Reboot 2014

Why wait until New Year's?  The holidays will be rough, but this isn't about weight loss or anything.  I'm here reminding myself not to lose control, though.  It's a problem.

Doctors
I'm not afraid of doctors.  I simply hate them.  I find them arrogant, narrow-minded, and judgmental.

Case in point.  Bio screen turned up blood pressure that was actually high enough to scare me.  Trust me.  That is beyond scary for a normal person.  So, made an appointment with a doctor.  We had to hunt down a new doctor because I didn't like that last one I had, the one before that, or, actually, any doctor I've ever had (except the OB/GYN my sister recommended who turned out to be awesome, but who cannot, of course, help with this problem.)

So, I go to this new guy.  Blood pressure was down a little from last week.  Good.  Not quite so scary.  Still securely in HYPERTENSION ALERT! category, not just "concerning".  He was nice.  Really nice.  Great guy.  Seemed smart.

He looked at me, made a judgement, and then began talking arrogantly as though he knew my life, and then when I tried to explain things, he narrow-mindedly pursued his judgement.  He started by saying "If you add salt to your food..."  Okay, a good doctor starts with "Do you add salt to your food?" Because the answer is no.  I have pretty much NEVER added salt to my food. So I tell him this and then say I look for low sodium soups and when I make homemade soup, I buy low sodium broths.  I say I realize they still have a lot, but I don't have them often.  Then he says "well, those soups have a lot of salt.  So do lunch meats.  Pretty much any processed foods."  Again, did he ask what I eat regularly?  Did he really acknowledge that I already knew they had sodium, but I don't eat them often?  No.  So he talks about salts in processed foods, none of which I eat, btw.  I have lunch meat, like, once a month and soups maybe once a week in the winter.

I could go on, but basically the whole appointment went this way.  He didn't ask me ANY questions.  he just talked AT me.  I had to interrupt him to tell him I had lost a bunch of weight, but I had surgery, got depressed, gave up, and gained back most of the weight.  He said "because fad diets don't really work.  You just gain it back."  Well, y'all here know it wasn't a FAD diet! Right!?  It was so insulting!

So he put me on a water pill to flush my system of water and sodium hoping that will help.  Well, I do hope it helps because it's cheap and it's not something your body adjusts to so that you can never get off of it like other blood pressure meds, but a part of me hopes it doesn't work so I can say "See?  It wasn't just about the sodium!"

I asked him about side effects and he mentioned peeing a lot and such so I specifically asked about potassium because that's usually a concern with water pills and he said "it's a good idea, but this one's pretty mild" so I'm thinking okay.  We'll see.

But I just know, KNOW that when I go in next week that he's going to be all proud of the weight I've lost.  Notice he did not mention that side effect, but it will happen.  I just wonder if he's going to try to spin it like "doesn't that make you want to lose more?"

Oh yeah, and he never asked me if I get any exercise.  He just lectured me about how getting out for even 10 minutes at a time if that's all I can handle will do a world of good.

I wonder if he walks 1 1/2 - 2 miles every day.  We walk a minimum of 30 minutes if we don't know the distance we're going (we do the mile and a half in about 30 minutes at home) which sometimes includes hills or terrain that slows us down.  Either way, it was rather narrow-minded of him to assume 10 minutes might be hard for me, don't you think?

Refocusing my efforts
Btw, the rest of my test results are on the high to mid level green HEALTHY so kiss my grits, everyone who thinks fat automatically equals UNhealthy!!  Based on weight alone, they say I'm a risk.  This is my frustration.  It's the things like cholesterol and blood glucose that should be putting you in "high risk", right?  Not the weight ALONE?  Okay, the BP, but they referenced the weight first in my report.

As I said, I'm not really going for weight loss, though, but once in a while I've been letting myself lose it a little.  I'm going to slow down and enjoy.  I want to feel better so I can do more, but I have this foot injury that's been slowing me down a lot.  It's getting better, but I am reminded of my age by how long it is taking.

I'm recording all my stuffs on SparkPeople.  It didn't work for me before, but I had already been doing great on my own.  I feel like maybe it will be easier to reboot with the app's assistance and I figure maybe I can record what I eat (I'm not really changing my eating habits this week.  I want a week to gauge myself.) and the sodium is low, I can stick it in his damned face.

$$$$!!!
Not to mention, I was a new patient so they wouldn't count it as preventative care?  WTF!  $105 later for him to listen to my breath sounds and insult me.  Plus come back in one week after charting my BP and taking the water pill to see how it's going.  Probably another $105.

I miss $30 co pays right now.

And if he says I have to come back in another week, I will tell him to Fuck Off and I'll leave.

Water contest.

We all have trouble drinking enough water.  Soda, water with crystal light packets, gatorade, yes, but clean water to flush out the system efficiently?  No.  It's not just me.  Jane complains about a cramp or an ailment and half the time I say "drink more water" because half the time the symptoms she describes sound like dehydration.  Scott has been doing better since his kidney stone, but he's starting to drink tons of soda again.  Me, I just don't drink anything.  I forget.

Well, Monday, Jane asked (out of the blue) if we could have a water drinking contest for the day.  I brought Scott into it and suggested we each count our ounces each day.  At the end of the day, a winner would be noted and at the end of the week, the one who won the most days would get to pick the family movie.  Wow... water consumption!  It's been much better.  Why didn't we think of this sooner?

