Coke Floats

5K

2010-03-31T10:38:00.000-07:00

Hello, faithful readers. I am still fat and diabetic.

A month ago, a friend of mine at work suggested I run in a 5K this August, so I took him up on the challenge. I've been running* 3 days a week for 30m for the last month. Not quite couch to 5K, but in the same ballpark. Yes, I have special running shoes.

Today was the first day I've done this that I was able to get up to 5mph 3 different times during the 30m; Ended up going 1.6 miles in 31 minutes; I actually feel GOOD after the workout today, a welcome change. ^_^

I have a regularly scheduled doc visit in a week or so, and will bounce the sanity of this idea off her.

Now that I've been doing this for a month and made a (annoying, sweaty, and painful) habit out of it, next up is fixing my diet. I never transitioned properly off the medifast - so I did a great job losing the weight, but not keeping it off. My plan this time is to use the MF for snacks & backup, but to stay with real food as much as possible.

* Another runner friend of my says "Why not just walk". Trust me, that's basically what I'm doing at these speeds. =-)

Back on the wagon.

2009-08-11T06:39:00.000-07:00

So, apparently you can't just ignore your diabetes and make it go away!

After getting under fairly decent control and off the insulin and dropping 50 pounds, I took some (too much) time off from keeping an eye on it, and it got out of control again.

Had a doc visit today; back on the insulin, upped the sugar meds, need to watch what I eat, start going back to the gym. About 20 pounds to get back down to my low.

*^&#$#@$!

Horrible placement

2009-07-20T18:03:00.000-07:00

I don't know what to make of this: You can buy the awesome Dr. Horrible DVD at the local grocery...

Chocolate easter bunny says what?

2009-03-14T16:18:00.000-07:00

My son had two basketball games today, both at a high school a little under 11 miles away from our house; for the afternoon one, I had the bright idea of riding my bike out there, and meeting the family for the game.

I'm happy to report I made it in one piece, stopped only to drink some water, and can still walk. Sort of.

Switching between sitting and standing is going to hurt for a day or so; time to scope out a new bike and/or a new padded seat cover (I have a padded cover now; it's not enough!)

So, I biked last saturday for 7.5 miles, went to the gym at lunch on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and biked today for 10.7 miles. I even played some basketball with youngest kid for a while before it got dark.

Hopefully this means I'm in the running for the Fatty Bowl. More on that next post.

Information

2009-03-05T05:24:00.001-08:00

I've been struggling getting back on plan. One thing that has always helped me is writing things down - blood sugars, weight, food.

Thanks to Josh W., I discovered The Daily Plate. I will try to enter my food there as I go: http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/diary/rss/cokefloats/

I'm just figuring out the interface, so don't worry, I didn't put the half and half in the sriracha.

... But now that I say that, think I might have to try that out.

Thanks, internets, for keeping me honest.

Lazy: Elevators

2009-02-25T09:23:00.000-08:00

I work in a small office building. There's a cafeteria on the first floor (where I just got a yummy, diet-safe chef salad), and my company has offices on 2 and 3. I work on 2, but 3 has a stash of work-sponsored free beverage.

So, a typical lunch time jaunt is stairs from 2 to 1, grab lunch, elevator from 1 to 3, grab drink, stairs from 3 to 2, eat at desk.

Today, thankfully, the elevator was on 3 when I was on 1, so I had a chance to think "take the stairs, lazy!". Which I did.

At least I wasn't breathing hard by the time I got back to my desk. ^_^

Free Shipping?

2009-01-15T19:42:00.001-08:00

I was buying something on amazon just now, and needed only $1.05 more to get free shipping.

"If only there were a way to search for items by price so I could get just enough for free shipping..."

http://slickfillers.net/

Thank you internet. Here's a scooby snack.

Twitchy Madness.

2009-01-07T00:09:00.000-08:00

Today was a rough day; I think on day one I was living off whatever I ate on the weekend. I ended up eating a little more than allowed on plan today, but I was trying to avoid HUNGRY, which was lurking around every corner.

One of my old habits, on medifast or off it, is coffee; when I'm on, I like it especially because of the (perceived?) increase in metabolism. Also, I can put creamer in it, which has just enough calories to get me through rough spots.

The downside of this wonderful plan is that it's now 3:12 AM local time and I'm not at all tired. Stoopid coffee.

At least I stopped being hungry hours ago.

Hurm. My boss is probably just getting online now. Perhaps I should just sign in to work and start my day.

