Meet Joe Cross, a very interesting man! I’ll tell you why after I go on this tangent…
So lately the only television I’ve been watching is documentaries on Netflix. I watched this YouTube video that used Jelly Beans to illustrate how little of our life we get left with once we’ve taken care of all our responsibilities. It really got me thinking about how much time I waste watching TV shows that are entertaining but don’t actually add anything to my life.
With that said, after I watched his video I spent another 15 minutes looking at this guys YouTube channel and he is hilarious! Talk about an instant fail though…
Anyhow, that night something did strike a cord within me when I was browsing through Netflix and I decided to watch a documentary about global warming (which we should really be worried about). And the next night I watched “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead”. It’s the journey of this unhealthy guy named Joe who challenges himself to do nothing but juicing fruits/veggies and fasting for 60 days in an effort to get rid of his illness and his “spare tire”. Aside from the fact that I don’t really believe it juicing it was awesome! Don’t feel like you need to watch the video in order to get something out of this blog. Its worth the watch but I’ll spoil it for you by saying what you already know. A guy juices, then he loses weight and gets healthier, and through the process meets interesting people and brings them along for the ride. Here’s the documentary trailer link if your interested
The only thing I didn’t really get about the juicing is when you juice, you completely strip the fiber out of foods. Yes, you’ll still be left with the vitamins and minerals but… you’ll also be left with the sugar. If you know anything about fiber, then you’ll know that we need fiber on an “all liquid diet” to keep our blood sugar from looking like a roller coaster.
Aside from that one little detail I found a three things particularly inspiring:
The power of one conversation
The main character Joe is going across the country just talking to people about food. He gets in these incredibly vulnerable conversations with people about their weight and how unhappy they are. He speaks with a huge spectrum of people ranging from the “who cares if I die at 50” guy, who’s offended by anything that threatens his current way of life to people who want help but don’t have anything other than food that brings comfort into their lives. But I really believe that all the conversations he had made a difference.
The power of fasting
All of us struggle a little bit with addiction. Maybe we aren’t cranking back 8 cheeseburgers a day but we all have something that has a grip on us. After all the definition of addiction is not reserved for drug addicts and alcoholics its for anyone who repeatedly does things they do not want to do.
The shear amount of restriction Joe went through caused his brain to do a full rewiring. Think of the brain like walking through a bushy forest. If you walk through a forest and decide at the end that you enjoyed the walk then you carved a small path in that forest. The next time you walk through it the path with become a little more pronounced. Let’s say you liked doing that walk so much that you want to do it 5 times per day! It wouldn’t take long for there to be a full on path. Once the path is there you can very easily walk down it
Whenever we experience happiness we have Serotonin to thank for that, its our happy neurotransmitter. This is why most antidepressants are Serotonin based. In our modern ‘fast passed’ world having things that boost our serotonin is a necessity for maintaining balance and not feeling like we are losing it. Guess what food causes one of the quickest spikes in Serotonin… Sugar… surprise surprise… No wonder why we are so susceptible to sugar addiction.
Doing some sort of fast completely changes our brains internal associations. Its like going to a brand new forest. This is the same principle of why addicts benefit from a rehab environment. We’ve learned that big changes can fool the brain, hopefully long enough to re-wire our relationships with something addictive. I could talk about how to strategic brain disassociation for days so I better keep going!
The power of video journaling
They didn’t make a big point of this but they obviously had to make video journals because they were making a documentary but there was something so raw about the video journals. I’ve fasted before and you just go the whole day kind of hating the world (especially the first few days) but there is something profound in the pain you feel. It just looked to me that the video journals created a really cool platform for them to sort through everything they were feeling.
With all that said! I double dog dare your too…
Start a conversation about health. Joe started a conversation with this random guy at a truck stop named Phil and through one conversation Phil lost 200lbs! We know we need help in life with a lot of things… but for some reason we all try to be healthy by ourselves. We are made for relationship and community so stop trying to ‘white knuckle’ your way into being healthy it doesn’t work…
Try doing a Blended Fast (not a juice fast…). I did one for 10 days not too long ago but why not try blending a bunch of fruit and veggies for a few days and see what you learn. If your going to go for a long(er) haul kind of like Joe did then try keeping a video journal (or just a regular journal). Any way you do it, I promise you’ll learn something about yourself
Joe and your friends in the Sandbox want this to be a good experience for you so we always recommend that any major change in fitness or nutrition be monitored by a well qualified personal trainer or other functional medicine practitioner!
If you need help finding one drop us a line here
