words about things

What follows is my subtle attempt at honesty.

Thursday's Notes:

A few of notes regarding the confusion some people have towards my weight loss, carb consumption, exercise, and ketosis. These are 4 distinct and different things. I know that people always say “I want to lose weight and get in shape.” But those are 2 different things. Seriously, take a deep breath, go to your quiet place and think about this while I babble on about what makes me feel self important.

#1 I have always judged my weight based on my ability to do the things I enjoy. I noticed I was having problems I’d never had before with my leg joints and I’d had a recent weight gain. So, weight loss was approved for execution. The plan to do this was to cut calories (primarily from carbohydrates) because that is how you lose weight. I’m not talking about health, I’m not talking about nutrition; I’m not talking about anything except modifying my daily caloric intake. That’s where I started to meet this goal. I could literally have eaten twinkies and lost weight.

#2 All calories aren’t the same and you have to look at how your food affects you. It goes in one hole, you do stuff while it’s in you and then it comes out of another hole. Look at these as 3 acts of the diet play and see what the characters are doing. Especially that 3rd act, it can be eye opening. I have always had strong reactions to refined sugars and terrible reaction to artificial sweeteners. I put these on the chopping block first. Since, I only had a couple daily sources for refined sugars and high fructose corn syrup, out they went. That was easy. By comparison, I had a few weekly sources intensely high simple carbs. Like pasta and rice. I LOVE pasta and rice! I was raised on it! I can make an awesome marinara sauce but what do you put it on? Pasta! Nothing makes me feel better after a long crapy day at work than a wonderfully cooked meat on a pile of long grain basmati rice! I love, love, love these things but I decided to drop them until I hit a weight where I feel comfortable. I won’t argue with the glycemic index crowd, or fight the paleo dieters, or the vegans or anyone else for that matter, I’m working with what I love to do (spend time in my kitchen) and what I have to do it with (food from my local grocery store). Simple carbs are out, complex carbs are under control.

#3 We act like “diet” means eating something special for a short period because someone told you to but your diet is actually just everything you put in your body that must be used or filtered out. Tattoos probably don’t count but everything else does. If you go to the DR and he gives you a prescription, that pill is now part of your diet. Likewise, we think of “exercise” as being something that you do at a gym that makes you sweat. Bullshit. Everything you do is part of your exercise.  Do more! Stop driving around and around the parking lot trying to get as close to the door as possible. Grab the first open spot in the back lot and walk the 100 yards to the damn auto-opening door. Stand up for a while. Pick stuff up. Don’t hurt yourself, but imagine that you are a healthy active human and behave like one. Move around, stretch, challenge yourself a little. If you really want to build your strength and endurance, you need a goal. Decide to run a marathon and spend the year to get to the point where you can suck at it.

I was raised on a farm and to me “work” meant physical activity that was hard and made me tired no matter how many times I did it. Now I have a job where “work” means sitting behind a desk and telling people what to do. But I still exercise so I can do the stuff I love. I spend a lot of time in the woods. I walk a lot. I couldn’t run a marathon, I’m not interested in that, but if I need to walk several miles through uneven terrain to get to where I’m going, I can do that, no problem. I ride my bicycle a lot. I’m not trying to win any races but if I had no other way to get to work on a windy rainy day and it was important to me, I could bike there. You get the point.

I’ve seen too many grown men hit 50+ have a heart attack and then want to get in shape.

I’ve seen too many grown women have babies and lament the body they used to have.

Pick something you physically want to do and build yourself up until you can make it happen. That’s the point of exercise.

#4 The ketogenic diet is an experiment for me. I took the time to modify my daily diet. I created new habits  and patterns for my preparing and consuming of food. Altering it for the ketogenic diet wasn’t that hard except for the fat content. I’m losing weight, so I’m already in ketosis a little bit. But by hammering down the carbs I can crank my ketogenic state  up which is only healthy if you bring up the fats and burn them for energy. This is what I want to see happen. In a few weeks I’ll alter my diet again and check to see the ketogen levels drop. I’m not even really worried about weight lose at this point (although I will be paying attention to weight gain). I want to see me burn fat for energy, be able to exercise, feel OK and establish a level weight. If I have problems I can easily alter my diet again because it’s all documented now. Maybe some people don’t think this is fun, but I do. It’s exciting and it takes time to see the results. Maybe my problem is I don’t have anyone to worry about me or support me. The handful of people I try to talk to aren’t really in my everyday life. Well , that’s my fault and the topic for another post.

PS: I have realized that there’s nothing f*&king more boring than listening to someone talk about something that, literally, only applies to them, like say, their diet or their dreams. It’s really some boring shit. This is why people talk about sports or politics or the weather when they meet. Plus we’re shallow creatures who burn too many calories empathizing with each other.

OK, enough talk about what's going in me. Next time, I'll talk about what's coming out of me.