1st run of the season

Ran today for real. Not just walking or mostly walking I don't think. Maybe by time, but distance I think was more running. I'm not sure.


It's nice to put on the shoes and be able to do a little running again. Yes, it was only two miles. Yes, I know it took almost half an hour. Like I said, there was some walking in there but it was my first run of the season so I'm okay with it. If I can get back into doing it as a habit it'll improve. If I can't get it turned into a habit then you're going to see lots of these little runs where I feel super motivated for a little while and then a long period of silence about running. I'm hoping that's not what happens.

No, it wasn't a great run but statistically, odds are, it's better than most of the people I know online or off so I'll take it, and, like I said, if I can get back in the groove of things it's just the beginning.

Oh, the picture's unrelated. I just stopped to take a picture of a bee.

Comparison: Fitbit Flex, Striiv Touch (Walgreens), and Jawbone Up Move

I've worn three different step counters for the past few weeks to compare them. Here are the results of a week's worth of data from them. I wore them when I walked, hiked, and worked (retail) I used them all to track my sleep as well, but that's not what I'm reviewing here. I'm talking about their step counting accuracy. All three are ONLY good for counting steps and I haven't tried using them in my sock or whatever for biking so I can't speak to that at all. They're pedometers, not really fitness trackers I don't care what they call themselves. And that's a gripe I have about a lot of these things. Their APPS may help track your fitness but the gadgets themselves... they're pedometers. Swimming? Nope. Biking? Nope. Weight lifting? Nope. Stop calling yourselves fitness trackers. You're not. You're hundred dollar pedometers. You're not fooling anybody with the fancy names.

The three devices are the:

$86 Fitbit Flex (amazon affiliate link) - pedometer, sleep tracker, worn on wrist, no watch
$80 Striiv Touch (Walgreens) - pedometer, sleep tracker, worn on the wrist, has a watch.
$45 Jawbone Up Move - pedometer, sleep tracker, worn on your belt or in a pocket.

They came in about as accurate as their prices would indicate (Prices are accurate as of May 30, 2015) with the most expensive, $86 being the best, the Touch was slightly less money and less accurate, and the Jawbone Up Move was MUCH less money and FAR less accurate as well. Here are the numbers I got on my test week & my test walks (how I got them is below)

	Weekly Total	Daily Avg	Avg on 700 step walk*	% accuracy
Fitbit Flex	60446	8635	686	98%
Striiv Touch	32949	4707	602	86%
Jawbone UP	26872	3839	364	52%

So... will I keep wearing all three? I'm not sure I will keep using the Up Move. I like that I can put it in my pocket because at some jobs watches aren't okay, like in a factory or any job with rotating/moving machinery. You don't want your arm ripped off in the interest of counting steps... or the band ripped off (more likely) and run through the machine. So, I like having the UP Move in my pocket, but if it's not going to count correctly why bother? Also I like the Up Move's battery. It's replaceable and not rechargeable but it lasts for WEEKS. The other two need charging, Striiv every other day and Fitbit Flex about every 5 days.

The Striiv Touch is nice because the app has a game in it where steps are used to generate energy that you use to do things like build castles or gardens or trees and such and you can build a little fantasy world so I imagine that'd be motivational if you only needed a few hundred more steps to upgrade your Tiger Garden you're more likely to do it I think. Also, it has a time feature that's nice on a wrist wearable. I hate that the Fitbit Flex doesn't do anything but show me five (or fewer) dots based on my steps. Really Fitbit? Is a clock that hard? Yes, the newer ones have them and they cost a significantly more. That seems stupid of fitbit. 

All in all they are all good at something but if you're getting one to be a pedometer that's accurate I'd go with the Fitbit Flex. It was VERY accurate. Honestly, I'd probably go with a newer fitbit that tells you what time it is, but I didn't test one of those because I don't have one so I can't really recommend something I've never used. That'd be crappy of me.

* I walked a fixed distance of 700 steps on flat ground without carrying anything in the hand wearing the bands so it was swinging like normal. The Jawbone Up Move was on my right hip the whole time on a belt using the clip it comes with. I did five laps and counted the steps each time, stopping at 700 and then taking them off and setting them on the ground while I counted them so I wouldn't get any accidental steps as I recorded results. Scientific? Nah, not really, but better than just guessing which was most accurate. I did five laps and averaged the numbers for my chart here.

