Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Day 4

This would be day four of the juice fast.

So far, things have been going remarkably well.  Most of the negative parts people claim to experience on days 1 - 3, I have not experienced them at all!  On day one I was a little light-headed and felt kind of high.  But beyond that, each day has been progressively better.

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday.  I needed to talk with him, because I ran out of my prescription drug--which is an anti-depressant.  However, I definitely wanted to talk to him about the juice fast as well, to get his insight as a physician.

I will say that I was a bit worried going into this appointment, as (the last time I went there) I previously spoke with a nurse instead of a doctor.  At the time, I was having serious medical concerns.  I couldn't leave bed due to nausea, exhaustion, and blinding migraines whenever I was out in the light.  She ran all kinds of blood work on me--which ended up costing me over $500 with insurance.  All of the blood work and tests--thyroid testing, blood sugar testing, kidney function testing, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.--came back OUTSTANDING.  So what was her "reasoning" as to why I was feeling sick?  "Well, I think you just need to get more exercise!"  SERIOUSLY?!  My blood work and tests come back absolutely perfect, I'm vegan, but.... it must be that I need more exercise.

Turns out that our furnace was leaking carbon monoxide.  My room is in the basement.... right next to the furnace.  Literally, the foot of my bed is maybe three feet from the furnace.  Due to this nurse's fat hating incompetence, I could have died.  Luckily, we caught it on our own, because we had the furnace serviced about a week later.  See..... fat hate kills.

Anyway, because of this, I was a little concerned about what it would be like when I met my actual doctor for the first time.  The office is covered in those "Your Weight and Your Health..." posters and literally has an item sitting on a table in the waiting room that says "Vat of Fat" on it.... I'm sure you can guess what that entails.  However, Dr. Constance is AMAZING!  First of all, he asked me how I'd been feeling since I have been off of my anti-depressant.  He said he could refill it, but that I should try and go without it if I do not feel like I need it (but keep the prescription in case I start having those feelings again).  He was also very legitimizing of his patience feelings.  "Only you can know how you feel."  He was surprisingly very supportive of the juice fast.  From everything I've seen from a lot of doctors--or should I say, "tools of the pharmaceutical industry"--they're pretty anti-juice fasting.  However, he's not a pharma-tool.  He's actually the Dean at the SIU School of Medicine.  He basically told me, ".... so long as you are taking in calories and drinking enough water to remain hydrated, it is not going to kill you.  People have fasted culturally and spiritually for thousands of years."  He also said that I don't need to "take a baseline" to determine my health.  I appear to be in very good health.

Another thing that made me know I could trust him was his general disdain for the BMI scale.  "You have to take many things into account: genetics, body frame size, diet, exercise, other illness.... The BMI scale is too simplistic."  Wow.  I don't think I've ever heard a doctor say that--other than academic doctors in books.  Purely awesome!

As of this morning--on day four--I'm at 282.6 lbs.  I started on day one at 294.8 lbs.  That is a loss of  12.2 lbs. in three days.  The further I get along, the more I think I can make it through these 10 days.  But I will admit that the first few days were total shit, and all I wanted was to sit in front of the couch and snack on pumpkin seeds.  But now, I really do think that I can do this--for at least ten days!

1 comment:

  1. It's nice to see a doctor not being a fat hater, especially one that is the Dean. Hopefully he will have some influence in teaching the new doctors coming out of SIU about health at every size.

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