Diary of a
Dieter:
Sheryll’s
Juice Fasting Journey
Beginnings
This journey is for my
overall health and wellness. No diets
for me. For the next 60 days I will be
cleansing my system by way of a juice fast.
Why juice fasting?
For you to understand my
reasons for doing this, you have to know about how I got here.
I went on my first diet
when I was 13. This may not seem
unusual, since teens generally tend to preoccupy themselves with, well…
themselves. I thought I was too fat. Don’t ask me how much I weighed at that time;
the scale at home didn’t work that well. By all accounts, I was roughly around 150
pounds when I was 16.
Since then, I have gone
on many diets: you name it, I probably have done it.
My weight, as a result of
these attempts to control my eating, has had its ups and downs like a crazy
never-ending rollercoaster. It topped
out at 282 pounds in October 1996.
It was time for some
serious intervention.
I went to Overeaters’
Anonymous, where I met regularly with others like me to find a way of eating
that I would not obsess about.
I lost 110 pounds by
mid-1997.
I looked good; I felt
good; I became cocky.
The ego is a powerful
thing.
The weight crept its way
back on. By 2005 I had gained it all
back, with five more pounds for good measure.
So how did I get there,
you ask?
By eating
copious amounts of food while avoiding vegetables. McDonald’s became my new hangout. I would order a nice healthy breakfast on
weekends: a Sausage and Egg McGriddle, a hash brown,
and a blueberry muffin. Dinners would
include a quarter pounder with
cheese, an order of large fries, and a blueberry muffin.
My boyfriend Gary cooked
most of our dinners and shopped for groceries like the world was going to end
tomorrow. There was no shortage of
crackers, cookies, chips, party mixes and cinnamon buns.
Aside from all this good
eating, I had a number of health issues, including asthma, eczema, every
allergy possible, sinus congestion (I really snored up a storm!), arthritis,
and gout.
What a mess!
A form of rotation diet
that I tried was to be the last “diet” on which I ever went. The three-week ritual always started with a
four-day fast. After doing this diet for
five months, I had lost 60 pounds.
Then I went to the buffet
capital of the world:
And the weight kept going
on.
I tried the diet one last
time in August 2006 and didn’t make it past day three.
I was depressed, sick and
tired of the rollercoaster ride. As much
as I love rollercoasters, I wanted off this one.
That’s when I started to
get wise to ultimate health.
I came across a book that
changed my life. It provided a nice
introduction to improving one’s health without dieting. One of the natural solutions prescribed to
cure disease was juice fasting. I
thought this was great.
But 21 days
with no food?
There had to be some
merit to this. When I came off the
rotation diet, I found out the hard way that I couldn’t eat the same way again.
One afternoon I went to
the corner store and bought two packages of soft cookies. You know the ones that come in packages of 9
or 12 and have a little dot of fruit-flavoured goo in
the centre? Well, I ate one package in
one go.
Then I broke out in hives
30 minutes later. They were as itchy as
all hell. My throat started to close
up. I felt nauseous, but didn’t know
whether I was going to throw up or go the other way. I took a Benedryl,
sat on the toilet, and waited to die. I
then thought about Elvis and his untimely death.
Well, I didn’t die. I did learn that my body was not going to
readily accept processed foods anymore.
My allergies were also
not as bad as they once were.
I just had to investigate
this juice-fasting thing further.
I went on my computer and
found on the Internet TONS of information supporting this form of cleansing.
So, what was I waiting
for?
In November 2006 I
started a 40-day cleanse. The first
three days were the most difficult, since I had to overcome the hunger I
felt. After that, I felt so good and so
energetic. I made a few observations:
·
I didn’t have to use my inhalers for my asthma.
·
My arthritis in my knees and gout disappeared.
·
I no longer was congested, so my snoring went
away (
·
I lost 43 pounds.
I came off that fast on
23 December. Just in time for the
holidays!
I have kept the weight
off by making a few other dietary changes.
I no longer eat refined sugar, wheat, gluten, dairy products and
chocolate (!). I also don’t eat a lot of
red meat. My body simply responds
negatively to this stuff.
It’s now time for me to
start another round of juice fasting.
This time I will do it for 60 days.
Some of my expectations are:
·
To reduce or eliminate my skin irritations.
·
To completely eliminate all allergies.
·
To lose at least 50 pounds.
I have to do this juice
fast. My life depends on it.