3,100 Grams

 

One of my resolutions for 2025 was to reduce my sugar intake.

 

Why?

 

Well, for a whole host of reasons – the black clouds of potential diabetes, dental decay, weight gain, poor sleep, lack of energy, etc. But the biggest scare for me is something I heard at random about six months ago:

 

“Cancer feeds on sugar.”

 

Then, over the fall and winter, I heard it two more times on two unrelated occasions. I took this for a sign, as I’ve had a sweet tooth for … well … decades, to be honest.

 

So I figured at my age, entering the final third of my life, I should do something about this. Before it does something to me.

 

Last year I quit soda. Specifically, my two demons of choice, Diet Coke and Diet Dr Pepper. I’d consume about ten cans a week. Ever look at the ingredients? That’s a lot of aspartame, potassium benzoate, and caffeine I’d been ingesting. Right now I’m thirteen months free of that monkey.

 

But I gradually replaced my Diet Coke / Diet Dr Pepper drinks of choice with two others: Sparkling Ice and Pure Leaf Iced Tea. Sparkling Ice initially was satisfying, but something felt off with it. Yep, there’s that preservative potassium benzoate, which some but not all studies link to adverse health effects, including cancer. More importantly, the drink is sweetened with sucralose. Even more importantly, I would get headaches from drinking it (one or two 17 oz. bottles a day). So I stopped consuming them over the summer.

 

Man, though, did I get addicted to that Pure Life lemon flavored iced tea. And would you know it? One bottle contains 38 grams of sugar – added sugar, at that. 38 grams!  The American Heart Association recommends 36 grams of sugar – that’s 9 teaspoons – a day, max, for a man. And I was drinking about ten of these a week. So that’s an average of around 50 grams of added sugar a day, 40% more than what the AHA recommends.

 

And that’s not all. I eat a lot of cookies and ice cream, too. It’s comfort food, rewarding, stress-relieving, endorphin-releasing. It’s the same for you, also. Every day I’d have at minimum a handful of cookies or a generous scoop of ice cream. A trip to CVS for milk required the purchase of a heath bar. That candy bar alone has 68 grams of sugar. Yikes.

 

Now, there’s no way I can measure all that side sugar. So let’s make a good faith assumption. Based on my regular daily intake of 50 grams of sugar for the iced tea, lets conservatively double it to account for all these ice cream / cookie / candy bar snacks. That’s 100 grams of sugar a day. Some days I did worse, some days better. But an average of 100 grams daily seems a reasonable estimate.

 

On January 1 I quit the iced tea. Also, no sugary snacks. I also minimized or eliminated condiments and sauces which contain sugar, though not to a rigorous, spartan extent. Just eliminating those 100 grams of sugar a day, though, means that I DID NOT INGEST 3,100 grams of sugar this month.

 

3,100 grams is 3.1 kilograms. 1 kilogram is 2.2 pounds. Ergo, I did not eat 6.8 pounds of sugar this month!

 

Some things that weigh about 6.8 pounds –

   - A small to medium cat

   - A gallon of milk

   - A standard bag of All-Purpose Flour

   - A bag of potatoes

   - 20 bananas

   - A new-born baby (!)

 

Picture that amount in pure, white sugar. That did not go into my body this month. That’s less food and fuel for any nascent cancer cells within my aging carcass. That’s less food for plaque on my teeth. That’s less work my pancreas has to do to secrete insulin into my bloodstream.

 

Because I didn’t go cold turkey, I didn’t have any headaches. I only had one bad night of sleep this month, and that was due to unrelated circumstances. My energy level seems a little better, maybe 10 percent better (?), but that’s something I hope will improve as the sugar semi-fast continues on in 2025.

May I recommend it to you? There’s really no downside to it …

Hopper 1, Wu Flu 0

 

Something odd happened the first week in January.

Patch, our youngest at age 13, had been sick off and on for the past ten days. Nothing unusual or nothing to keep her out of school. Certainly nothing flu-like. Some sniffles, some clear mucus, some fatigue, but it would come and go.

