Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead

What I wanna buy is some celery.

Ah, you got the tomatoes?

Yeah, I got the tomatoes.

How many do you want?

They're two for a dollar.

Ah good, two for a dollar

I'll take four tomatoes.

Gonna try to take one onion.

One onion, you get two for a dollar.

Alright, I'll take two.

- How much is all that?

- Four dollars.

Four dollars.

That's not very expensive, is it?

No, not really.

- You can have that, that's fine.

- Alright, thanks.

Alright guys, thank you very much.

- Y'all come back now.

- I will now.

Happy Thanksgiving.

You all have a good time.

Alright mate, see ya!

I thought it'd be nice to find

somewhere off the freeway,

amongst nature,

a beautiful spot

here in Arkansas and...

juice up my Thanksgiving lunch,

which has no turkey in it

by the way.

I think in a funny way

I'm thankful that I got sick

because if I didn't get sick,

that was my body telling me

to slow down and get well.

Who knows,

if I hadn't had got sick,

I might not have ever

slowed down and I might have already

had a heart attack and died, so...

We'll never know.

I'm thankful for that.

Quay.

My name's Joe Cross,

and I'm an Australian,

in case you couldn't work

that out from the accent.

I've just arrived

in the United States.

I'm not gonna eat

any of your food.

I've come here

to fast for 60 days.

All I'm gonna do is drink juice,

green juice.

Why am I doing this?

Well, let me show you.

Take a good hard look at my gut.

How many pizzas, burgers, fries,

and cokes do you reckon I inhaled

to create that masterpiece?

I'm certainly no picture of health.

I look like

I've swallowed a sheep.

Not only am I overweight,

I'm also sick.

For the past nine years,

I've been taking pills,

night and day,

just to get by.

But as of today,

I'm saying enough is enough.

I know what you're thinking...

"Can't you just eat the fruit

and vegetables? Why juice?"

Well, have a look at just

how many vegetables

it takes to make one juice.

I don't care how hungry I am,

I don't think I could eat this

four times a day.

So, by juicing,

I'm super-charging

my nutrient intake.

That's a lot, isn't it?

I've tried this before

but never for this long.

In the past, I've always

gone back to my old ways.

This time, once I'm done,

I'm determined to adopt

a healthy lifestyle.

But first,

I have to get through

the next 60 days.

So, I have a plan.

For the next 30, I'm gonna hang in

and around New York,

and after that, I'm gonna drive

across the country.

What I'm doing is

a documentary on health.

- About what?

- Health.

- Health?

- You know, what we eat.

I'm actually going across America,

on a tour around the States.

I've got a thing called

Chronic Urticaria,

which is like a chronic rash.

- You got a what?

- An illness, like a disease.

I put myself there

by having a lot of junk food,

eating a lot of crap,

not eating vegetables,

not eating fruits.

I believe

what we put into our body

is very important as

to how healthy we're gonna be.

I'm on a juice fast.

You ever heard of fasting?

Fasuma..

Water...

and vegetable juice.

and about six to eight months

of eating just vegetables,

fruits, nuts and beans.

That's crazy.

- I don't think I'd survive.

- I reckon you would.

- That is unbelievable.

- I know, tell me about it.

You wanna know what else

is unbelievable?

Is just how many doctors I went to

when I first got sick.

In fact, I went to six of them.

I had skin biopsies and tests to see

if I reacted to certain things.

I took a bunch of different pills.

I even spent 14 days in hospital.

When none of that worked,

I started exploring

alternative paths:

Massage...

Acupuncture...

Chinese herbalists...

Mud baths...

Cell and hair analysis...

Even witchdoctors

The list was endless.

And then I thought, hang on!

When I scraped my knee as a kid,

I didn't have to do anything

as long as I got out of the way,

it just got better.

If the body can heal itself

on the outside,

why can't it heal itself

on the inside?

So what have I been doing wrong?

Well for starters,

I had my priorities out of whack.

I'd been focusing on my wealth,

rather than my health.

And look where that got me!

And this is only the beginning.

Now I'm on a mission

to cure myself,

which means...

no more pills.

Well, it's the morning

of Day One.

Time to visit Dr. Joel Fuhrman,

a leading expert in nutrition.

You don't have a common condition,

but it's related to

an autoimmune phenomenon.

I've seen patients

with this condition do pretty well

and even get rid of it.

Alright Joe, step on the scale.

The moment of truth.

- Check it out.

- Here we go.

Dr. Fuhrman agreed

to supervise my fast,

as long as I got a blood test

every ten days.

Permanent results only come from

permanent changes in

lifestyle and diet style.

You don't get permanently well

unless you permanently change

the way you live.

Let's see

what your waist is.

The tape's long enough?

The fasting period itself

can be used as

a time where you're gonna

retrain your taste buds.

So if it's something that

really helps motivate you

to stay with healthy eating

thereafter,

then its done its job.

Hello?

G'day Mum,

- Hi Joe,

- it's the morning of Day Two.

Oh dean only Day Two,

I've been very concerned

about you doing this.

It's just beyond me that

anybody can do this for 60 days.

The first few days

are the toughest.

Not eating, it's kind of like

you're cutting yourself

off from society.

When you're not eating food,

it just doesn't seem normal.

I couldn't even watch TV

because of all the commercials.

You don't want to be

around people,

and you don't want to be

around food.

I was happiest in bed.

I didn't wanna get out of bed.

I just wanted to lie there

and feel sorry for myself.

Day Three was today.

I had a pretty bad night

last night.

I felt very, very,

very much alone,

last night in the sense that...

it's like you've got this mammoth

task ahead of you and

without food,

you're really starting to hurt,

and you're feeling it.

You wanna go to sleep

and wake up in two months

and it's all done.

As the saying goes,

"You do the crime,

you do the time,"

and there's no question,

I've done the crime.

I mean, you know,

I really have...

I really have...

not been kind to my body.

You know it's...

it's a tough thing,

the emotional attachment to food,

its bloody tough.

These are the pills

I have to take.

This is a 5 mg tablet

of prednisone.

That's 15 mgs there.

Before I started on the fast,

that's how many

I was having a day.

Looking at these...

at these...

bottles here,

it doesn't look good.

If you're a fit, healthy,

young person, you shouldn't be

traveling around with

prescription drugs

and doing that, I mean it's...

You wouldn't have thought,

I would never have thought

that it'd be me,

that I would...

have to do this.

I was in California in 1999

and I played golf and I thought

maybe I touched some poison ivy,

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