*twitch*

Wagon: I'z on it.

2009-01-05T10:34:00.000-08:00

Rachael and I tried an experiment for the holidays; We'd not worry about our diet, eat what we liked, see what happened, and basically start over in the new year. Not so much a New Year's resolution, as a last hurrah on the old.

Well, that's over with now. I'm kind of glad, as I'd gotten to the point where I was back to my old ways entirely; Eating unhealthy snacks (and too many of them), no exercise; I still can creep into all (most?) of the clothes I bought on the way down, however, so things aren't too bad. I had taken to weighing myself much less frequently, just enough to make sure I didn't get close to my original weight.

I'm at 244.6 today; I had reached a one-time low of 219 on September 21st; I stopped daily weigh ins for the holiday on October 29th at 226.8 after some weeks of moderate goof-offery.

So, back on the wagon today; daily weighins, medifast do-over (I'm now about 40 pounds from my target weight: about half way done from my first go round), and, (*gasp*), back to the gym for a surprise 30 minutes of cardio that left me, amazingly, upright.

Thanks to my employer for getting me a free gym membership that I didn't know I wanted. I may be the fattest person with two gym memberships that I know. Thankfully, I had a gym bag packed and ready to go in the car from weeks ago (*cringe*), and managed to hitch a ride to a local gym with a friend from work today for lunch break.

I'll have some posts in the next few days about lessons learned, both from the first run of medifast, and from the months of debauchery.

On Holidaze

2008-12-06T16:30:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted here in a while as I'm no longer on the wagon, and I always thought of this blog as part of a balanced diet.

I'm still down ~45 pounds from my initial weight, but I'm not following any sort of sane food intake at the moment. I'm just trying to stay on an even keel until January, at which point I plan on getting back on the wagon again. This not-really-a-plan is actually working out OK.

Even eating pretty much whatever I want, my weight is still staying very steady. My blood sugar is starting to go back up a little, though.

I had a debate with myself this morning about whether or not to get on the scale - I've been weighing every few days still, but have had a few extravagant days of eating, so I wasn't sure I wanted to see the damage.

Talked myself into it (not so hard after remembering talking myself into doing it every day), and was happy to see that the last few days have just been holding steady.

I still feel great compared to 45 pounds ago.

I still need to get back to the gym. Encourage me, lazyweb.

newer clothes

2008-10-17T17:52:00.000-07:00

Kids had a school event tonight that didn't require my presence, so I dropped them off and went to the K to pick up some new clothes (again). The last of my old shirts are too big, and I don't have enough of a selection of L dress shirts to go a whole week.

Finally picked up a new belt (a 40. the 38 seemed a smidge too snug.) Got some 38" jeans, a large dress shirt, and... a medium long sleeved T.

I tried on a medium dress shirt and it was a little too tight in the chest (to be fair the T is a little tight as well, but not obscenely so. I least, I don't think so) but the stomach fit no problem. So if I start toning up, I'll be able to wear a mediums. And maybe some 36" pants.

I can't tell you how insane this is.

Goodbye, gram.

2008-10-16T12:40:00.001-07:00

My grandmother, pictured a few posts back, died recently. She was 92, and she was, sadly, ready to go.

There were no services, so Rachael and I took the kids back to visit my mother and her sister, to make sure everyone was alright. I think everyone is sad, but not distraught.

(now comes the related food bits)

There was, of course, much eating during the visit. I've been holding steady in the 220-225 range for months now, after falling off the medifast wagon. (More like dangling off the side of the wagon). After that visit, I had plumped back up to just under 230 again. I'm now back down to ~ 225.

Last doctor's visit (after weeks of being at that range), saw a slight increase in A1C from 6 to 6.4 or so; No change in meds; 3 month followup instead of the 6-weeks we'd been doing.

I'm slowly getting ready to make the push for the last 20 pounds. Planning a switch to a morning gym schedule to sneak it in before work, slowly getting back on the medifast wagon.

Saw someone today who hasn't seen me since I started on medifast; she said I didn't even look like the same person, and when I got to the '20 pounds to go' bit, she had the awesomeness to say "From where!?". (I could show you, but this is a family blog.)

(food part over)

I do wish I had gotten my stuff together when gram could have appreciated it; I know she always worried about my weight and health (I know this because she was not afraid to tell me I'd put on a few pounds!).

Goodbye.

Going Steady.

2008-09-24T23:26:00.000-07:00

Things are pretty much holding steady at this point, I'm still in the low 220s; had a brief dip down to 219 about a week ago, but a trip back home for some family cooking caused a slight rebound. Course correction in progress.