Soon the same thing happened to Little One, age 17. But she felt a lot worse, and the wife took her to the local Care Now, thinking it might be strep (again). She was tested there, and the verdict was: COVID.

Well, here’s the great test, I thought. I remember the Great Fear of the Winter of 2020, wondering if I’d succumb to the Wu Flu. Well, despite several coworkers coming down with it (none fatally), I never got it. I casually stored that fear away in the spring and summer, and then pretty much filed it in the garbage can. Last winter, despite much renewed fear mongering from all the usual suspects, I wasn’t worried. In the spring the wife got the double vaccine. We moved down to Texas last July and, looking for work and seeing the writing on the wall (that I might have trouble finding employment being unvaccinated), I succumbed to the vaccine.

That was a not-so-great experience, to say the least, as I’ve documented here in these e-pages.

We kept Little One and Patch home from school for the week, per policy down here. Five days quarantine. And a day or two later, I suddenly felt the symptoms of my annual bronchitis kick in.

That Sunday, at the wife’s request, I went to Care Now. And lo and behold I tested positive for COVID. But, I protested, this is my annual bronchitis – not the flu. I get it every year (with the notable exception of 2020 and 2021, the result of, I guess, excessive hand-washing), the coughing knocks me on my butt for a day or two, the docs give me a Z-Pack, and I’m miraculously cured.

This doctor, decked out in just slightly less than a full hazmat suit, would have none of that. It’s COVID, she insisted, and it mimics other diseases. We will not be giving you a prescription for azithromycin; you’ll just have to ride it out.

Well, I thought, not being in a good mood at that point, it’s a good thing I didn’t come in with raging hemorrhoids. That’d be COVID in disguise, too.

Once home I doubled my vitamin C and vitamin D3 doses, drank lots and lots of fluids – water and fruit juices, and generally took it very easy. Despite my coughing and fatigue (from not being able to sleep peacefully through the night) I did not miss a day of work, nor did my output suffer. After a few days I felt 90% of normal. As of Monday, I am completely healthy.

So, COVID or not, I survived. 50+ year old Me with my one functioning lung and extra 25 pounds around the waist.

Hopper 1, Wu Flu 0.

 

Depression

Is only your mind’s way of telling you to move your body, eat cleaner, and focus on something not you.

(1) Move your body

(2) Eat cleaner

(3) Focus on something not you

Rinse and repeat, as often as necessary.

Something I’ve experienced first-hand these past couple of weeks.

Minus 11

That’s the results so far, eighteen days into my “No Added Sugar” diet. Minus eleven pounds. My body is shifting around, my clothes fit better, and my mood has been pleasantly positive pretty regularly.

Like I said, I’m not super gung-ho about it. A week ago I had a couple of sweet mixed drinks. Had two beers and a glass of wine over the weekend. Had a chocolate truffle and a granola bar a few days ago. But other than that, I’ve been eating mainly natural, non-processed, non-junk food. And no soda, only water.

This did start off as an “energy-management system”, and to that effect I think it’s working. Probably have to wait a few more weeks to see if there’s any real improvement. If I was to guess, I’d say my energy level, after being added-sugar-free for eighteen days, is about 10 to 20 percent higher. With the exception of one bad night, I fall asleep ten minutes after turning out the light. And with two or three exceptions, I get up out of bed pretty easily in the morning (though I have been sleeping in later than usual on the weekends).

So … I recommend it.

Even if amazing high energy results don’t materialize, it’s still an awesome feeling to know that I am off the SAD diet, a diet that leads to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and a whole host of other maladies.

I do find myself more thirsty than normal (due to increased nut intake? I did switch my snack food to non-salted pistachios and almonds yesterday). The afternoon lull, that desire to take a nap around 2 or 3 pm, hits me stronger now than in the past (probably because that Diet Coke at lunch swatted it away). Otherwise, no real complaints.

