All Juiced Up

Here we go again......

In my never ending quest to not become the "before" guy in the diet commercials, I have once again decided to implement some healthy changes into my lifestyle. Now, let's not get too excited. I don't plan on becoming a vegan and having sleepovers at the gym. I've got to take baby steps.....

Out of sheer boredom, I began to evaluate the all of  things that have been disguising themselves as food and wreaking havoc on my expanding waistline. I could spend all day telling you about all of the bad things, but let's try to stay positive. The one thing that seemed to be clearly lacking was my consumption of fruits and vegetables. In my defense, I do occasionally "order" an orange, but it's usually left floating in my Blue Moon draft.

So. I decided to make a conscience effort to increase my intake of all types of leafy and colorful natural foods. As luck would have it, I happened to tune into a documentary called "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead". It's basically about a guy from Australia who comes to America and is determined to lose weight by "cleansing and rebooting" his body. Essentially, he buys a juicer and lives off of this nasty green vegetable juice for 30 days. His journey through New York City and into south is interesting as well as very entertaining. In the end the guy goes from 305 pounds down to 220. And his overall health shows dramatic improvement.

After going back the the land down under, the guy receives an emotional phone call from an overweight truck driver he happened to meet in the states. The Aussie offers to come back to the US and help the guy out. Long story short, the truck driver had remarkable results. If you get a chance, check out the film. It really is a remarkable story....

Ok, back to me......

Of course, after seeing the film, a low-wattage light bulb goes off in my head. I'm thinking, "Hell, I was going to do the fruit and vegetable thing anyway. I might as well buy a juicer!" So, off I went to Walmart....

The juicer itself was a pretty easy purchase. But when it came time to shop for fruits and vegetables, I was in over my head. As I strolled through the produce section of the local wholesale club, I felt like a teenage boy buying a girlie magazine. I was definitely a stranger in a strange land.

I eventually wound up gathering about thirty pounds of neatly packaged fruits and vegetables. I could hardly wait to get home home and juice them. I also picked up a bag of mixed nuts because, well, I'm just a nutty kind of guy......

I get home and take the juicer out of the box. I am a guy, so you know reading the instructions was totally out of the question. So, I proceed to cram about a pound of baby spinach leaves into the feed chute. I crank the machine up and wait for something to happen. Nothing. So, I add another batch of spinach and repeat. Again nothing. Then, I turn the machine off and, all of a sudden, A small amount of green juice starts dribbling out of the spout and onto the kitchen counter. It looked like thick green semi-gloss paint. And I'm supposed to drink this? And I can't help but think that, at this rate, it's going to take a truckload of spinach (or other vegetables) to make one glass of juice! Can I just order a Mojito and call it a day?

Well, as luck would have it, Tina came home just in time to witness my latest adventure. I figure she was going to go postal from the new green paint job on the counter. But instead, she starts laughing. Can you believe this bullshit? She tells me that I'm one of the funniest people she's ever met. Now, if I had just performed one of my legendary pool dives, I could understand it. But I'm trying to get healthy over here. What's so funny about that?

So, I gather up my vegetables (and what's left of my pride) and head out of the kitchen. I return later and manage to make enough juice to fill a glass. I transfer the contents to a plastic travel mug and put it in the refrigerator. I decide to take the drink to work with me and have it for lunch the next day. I figure it will be a healthier alternative to the 5-hour energy shots that I rely on so often.

Around noon the next day, I decided to go out to my car to retrieve the magic juice that's in a cooler in my trunk. I open the cooler and take the drink out and anticipate the instant boost that I'm about to receive. After taking the first sip, I realized that the taste wasn't quite what I had hoped for. It was rather nasty. And, as if this concoction wasn't already hard enough to swallow, there were chunks of carrot in the drink. I don't even think Captain Morgan could help this situation. But being determined to finish what I had started, I marched on. I would take a drink, hold it in my mouth for a few minutes, then shake my head back in forth before I finally forced myself to swallow it. I repeated this process several times until the entire drink was gone.

To people passing by, it probably appeared as if I was having some type of epileptic seizure. But they obviously knew nothing about a healthy lifestyle.

Well, after a few minutes, my stomach started to cramp up and I felt a little disoriented. At one point, I felt like I might actually pass out. My body had been deprived of vegetables for so long that it seemed to be rejecting my high-octane health juice. I seriously thought that I might be the victim of a self-induced coma!

Thankfully, after several minutes my head cleared up. But my insides still felt like they were twisted. I wound up heading over to the Walgreens to pick up some Tums. Hey, I never had these issues with a strawberry shake from Chick-fil-A!

If this is what healthy eating is all about, I think I'll just stay fat, dumb and happy!

kw