Still heading down to 205, but doing so pretty leisurely at this point, even before the homemade white chocolate cheesecake and BBQ.

Six week doc visit was supposed to be Tuesday. Then Friday. Now Next Tuesday! The doctor herself is apparently unwell; I'll hopefully be able to ratchet down the meds another notch once I can go over my bloodwork from last week.

In the before time

2008-08-31T14:46:00.000-07:00

Here's another before photo from late March (thanks Raye!), a little more than a month before I started this program.

Sadly, it shows off my old physique quite well.

Also pictured here is my grandmother, Elsie Wilcox.

Day 117 - What's the Over/Under?

2008-08-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

Haven't had a weight post in a while. The weekly weigh-ins have slowed down a bit, but I think that's entirely explainable by my recent deviations from the food plan.

I'm still primarily eating the medifast food, but I am being a little less cautious eating out (having the miso soup with my sashimi), having meat 2x a day once in a while instead of once and trying to juggle the medifast food down accordingly. So I'm still losing, but not as rapidly.

But as of today, I'm at 220.2 lbs.

61.8 pounds total loss (4.4 stone, 28 kg, 22% of my original weight.)
calculated BMI is now 29.86; I am now officially merely overweight. (I started out at 38+; morbidly obese with the diabetes)
Another 15.2 pounds to go to make my doctor happy. (We'll see if I'm happy there.)

I just went through the closet again today and tossed some old 44"-waist pants that managed to survive the last culling; Got some new 38" pants for my birthday which fit quite well. I don't normally like clothes as presents, but the size made it worthwhile. (Thanks, mom.)

I've included some before and after shots in this post; the one on the right is from mid January; but that's about the same size I was in May when I started. The one on the left Rachael just snapped a few minutes ago as I was hunting for a new shot. I tried to use the "thin" pose. I think I look a little goofy, but it definitely shows the difference. I'll see if I can find a better "before" shot later, but that's ancient history now.

Onward and downward.

Happy Anniversary

2008-08-28T06:13:00.000-07:00

Today is Rachael's and my 15th anniversary; We actually got to go a concert[0] last weekend, so no big plans today.[1]

Just wanted to wish her a happy anniversary and thank her for all her support on the diet; without her (she's going through the same program I am), I'm sure I couldn't have made it this far!

[0] Cheap Trick/Heart/Journey, all of whom rocked. I was especially impressed with the vocals on the new Journey lead singer.

[1] Thanks to Ann who offers to baby sit every year for our anniversary. If it wasn't for her, we'd never go anywhere!

Bite the Big Apple

2008-08-22T10:23:00.001-07:00

Warning, this isn't about my weight loss.

Ok, I'm a big Apple fan. I switched years ago for the unix, and stayed for the shiny. I have a first-gen iPhone. I've tried out the option to download music from iTMS to the phone, and then re-sync it to the computer; works great.

So, I heard a song in the car on the way to lunch today. Thought it was Richard Cheese, but no, it's an honest to god "name brand" artist doing swing-style covers of rock songs. I liked it so much, I bought the album when I got back to the office and had access to wifi.

I just used technology which was only a dream even 10 years ago to do something amazingly awesome...

...and it was to buy a Paul Anka record.

I think there might be something wrong with me.

Day 106 - Week 15 weighin

2008-08-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

Snuck out a new minimum of 224.2 pounds today, for a 15 week total of 57.8 pounds, 2-pound loss from last week.

That's about 20% of my starting weight, at an average of 3.85 pounds a week.

If I can go a little over 3 more pounds, I'll drop down to 'overweight' from 'obese'. I started out at 'morbidly obese' in May.

If I go a little more than 16 pounds after that, I'll be at the goal BMI set by my doctor.

I had a most disturbing feeling last night, lying on my side, getting ready to sleep. Resting my arm on my side, I could feel my bones (lower rib and pelvis, I think), and the loose skin that's accumulating was kind of hanging off to the side. The disturbing part was the depression between the two bones.

Anyone else reading gone through this kind of weight loss? Presuming I can keep it off, how long is going to take me to adjust to the new... shape? I don't feel different most of the time (my "just walking around" body feels the same as it did months ago), which means anytime I notice something like this, it's rather jarring.

