I don’t think that I have ever reviewed a movie on this site, but I may do so more often. I certainly don’t want to step on the toes of my friend Shane’s Only Good Movies site, but I came across one the other day that I thought would make a good post.

I am in the trial test of Hulu Plus (still on the fence if I like it, although being about to see House and Kitchen Nightmares on demand is nice) and I wanted to see what kind of movies they had. I didn’t see any that I just had to see, but I came across one I had heard about in passing and I thought “why not?”

This movie features the attempt of a 310 pound Australian businessman Joe Cross to combat his chronic autoimmune disease called Chronic Urticaria. His plan to fight it was by changing to vegetarianism and in the process he lost weight through exercise. And to jump start the changeover, he only consumed juices that he juiced in his own machine.

Another part of the plan was that he was going to start this quest in the United States. The first 30 days he staying in New York City and days 31-60 he traveled across the US. The film features him meeting up with people in both NYC and around the US having them try his juice concoctions, asking if people knew or had tried fasting and converting some to try his fast (all under doctor supervision). The movie also features a man named Phil Staples who also suffers from Urticaria and is 429 pounds. Both men lose significant amounts of weight, with Cross losing 100 pounds and Staples losing over 200. They both were able to stop taking medication related to their condition (mostly steroids) after the program and their lifestyle changes. (Recent reports state that Cross is now around 230 pounds and Staples is around 250 pounds — this is expected due to the conversion to solid food.)

I enjoyed the movie. And it wasn’t the weight loss aspect. It was the defeating the disease part. As I have stated before, weight can be a hindrance to some diseases, and this seemed to be the case with these gentlemen. But I think the lifestyle change was more of a factor in beating back this disease and that the juicing and the exercise helped immensely.

I have always been a big proponent of juicing, mostly because my father did it for years and even went for days on juice fasts and he lived to the age of 81. I even went on a 50 day juice/water fast in 2004 and saw many benefits including a 96 pound drop in weight. I however did not go to the extremes of these men and I drank over the counter juices (albeit from a health food store).

My thoughts on this seem to be mixed as I know that diets tend to fail and that people lose and gain thousands of pounds in their lifetime trying to find “the perfect body”. But I don’t see harm in a lifestyle change. Changing to a vegetarian lifestyle and adding juicing and exercise to a person’s routine is great. And I dare say it is what HAES promotes (healthy living, not vegetarianism).

I also think that the documentary has blossomed into a marketing scheme for Cross, as his website named after the movie seems to be capitalizing on the movie by not only selling t-shirts, bags and DVDs, but juicers as well. I understand t-shirts and DVDs to an extent, but selling juicers seems to be a step too far. I don’t know if that takes away from the movie or the fact that Cross and others reversed chronic medical conditions. I guess that would be a choice for each viewer and website visitor to make.

So after all the considerations, I wonder, (and I have not read any of the Fatosphere’s take on this film), does the Size Acceptance community find this film to contradict the tenets of the movement? Or is the weight loss simply as side effect of the conversion to the new lifestyle? Feel free to answer this on the Big and Tall Shorts Facebook page.