Yesterday, Cindy and I finished our 10-day juice fast, and now we’re heading back into eating solid foods. We broke the fast with what started out as a simple cabbage and broth but morphed into a full-blown (and extremely satisfying) vegetable soup. Tonight, we had veggie pizza.

Losing 10 lbs. as a result of being on the juice fast is nice, but I expect it to be temporary. In fact, I weighed myself before writing this entry and I’m already up more than a pound from yesterday. I had been losing about a pound a day during the juice fast. I’m okay with that. Any real change is going to have to come from making…well, real change. It’s that simple. And this gets to the heart of why I did the juice fast.

It’s easy to set my mind at starting something…but hard for me to finish it. I have a long history of stopping projects. I thought the reboot might help me figure out more than how I really think or feel about food. I thought it would show me how I manage to talk myself into quitting projects. It’s easy to quit something when you see it as insignificant, unimportant. The problem with doing that is that eventually you start seeing more and more things as insignificant, or something you can put off until tomorrow. But eating? Now, that’s a challenge! Because it’s something I do everyday, several times a day.

What I needed was to set my mind to something I knew was way outside of my comfort zone, and then do it. When your comfort zone includes comfort foods, not eating is seriously outside the comfort zone, folks. The juice fast couldn’t be something so short-term that I could do it without much effort, but not something too long that I would be setting myself up for failure. 5 days, I could do easily. 7 days is harder because weekends are our time to explore and enjoy the foods this town has to offer. I really missed having brunch at You Say Tomato on Sunday, let me tell you! For me, getting through Saturday and Sunday was more difficult than getting through Monday to Friday. I needed more than a nutritional reboot. I needed a mental reboot. And because I can’t resist wanting to go just a little further, I chose the 10-day fast instead of the 7-day (which I think would be plenty for most people).

What I learned from my juice fast was something obvious: my body and my mind are not on the same page. That’s nothing new to me. The fact that I’m overweight is a pretty good indicator that my life is not balanced, and hasn’t been for some time now. But by drinking juice for 10 days straight, I became very aware just how often my mind lies to me. When I think I’m hungry, I might just be thirsty. When I’m hungry, I might just be bored, whether I consciously think I’m bored or not. For example, I would get hunger pangs late at night, and I would usually just fix myself something to eat, watch some more TV, and then go to bed maybe an hour or 2 later. Not so easy to do on a juice fast. Instead, I would drink water, turn off the TV, and read a book. 15 minutes later, I would notice that I wasn’t feeling hungry. It’s one of those things you know you do, but you don’t realize to what extent you’re doing it until you have to not do it, night after night.

Another very obvious thing: I do not drink enough water.

Now that the fast is over, I’ll be adding in more salads, fresh fruits and vegetables. I’ll also make fresh juice more often when I want a snack, and add more fish and seafood to meals. I’m also seriously considering making 2 days a week meatless (Geez, did I just hear someone hit the floor after reading that?) Last night’s cabbage/potato/onion/garlic/celery/carrot soup was pretty damn tasty. I definitely feel like I have a better appreciation for vegetables when done right. (I’m still going to always choose fried okra over boiled any day of the week though.)

Also, considering I spent the last 10 days not grazing and not eating anything after 8 PM, I’m definitely more mindful of late night eating, and the need to curb that impulse.

But I’m still down for the chili bacon cheeseburger with fries, and fried chicken, and ice cream sandwiches. And I’d still be up for some good Mexican food, if there was a place to get it here in Kansas City. I’m not eliminating “bad” things I like to eat. I’m adding in more “good” things, more micro-nutrient foods that I also like to eat but have neglected, and I’m giving them the same level of consideration as I would to all those comfort foods. Before this fast, if you had told me I would love eating a bowl of vegetable soup, I would have thought you were crazy.

The 60-Day juice fast that Joe Cross and Phil Staples did in Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead was remarkable. And radical.

But I’m not doing that. I got to where I am by making lots of small negative changes over an extended period of time that felt good in the short-term but resulted in negative long-terms consequences. I’m not talking about just my weight here, either. So, the only way to undo it without “falling off the wagon”, to my mind, is to make lots of small positive changes over an extended period of time that may feel uncomfortable in the short-term but will result in positive long-terms gains.

I think, having done this juice fast, and coming out of it feeling like I’m in control of things that would have typically gotten the better of me, it’s going to be a much easier road to travel.

