One thing I have enjoyed about this column is passing along websites, apps, and great tips I have stumbled across in my days of internet surfing. My most recent find comes from my husband. He loves documentaries and even watches them while he works out. You would find me snoozing on the treadmill with such riveting television, but I did indulge him one day and turned on a video called Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. Sounds awful doesn’t it? Unfortunately in America the title describes a great number of our population. The film follows an overweight, middle-aged man, with many health disorders. Under his doctor’s supervision, he begins a 60 day juice fast. If you gasped and said, “No way!”, then you and I had the same reaction. His plan was extreme, but so were his results. I’m not peddling the idea that we all need to go on a two month-long juice fast, and neither is the filmmaker. But the claim he makes for including more micro-nutrients into your diet is hard to refute. In fact, I have a juicer on order and am excited to incorporate it into my family’s daily regimen. My middle son, the meat and potato lover, asked if he could put cooked steak into his shakes. I told him not to rush things; there would be plenty of time for blended meats in his twilight years.
In my younger years, I didn’t really give a lot of thought to my health and diet practices. If my goal was to lose weight, then I cut out meals and ate low-fat foods with little to zero nutritional value. It was easy back then to get the desired results and I never thought about how my poor diet was affecting my overall health.
Today with shows like The Doctors, The Chew, and Dr. Oz, we have so much information at our disposal concerning health. Just spend one day doing a little research about the damage a poor diet has on your body and you will be spending a lot more time in the produce section of your grocer. My spring clean-up regime is broader than losing the ten pounds I accumulated during hibernation. I’m prepared to make some big changes and the inspiration was the Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead movie. It’s free on Netflix, or you can go to fatsickandnearlydead.com to find out more information. It’s worth an hour or so of your time and if you put a couple of the ideas into practice, it might add a few years to your life.
The Plain Wife by Aimee Jones 