I intend to keep the diet at this level until the end of the month. Then, based on my weight and energy levels, I may decide to get super gung-ho about it.

Results to follow then …

Sugar Free

Normally Hopper likes to post his New Year’s Resolutions here on the blog on December 31st. Normally I extol the whys and hows and suchforth for each one, polishing the benefits for your approval.

Normally, they last a day or two.

Now, things are being done a little differently here at the Hopper. I did not post my resolutions. Indeed, I really didn’t have any concrete ones (other than, “get a day job” and “sell / write / publish some more books”). Going in to the evening of Thursday last, I had no idea what I specifically wanted to accomplish. In my frazzled mind, I wasn’t sure I wanted to accomplish anything.

However, a thought occurred to me alone in the house that afternoon (the wife took the little ones to see the new Star Wars flick). A while back – don’t recall exactly when – I was reading some self-improvement maximize productivity type stuff and recall someone writing – don’t recall exactly who – that getting things done really isn’t about Time Management.

It’s about Energy Management.

Since May, I’ve been quite active: walking the track and the streets, lifting the weights in the basement, kicking the soccer ball with the girls. It’s not always consistent, but a week doesn’t go by without me doing something. Usually a lot of things.

But I was still tired, flabby, achy, irritable. More so than what I would expect a middle-aged man in a moderate program of exercise to be experiencing. I’m not a doctor, but I know me. And this just didn’t fell right.

It had to be my diet.

I subsist on the Standard American Diet – SAD, for short. Lots of processed foods, lots of fast food, lots of fatty, sugary food. At least a Diet Coke a day. A whole pizza consumed slice-by-slice by the end of the week. Hamburgers. The occasional Chinese take-out. When I’m home watching the girls, Cheese Macs are a staple. As is pasta in various permutations. The only time I really eat healthy is when the Mrs. cooks, and with her job – the travel, the NYC commute – that isn’t often.

So I’ve gained weight. Probably twenty-five, thirty pounds above and beyond what should be normal for a man my size. Four-five permanent pounds a year over the past six-seven years. Imagine the fatigue of lugging around a 25-pound iron plate all day. Worse, imagine all that fat and sugar and excess gunk clogging my veins and arteries and God-knows-what else. And even worse than that, my poor body trying to get through a hectic, stressful life fueled by that crap.

You can’t run a Ferrari with a gas tank filled with cheese, as they say.

That’s what I realized on New Year’s Eve.

Originally (the first couple of hours leading up to the Ball dropping), I was only going to cut out the Diet Coke and Pizza combo. I did a pretty good job of this the first half of the summer and felt fairly energized.

Then the thought popped into my head: Why not go all the way?

Well, becoming a hardcore raw vegan is too great a step for SAD old me, at least at this stage. But surely there was a compromise somewhere …

Sugar. Over the years I have heard and read so many bad things about it. So bad, in fact, that you should just substitute the word “Poison” for it. Picture yourself in the grocery store and the kids pick out a really sugary cereal. “Hmm,” you say, turning the box over to look at the ingredients. “How many grams of poison are in each serving?”

The problem is that sugar is in everything. Everything. But I thought I could make some strides in eliminating the excessive sugar in my diet by following these simple rules:

Eat nothing processed / out of a box

Eat nothing “white” (pasta, bread)

Drink no Diet Cokes and no beer

Eat no pizzas – or any other fast food for that matter

Increase my intake of fruits, veggies, and nuts

And that’s it.

For the past seven days, I’ve pretty much stuck with it. I’m not a Gandhi with my internal discipline, so if I mess up, no biggie, as long as I get back on track. I had some tortellinis one night. Raviolis for lunch a few days ago. Just not with sugary tomato sauce.