One hundred days...

Today is a milestone of sorts. I have logged into MyFitnessPal for almost a hundred days in a row (92, that's close to a hundred, right?) and I've gone a hundred days in a row with no cigarettes. I've gotten a couple new pairs of pants that fit me at my new weight so I won't hear that my pants are too baggy any more and it was warm enough today to go for a walk outside without dressing like the kid from A Christmas Story. So far this has been a good year.

The pants I got were from amazon and I suck at buying clothes online because I like to see how they fit before I buy them. I like to see the color and hold them, feel the material, see if they're right. Well, these fit great and the color's good for work. The material feels like a cross between sail cloth and sacking though. I'm not in love with how it feels on my skin and that's after washing them with fabric softener and using dryer sheets too.

They're Dickies and they fit well and they look good. I'm not a super fan of the material, but I think they'll get more comfortable as they get broken in. So, yeah... lots of good healthy things happening in the past hundred days. I'm looking forward to keeping it up.

Also been working on my brain and have been spending a lot of time at khanacademy.org. I really recommend it. It's a lot of fun.

That's not normal... Good.

At work talking to someone who was offering me a snack that wasn't on my diet... here's the thing, when I say "on my diet" it doesn't mean I'm trying to lose weight. It means diet as in list of things I willingly eat. Things I eat that I believe are good for me. Things I eat. That's what I mean when I say "diet."
They asked why I was trying to lose weight. I said I wasn't trying to lose weight. I'd already lost the weight and I didn't want it back so I was eating well and cheating only sometimes.

"You should gain weight."
"Why? I'm in the healthy weight range for my height & I feel fine."
"You look too thin."
"I'm sorry. I guess I'm glad we're not dating then."
"You know what I mean."
"I know I'm in good health. My blood work is good. My energy level is good. I'm pretty sure I can do more crunches and push-ups than anybody in this store right now in spite of being thinner than everybody here. I'm fine."
"You need to eat more."
"So, what? If I eat chips and just get fat packed on me, not muscle, just fat, that's a good thing?"
"What've you eaten today?"
"I had a bowl of oatmeal and a banana for breakfast with coffee. I had two eggs, a can of tuna, a stalk of celery chopped into it and around a tablespoon of mayonnaise for lunch, basically tuna salad on a bed of lettuce, and for dinner tonight I had a cup of vegetables, 4oz lean beef and a cheese stick. When I get home I'm going to have half a cup of sugar free lime gelatin with mandarin oranges in it."
"Now that's not normal!"
"What?"
"That you know everything you eat, that you keep track of it."
"I know. Normal for my age is slightly overweight, impending diabetes, high blood pressure, and cholesterol levels that either require or soon will require medication. I don't actually want to be normal for an American male of my age. Normal means I'm dying faster. I'm good being an outlier when normal is bad."

I sincerely can't believe people see me at my current weight with a BMI of 22 which is squarely in the middle of the healthy BMI range and tell me I'm too thin or unhealthily thin. I'm thinner than most but I feel fine and I look fine and my doctor says I'm fine so please... stop asking me to join the norms who all could stand to lose some weight. I'm where I want to be. I'm good. Thanks.

Weight Loss & Me

Achievement Unlocked: Goal Weight Reached!

I used to cook a lot for me and my other half and we ate well and it was delicious (except the time I made tomato soup with soy milk, that was simply awful, I can't recommend it at all.) But, my meals were making us both bigger, a lot bigger than we wanted to be. So, I learned a new way to eat that is healthier for me and has gotten me from 205 lbs (93kg) down to what you see here in the fuzzy picture, 165lbs (75kg).

When I was at my biggest the doctor told me during my annual exam that I was what's it called? Pre-diabetic. Well, that's no good at all. So, taking a page from my Mom's playbook based on the assumption that I've got a 50% chance of having a metabolism similar to hers, I went on the Atkins diet and tried to make sure I walked 10k steps a day. There was a stint in there when I ran pretty regularly, but that's mostly over right now due to a knee injury I did to myself out of stupidity. Nothing permanent. It's better now but I lost the momentum and haven't gotten it back.

