Getting Healthy

Pepper is as energetic as ever, and still adorably cute. It's hard to get used to the idea that he will only ever be max. 7 pounds, even as a grumpy adult. Right now he is snuggling next to Lily , legs splayed out like he was drunk (he's not), and Lily is engrossed in one of the hidden object games I downloaded for her iPad. Typical evening in our quiet household. We had an eventful weekend in terms of weather - Lily came home around 3pm on Thursday and that blizzard lasted until late Friday night/early Saturday morning. Most of Saturday was clear and sunny, but we were under a second blizzard warning for the evening, though when we went to bed it was still pretty clear out. Winds picked up Sunday afternoon, but it never got terribly bad even though we were supposed to have a blizzard until Monday evening - by later on Sunday, it was pretty clear again and our blizzard warning sadly ended. It was brief, but reminds us that if only there were a bit more snow, this could be a very different winter.


Friends of ours recently gave us an exercise bike they don't use, so now I can watch TV while cycling, which will help me towards my goal weight. Lily has challenged me to bike if I want to play on the XBox, so that has helped me increase my cardio time tremendously...I really want to finish my game.

The combination of cooking for ourselves and not driving everywhere has already had a tremendous effect on my health - I'm 60lbs lighter than when I first came to Baker. In fact, Lily's company did a clothing drive for Christmas, and we gave away 6 garbage bags of clothes, mainly because they were too big. It made a few families on the receiving end very happy, and us as well, knowing what we'd accomplished to be able to donate that much. There are still some clothes that are too small, but we aim to be wearing those shortly.

In a similar vein, we recently watched a documentary entitled "Fat, Sick, And Nearly Dead", a story about an Australian named Joe Cross who was 100lbs overweight and had an autoimmune disease that required him to take steroids. He decided to do a juice fast, wherein he only ate fruits and vegetables via his juicer for a period of time. The results were astounding. He lost more than 100lbs, and he no longer takes drugs for his disease. In the film, he meets an American truck driver who has the same disease and tips the scales at over 400lbs. He gives the truck driver an Australian shirt, which is several sizes smaller than he is at that point. The American sticks to the same program, and ends up wearing the shirt near the end of the documentary.

We own a juicer, but fruits and veggies cost a fortune up here so we don't use it as much as we would like. Even though we try to juice once a day, going on a complete fast of only juices for both of us would be incredibly expensive. (It would work out to over $30 per day per person at current prices, for produce that doesn't taste as great as they should.) We may have to move home sooner than planned just so we can start a juice diet and follow in Joe's footsteps. For a list of testimonials, you can visit his website.

Hopefully, the next time we see you in person, there will be less of us to love :-)

-J