A couple of weeks ago, Cindy and I watched a documentary on Netflix called Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. It’s about an Australian guy bloke named Joe Cross who is overweight, and suffers from an  autoimmune disorder called chronic urticaria. Sick and tired of being in such lousy shape, he comes to the United States to do a 60-day juice fast so he can lose some weight and get off the steroids he has to take for his hives. He spends the first 30 days in and around New York City, and the next 30 travelling across America, meeting people and talking about what he’s doing. Along the way, he meets truck driver Phil Staples, who weighs more than 400 lbs. and also suffers from chronic urticaria.

This is their story. Well, it’s mostly their story. Joe also meets a woman named Siong who suffers from debilitating migraine headaches. She takes on the challenge of a 10-day juice fast to see what effect it has on her life.

The idea of juice fasting for 60 days is just incredible to me. I was fascinated by it, but at no time during the movie was I  tempted to try it, you know. However, when we got to the part about Siong and her struggle to deal with a mere 10-day challenge, I asked Cindy if she wanted to try it…together. 10 days. I could try 10 days.

So, yesterday I ordered a Breville juicer, much like the one in the movie, and it arrived today. After dinner, we made an impromptu juice (didn’t follow a recipe, but it’s close to things I’ve seen people juice) of 1 lemon, 4 celery stalks, 1 cucumber, a handful of spinach, 2 granny smith apples, 2 carrots, and 1 kiwi fruit. It was not bad at all. Next time, I think I’ll sprinkle in a little  black or Cheyenne pepper.

So, while Cindy is away this weekend at BlogHer in San Diego, I’ll be making a solo trip to the farmer’s market to buy (I’m guessing) 5 times more fruits and vegetables than we’d normally consume in a week. She’ll be back on Sunday, and on Monday, we’ll start our own 10-day juice fast challenge.

Cindy thinks we should keep a video journal of how we feel from day to day, so I’ll dig up the Flip camera before she gets back.

We’ll both talk about this again later — how it’s going, what we hope to get out of it, what we plan on doing after it’s over, etc. — when we actually start the fast next week. (I’ll tell you something right now though: I’m not giving up coffee or tea.)

In the meantime, if you want to see the movie yourself, it’s available for streaming on Netflix.

Is it odd that one reminds me of the other?

COBB: You’re waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t be sure. Yet it doesn’t matter. Now, tell me why?

MAL: Because we’ll be together.

I took the idea of the grape soda Ellie Badge (if you’ve seen Up, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen Up, go see it…take tissue) and changed it to better suit me and Cindy. I think Moxie is more fitting for us. Not only is it one of our favorite drinks of all-time, but it’s a quality we strive to bolster within ourselves.

And we’re going to need a lot of it to get us through the next couple of years

I’ve been meaning to post some pictures to the Growing Up Star Wars Flickr Group for a while now, so this as good a time as any to start going through the boxes and boxes of completely disorganized photos and see what else I can find to embarrass myself with each week.

Washington Irving Elementary – Durant, Oklahoma – October 1978

I think I had maybe a dozen Star Wars. I would wear them until the plastic iron-on picture would start cracking.

Halloween in Durant, Oklahoma 1978

Note that I was clever enough to use sunglasses with the Darth Vader mask, but not clever enough to wear a black long-sleeved shirt. Man, these costumes were just awful back then, but we loved them! I’m pretty sure the one-fist-on-the-hip thing was probably my grandma’s idea. Sassy.

My Birthday – Germany – 1980

I remember that this was the puzzle I wanted because basically I liked anything that had Han Solo. Chewbacca, or the Millennium Falcon on it. I don’t think I ever put it together.

Halloween in Germany 1980

I love that I’ve been demoted to a storm trooper, but I’m still taller than Darth Vader.

Christmas – Altus, Oklahoma – 1976

Of course, with a haircut like mine at that age, not everything was Star Wars. I wish I could find a better picture with the insignia showing. If I do, I’ll post it. It would be the logical thing to do.

We’ve been in the process of moving, and things are just piled and stacked everywhere. I haven’t had a chance to get much of anything sorted yet. I thought I would be able to get something done last night, but I was on-call for Traci and had to go watch the beast for a few hours. Most likely, I’ll be doing that again tonight.

On the upside, I now have every fight scene from Spider-Man 2 and 3 committed to memory. Quinn, who will be three in a few months, loooves Spider-Man. He’ll watch it, and just pick some random line to repeat. The other day, he climbed into the chair with me and said, “Avenge me. Avenge me, Uncle Chris. Uncle Chris, avenge me, okay?”

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I just used a Redbox DVD rental kiosk at the Albertson’s down the street from us. We have Netflix, which we love, but sometimes I don’t get the movie back in the mail soon enough for the weekend (and the mail doesn’t run on Sundays anyway), so when I see an opportunity to get watch a new movie for $1 a night without having to talk anybody, I’m all for it.