So, now when I tell people I don't eat something because it's "not on my diet" what I really mean is it's not good for me and I'm trying to not do things that are bad for me. But what they say is "You're not fat." Nope, I'm not. But I was and I don't want to be again! So, instead of trying to foist the garbage onto me as a kindness it'd make me SUPER happy if you'd smile and say, "Well, congrats. It's working," instead of "You don't need to be. Here eat this." You're not all jewish mothers from 80's sit-coms trying to fatten me up, so stop playing the role. It's rude and irritates me. I'm not telling you to eat like I do so please, PLEASE stop telling me to eat like you do.

I'm a huge fan of MyFitnessPal as a way of tracking what I eat and keeping me on target. I mostly know what I can eat, but sometimes I go on an "enter it all because you need to pay attention dummy!" phase and when I do, MyFitnessPal is there with a great site and a great app for the android phone. I'm a huge fan. Another tool I used was a fitbit flex (affiliate link - buy it and I'll get a nickle or two) I got back in the day when I had money. They're not cheap but they're great activity trackers and the website dashboard is the best I've seen out there. It really is fantastic. Love mine.

In there I had a BIG job change where my income was cut by a LOT and money was tight, like really tight for a while, like seriously... I lived in a shack and was broke as hell. They're better now, but that was the hardest time to lose weight because carbs are cheap and protein isn't. Fresh vegetables aren't. It was a lot harder to eat healthy while broke but it's possible. It involved a LOT of chicken and eggs (when they were on sale) and frozen vegetables instead of fresh like I preferred. If I could get fish on sale I'd add that as often as possible because that's helpful with the good cholesterol.

That bout of near-poverty did help me see something I'd not paid attention to before (the last time I was poor I hadn't cared what I ate and would eat anything.) cheap food is factory food. I could get more bags of frozen dinners and pot pies and frozen pizzas than I could of real food for the same amount of money. But those things are all loaded with carbs, empty calories, salt, and God knows what other chemicals to give them the months long shelf-life that real food just shouldn't have. So, when I look around and see the obesity epidemic I understand it better now. Real food isn't as cheap as factory-food, or as convenient. Those bags of frozen chicken parts aren't something I could just throw in the microwave and eat... they required a time investment to turn them from ingredients to food.

So, now what? I've reached my goal weight. Well, it hasn't been about weight for a while now. I am a healthy weight for my height and age and I look pretty okay I think. I'm happy with my weight and have been for a while. Next though, because there's always a next, is getting in a little better shape. I'm not planning on lifting trucks or things, but I'm at an age where evidently muscle starts to go away. Well, that's no good. I don't need a lot of them, but I need enough to get me to the coffee pot and back for a lot of years yet! So, I've started using some Runtastic Apps on my phone to do some fitness type things. I'm not to a point where I'm lifting weights because seriously, picking things up bores me, but some exercises, bodyweight exercises, can't hurt: crunches, push-ups, planks, and squats so far.

How about you? What're you doing to get healthier? Take it from me, an inveterate pizza, Mountain Dew, and donut junkie, it's possible and without feeling like you're going to die. :)

Let's get physical! physical! physical!

I get an annual physical because I'm big on preventative maintenance. It's easier to fix something early than to fix it later is my opinion. I know people who hate going to doctors because "they always tell you what's wrong with you." Well, yeah. But then you can fix it. Not knowing doesn't mean it's not wrong! That being said I'm very anti-medicine. Medicines have such long lists of side effects. I don't want them.

Three months ago my physical said I was pre-diabetic, had decreased kidney function, and higher than he was comfortable with cholesterol.

So I started doing things differently in my diet. I went on a low carb diet and dropped soda almost completely. I increased my fiber intake with fiber supplements. Last week I went back to the doctor for a follow up physical to see how things were going with my experiment on myself.

• The kidney function was good.
• Blood sugar was good. A1C was good (that'd gone further back than 3 months and is better now.)
• My BMI & weight are better than they've been in years.

My cholesterol is what I was most worried about due to my diet. You hear if you eat a lot of meat your cholesterol goes up. You know how it works. You eat cholesterol your cholesterol goes up. Just like when you eat the heart of a lion you get braver. (That was sarcasm by the way.) My cholesterol was getting better. Good cholesterol was going up (That's the fish I think) and the bad cholesterol was going down (That's the fiber I think). But it still wasn't where my doctor wanted it. Dietary changes are slow to impact the body. With my family history of heart issues he wanted to know if we had time for me to do it with diet so he had me do a CT Scan to get my Cardiac Calcium Score.