But – no Diet Coke. No pizza. No fast food of any kind. Nothing out of a box. Every morning I have my Quaker Oats natural with half an organic apple cut up into it coated with cinnamon. I snack on nuts and grapes. (Not “grape nuts”.) Hard boiled eggs and tuna after a workout. I’ve eaten four salads. In the past, it would have taken me four months to eat four salads. No cookies, candies, ice cream, granola bars.

Results?

As of this morning, six full days, I am minus-five pounds since December 31st.

However, and it’s a big however, there were some pretty strong detox effects from Demon Sugar.

I had no energy Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Absolutely none. Monday I took three thirty-minute naps. Tuesday an hour-long one. Wednesday I did not nap, but experienced something far worse than fatigue. A dreadful black cloud settled on me, much more intense than I ever felt before. It came in around ten in the morning and didn’t leave until I picked up the girls around three. Such dread, despair, and blackness. I felt the urge to weep. Intellectually, I knew this was a (weird) side effect of detoxing from a drug, a very, very, very powerful drug, but man, were those feelings strong and frightening.

Those were Days Four, Five, and Six. Today, Day Seven, I felt alright both physically and psychologically. In fact, unexpectedly chipper and upbeat – I actually flashed my pearly whites to many people in my travels today and started up a few conversations.

Now I’m just waiting for that Energy to kick in. I need it.

For that “get a day job” “write / publish / sell more books” stuff.

P.S. In case you’re interested, I’ll keep you posted now and then on how the Anti-Sugar Lifestyle is coming along. Especially if I suddenly do shift into higher gear.

P.P.S. If you’re really interested in the Anti-Sugar thing, go to youtube and search for “Lustig” and “sugar”. It’s ninety minutes long, but it’s quite enlightening.

Scare

This guy at work who could pass for my twin – he’s slightly stockier and six years younger but looks my age (I don’t know if that’s good or bad) – had a mild stroke yesterday.  I don’t know the details, but it seems to have been caused by high blood pressure.  I spoke with him earlier today and he seemed fine on the phone.  Said he’d be taking off the rest of the month, returning next Friday.

So, thankfully, it must have been real mild.

Still, a wake-up call.  Certainly for him, but also for me.  I will pray for the guy; he’s one of the assets at the place where I work, and a genuinely nice man. 

Twenty-four hours ago I was toying with the idea of giving up soda ... consider it done, with more overhauls to come!

Z-Pak

A hundred percent better than yesterday, but still at only seventy-five percent or so (if that’s mathematically coherent).  Day 2 of my Z-Pak, three azithromycin pills circulating in my system, telling that bug in my bloodstream that there’s a new sheriff in town, at least until I urinate him out.

Anyhoo – yesterday, day 1, had the blessing of sweeping away that gurgling sensation in the depths of my trachea that, upon exhalation, made my chest heave with coughing spasms.  My ribcage feels like Tyson did a 2-hour bongo solo on it.  Then, all day today, the dizziness is gone.  Hooray!

Only one mistake, though.  Our pharmacist – great guy and phenomenally smart as we’ve grown to respect over the years – recommended this green tea extract.  One eye drop has the same amount of antioxidants as 15 cups of regular green tea.  So the wife, thinking it would be a great way to relax sick old me last night, poured me some herbal tea with an eyedrop of this stuff in it around 9 o’clock … and I was up until 1:30 am!  Turns out it also had as much caffeine as 15 cups of regular green tea …

Well, I’m on the mend.  Should be fine by the weekend, God willing.

Week from He**

What do you do when you have to face a week from hell?

Well, more accurately, two days from hell. And when I say “hell”, I really mean that they’re shaping up to be really, really rough. Because Christmas falls on a Wednesday this week and we all have off (praise God!), my deadlines are moved up a day and the normal major tasks I normally have 22 hours to complete now have to be finished within 15. Plus, since this is the last payroll week in the year, everything has to be perfect, and all adjustments for the year have to be submitted by tomorrow.

So how do you face this?

Normally, I’d complain, gripe, whine, eat lots of chocolate, drink soda, chill out with a Fosters at night, shun the children, rub my temples and eyebags nonstop, and be a general menace to anyone my social strata or lower who comes into contact with me.

