Where have I been?

It has be a significant time since I written in this blog.

I first thought I'd be chronicling my lifestyle changes as I changed it in small ways.

Instead I changed a huge part of my life of my life by giving up sugar and starch for the past 3 months. That endevour seem to take up all my  energy to keep up. So this blog fell by the wayside.

The effort paid off with more than a twenty pounds weight loss but more importantly my size reduction makes putting on a seat-belt again possible. (It is the little things that motivate me.)

But as pleased as I am with the results, I'm worried that it is coming at the cost of my health.

You see, I lost the weight by following a pseudo Ketogenic diet. I say pseudo because the advocates of this lifestyle will tell you that your food needs to be GMO - free and grass-fed and organically produced. (Which is all code for expensive.) "Keto is more than going to Wendy's and throwing away the bun," they say. (Which is pretty much what I was doing.)

I realized as I continued this diet I was missing something and it was more than just my sweet tooth crying out to be fed.

Most of the proponents on YouTube admitted that the diet has drawbacks and they were more than happy to sell you the supplement that fill the holes that were missing from this meal plan.

Now I'm not dissing these people, I'm grateful for the information and services that they offer because I realized the Keto may be a good idea for fighting cancer and for young men who are trying to achieve a certain look or sports performance.

It doesn't seem to be good for women who are interested in their fertility. The same goes for intermittent fasting. Which I also looked into and tried on a limited basis. While both these strategies seems to be okay for guys under fifty, but not so much for gals of any age.

Being a woman over fifty, I'm not so worried about my fertility at this point. I am however concerned about my longevity and more importantly my mobility, which is what started me on this journey in the first place.

So that leads me to my search for a "plan" that will get me what I want.

I started the Ketogenic plan in support of the eating habits my Dad had adopted to fight his cancer. Now my sister has been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and I am looking in to the Schwarzbein Principal.

Not too many gurus promoting this plan on YouTube and that is because it does not purport to be about quick weight loss which is the motivating factor for most other plans.

Even the first Schwarzbein Principal book was designed for those suffering from Type 2 Diabetes. Dr. Diane Schwarzbein put out the "Schwarzbein Principal II" for the rest of us looking into our endocrine system's health.

My original "Plan" (Plan-W) was to lose my excess weight over the space of four years. 200 pounds at the rate of a pound a week. I'm already at my February 2018 goal of 336 pounds. I was hoping to achieve those goals through the 3 "W"s - Water; Walking and Wake

The first "W" I've pretty much started. I'm drinking water as my beverage of choice. I still need to add water rich foods to my diet but I've been improving on that too little by little.

The second "W" I've got to confess I haven't worked on at all. I need to start walking. Even if it is for five minutes around the cul-de-sac on my street.

The third "W" stands for waking up in the morning. Originally I had a goal to get up each morning at 5 AM so I could write this blog, but as I researched I found sleep is a key factor in the body using its fat stores. So I change "Wake" to emphasize getting enough sleep so I wake naturally. (Hopefully around 5 o'clock in the morning.)

There is a now a fourth "W" that I have added. It stands for "Write-it-down". I need to document my journey as I navigate through all the information out there.

So I am rededicating myself to writing this blog.

I'm Walking Here!

"I'm walking here! I'm walking here!"

I'm walking here montage

Why walking is an issue?

Weighing 360 pounds is only part of the problem. I'm a little phobic about walking outdoors.

I have an issue with my eyesight that hinders my depth perception because of this I tend to stumble. Especially when I'm hurrying.

What I'm afraid of is that I'll be crossing the street when I stumble and fall. I won't be able to get up before a car comes.  I'm more afraid for the driver that they will have to live with the fact that they hit me, than afraid of myself getting hurt or killed. Isn't that silly. It would just be so embarrassing.

So I have a tendency to wait till cars pass at crosswalks or till the driver insists by signaling that they'll wait for me, but I still get very anxious.

I have solutions for this of course, first thing I don't rush anymore and I haven't fallen in years.
I have a mantra when ever I find myself rushing, "No hurry, no worry".