The Cardiac Calcium Score measures the hardened cholesterol plaque in the arteries of the heart. (Arteries carry blood away from the heart.) Higher scores are indicative of blockage and are a good indicator of a possible heart attack because of that stuff. My score came back today and was zero. That's the best the score can get.

That means I don't have hardened arteries. Now, it's possible I've got soft build-up in my arteries that isn't showing up on the CT scan. I'm young yet for it to be hard. I get that. But I have time now to manage my diet and exercise to get my blood syrum cholesterol numbers better without worrying that I'm pumping cholesterol laden glop through rapidly narrowing arteries.

None of these issues were giving me any symptoms at all. I felt fine and any of them, diabetes, kidney damage, and high cholesterol could result in my dying early. By finding them early and managing my diet and exercise while they weren't problems I'm avoiding having to take medicines or worse. I'm anti-medicine because of all the side-effects that go along with them. I'm not anti-eating though so I'm learning how to eat and what to eat. I'm eating healty and MUCH less processed food than before. I'm doing more cooking and trying to be aware of everything I eat. MyFitnessPal.com has been a huge help for tracking my diet and helping me stay on top of what I'm eating.

Please! Get a physical. Find out if there's anything you need to know about and give yourself a shot at fixing it yourself. Do it for yourself. Do it for the ones you love. They'd like you to be around longer.

PIMPING MY BOOK & HURRICANE SANDY RELIEF:
All proceeds from the sale of my book Jump/Drive for the month of November are going to Hurricane Relief. Do me a solid and buy/review my book while you're helping out the victims of super-storm Sandy. If you're on the fence about it go read the reviews already there. So far they're going well!

Review: Fitbit Zip

The Fitbit Zip Wireless Activity Monitor comes in 4 different colors and all four do the same thing. They easily count your steps and wirelessly connect through Bluetooth to your computer or iPhone (Android coming soon I've read.) where your activity levels are uploaded to a website to measure your activity, show your busiest times, and keep track of it for you giving badges/awards for certain levels of activity or milestones reached.

I've had quite a few pedometers in the past and used a lot of them for a while but I do almost everything online. I certainly track things with online tools. MyFitnessPal has been how I've kept track with my weight, food eaten, carbs, etc for months now. My Fitbit will sync up with my MyFitnessPal account and update the information there so I don't have to do it by hand like I do with Runtastic (The app I use on my phone to track my hiking & running.)

One of the surprising things I noticed as soon as I got the Fitbit was how small it was. On the webpage it shows it compared to a cell phone and it looks about half the size of the phone. I was prepared for a large pedometer. Then it arrived and it's TINY. It works in a pocket or clipped to a belt. I've lost them off belts before so I put it in my pocket and it's tiny and remains accurate even in my pocket. I counted today while I was walking and out of the 100 steps I counted it was within 4 steps every time while resting in my jeans' little coin/watch pocket.

The picture I've posted doesn't quite give away how small it is. It's just slightly larger than the quarter and very thin.

I'm very happy with the website and information provided by the fitbit and tonight as I was getting ready to turn in I saw I was near an even multiple of 1,000 and I paced it off in the back yard, walking around until I'd rolled it over so it's helping motivate me to get off my butt and on my feet more. Mission accomplished.

Parkour really is cool.

This post is mirrored from simplerich.com because I really like the videos, the links, and the info provided and I want to reach biggest audience possible so that means I'm sharing it on both my blogs. I won't make a habit of this. I promise.

Parkour or FreeRunning figures into the book I'm finishing up and getting ready to send to an editor. EEP!

I worry that enough people aren't familiar with what Parkour is. There are several things in the book I'm going to talk about here during the run up to the book coming out. On FreeRunning a video is the best way to talk about it as it's so visual.

Sometimes people participating in Parkour fall. It's not easy. It's super-atheletic. Go read this list of warm up exercises before you hit play on this painful video of failed Parkour attempts. If you're going to do any FreeRunning you need to be fit. Seriously.

And as such it takes practice, training, and the ability to get up when you fall and do it again, and again, and again.

This idea of leaps of faith, of hurling yourself into the void with the confidence that you'll land OK are a big deal in the book. The part where the FreeRunner either catches himself or intentionally falls in a way that he won't get hurt is important to FreeRunning. Not all jumps are meant to end in a catch. A big part of Parkour is knowing how to fall, how to land, how to not get hurt when falling from a great height.