I decided that would not be in my best interests during this two-days-from-hell. So, after a few moments thought, here’s what I did:

First, no booze on Sunday.

Also, no sugar after dinner (I’m a huge late-night cookie monster), and no caffeine after noon (turns out I didn’t have any caffeine at all the whole day).

Second, I had to tire myself out because I was getting up early on Monday.

Fortunately, Little One and I were scheduled to serve at mass Sunday morning; since she’s low-altar-server-on-the-totem-pole, she drew the 7:30 am mass (and me along with her). The whole family got up at 6 – unheard of for a Sunday morning – and were out the door an hour later.

I also did a half-hour workout in the afternoon. Weights and that sort of thing.

The result was a pretty tired Hopper. Almost dozed around 4 pm as the Jet game was wrapping up (Jet games have that effect on me), but I stayed awake.

Third, gear up the body for sleep.

Did this by taking an epsom bath salt at 9, reading one of my Westerns.

Fourth: sleep!

Passed out on the couch (after bringing all my work clothes and essentials downstairs) at 10 pm. Woke up to my phone alarm at 5, with a decent 7-hours of sleep under my belt.

Now, how to handle Day One of hell?

First, I chugged 16 ounces of water immediately on waking. After a hot shower I had a good cereal chased by an omega-3 pill and a multi-vitamin. Since everything I needed for my day was on the dining room table (premade lunch, snacks, etc), I just got dressed and left my house in the darkness.

It was also good for the mental well-being that, being 6 am two days before Christmas, there were pretty much a tenth of the cars on the road during a normal commute.

Got to work and I, er, well, worked. No chit-chat. No surfing the web. Started with a one-page to-do list and I just worked the list. By 11 am (three-and-a-half hours in to the workday), I had a full-day’s work completed.

Wow!

I also need to mention that I avoided a platter of cookies and chocolates thoughtfully left out for us all in the office by various vendors. And I passed those cookies about twenty times during the day.

So now I’m home, tired but a good tired because I got a lot accomplished. Everyone’s in bed and I’ll probably put a few pages away of the novel I’m reading before crashing again at 10 pm. Then tomorrow: repeat!

Hey – I think I just got an idea for a 2014 resolution!

What a Difference a Day Makes!

Day One:

Wake at 5:30, heartburnt from pizza and beer the night before, head-achy, fatigued. Net sleep: five-point-five hours.

Get a short-term energy boost from sugary cereal, cookies, hot chocolate.

Lunch of an Italian hero, potato chips, chased by a Diet Coke.

Productivity: Nearly nil, barely get done what needs to be done, watch the clock to wait for the workday to end.


Day Two:

Wake at 6 am and doze for an hour. Net sleep: eight hours.

Drink 8 ounces of water, have oatmeal topped with apples and cinnamon, stretch.

Fruit, salad, cool, fresh filtered water at work.

Productivity: Got more done by 11 am than all week, tearing up the to-do list.


Health: It’s the new cool. I’m test driving it for New Years Day 2014.

Detox Bonus

A by-product of my dietary detox week inadvertantly gave me bonus results: more free, productive time and a more positive outlook on life.

What is it, you ask?

Well, going in to the detox I realized I would be, uh, shall we say, a little emotionally volatile. Still had to go to work, interact with family and friends, coworkers and drivers on the road. But there was something I could do to help maintain an even keel. I went on a news fast.

So, since Sunday night, no Obama, no Obamacare, no Democrats, no Republicans, no culture war. These things invariably raise my blood pressure and, aside from voting in every election and living according to my beliefs, there's not a damn thing I can do one way or the other to influence them. Why torture myself? Why gripe, complain, moan and groan when the only thing doing so will really affect is my state of mind and state of health?

Over the past week there has been no online browsing of news sites, opinion sites, or cultural forums that I regularly visit. No watching political shows on teevee. No discussions with the wife or coworkers. Nothing. There has been a socio-political vacuum in my life.