Nitty gritty

Why is it that when you talk about weight loss, everyone is full of advice? It’s not the advice that’s annoying nearly as much as the commands. There is a difference between friendly, supportive advice (something from either experience or education) and trying to rain on someone else’s parade, trying to look smart, or just telling someone that they are doing it wrong (sometimes based on rumors or things you heard from your friend’s sister’s herbalist).

1. Fats – “It’s not just about cutting calories, you know. You also have to cut fat.” Well, if you are cutting calories, won’t you automatically cut fats? When you give up certain foods or choose between certain foods, can’t you see that counting fat might be less important? We now choose leaner meats and skip a lot of the junk food. Sometimes that’s the perfect thing because when we do treat ourselves to a high fat food, we realize it doesn’t taste as good as we thought it did.

Clearly we are becoming accustomed to less fat because if we eat something fatty at a dinner party, it will sit quite heavy for a while. Maybe we are still eating too much fat. Maybe not. Either way, there is no question that it’s already been cut.

2. Carbs – Even those of us with just a passing interest in cars found ourselves wondering why people on diets were suddenly obsessed with carburetors for a few days before we figured it out, right? I don’t care what you say; CARBS are NOT EVIL. Your body gets its energy from carbs and without energy, how the hell are you supposed to exercise? When you eat more carbs than your body uses, however, it will turn to fat. Granted it needs to be in balance like anything else and in general, we (humans) often eat more than we need. Low carb diets work, but what about balance? For me, it’s simply a matter of it being too strict. I can’t stick with it forever. I don’t miss potatoes, rice, or noodles. I can live without bread, cookies, chocolate. The thing is, I want sauce from time to time and I would cry if I couldn’t eat more fruit than one tiny strawberry a day. While fruit has calories so you still have to limit it, when I tried the low carb diet I found if I ate one carb over, I gained weight. I do find that if I spend too many of my daily calories on high-carbohydrate foods, it slows down my weight loss.

It’s my verdict that if you want a diet you can stick to, eat a few carbs. Just don’t create a diet of carbs or you won’t lose much. Eat something with carbohydrates before you go out for exercise, but avoid it at dinner.

3. Fiber – I find the last word on fiber to be non-existent. I’ve heard all sorts of stories on why fibers are good and why you need to watch the fiber numbers in your diet. The benefit I see requires getting VERY real. When you diet, your digestive system goes crazy. The end result? Troubles in the bathroom. Fiber will help to regulate that so eat your fiber. Additionally, high fiber foods do tend to make you feel full faster and longer just because they take longer to chew and digest. Veggies are free foods that are usually high fiber that make great filler foods. Suggestions on how to work these in will come later.

4. Multivitamins – It happens to be true that most people don’t actually need supplements, but if you are dieting, there is a good chance your body is getting shorted something, somewhere. Still, even at a lower calorie level, it’s possible you still don’t need them. He didn’t seem to need them, but I kept having strange feelings of general “unwell”ness until I started taking iron and Vitamin B complex supplements. Deficiencies in those areas have long been a problem for me which is the main reason I constantly discount vegetarian diets for myself. I now take a Women’s vitamin supplement. Despite hearing that your body doesn’t use vitamins, the truth is that if your body has what it needs and can’t use it, it will dispose of it in your urine so it’s harmless. Meanwhile, if your body is short of something, multivitamins can fill in the blank.

Don’t trust the guy at the store who is trying to sell you his overpriced product. Don’t trust the webpage that is paid for by the supplement you are researching. Do consider finding one of some kind or another especially if you just don’t “feel” right or if you’re quite sure you have a deficiency. If you are a woman of child bearing years, please consider making sure you get enough iron and B-vitamins from somewhere.

5. Water – drink lots of it. The general consensus is 8 servings at 8 oz. per serving. Personally, I can’t remember to do 8 things a day, let alone keep track of 8 glasses of water. Instead I carry around a large 32 oz cup which I fill in the morning and try to make sure I fill again by afternoon. That’s 64 oz a day which is the recommendation. Sometimes when I feel like I want a snack or something crunchy, a couple large gulps from my cup helps subside the craving.

6. Exercise - The "right" way is to do at least 3 days of strength training and 3 days of cardio a week, according to the majority of people who think they have the last word on weight loss. We've done a lot of walking (cardio) and similar things and I have no problem with strength training, per se, but again we are just focusing on the one thing because it's something we can do. We don't have weights or a lot of equipment. Besides, when you build a lot of muscle with a modicum of weight loss, you find yourself not losing much, if anything at all. How discouraging is that? It's been a motivator to see the pounds flee so we prefer this method.

Still, I have started doing certain muscle building routines just because the skin is a bit saggy and I am hoping that building muscle will give me something to sit on seeing as how my rear feels so freakin' bony all the time (and I still have ample!)

Basically, while I agree that all of these things are important, I want to make it clear that it is only calories we are counting. I think you should keep the other information in mind, but counting calories trickles down into the other areas. This is what works for us. If you find something else that works for you, kudos!

Please stop making it so complicated! If it’s complicated, either one of two things will happen. The person will become so discouraged, they will quit OR the person will become one of those people who can only talk about weight, diets, fiber, calories, etc and if they are like, they will become so bored with themselves that they will quit. If they are the latter and they don’t quit, they will just be boring and who wants to hang out with a boring person? Stop boring me and let’s talk about something else other than what I’m doing wrong, mmkay, pumpkin?