The Argument
Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead is a movie made by an Australian business man on how going on a juice fast changed his life for the better. My review of Fat Sick and Nearly Dead really isn’t about that.
The plot is simple. An overweight man, Joe Cross, takes way too much prescribed medication (in his opinion) due to obesity related problems. He decides to do a sixty day juice fast while driving across america. No food; only juice made from plants and fruit. He succeeds. By the end of the movie he is no longer obese and off all of his medications
While on the road, he befriends a truck driver who is in a similar, but probably worse, predicament. When the director gets his life in check due to his juice fast, the truck driver calls asking for help. The director sets the truck driver on the same juicing path. He too has amazing success by juicing for sixty days (he does check with a doctor before doing this). However, this isn’t a film about juicing.
My Analysis
The first part of the film deals with the directors journey through fasting. Traveling to America, he talks to people about why they are fat. He does bring up, but doesn’t go far enough, that obesity is the greatest threat to homeland security. He trashes the Standard American Diet, promting a mostly plant-based diet instead. He promotes juice fasting….but the movie isn’t about that.
The second half tracks the truck driver who was nearly suicidal due to SAD (sorry for the pun but it does apply). He quickly loses the weight and loses the medications due to going on a sixty day juice fast. Yet, the movie is not about juicing.
The director doesn’t want everyone to do a juice diet as extreme as his diet. He promotes a six or ten-day fasting and if that’s not possible to just drink juice made from plants once a day. He knows, unlike some talk show hosts, that only doing a juice diet isn’t feasible. Yet, again, the movie isn’t about juice.
The Verdict
Even though the movie thinks it’s about juicing it is about the only thing that can change your life: willpower.
To be able to a do a juice diet for that long and then not fall of the wagon is to have the willpower not to do so. The first solid food the director eats after his fast is a granny smith apple which he had put into his juices. I was expecting something more substantial, not a hamburger per say, but maybe some beans or a nice salad.
Also, neither man treated this as a diet. Diets never lasts. They treated it as a lifestyle change and worked hard to keep up this change. That’s why I liked the movie. In fact, I preferred it to Forks Over Knives.
I didn’t care one way or the other about the juice diet. I was impressed and inspired by their willpower.
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What I find interesting is that it (the trailer at least) doesn’t seem to mention what is probably just as, if not more, important: what exercise regimen he adopted. Faddish American culture seems to treat the diet as the be all end all of weight loss. That’s why we spend billions on South Beach, Atkins, etc. looking for a quick fix, when the solution is generally eat less, move around more. Did the film give any mention to that, or was it really just about juice in the end? 😉
While they didn\’t focused on it, they did show them doing power walking, swimming and running. They took it slow at first and showed them getting more strenuous, but they would talk about other thongs when showing it.
That’s what the trailer suggested. I don’t understand why that aspect seems to get such short shrift. I guess a movie about eating sensibly and exercising regularly/moderately just doesn’t have the same impact.