If you want to try it, Redbox will email you a promo code for a free rental to use at one of the kiosks (I don’t think you can use it to rent online). So, the price is definitely right. I haven’t used my promo code yet, but I suspect you’ll still need to swipe a card at the kiosk in case you decide to keep the movie more than one day.

You can check for Redbox locations on their website.

Just so you know, I’m not getting paid anything for pushing Redbox. I just think it’s neat, and makes a good DVD rental back-up to whatever service you’re using now : )

BTW, The Departed was pretty damn good.

A couple of weeks ago, Cindy and I saw The Da Vinci Code. Like the book, the movie is making oodles of money, and upsetting a lot of people of faith, including religiosity salesman Ted Baehr who calls it “Dan Brown’s hate-filled, fictitious attack on Jesus Christ, Christianity, the Bible, Christians and history” (because, you know, it’s not like the Church has ever meddled with history for its own ends or anything). Just do a Google search and you’ll see that a lot of people are protesting The Da Vinci Code. If people really, truly wanted to do some good in the world, they should have been out there protesting Big Mamma’s House 2.

On a side note, the phrase “fictitious attack on Jesus Christ” seems a little odd to me. Isn’t a “fictitious attack” an attack that never happened? Then again, it’s the right phrase in the sense that Crispies are imagining that Dan Brown is attacking them.

I’m with Bob Higgins, who has a nice little piece about Baehr and The Da Vinci Code over at Political Cortex. He says, “What is so frightening to these folks about a work of fiction is a mystery to me unless they fear fiction because they have always been afraid that they have based their entire lives on a work of fiction. I just don’t know.”

Well, neither do I, Bob. Neither do I.

Or so I thought.

Then I realized that The Da Vinci Code is not just a bunch of made up stuff, but filled with many factual details. For example, did you know there really was a Council of Nicea? Okay, maybe you did. But what about Templar Knights? Yeah, I know, too easy. But did you know there really is a place called Paris, France? Or that there is an actual painting called the Mona Lisa by a guy named Leonardo da Vinci?

I began looking through some other books I have on the shelf, trying to find other instances where writers have used real places and events in a not-real way. Using the Internets, I finally found something. Through extensive research, I discovered that dinosaurs did, at one point in time, rule the earth. I also learned that both DNA and Costa Rica do exist. However, I was very disappointed (and disillusioned) when I found out that Jurassic Park was just a made-up place, even though Costa Rica is real.

Dammit! How can it be legal for writers — especially fiction writers — to fuck with our minds like that? Mixing fact and fiction? What the hell’s up with that?

“What’s it about?”

“This guy is a gymnast who has everything, and then he gets hits by a car, and they tell him that he’ll never compete again…and then Nick Notle teaches him how to overcome his injuries and compete again.”

“Wow, Nick Notle does that?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Who plays Nick Notle in the movie?”

“I think it’s that crazy guy from Celebrity Fit Club, Gary Busey.”

A couple of weeks ago, Todd pointed me to a site run by a guy who does reviews of movie trailers or something (I wish I could remember where it was because the credit for this find goes to that guy). Anyway, the guy was scrolling frame-by-frame through the first teaser for the new Mel Gibson movie Apocalypto, and looking for screenshots to use for his teaser write-up, when he found a frame that didn’t seem like it belonged. See if you can spot it.

I saved the teaser to the desktop, and used Quicktime to see that it takes place at 1:46 (it’s actually Frame 6 of 24). Just pause the teaser and use your keyboard’s Left- and Right-Arrow keys to scroll back and forth. You can also just pause it as it’s playing in the browser, but you won’t have a time counter.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m always a little ticked when they use a shot in a movie trailer but then that scene is nowhere to be found in the movie. I certainly hope that is not the case here.

I think Apocalypto will be a return for Mel Gibson to the standard popcorn-munching, shoot-’em-up, bad-guys-versus-good-guys, mind-numbing, action-packed Saturday matinee that we all love.

From what I can piece together from the just the first teaser, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover reprise their roles as Detectives Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh, who must travel back in time to save an ancient Mayan civilization caught in the middle of a war of Aliens versus Predators. Also starring Joe Pesci as Leo Getz (“Whatever you want, Leo gets.” Get it?)

Anyway, I have to confess that I haven’t actually seen Danny Glover or Joe Pesci in the trailer, but I haven’t watched it all the way through frame-by-frame either, so I’m just guessing here.

Whoob whoob whoob whoob whoob whoob!