And I feel great!

I highly recommend it.

Detox Redux

As I write this, I am at the 42-hour mark of dietary detoxification.

No, I am not ready to haul off and slug someone. Though there are plenty of candidates.

Why am I detoxing? And what exactly is detoxing?

Well, all I’m really doing is eating healthy. Super-healthy. Me and the wife; it’s a joint effort. For the next nine days all we’re allowed to eat is fruit, vegetables, raw nuts and brown rice. Oh, and also a little bit of cheese and/or yogurt every day (something like 6 ounces or so), but I’m avoiding that because I think dairy is my problem. Sunday morning I had a ham and cheese omelet that was more like a half-pound brick of melted cheese with a little bit of egg and ham thrown in. Toss in the two metric tons of pizza I eat on an annual basis, and, well, you see where I’m going.

When you eat super-healthy, you’re like Tom Brady. The first seventy-hours, though, you’re like Tom Brady in his last Super Bowl: suffering high-velocity sackings again and again by Justin Tuck and Jason Pierre-Paul. Only Tuck is Sugar and Caffeine Withdrawal and JPP is Toxin Elimination.

See, from what little I understand about all this, when you begin to eat super-healthy, after about a day of so eating, you’re subjected to headaches, bodyaches, fatigue, irritability. Some experience other symptoms, but that’s what I’m blessed with. It’s my body craving all those cookies and all that chocolate and all the Diet Coke and chips and pasta and pizza ad infinitum that it’s no longer getting. And it’s p.o.’d in a mean, serious way.

Good news is, per most of what I’ve read, this withdrawal only lasts about seventy-two or ninety-six hours. In most cases.

I’ve lived through this a handful of times before, and it’s true. I’m approaching the halfway mark of this part of the dietary detox experience.

At the same time, and, unfortunately, lasting for about two weeks, the body begins purging all the junk it’s been storing for years and years and years. I’ve been pretty much cleaned out during my hospitilization in 2009, so I only have about four years’ worth of accumulated crp in me. Once the body realizes I’m not compounding the problem, it, in its God-given wisdom, begins a very thorough and very efficient housecleaning.

These toxins come out in three ways: via your bladder, your back end, or through your skin. But in order to get to their point of disembarkation, they gotta travel your streams of blood and lymph. Toxins are brought out from being safely sealed away to get expelled, and that’s why – the doctors say – that’s why you can expect headaches, flu symptoms, fatigue, fevers, aches and pains, rashes, moodiness, irritation, etc. for the next two weeks.

Once that’s all behind me, the body begins rebuilding internally. But that’s the subject for another post. For the record, my longest stay on this path was twelve days, back in ’07 or ’08. So I’ve never experienced that aspect of detoxification and clean-living.

Why am I doing this? Yeah, I could stand to lose 10, 20 pounds. But basically I’m sick of the lack of energy. Life’s going by, and I’m just there, moving from bed to couch to car seat to chair at work, reverse and repeat. Got lots of dreams and goals, but no energy to actually get something done past the planning stage. Oh, and overhauling my diet is one of those goals. I once read that if you have a ton of things you want (need) to do in your life, major things, start with the Physical, cuz that’ll spill into all other areas of your life more than anything else.

As of October 20, 9 pm, I did.

Little Victory

Well, here’s some good news on the personal development front (a front that’s long, long, too long been laying latent):

Passed out about 10 pm last night only to wake up wired around 2:30 am. The noise from the bedroom air conditioner – and, truth be told, anxious worrying over how much money it cost to run it (what, a dollar overnight?) – made me get up and try to resume sleep on the downstairs couch. No dice. Finally went down to the basement writing office to waste a few hours playing freecell and listening to Leonard Nimoy In Search Of youtube clips.

Or so I thought.

Somehow I stumbled across a motivational article written by – of all people – Donald Trump. I read it, then read another article written by someone else. Then another. Then, an epiphany.