Day 102 - Edamame Pyrotechnic

2008-08-15T10:25:00.000-07:00

Went out to a birthday dinner last night with the family to a newish Japanese place; Isabella's birthday was the day before mine, so we kind of shared a dinner out, but dragged the whole family with. I ate enough sashimi to fill the hold on a small whaling ship, and even had some awesome treat for dessert that involved mango ice cream wrapped in some dough-like coating (pictured here). I thoroughly enjoyed that, and the edamame, and some kind of warm sushi-like product that I think had some spicy mayo in it. And some shrimp tempura. I picked at everything.

I felt absolutely no guilt about this; However, I also had no "I deserve this NOM NOM NOM" moment, either. It was a normal, relatively sane dinner out; I had a good time, the food was good, I felt full but not bloated when it was over. I felt weird about not feeling weird, and commented on this to the wife, which did, I admit, make me feel sort of meta-weird.

My daily weighin shows a one day uptick of 0.2 pounds, which is completely insignificant.

And, after this wonderful dinner with my entire family, on the drive home, there were fireworks! We left the restaurant just in time to catch a good portion of a fireworks show on the Hudson; we pulled off on a back street to watch the amazing finale from the car.

Woot.

Day 101 - Yes, but how does that make you feel?

2008-08-14T05:37:00.001-07:00

I can't believe I missed an opportunity to blog on Day 100. Ah well.

One of the things that got me to a point where I needed to lose 80 pounds is eating for the wrong reasons. I often (used to!) eat when bored, excited, mad, depressed... To the kind of mindset I spent most of my life in, there's nothing some sugar and fat can't fix.

So, on this plan, I started out trying to be meticulous about following the program. And it didn't require a lot of concious thought at first; you setup your meals for the day, you eat every 2 hours, you don't have to think about it. The lack of thought was very helpful to me. I could make eating right the default, and I'd have to go out of my way to screw it up.

Lately, as I'm getting closer to my goal, I'm finding that I do have to think about it more. I've had a few days (yesterday was one!) where I didn't follow the program, but ended up substituting more low fat meats for a medifast meal or two. My totals for the day were probably not that far off, but I had sashimi for lunch[1], and then some roasted chicken and cold cuts later in the day. Well, I've been doing so well, don't I deserve to have some yummy food?

I've been having that thought a lot lately, and I think it's the new trick my lizard brain has come up with. It's partially true, even! I've lost (quick check) 57.6 pounds as of this morning. That's insane. Surely I deserve a little celebratory snack. An extra bag of those (relatively) delicious soy crisps? Another few ounces of meat? How about a few chips from a bag that isn't even on the diet?

One of the reasons I've been able to make this work so far is that I haven't really had to deal with real food at all. I've been "on plan" since May, so I've been able to avoid a lot of things that looked really good. I've allowed myself some slack so I don't explode: a few 20 calorie snapples aren't going to ruin my diet, after all. (And they haven't! I have retroactive proof!). But where do I draw the line? So far the line has been very close to "medifast or nothing"; Obviously not a good long term strategy.

As I start getting closer to maintenance mode, though, I'm going to need another mechanism to cope with all the food out there. I haven't quite figured out what that's going to be, but I am planning on keeping up with the daily weighins. So, worst case, even if I can't easily stay in a healthy range, I'll have an alarm for when I leave the range, and I know I can drop a few pounds as needed. It'd be nice if I never made the alarm go off, but that's my plan B for now.

I am glad that the medifast plan has a long maintenance cycle; Hopefully it will give my brain time to adjust to that as well. I also have a visit planned with a diabetes educator/nutritionist team once I'm released back into the wild, so I'll be working in this with the help of some very smart folks.

[1] Big shout out to Yoshi's in Latham, NY. Highly recommend. They take very good care of me there, and the sashimi platter I get there at least once a week has been a lifesaver on this diet. Having one food that I really enjoy that I get to eat on a regular basis with no guilt makes this bearable. I am looking forward to going back there every week even when I'm off the diet and on my own.

Day 99 - Pharmaceutical Reductionism

2008-08-12T17:02:00.000-07:00

Got the results of my six-week followup bloodwork today: my A1C is down to 6.0; it was 6.8 six weeks ago, and that's with several reductions in blood sugar meds six weeks ago, and going off the insulin about 30 days ago.

I'm back on a very small dosage of lisinopril for kidney protection, but get to cut the dosage of another med in half to compensate.

Cholesterol is sneaking back up slowly with the drop in meds the last time (only to 104 total, though), so no change on the meds there for now.

Big news is that my last remaining blood sugar med (metformin), which I was on 2g (2000mg) of has been cut in half to 1g. That's two less horse pills a day.

