Day 20: Intractability and '80s desert adventure movies

Yikes. It's been more than a week since my last post. My reader must be so disappointed.

First, the weekly weigh-in. As of Friday the 22nd, I am down another eight-hundreths of a Jess, for a total loss of 0.28 Jesses. I know what you're thinking: "Wow, he lost 0.28 Jesses in two weeks? That's really good! ... Or ... is it?" Because you don't really know how much that is. I've received some blowback for measuring my progress is Jesses, because of the inherent opacity therein. But I am unconcerned. You'll just have to trust me. It's good. Better than I've ever done before.

But there is news. Strictly speaking, the juice fast is over. Before you call me a quitter or a loser or a blackguard, read on.

I noted in my last post the difficulty I was having with just juice. I was finding it unsustainable, because I was simply not getting enough calories — in the neighborhood of 900 or so per day. One of my stated goals of the fast is improving my health, and I don't think such a drastic reduction in calories, to a level that is really not good for a guy my size, will meet that goal. And since I have found myself unable to get my calories up where they should be, something had to be done.

So I made a change. I'm now, for the next two weeks, drinking juice, but also eating fruits and vegetables, as well as nuts, beans and seeds.

I know there's a chance that my reader will be disappointed with this change. This blog, after all, is about a 60-day juice fast, and I'm cutting it off after 14 days.

That said, I am encouraged about the progress I've made. Specifically, I again feel like I have more energy, enough to have done a rather vigorous bodyweight/kettlebell workout last week. I've felt good enough during those workouts to have completed two full circuits each time, something that was the goal when I designed the workouts but which I had been previously unable to do. I also went swimming this week and felt great.

However, the weight stubbornly clings to me, probably because I'm still not getting enough calories and my body's freaking out. It's tough, I tell you. But I will persevere.

This reminds me of a song. The '80s, as you may know, were a golden age of awesome, and awesomely bad, movie songs. An example of the latter, in my opinion, is Billy Ocean's "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going," from the 1985 adventure comedy The Jewel of the Nile, starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. First of all, the title is ridiculously long (a particular pet peeve of mine). Billy Ocean was also responsible for the laughable "Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Car," so he knows something about long song titles.

But apart from that, the song was a mystery to me when I was a kid. I thought it meant that when the going gets tough, the tough leave, which I thought is a misrepresentation of what it means to be tough. I now understand that it means the tough get to work.

Well, Billy, I guess it's about that time.

By the way, Jess (yes, the Jess) found out on Monday that I'm using her to measure my progress. She is excited to one day become a standard unit of measurement on the Internet.