I can’t wait until I’m healthy to improve my health. It has to start now.

So …

At 5:30 I went outside into the misty darkness and threw open the creaky garage door. With iPad in hand I did 10 minutes on the exercise bike, then threw around the dumbbells for a couple of sets. Back inside, I stretched the hams, calves, quads and lats while my bowl of steel-cut oatmeal, with half a cut-up apple and cinnamon thrown in, cooled on the counter. I ate reading more motivational stuff, downed some omega-3 and CoQ10 capsules, then tiptoed upstairs, showered, shaved, dressed and headed off to work an hour early. On the way out I made little Patchie some breakfast.

Wow! That’s about five times as many positive things by seven a.m. than I normally do all day.

A little victory. Trick is to string seven of them in a row, then thirty of them, then three-hundred-sixty-five of them, and on and on and on.

Shin Splints

So I’ve been working out in my garage for half a month now (since May 12 to be exact). My exercise bike is out there. My bench is out there. My dumbbells and bars, straight and curled, are there. I have a clock but no radio yet. I usually workout out at 6 a.m. and am done a half-hour later, so I won’t be blasting any metal yet. Yet.

I’ve got it in my head to run a 5K. My town sponsors one every April. That’s about eleven months away. Should be enough time to train. The last 5K I ran was in 2003. The last time I ran anything longer than ten yards was around the same time. The decade that has flown by has seen me battle atrial fibrillation, pulmonary vein stenosis, and a steadily enlarging waistline. Running not only winds me, it scares me.

This morning I did my first “run” in ten years. I got up and got dressed and got out the door by 6:30 am. Ten minutes later I was done. Outside was a weird mixture of cool and humid, banks of fog giving only one-block visibility. I did a variation of 100 paces walking, 100 paces jogging. Did this about a dozen times over half-a-mile. Got back, slightly winded but otherwise okay (read: alive).

Thought I’d have a euphoric high to carry over into my early morning at work, but, no. Just a somewhat non-centered fatigue, probably due to my body still rebelling against 6 am wakeup workouts. Then, around noon, I noticed my shins really started to ache. Shin splints. Hadn’t felt what they felt like in years.

Tonight I’m gonna soak in the tub – I know, I know, what else is new – but pay special attention to my calves. Not sure what I’m going do. Maybe an Epsom salt soak. Maybe some baking powder (hey, it works!). Definitely some stretching tonight, Rodney Yee yoga stretches, so they’re loosened up for the six or seven hours of sleep I’ll get.

Tomorrow morning – back with the weights.

Friday morning – going for a 200 pace walk/jog mixture.

Pray for me.

Sore

and tired.

After tipping the scales at an utterly unacceptable poundage, after being reduced to one pair of work pants that fit, after weeks and months and years of chronic fatigue and insomnia and being sick and tired of being sick and tired, I initiated a Plan of Attack.

Now, I don’t want to be all proud of myself just yet. I’m only five days into it. (But I swear I see results already! I swear!) And being somewhat superstitious, I don’t want to jinx myself. But I just gotta say –

It works! If you JUST DO IT!

What am I doing?

Getting up at 6:15 before the herd of women in this house wake up. Tip-toeing downstairs to the little work-out area I cleared away last weekend.

On odd days, I do ten minutes on the exercise bike, then stretch out my hams, quads, lats, and calves. That’s it.

On even days, I only do five minutes on the exercise bike followed by the stretches. Then I do two sets of curls, push-ups, leg dips, calf raises, and crunches.

I record all this on the PC, and creep back upstairs to make myself some steel-cut oatmeal – a half-cup with three-quarters cup of boiled water, half a cut-up apple, and a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon. And I chase it with a one-gram Omega-3 and a vitamin-D supplement.

About this time I’m attacked by hungry pre-tween girl zombies.

At lunch I’ve been eating an apple and a banana, with some roasted almond and carrot snacks throughout the day. And I cut out soda, drinking only from the filtered water thingie we have in the work breakroom.

