Progress Pics

I didn't think about what it would mean to be writing a blog about weight loss when I started back on Atkins at the end of September in 2010, so I didn't really take pictures. In retrospect, that's pretty stupid. I'm sure part of the reason was how much I hated the way I looked. I sort of just plunged in and as it turned out while my weight loss was pretty good, my blog posts were almost nonexistent. On a day to day basis or even week to week there didn't seem to be much to report. Looking back now, I was learning a lot. But even that was pretty sporadic. But there are some pictures of me taken a few weeks before I started that month at picnic near Idaho City. And then I have some recent photos. I can tell the difference, but I'm not sure that it's that great in the photos especially since I'm not standing up, but I think it's worth a try. P.S. I've got the glucometer and will be trying that out officially starting next week. Thought I'd read through the instructions before plunging in. What a concept!

The above is a picture of me (I'm in the dark red shirt) about the second week of September of 2010. About 2 weeks later, I started back on Atkins.

This a picture of me taken the last weekend of April 2011 and I'm about 30 pounds down from September 2010.

This picture of me (in black blouse) was taken at the end of June 2012 and I'm 51 pounds down from September of 2012.  Maybe the difference is not all that apparent in the photos, but I'm wearing much smaller size clothing than I was back then. I'll have to find the clothing I was wearing in that first picture and put them on and have a picture made.

So next week starts the new experiment. Now where did I put those strips for the ketones????

No Definitive Answer Yet On The Blue Light Blockers

Sleep Deprivation Makes You Carb Out

I still cannot report that the blue blocking lenses are working because of other things that have caused me to have poor sleep or awakened me in the middle of the night. One night I went out with a friend and we went to the Cottonwood Grille for coffee drinks on the patio after dinner. Hopefully this is a picture of the Cottonwood Grille patio. You can see why we wanted to take advantage of something so gorgeous that will soon probably not be comfortable once the weather gets colder and it will. It's September 21, kids. It got dark about a half an hour after we got there and so yeah, I was drinking a coffee after dark. Totally fucked up my sleep that night. I sort of recovered a bit the next night. But the night after that my dog woke me up at 3:40AM to go outside. The reason I'm sure was because I went to sleep at 10:30PM which is WAY WAY early for me, and as a consequence for her too. Way Early for both of us. So that makes me think the blue light blocking lenses would work if there weren't other things going on.  I only made it worse by sleeping in the morning after the middle of the night wake up, so I'm still not on a regular schedule. But so far, because of those events, I can't say that I have a definitive conclusion yet, on the blue light blockers. However, I'm leaning towards the thumbs up.  I can feel myself getting sleepy and fighting it way sooner than ever before.  That's good. Real good.

THE DUDE WEARING WAYFARERS

I got two different pairs of blue light blocking glasses. One really looks cool, but is really for being out in the sun so they are more like sunglasses and a bit too dark. So the ones I like have wrap around lighter lenses and I can read or do whatever without straining my eyes. I even go outside to get my dog in (she's deaf now and so calling her doesn't work) and it's dark and I'm still wearing them. ha ha But because I like the way my old face looks behind the sunglass type blue light blocking lenses, I'm hot to get some prescription sunglasses in Rayban Wayfarer frames as the Amazon.com review of those glasses said they were a knock off of those Ray-ban Wayfarers.  No wonder the Dude wears them. They are dark and cool. And even though I'm probably not cool enough to wear them, I want them. I can fantasize about being cool.  The Wayfarers are not as popular as they used to be, but I think they are a classic. So you learn something new every day whether you want to or not.

Blue Light Blocking Glasses Ordered

Sometimes I'm slow on the uptake. I'd heard for years that sleep deprivation increased cortisol levels and was associated with the onset of diabetes, cancer and other bad crap.  So I bought OTC sleep aids which helped, but not entirely. I also tried melatonin, and valerian root.  Both of those helped and seemed better than taking the OTC sleep aid on a permanent basis, right?  I've been a night owl for almost all my life. When I was taking the valerian root and melatonin, I was hoping to get to sleep by midnight, which is early for me. I naturally fall asleep at about 2:00 am. That sucks when you have to get up and go to work, but I was used to it. I really did try to do something about getting more sleep.  I just had a hard time overcoming years of habitual night owlishness. I would often feel sleepy at about 6 or 7 pm, but if I let myself fall asleep, I'd wake up in a couple of hours and be awake for the rest of the night, so giving in to drowsiness early in the evening wasn't an option.

When I started this journey towards health, I armed myself with a couple of iPhone apps for low carb eating. One of which gathers the best low carb blogs together.  This, of course included Jimmy Moore's Livin' La Vida Low Carb http://www.livinlavidalowcarb.com/ which is a great resource. I don't often listen to podcasts, because I guess I'm more of a reader, and the question and answer thing seems slow to me.  But I do listen once in a while when I'm really in need of a motivational boost.  One of Jimmy Moore's more electrifying podcasts was with Dr. Jack Kruse. I immediately found Dr. Kruse's website http://jackkruse.com/jacks-blog/ and Facebook page and I also recommend these to anyone trying to go low carb or just heal themselves. Both Jimmy Moore and Dr. Kruse have compelling stories of their low carb, healthy living journeys. Just reading those will keep you going.