There are classes all over the place, a quick search shows them nearby even if anybody wanted to take a class. I don't recommend anybody try and teach themselves Parkour by watching YouTube videos. It's just not a good idea in real life. Unlike in my book where they manage to do OK with it. To read loads more about it check out American Parkour, a very thorough site I heartily recommend with lots of links to resources.

Zombies, Run!

So, I've started running again. Not well, not far, not fast but running at all is better than not running. I keep logging the runs as walks over on those sites I log stuff at because my speed is, on average, a really fast walk. I'm running in segments, call it intervals if you want to be gracious. I'd appreciate it.
Why running again? Because I was tired of not running and because I found this most awesome of apps for my android phone called Zombies, Run! Yeah. Exactly! I know right!?! What's not to love?

So, here's what happens. You slide the cassette into your walkman and push pla... wait. What? No. You launch the app on your phone and choose a mission. First mission you're introduced as a guy who survives being shot down while riding a helicopter to Able Township. You run from zombies in the woods and arrive at the town and find that they need a runner and here you are, able to run and you've got to do something to earn your keep so you'll run. You'll run missions like saving a little girl, retrieving supplies, leading hordes of zombies away from Able Township. Just all sorts of things they send you, me, us, out to do.

While you run the voice acting is professional. Seriously, it's top notch and there are spoken word interludes between your songs on your playlists that you can choose from (Build the playlists in winamp it's easier... I had to download winamp to build a playlist for some reason. It didn't see any of my other playlists from other media apps... also, make sure you have it right because you can't change music while running. Also, make sure your playlist is as long as you're going to be out there. I was out an hour but only had a 45 minute playlist so I walked in silence for fifteen minutes with only the occasional "You found a sports bra," alert. (Seriously, I don't know where I'm finding all these sports bras but the ground is seriously littered with them if the numbers I'm finding is any indication... all in game of course. I'm not REALLY picking up other people's underwear! Honest!!!)

Oh yeah! Not only are there adventure updates between songs, but you'll find things as you run along and when you're done running you can use those items to upgrade various buildings in Able Township. The higher the level of the buildings the more missions open up. Cool eh?

If you run longer than the mission is, no worries. They've planned for that. The app goes into DJ mode then where the DJs banter back and forth with DJ chatter between songs. It's all very well done. Seriously. This thing is slick. There are only 23 missions so far but I've only completed 4 so far so I'm OK for a while longer.

Is it perfect? No. I got a phone call from work while I was on the thing and it was yelling in my ear about the zombies. Thank God the employee on the other end couldn't hear it. I could though. Did I mention that there are zombie chases? I didn't. I just checked. At random times in your run it'll pop a zombie chase event and you have to pick up the pace to out run the zombies. Listen. I know zombies aren't real. But I run on a nature trail and sometimes it's all shady and dark... when the zombie sounds actually come out of my earphones and it sounds like they're shambling through the brush at me. Trust me. I move faster. It's fun. It's creepy. It's really brought a level of gamification I hadn't thought possible to running. I look forward to running further and longer so I can collect more things to upgrade my base to get more missions. This is a good thing.

It's worth the price. It was about eight bucks and I love it. If you want to see how I'm doing check out my mission logs.

Sugar is everywhere!

I've been doing the Atkins diet for weeks now, maybe six weeks? I can't remember.
Atkins, if you haven't heard of it, is a low-carb diet that focuses on limiting carbs, not caring about calories or fat.
I started doing it as a way of keeping my blood sugar in line with where I thought it should be. My family medical history has diabetes in it and I'm not there and don't want to be there. Diabetes is like rust on your internal organs and it's cumulative. I don't want chronic damage to my insides happening while I'm not looking and "just a little diabetic" is, to me, like being "just a little pregnant." Damage is damage. "Just a little diabetic" means the damage is happening slower but do I really want my guts rusting? Even slowly? Not if there's something I can do about it.
So I'm watching carbs and one of the biggest things that makes carbs show up in food is sugar. Processed sugar is the most common. I'm including High fructose corn syrup as a processed sugar because it's processed and a sugar so it counts.
Sugar is EVERYWHERE. Famous Dave's has a delicious variety of meats that I really like. Their brisket, a cut of meat that when it comes off the cow has zero carbs in it and is delicious but the way Famous Dave's makes it has 30g of carbs & 10g of sugars. 30g of carbs was my total carb allowance for the day when I ate it. I was wog-boggled. It was the first time I became really aware with just how obsessed we are with sugar as a primary flavor in our food.
In 2003 Iowa's childhood obesity rate was 12%. In 2007 it was 25%. It doubled in 4 years. (Source). It's been going up since then. Looking around I can tell you that the fat kids are growing up to be fat adults. Target recently changed their sizes, what used to be a large in kid's clothing is now a medium. The kid is still fat but now (s)he won't FEEL fat.
You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but flies don't live that long. I don't think we should aspire to their lifespan and dietary habits.

