Amina Nuhanovic

Julia Wylie
Foundations of Nutrition
Nutrition Perspectives
December 1, 2016
I watched a documentary called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead by Joe Cross
and Kurt Engfehr. I chose this documentary because I have never heard of it
before and the title of it kind of caught my eye. Joe Cross is an Australian
native, he is an entrepreneur, filmmaker, author and wellness advocate.
Once Joe decided to start a healthy journey in his life he decided to make a
documentary to show his progress and to show how he helped others around
him.
Joes journey to a healthy lifestyle started in 2005, when he was obese,
weighing in at 310 pounds, and had an autoimmune disease called chronic
urticaria, which causes severe rashes all over your body that are painful and
your skin gets very swollen. Joe had to take steroid prednisones for years to
maintain the rashes and to keep them under control. He had visited every
single type of doctor whether it was a general doctor or a witch doctor, that
was able to diagnose him and try to get his rashes under control but no
doctor was able to help Joe without medications. His goal was to be
completely off of his medications at the end of his sixty-day juice fast.
When Joe decided to start his journey, he began in the United States, in
New York to be exact. He started his first thirty days in New York, because he
wanted to be around all of the food that he is used to eating so that he could
basically restrain himself from it all, to build a back bone towards all of and

to not have such lust towards the food he saw. To prepare himself for this
sixty-day juice cleanse Joe decided to eat micronutrient dense foods and cut
out as many macronutrient foods as he possibly could so that it wasnt total
shock on his body when he started juicing. Joe was monitored by a doctor in
New York, and had blood lab results taken every ten days of his diet. The rest
of Joes thirty days he spent driving across the country, meeting and talking
to new people every single day. He kept a juicer, and a generator in his trunk
so that he could continue to juice every single time that he needed too. The
first five days for Joe were very tough, he felt very alone, very fatigued and
hungry, but after the fifth day Joe started feeling very energized and much
more charged up and confident about this sixty-day cleanse. Joe lost a lot of
weight during his cleanse and by the end of his sixty day he lost about one
hundred pounds. Joe was off of his medications for the chronic urticaria at
the end of his journey and he is living a healthier, and much happier lifestyle.
Every time Joe stopped at a new location he met a few new people and
would ask them how they felt about this juice cleanse and what they thought
about it. Many people were telling him that it was crazy and that some would
never do a juice cleanse like that willingly. Some of the people who met Joe
were inspired by his juice cleanse and were actually willing to take him up on
an offer of doing their own juice cleanse for at least ten days. Joe has
changed a few peoples lives by offering them this ten day cleanse to just
try, some folks had migraines, high blood pressure and cholesterol and

surprisingly this short amount of time people lost weight, their migraines
went away and their cholesterol was significantly lower.
When Joe made his way into Arizona to a truck stop, he met a guy
named Phil, who was a truck driver that was morbidly obese and could hardly
carry his own weight. Phil and Joe had something in common, and it was their
autoimmune disease. Joe was so surprised to have met someone who had
the same disease since it was so rare. Joe offered his help to Phil and told
him that he would be more than happy to help him on his journey to a
healthier lifestyle so that Phil could live a long life. A couple months later Joe
received a phone call from Phil asking Joe for his help. Phil couldnt stand to
look at himself and feel this way about himself anymore. So Joe hopped on
the next plane back to the United States to help Phil, they made sure to go
see Phils physician and to see if it was okay for Phil to start this ten day
cleanse and he got the thumbs up. Joe got Phil a room at this little hotel that
was away from the city and away from fast food, and everything that could
potentially get Phil to backlash on his bad habits. Phil lost twenty pounds on
his ten day cleanse and decided to keep going with this cleanse, he went
another sixty days and he lost over one hundred pounds. Phil even helped
his community in trying to start a cleanse as well and he got a few people on
it. The most important person Phil helped was his brother Bear who had a
heart attack. By the end of Phils journey, he went from a 6XL clothing size
down to a 2XL.

During this documentary and watching what so many people said

about the way people ate and how crazy Joe was for doing this juice cleanse
just showed me how there is such a huge emotional attachment towards
food. The biggest issue is self-control, so many Americans and many others
have such a hard time saying no to unhealthy foods. Many people are okay
with dying at a younger age just so that they can eat whatever they want,
they wouldnt change their lifestyle to see their children and grandchildren
grow up.
I definitely think that all of the themes in this documentary are still so
relevant today because our obesity rates in the United States are not
dropping, only growing. The movie was produced in 2011. Ive learned
watching this that we as humans have so much to work on for our next
generations and to start living a healthier lifestyle before its too late. I
definitely think that watching this show was very motivating for me to start
helping others around me and even for me to start motivating myself to start
eating healthier and start eating more fruits and vegetables. Im even
thinking about trying a juice cleanse to reboot my own body and try to see if
it will help me with my headaches and my stomach issues as well.
I think that this movie has taught me a lot about the micronutrients,
which are basically all fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. The macronutrients
are everything else that you could find like your fats and carbs, which you
should definitely have in moderation. Our book also tells us the same that
our micros are fruits and vegetables and our macros are fats and carbs.

Most foods that people consume in the United States are processed foods
that comes in at about sixty percent of our diet, thirty percent animal
products and only about five percent fruits and vegetables which is very low
and should be much higher. During Joes journey he did an 80/20 ratio taking
in eighty percent of vegetables and only twenty percent fruits so that he
didnt take in too much sugar.

Works Cited
Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. Performance by Joe Cross, produced by Kurt
Engfehr, 2011.