 Dr. Kruse has introduced me to some radical ideas, that after consideration, make so much sense. I am barely skimming the surface of implementing these ideas, but I've taken the first steps. Dr. Kruse is a big proponent of normalizing your circadian rhythms.  The science of it all can be overwhelming.  I'd read that his wife wears goggles at night to help regulate her sleep cycle, but I just couldn't imagine wearing goggles to bed, or even an eye mask on a regular basis. That's because I'd either misread or not read the right passage, so I didn't understand that Dr. Kruse's wife was wearing blue light blocking glasses BEFORE going to bed. Then someone posted a comment on Dr. Kruse's Facebook page about how much the blue light blocking glasses helped. I still didn't get it, not really.  But one day in boredom, I surfed the net and finally got it. Here's a quick article on the whys of blue light blocking http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/6/prweb9532967.htm.  Blue light emitted from artificial light sources stops melatonin production.  Wow! And so you don't wear the goggles or glasses to bed, you wear them three hours before you want to go to sleep.  Whoa! Well now that totally makes sense. I get it now DUH!  I just ordered some blue light blocking glasses, and I will let you know how that works for me. I went with the cheap ones, because $80.00 is lot to pay to try something out. The Amazon reviews said that the cheap ones work just as well, so what the hell, I'm in.

I Don't Even Know What I Weigh.

This was actually written before I started back on Atkins in 2010.  I'm not sure why I didn't publish it, but it's not much and does give some mind set background.  So I thought I'd publish.  Too bad you can't do it retroactively ha ha. Do Over!!!

I'm good at ignoring things and just relegating them to someplace in the back of my mind. Yeah, sure, it says things to me now and again even from way way back there somewhere. But after many years of telling myself that I'm fine with my weight, the stars have aligned and I'm ready to get back on the low carb lifestyle. I have a new job and a lunch break. I didn't have a lunch break for a long time. It's fall and my lunch can stay in my car without getting fried..

What keeps me going and keeps cheating to a minimum?  The picture above tells it all. Before I restarted on the low carb thing, I read Gary Taubes' GOOD CALORIES, BAD CALORIES http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Science/dp/1400033462/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347126932&sr=1-1&keywords=good+calories+bad+calories+by+gary+taubes.  Taubes did exhaustive research on why the diet authorities including the U.S. government have been promoting a low fat diet for nearly 40 years and where they went wrong in their theories.  The science is there. All I have to think about if I want to eat a sugary treat is that Alzheimer's is now called Diabetes 3 because nearly all Alzheimer's patients have Diabetes and nearly all Diabetes patients end up with Alzheimer's.  If that's not enough, think about this:  cancer cells have more insulin receptors than any other cells in our bodies.  In fact the PET scan to determine whether your tumors are growing or not, is a scan where first they inject you with radioactive glucose. Anything that lights up afterwards is a tumor. So scientists know that cancer cells loves them some sugars, but do they tell you to limit your sugar intake with regards to cancer? Hell no.  They may tell you to limit your sugar intake if you want to lose weight, but their whole food pyramid is based on grains and low fat. What's in grains?  Glucose.  And glucose is a sugar.  So there you have it. They are promoting a cancer loving diet.  Check out WHEAT BELLY by William Davis M.D.http://www.amazon.com/Wheat-Belly-Lose-Weight-Health/dp/1609614798/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347126873&sr=1-1
if you don't believe me. So if you want to motivate yourself, sometimes a good dose of fear works. Yeah, I said it. But think about the positives, not only will you be losing weight, but you'll be getting healthier.

On another note, I've been stalled for nearly a year now. Not losing, but not gaining either. I have some ideas of what I should be doing to break out of this plateau, but sometimes a good book gives a person a new protocol to try.  So I just ordered  THE ART AND SCIENCE OF LOW CARBOHYDRATE PERFORMANCE by Volek and Phinney http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Science-Carbohydrate-Performance/dp/0983490716. I know it involves using a glucometer and that people are saying it's the missing puzzle piece for low carb. I'll let you know.

September 1, 2012

It's been a long time. I guess it just seemed so mundane to write with so little to report. Is that a good excuse for not blogging about a subject you are very passionate about? Not really especially if you consider yourself to be a writer at heart. Looking back I see now that a lot was happening, but maybe not as fast as I wanted it to. I am now down 51 pounds from where I started back in September of 2010. That's the good news. The bad news is that I lost that by September 24, 2011. So,yes damn it, I've not lost an ounce since. That's almost a whole year on a plateau!!! Okay, but there's good news in that bad news. That means I have maintained the weight loss. So that's good, right?

Here's what I know I should do, but haven't done. Strength training. Everything I've read says that you need to work on creating some muscle. Chronic Cardio just creates a calorie deficit which then signals to your body to slow down your metabolism. So it's better to go for a nice leisurely stroll than to walk for hours on a treadmill. Another benefit from NOT doing chronic cardio is that Chronic Cardio causes stress to your body which then produces cortisol which then adds on the pounds. So screw that!  I bought the strength bands in October of 2011. I didn't even open the package until, I don't know, May of 2012.  I just couldn't bust that move. So then I tried the triceps exercise with the lightest weight band, and I couldn't even move the damn thing. So I ordered a 10lb. stretch band. AND I still haven't tried it out. A lot of stuff was going on (excuse alert!). I was going out of town on two different trips, blah blah and boo frickety hoo.  I guess I was thinking about motivation and I thought, maybe I should fire up that pathetic blog I started almost two years ago and get a move on to phase two of the whole healthy living thing. So there you have it. I will try to post often, just to keep myself moving forward. It might be at a snail's pace, but the Japanese have a thought process on moving forward called Kaizen. It just means that you try to make at least, at least, and again at least, the smallest possible step toward your goal each day. We in the west call it Baby Steps which is fine, but Kaizen just sounds a bit more warrior like to my western brain, so for motivation, I'm calling it Kaizen.