Damn you cholesterol! *shakes fist*

So, after being on Atkins for two weeks I got into the doctor to see if my kidneys were going to fall out from the excess animal protein. He indicated if I drank plenty of water they should stay inside me where they belong.

What did wind up concerning him as it turns out, was my cholesterol was literally one point higher than he wanted it to be so he indicated I should return to talk about medication options to fix it. (I should point out my theory on the increased cholesterol from last visit is due more to the induction phase of the diet which has far fewer vegetables than I normally eat more than a result of the diet itself. The Induction phase is really restrictive on vegetables and you know what meat doesn't have in it? Fiber lol)

Here's the thing though. No other options were discussed. He didn't mention increased fiber intake or other dietary changes like increasing my fish intake to increase good cholesterol and improve the ratio. He didn't mention an exercise program to help reduce the bad cholesterol. Nothing. One point above what he wanted and he decided some medicine is the right thing to do.

I don't like that. First off I'm not convinced that cholesterol in the blood is going to kill me. I get that cholesterol plaque on the arteries is bad but that's not what this test measured. It measures the stuff in the blood, not along my arterial walls.

So, I'm ignoring his recommendation I come in for medication. I'll change my diet (increase fiber and add fish) and add some exercise which I've slacked on for a while now, and see if that works. I can get it tested at Walgreens in a month and then again at three months and keep an eye on it that way. I'm not a doctor, but I don't need to be a doctor to look at a number and see if it's going up or down. He said it was too high so I'll bring it down... without medication thankyouverymuch.

Atkins Update

I started Atkins about a week ago, June 7th (Today's the 18th so that'd be 11 days ago) for health reasons, not weight loss reasons. I've read & heard from my mom about the advantages a low carb diet has in regards to things like cholesterol and blood sugar so I thought I would give it a try.

I'm 11 days into my 14 day induction phase of the diet, the most restrictive phase of the diet, less than 20 carbs a day with most of them coming from green vegetables. The omelet pictured here is 2 eggs, a teaspoon of half and half, 3/4 cup brocolli, 2 table spoons cream cheese and bacon all cooked up in cooking spray. It's absolutely on the Atkins diet.

Calories: 313, Net Carbs (That's carbs minus fiber) 7 and that's the important part. Really all that matters for Atkins is the net carbs. Most of the carbs there came from the brocolli (8 but less the 5 grams of fiber). (I use myfitnesspal to track my food.)

One of the side effects of the diet for me that is most surprising is the amount of weight I've lost. I've lost almost 8 lbs, going from 192 to 184. I've hit a plateau or leveling off where I've been around 184, within half a pound for three days. I wasn't as strict as I should have been on Sunday having some mixed nuts (6 net carbs) that were in addition to what I should have been eating. It was Father's Day and there was a thing and there were snacks and well... I had some mixed nuts and thereby went over my count, but I'd known that was going to happen.

So, the impact it's had on my blood sugar, the real reason I'm doing this? It's been consistently down in the 90s in the morning instead of between 100-115 like it was before Atkins. The numbers I was getting pre-Atkins are in line with pre-diabetic numbers and I was eating healthy according to all the normal ideas of what a diet should be. I was big on portion control, doing low fat, not super high calories... but my blood wasn't the blood of a healthy person who intended to be around for a long time.

Diabetes is insidious in that during the early stages, like I was, pre-diabetic, no outward symptoms, the higher blood sugar will rust your organs. OK. That's not really all that technical but that's the effect it has. Just like rust on your car is slow, chronic, and irreversible, so are the effects of diabetes, even pre-diabetes on a person's insides. I'm not being alarmist. It's just that this whole life thing... I'm in it for the long haul. I don't want my body rusting on the inside when there's something I can do about it. Something easy like eat fewer carbs, avoid grains as if they're a slow poison, and do a little exercise now and then.