I still stumble, but I have a walking stick, so this helps with the depth perception issue. I can feel the terrain that I can't judge by sight. It also steadies me on the occasional mis-step.

When I walk there is discomfort because of my weigh, but I think that my anxiety is more of an impediment to my walking than any pain I may experience. So I need to push past this fear. The opposite of fear is not courage but faith. I need to exercise faith and trust that the drivers will see me and stop. Have faith and trust that measures I've taken to keep from falling will work. Have faith that with walking my mobility will improve and these issues will diminish along with my anxiety. 

Have no fear, Plan W is here. -a new mantra

"I'm gliding here!"

Weigh-in #2

The scale still says three hundred and sixty pounds. A little discouraging I must say, but not wholly unexpected. Breaking even is better than an increase. So I'm going to chalk this up as a win.

Weak Week

I've had an unplanned week off  from blogging. So I'll have to make up for it this week with double posts to catch up. I'll do that by analyzing what went wrong but also what's working.

What went wrong?

First, of all the heat. We have had usually muggy weather  and it's actually sticky...




                  "I just hate it when it's sticky"

Second, I have started going to a class on Lazer and 3D printing. It is two nights a week and that has taken up all my ability to overcome the inertia that keeps me from accomplishing my goals.

I'm excited about learning how to use CorelDraw to create the stuff that dreams are made of,

But...

It's a distraction from Plan W

I'm not :

• weighing in a pound less this week. 
• waking up at 5am each morning. 
• walking at least a ½ mile each day.
• writing my blog.

What is Working?

I am  using my Bullet Journal to get things done.

I did drink more water. 

I kept track of my food consumption 5 out of 7 days.

I remembered to take my blood pressure medication more frequently.

I went for one walk this week and determined that a ½ mile walk is a good start to build from.

Plan W - week 3 goals 

• Write blog
• Walk a ½ mile each day
• Take my pill each night 

Water, Water, Everywhere

"Water, water, everywhere... Nor any drop to drink."

From Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Water or hydration is very important. Experts all agree on this. You may be able to live up to two months without food, but you aren't likely to last three days without water. The experts also believe that we as a society are most likely under hydrated most of the time.

We are constantly losing hydration through sweat, urine and even breath. So how much is enough and can you drink too much? The answer to both is "It depends". Which I admit isn't helpful.

There is good news. Dehydration, so little water you could die is rare. Even rarer still is Hyponatremia, when you drink too much too fast that your kidneys can't keep up and causes water intoxication of your brain. Yeah, that's right, ☠ toxic as in dying. Who'd of thought you could get to much of a good thing.

Drinking fluids can help with hydration. This includes milk, juice, coffee, tea, ect.... along with good old  H₂O. 

However, being an unrepentant soda drinker, as I am,  I would love to say that soda counts toward good hydration, but that is not the case. Although soda pop's bad rap has been perpetuated for decades, it isn't altogether deserved.

When I was a kid we were told that carbonated drinks would cause dehydration because you would pee out 1½ times as much as you'd take in. There are many reasons not to drink pop but this is not one of them. 

A soft drink can hydrate you in extreme circumstances, but on a regular bases the harm to benifit ratio of the carbonation plus chemicals,dyes, and other additives far out weighs any advantage from the drink. So because of this sum-zero-gain soda pop should be avoided and only consumed for its "entertainment value."

Check out this article from Care2.com

8 Common Myths About Dehydration

How much water should you drink?

The popular answer is eight 8 ounce glasses a day but as sited in the Care2 article above, this isn't supported by hard evidence. Drinking a half gallon of water each day can be daunting, so some experts suggest that thirst should guide your intake. While others believe your urine color is the best indication of a healthy amount. There are even some health gurus that believe you could and maybe should get all the water you need from water-rich foods such as cucumbers, celery and other vegetables. They believe plain water robs your body of minerals, enzymes and other good stuff that veggies provide.

I like the idea of spliting the difference with a two prong attack. The strategy is to drink a prescibed amount water while simultaneously adding more water-rich vegetables to my diet. Instead of concentrating on replacing water for soda (which has never worked).  Putting my energy into addition not subtraction.

