Documentary about a plant-based diet: Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead

The past week I watched two documentaries. Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead and Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead 2. They were both on my list and on available on Netflix! It concerns a subject I’m very passionate about: a healthy diet. In this case about a whole-food plant-based diet. It’s about a guy named Joe who calls himself Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.

A ‘healthy’ Diet

Nutrition is a tough subject, there is no such thing as an ultimate healthy diet. That’s partly because health is not just about food, it’s also about mental health, exercising and more. And I want to say something about the title of the documentaries as well. Sick and Nearly Dead would have been better, because being fat is not a negative thing. It just says something about someone’s appearance and that’s it. There are not negative things about that. So please, before you read on: do whatever makes you happy. I just want to share this documentary because in the case of Joe (the main character), this diet change made him much happier! I’m sharing this because we might be able to learn some things from him.

So, yes, I am advising you to watch Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead (and part 2 as well). But no, I’m not your guru. There is no once-size-fits-all and so we can only look at individual cases and see if anything we see might be helpful for our own lives. When I look at myself, I am much happier since I switched to a plant-based diet.

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead

The documentaries are about Joe Cross, who calls himself Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead (p.s. it’s only okay if someone calls themselves fat, you should never call anyone else fat). Joe finds that he lives way to unhealthy and is unhappy about that. Therefore, he is doing a massive challenge. In 60 says, he’s traveling through all of the United States and lives of smoothies only. He calls it a juice cleanse, but it’s really a smoothie cleanse. He only eats fruit and vegetables and mixes those into smoothies. Beware: he makes smoothies and so he eats the entire fruits and vegetables in the smoothie. He doesn’t actually juice (which is the process of taking only the sugars out of products and drinking those, skipping the fibers). This means all the vitamins, fibers and nutrients stay inside the smoothies Joe makes.

Transformation

By doing a ‘juice cleanse’ (or smoothie cleanse as I would call it), Joe only eats healthy foods and no junk food anymore. He loses a massive amount of weight and keeps feeling better. In the end, he doesn’t even need his medication anymore! Along the way, he meets all kinds of people and gets into discussions with them about what a healthy diet looks like. At the end, he’s inspired many people and set up a whole movement! And most importantly: he continues the healthy diet in the form of a whole-foods plant-based diet! He succeeded in making the diet change last! That’s why part 2 has been filmed, where we see the story of truck driver Phil who also does a ‘juice cleanse’.

My Opinion

I think the documentaries are inspiring. A story about someone who is highly unhappy, but then takes faith into his own hands and makes a massive change. He’s gotten a much happier person and that’s what it’s about, it’s not just about the weight. I think it is a great story, seeing somebody turn their life around for the better! This is a must-see.

Yours sincerely,
Romee