I'm not a doctor (or I wouldn't have said my insides were rusting from eating spaghetti) and I can't pretend to give medical advice, but I can tell you that following the diet for the first few days has been educational and helpful. How well I'll do on it long term has a lot to do with me. It's doable on the road. It's doable at home. It's doable. I've watched my mom do it and her blood sugar's in line, her cholesterol has LOWERED on this diet, and she's lost weight and looks great and has good energy levels.

(Side Note: I noticed while looking at pictures of her food on her blog that my food pictures cooked at home almost always include my kindle in the shot. Hers do as well. You'd think we were readers or something.)

I think I'm going to die. (Danger: Whining!)

The longer I look at the things I can't eat the more I'm stressing over this plan. Sure, there are things I can eat... but I've never heard of some of them! And let's be serious, fruit? I love fruit! I buy cases of apples and grapefruit. OK. I buy one case each. But still! That's going to hurt. But oh joy! I can eat chickory, endive, arugala and escarole in giant heaps. WTH is an escarole(1)?!? Might as well tell me I can have all the moon rocks I can stomach!

And oatmeal? I've spent YEARS learning to like oatmeal for breakfast. I've gotten to the point where I really DO like it and will have it as a meal replacment even... or I would. It's quick and easy and I thought it was good for me. Evidently there's no way I can eat oatmeal at all on this plan. Sure, if that were all I were going to eat containing carbs for the whole day that'd be fine except I'm supposed to get 15 carbs from vegetables! That leaves me 10 carbs for oatmeal. I think that'd be about a third of a cup. 

Ugh. I should have read more before I started this stupid thing! I didn't know what I was getting into and I told myself I'd do it for two months to see how it went. I'm on day 2 and just now realizing how limited this all is. I suspect some of this is just junkie talk as my body go into some weird carb-starve mode that will result in my blood sugars and cholesterol and all that other blood stuff settling down into healthy numbers, and once I acclimate to not eating so many grains (Hell, I'm goin to be practically gluten free for induction (the first two weeks) at least) it'll be better.

I don't mean to sound whiny... I guess I do. I'm enough of a writer to know what tone I'm using when I write. It's only 2 weeks of induction then things get better and I can have  like... a piece of grape or something lol.

(1) I looked it up escarole is yet another leafy green vegetable that will not be available anywhere I shop. I can't even find kale and I've heard of that one. You're pretty much limited to spinach, lettuce, greens, and cabbage where I live. CRAP! Arugula is another of those too! 

#discouraged

Waking up...

Last week at work was a little... tiring. The hours were long and varied and unpredictable and that wears on a person. I was at a store that is perfectly staffed with 8 employees. There were 3 when the manager left for vacation (It wasn't a real one, it was unavoidable and personal... she couldn't stay to clean up the mess.). That's no good. Guess who gets to try and be the manager as well as the remaining 5 employees AND try and help crew morale because obviously they were overworked doing horrible shifts as well? Wait! I also needed to hire and train at least 4 people while being positive, energetic, excited, and all that other good stuff. Oops. I blew the secret. It was me. :) I'm back to my home store now and the manager's back. She returned to a full crew, trained (1 still in training but doing well) and things should be going well there. So, why am I scared to death they're going to spiral out of control without me there? I get attached to crews/employees when I work in a store that long and that closely and it's hard to let go. I'm also very protective of my employees.

So, I've been home two nights now in my own bed and have been completely unable to get up the energy to do anything. Even my daily writing (I write every day rain or shine whether I feel like it or not) was mostly things along the lines of "Dear God I'm tired. I can't think. My brain is pudding. I should go to sleep. I'd do better with some rest. Oh man... I haven't hit my goal yet... It's been an hour and I don't have a page written? This is horrible."

I'm pleased to say that today, this morning, I feel much better. I'm not physically exhausted or emotionally pooped. That's the thing about those long hours and days and days of being positive, optimistic, helpful, outgoing, cheerful, etc for hours after I should have been in bed day after day... that takes energy. I don't know what kind of energy but it's an energy. And the crew can tell if you're faking it so you have to mean it... and it's hard to fake meaning it so you really DO have to mean it... and that's exhausting. I said emotionally but I think I mean mentally. It's some numinous kind of energy that a Snickers bar won't fix for me. I'm an introvert in real life, I'm only extroverted at work, so to recharge my batteries I need a long time alone with a book and a hot beverage. Maybe a video game. But just me, nobody else, not even nearby, like on the couch or something. I've had that for a few days now. I think I'll make it.

