Juicing and HC3: Here We Go!

Yeah, it's been awhile.  I know.  I haven't felt compelled.  Now I am compelled.

I'm setting cooking aside for a little while because I gotta get some fat off my ass.  There.  I've said it.  It's just that simple.  About the time I came to this decision I also got back the results of my latest routine blood work.  Not good.  Not dreadful, exactly, but not good.  I'm 63, folks.  I have essential tremor (genetic, no doubt). I have high blood pressure (likewise).  A couple other blood numbers were not too swell.  And I'm not ready to throw in the towel on life.  Too damned many UFOs.

So, I asked Doc (my M.D., Dr. Anna Talarico) what I could do to lose a lot of weight fast on the way to establishing eating habits more appropriate to my age and station in life.  In the past I've been able to lose 15 pounds, but then I get stuck.  And then I gain it back, of course. What I want to lose is more like 50 - 60 pounds.  Doc suggested I investigate juicing and the HC3 diet.  Juicing is pretty straight forward, requiring only a juicer (often quite $$$$) and lots of veggies and fruit (cheap).  Most people don't juice exclusively for more than a couple days.  Many juice except for 1 regular meal a day.

The HC3 plan is more controversial, but so are many if not most if not all weight loss plans.  This is NOT the HCG plan that requires daily injections of hormones.  This HC3 is NOT who-knows-what you buy over the counter that is otherwise often labeled HCG but isn't.  The program I will undertake is Numedica's HC3 which I will do under Doc's supervision.  Basically, it's a low/no-carb, very low calorie plan with a homeopathic version of the hormones.  Whatever.  As I said to Doc, at their heart, all successful weight loss plans are the same:  drink a lot of water, pee a lot, and eat less.  But I need structure (the HC3 plan) and a cheerleader (Doc).

To start, I obtained the HC3 plan "kit" from Numedica.  At $299.00, this isn't cheap, but my grocery bill will be cut to nearly nothing, so it'll all balance out.  Not to mention the theory that I won't drop dead of a heart attack sometime in the near future.  Anyway, making a big financial commitment provides a certain level of motivation, as does the $15.00 co-pay to see Doc every once in awhile.  I also obtained a juicer.  Since I'm not sure about this juicing thing, I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a juicer -- they can be awfully expensive.  On Amazon I found a re-manufactured Breville for only $70.00. Since I love my Breville stand mixer and the $70 juicer got good reviews, this was an easy pick for me.

So, I'm going to mostly juice for a couple days, using recipes I've found on the interwebs.  The theory is to detox, although that seems a bunch of hog-wash to me.  Whatever.  Drinking veggie and fruit juice for a couple days seems like a pretty healthy thing to me.  I'll survive a couple days w/o protein.  This morning I started by juicing some stuff that's been in the frig too long: celery, carrots, apples, and tangelos.  Pretty tasty and very rich.  I can see you have to go easy on the very assertive celery.

This new start was a good excuse to clean out the frig.  (The deer will be dining on the elderly veggies.)  I made a trek to Food 4 Less for vast quantities of fresh produce and spent a couple hours cleaning and organizing all of it so it's all ready to go right into the juicer.  For lunch and dinner I juiced red cabbage, cucumber, spinach, celery and apples.  This was way tastier than I thought it would be and made enough juice to fill me up for the rest of the day.  But, I found that I miss chewing.  So for having dinner with Randy, I had a teeny weeny salad and a few dry roasted peanuts.  Much better.  As you might expect (I sure did), I've started peeing a lot.

Well, that's it for today.  I haven't weighed myself yet nor taken any measurements.  I'm not sure how long I will juice.  I do know that 100% juicing is not for me, especially since we have a neighborhood Italian dinner tomorrow night.  And that thing about missing chewing.  But I did really well today.  Not a lot of calories.  Everything I ate was healthy.  And I've added juices to my cooking repertoire.  Tomorrow?  Juice, a visit to Doc, and the neighborhood dinner.