And I'm exercising less now than I was before I started the diet[1]. Still. So nearly all of this medicine cutback (and improved control on my numbers) is all food related.

The doctor seemed to have a hard time deciding today how deep to cut the dosages; She joked that it's easier to write the Rx when things are going badly.

Still aiming for 205 pounds; Doc says to shoot for about 28 BMI. That's about 20 pounds away from here, and given what I can see that remains of my still enormous-seeming stomach, I'm not sure I'm going to stop there. I want to be healthy, not skinny; But I have no idea what a healthy weight is, so we'll see what happens when I get to 205.

I can already see .... issues with the skin that's left; I'll try not to worry about that (other than doing crunches) until I've kept the weight off for some time.

Another followup bloodwork/visit in six weeks; I aim to cut even more meds and weight by then.

[1] Though I did go for a very nice 10mile bike ride this weekend. Work is about 14m from here, and the first 10m of that is pretty flat. Definitely going to try that one day this month.

Day 93 - Wardrobe Malfunction

2008-08-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

Time to go clothes shopping again; I have one pair of comfortable fitting pants (40s) and a few XL dress shirts; I'd already gone through the closet once, but even the stuff that's left now is too big.

Today I wore some nice, dress clown pants, one of my old 44s. I had to fold the waistband over before cinching my belt as tight as possible. So I stopped at the local Kmart after work to see if they had something cheap that could get me through the next few weeks. I only bought one outfit, but I did a little dance in the dressing room when I realized that the L dress shirt and the 38 waist pants fit. Schweeet.

I also just noticed (after not having checked the BMI-ometer recently) that I'm just under six pounds away from being overweight instead of obese.

woot.

Day 91 - Scales and Stones

2008-08-04T12:20:00.001-07:00

So, as threatened, I've switched scales; that, combined with another good daily reading put me at 226 pounds this morning.

That's a total^[1] of 56 pounds (down from 282), or 4 stone, even. That leaves only 21 pounds to my next goal of 205.

Must start muscle toning.

^[1] I can't think of a way to easily keep track of the fact that I've switched scales when discussing how much I've lost, so I'm pretty much just going to ignore it from now on and pretend I had one really good day today. ^_^

Day 90 - Are we there yet?

2008-08-03T06:52:00.000-07:00

Went to a going away party for an ex-coworker of mine this week; got to see a lot of old friends that I haven't seen since I started the diet. So I got a lot of concentrated positive feedback. That was very nice, on top of just getting to see folks again.

But, the real reason for a post today is that I hit my first milestone! Had a single day loss which puts me comfortably at 232.5 pounds, for a total loss of 49.5 pounds as of this morning. That's 3.85 pounds a week.

Next time I go to the gym (which is about once a week lately; that plus bikes are keeping at 2-3 cardio "events" a week.), I'm going over to the weights to hoist up 2 25 pounders. Perhaps I will see if I can go for a walk around the track with them.

And, as I mentioned earlier, now that I've made it to the first milestone (WOOO!), I'm going to switch over to the wife's scale.

Medifast. Tell your friends.

Day 81 - Horribly close

2008-07-25T06:41:00.000-07:00

Went out to dinner last night. Even picked a place (local diner) that I had a bad time at the last time to see if I could do any better. Didn't particularly care for the food, so it made it very easy to stay on portion. I wasn't starving like I was the last time we hit the diner, though. Small victories. Thank goodness for coffee; having one vice left makes me not miss the others so bad.

The new food from medifast is also helping; amazing how much less annoying it is when you don't have to eat the exact same soy powder every single day. (Some of the non-diabetic flavors actually seem... tasty. That can't be right, can it?)

So after a month of relatively slow loss, I've lost 6.5 pounds in the last 4 days. I'm down to 237 as of this morning, putting me two pounds away from my initial goal of 235. That's 45 pounds in 81 days.

I am pondering doing a scale switch once that happens, as my better half has a new scale that seems to agree with the scale at the gym. It's also finer grained (tenth pounds instead of half pounds), and, not that this has anything to do with my desire to switch, shows my weight as several pounds below my current. ^_^

I wanted to get to the 235 before the switch though. Soooo close.

Going out to Indian buffet today, and I blogged about the new low, and we're going into the weekend, so no doubt it'll be another 2 weeks before I get this close again.

Thanks for everyone who's posted comments so far; helpful to know that someone is slogging through these entries.

Also, go see Dr. Horrible.