So, if like me, drinking your recommended 2.7 liters (3.7 for guys) of water per day is an albatross around your neck, consider the alternatives.

Because water... water is everywhere.

So here's the plan

Use my handy dandy Bullet Journal to track water intake by:

4 cups (24 oz) or 1 sports bottle of water 

6 stalks of celery

5 servings of water-rich vegetables 

Step 2 of Plan W -  Water intake

Why Blog?

Why am I blogging? In a word - Accountability! I have made a commitment to blog each day at least till Thanksgiving. It is the first 90 days in a 4 year plan. That plan being Plan W.

Me with my minion ready to work

• Plan W
• Weighing in
• Writing-it-down
• Water
• Wake
• Walk
• Want
• Willpower
• Wholesome
• Window of opportunity
• Wonder
• Work
• Wealth
• Wait
• Watch
• Win

Weathering the Weather

As of this writing (Labor Day weekend 2017) we here in Lompoc are experiencing an unusual heat wave due to tropical storms. It's the muggy type of humidity that is hard to bear. It's Hot!

Which reminds me of a scene from Neil Simon's "Biloxi Blues", where Mathew Broderick's character complains about the heat.

"Boy, it's hot. This is hot... 

It's like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot."

So stay cool, hydrated and have a Happy Labor Day!

Write-it-down!

I've been told that people who write down what they eat are more likely to lose weight. I also heard that they are more likely to keep the weight off. This may be so, but it’s an exhausting activity to sustain indefinitely. So this would be a failure I don't need.

Having said that I am going to be writing down what I consume until I come up with a uniform eating habit. With the same menu each day, I won't have to write anything down unless I eat something outside my regimen.

What will I be writing down in?

A journal. A Bullet Journal to be exact. As I was researching on how to blog, I came across this exciting system for planning my day, week, month, year… quite frankly my life. 

What is a Bullet Journal?

A Bullet Journal, or BuJo for short, was created by Ryder Carroll, and his website, bulletjournal.com can explain it better than I can. Plus there is this YouTube video, How to create a Bullet Journal + 10 Tips, that I found helpful and very entertaining.

How am I going to use my Bullet Journal?
I've been experimenting with my BoJo for the last couple of weeks trying to use it to implement Plan W. I'm starting with what the tutorials call "The Basics", following the creator's original instructions. I'm not buying an expensive journal that would be so nice that I'd be too afraid of ruining it to even use it. I'm going with a 50¢ composition book (gotta love those Back-to-school specials) and a pen I stole from my sister (because I like the feel of it- so smooooth) that makes bold dark lettering (it's a Bic Velocity 1.6, in case you were curious). This system is flexible enough that not only can I use it to keep track of my eating (what I am calling my food log) I will be able to use to record any physical activity and manage the tasks I want to get done instead of watching another episode of Law & Order that I've already seen but for the life of me I can't remember how it ends (and I must know how it ends or the world will cease to spin on it's axis)... Yeah, it can do that. Pretty powerful stuff here, writing it down. World changing stuff, (at least my world). Life changing stuff, (well, my life). Just by writing it down (or so they say).

First step in Plan W - Write-it-down!

The Weigh-in

I weigh in at about three hundred and sixty pounds at present. The plan is to turn that around and do a one-eighty. Actually over the next four years I plan to lose two hundred pounds which would make it a one-sixty, but I'll take one-eighty.

Welcome to the Plan

I know you have heard of Plan B - that fall back plan for when your first plan - Plan A - falls through. So what happens when Plans B; C; D ... ect. - so on and so forth -  Fail - now you're in your 50's and 200 pounds heavier than you should be - you end up on Plan W.

What is Plan W? It's an accumulation of 30 years of what not to do - and what doesn't work - and doing the opposite. Over the next 90 days I will be sharing with the world - via the web - what will work. Don't worry I'll share what doesn't as well. (Notice the clever use of words starting with W).

Welcome to Plan W - watch out - we're on our way!  (I wonder how many more W words I can use?)