the end of the month I want to see what fasting does to your muscle and fat mass. Third, I’m getting my cholesterol and A1C tested to see what those numbers are and how they are effected with this “diet”. I’m also still keeping up with my weight lifting routine, and also am measuring weight and fat% everyday using my Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale. It’s more of an “experiment” than a “diet” I want to see what actually happens to a body. Last benefit, I want to see if I can go 30 days in starvation mode, so if i ever get in that situation where i possibly can’t eat for days or i have to “survive” i want to know that I could do it. Without actually being dropped into a jungle for a month I guess this is one way to try it.

First off I ended getting this Juicer:
Breville BJE510XL Juice Fountain Multi-Speed 900-Watt Juicer It’s a great centrifugal juicer and it’s really easy to clean up.

I will keep everybody posted on the progress from day to day and the moods and general stuff that’s going on in my body and the results from the measurements. This should lead for an interesting 30 days. Wish me luck.

So I watched “Fat, Sick, and nearly dead” am considering doing a Juice Fast for the month of September. I know I’m gonna get a lot of “WTF” are you thinking, but I want to approach this scientifically. First I have a fit bit scale that measures body fat percentage and weight, I also have a fitbit that tracks my activity level, I still plan on lifting weights with my lifting buddies and I also plan on getting bod podded and have my cholesterol etc checked throughout the month to see exactly what happens when someone juice fasts. This will be an interesting experiment.

I saw this and I thought this was the best explanation for why I’m an Aetheist.