Did I say Snickers bar? Yeah. Yesterday I started doing the Atkins diet. The thing is I don't know enough about it so I started it like this, "OK. I'm not sure how many carbs I can have so I'll just not eat any." My total carb count for the day when I got to the house and put my food in the computer was 12. That's low lol. So, today is going to be better. I'm allowed up to 20 as long as they're the right kind. I can do that. I've brought my lunch. I'll run home for dinner and then it's off to an art show at my favorite coffee shop... where I'll have a hot tea sans sweetener.

Just in case that's not enough I'm doing the quitting smoking again. I figure between the lack of soda, lack of sugar or processed foods, and hugely lower carb intake my smoking urges will be lost in the misery so why not? That kind of works out though because part of Atkins is some exercise daily and I don't want a cigarette after I do cardio so I'll just walk a lot, briskly. I haven't decided if I'm going to pick up running or not. I'm going to focus on getting good walks in first, that'll get me used to the time it takes to run. I'm tired of saying I'm going to be running and then I do a few times and then peter out. It leaves me feeling like a chronic failure. So, instead I'm going to walk. Walk first, run second. That's what happened last time. It got to where walking wasn't enough so I started running. Maybe it'll work this time. Maybe not. I just need to make sure I'm getting in some cardio. I feel better when I do and saying, "RUN" and then not just left me feeling disappointed in myself all the time.

But, I'm awake and I'm doing some positive things, probably too many at once, but I'm not pudding-brained any more so that's good.

You know what push ups are? Repetitive is what.

I won't lie. Last time I was here I was talking about the 100 Push Ups program. While I'm sure it's a great program by the time I was up over 80 push ups I was bored with it.

You know what's boring? Staring at your carpet while you hump up and down on it... yeah... you know... when you say it like that it doesn't sound as bad as it was.

But that's not the point! The point is that doing any repetitive exercise that many times in a row is repetitious and repetition is, as I've said repeatedly, the hobgoblin of boredom. And boredom is, without being repetitive, not something that makes me want to repeat something. Especially if it's something that's repetitious. You see what I'm doing here right? Repeating repetitious over and over again repeatedly to make a point?

So, I did lots of Push Ups. I never made it to 100, but that's OK. I don't really believe I care about making it to 100. I did increase the number I could do so I'm more fit than I was before. But also was more bored. So, trying a different program starting next week. I firmly believe I need to do some cross training stuff. I just am working on finding some that I don't hate. There's a deck of cards work out that I think might be good. It won't be too repetitious and will work a variety of muscle groups. I'll tweak the system as I do it and post what I settle on in here as I do it. A friend of mine told me about it when I was talking about doing the 100 Push Up program and how boring it was. He suggested that while this one wasn't super exciting happy fun time at least it was mixed up a bit.

Running out of steam

My running lately has been sort of blah. I do it, and keep doing it because I remember that I enjoy it. Lately though I haven't been enjoying it as much. I keep doing it because I enjoy how I feel after exercising, but it may as well be considered a cardio workout as much as it is a run. My times aren't as good as they were a month ago, and my motivation is lacking. I think it's the tedium of the treadmill that's doing it. I got to run outside once, and that was nice, but I'm mostly on the treadmill lately. While I think it's increasing my general fitness level, or at least maintaining it from where it was when I was doing C25k, I don't think my running is actually GOING anywhere.

I worried this would happen when I finished C25k. Without a specific target in mind I sort of feel at loose ends. On Jan 1st I ran that virtual 5k and hit my under 30 minute goal for a 5k and those were my only two real goals. I wanted under half hour 5k time and wanted to finish C25k. Both done. Leaving me with a vague "Now what" feeling that I haven't shaken yet. Combine that with my not liking treadmills much (but prefer them to not running at all I have to qualify) and my not being willing to do more than half an hour on a treadmill and I'm at a wall.

I am considering doing C25k again, but with the times walking spent running at a comfortable pace, and the times running at a faster pace. Maybe that will help with keeping me motivated as well as giving me moving targets that will show progress that keeps me motivated.

Not sure what I'll do, but it's sort of why I haven't been on here much lately.