My goal is to lose twenty pounds over the year and to increase my overall energy and mental well-being from a holistic, body-health angle.

Half-a-week in, it’s working.

So far.

Bad Bad News

Got a voice mail from my cardiologist today, and it wasn’t hugs and roses. He finally got around to taking a look at my annual lung scan I did fifteen days ago. It’s not good.

My left superior pulmonary vein is closing up yet again. The inferior vein closed up three or more years ago, after my second catheterization to cure atrial fibrillation. Since you only have two veins going from the heart to the lung, this is quite serious.

First, they put a balloon into the vein to blow it up. This lasted three months. Then, they put a stent in it. That lasted a year. This was followed up by a stent within the first stent, and now, it seems, that that has lasted two years.

But the fn vein is still closing up.

I am equal parts frustrated, angry, scared, and disillusioned. It’s official; life is too hard. It seems I need to pay the price of a lung for whatever sins of omission or commission I may have done earlier in my life. I don’t know; the Great Vacuum has told me nothing. Or maybe I’m just tuned to a different frequency.

The wife tried to cheer me up this afternoon. We’ll get a consultation with your doctor, she said, even after I said that he has no idea what to do next.

I don’t either.

Prayers appreciated.

Bloodwork

Hey, got my blood work back from the lab and spoke with my doctor today. This is the first work-up I’ve had since I got out of the hospital three years ago. I’ve been worried a bit lately, and wanted to get all checked out before the Paris trip. Thanks to a grade-Z diet based on short-term emotional pleasure and a sedentary lifestyle which avoids most physical activity in favor of the cerebral, i.e., reading while lounging on the couch, floor, bed, or bathtub, I was worried about how my numbers would turn out. I was afraid that my doctor would get on the phone and yell, “How can you live with lard flowing through your veins!”

Well, it’s not all bad. There’s work to do, mind you, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.

The worst news – the triglycerides. Through the roof. A tidy 581 mg/dL, or nearly four times the maximum figure doctors – and living veins, hearts, and arteries – like to see. So I need to skip the rice, pasta, and chips (simple carbs) and up the veggies and lean protein, like fish and turkey. But this result was expected. Also, since my doctor’s appointment two weeks ago, I’ve been hitting the exercise bike, doing yoga, and throwing the weights around. All that’ll drop the triglyceride levels, too.

The good, unexpected news – my total cholesterol level. It’s 182, right smack in the zone for health, 125 to 200 mg/dL. That shocked me, and all I can say is, it must be something someway somehow due to omega-3s, which I take religiously (2 grams a day).

The expected challenges – getting my HDLs up. HDLs are the good cholesterol. Mine is sitting in the basement at 28, and that number needs to be at least 40 mg/dL to put a smile on my doctor’s face. Aerobic exercise – the exercise bike – plus losing weight, adding fiber, and eating more fish will help that.

The oddities – a deficiency in vitamin D and a slightly low blood platelet count. To rectify the vitamin D, she wants me to take 2,000 IU of a supplement for a month, then drop down to 1,000 a month. Platelets are the thingies in your bloodstream which help with clotting. A residual effect of the coumadin I was on for months and months and months? Dunno. She’s not too concerned at the moment, so we let that count slide.

So, more blood will be taken in three months time. See how good I can be between now and mid-July in terms of my diet, my exercise, and my relaxation techniques. I’m dying to know how better I can do! Well, you know what I really mean to say …

Yoga Boy

So this past Saturday I had a full physical – my first since 1999. Now, before you think I’m crazy or suicidal, just remember that since 2006 I’ve been probed, prodded, pricked, poked and pored over at least a dozen times to figure out what was wrong with my ticker. I’ve been checked out and scrutinized over for everything from the Big Casino to tropical parasites. And it’s all come up negative. With the exception of the pulmonary vein stenosis and the reduced functionality of my left lung, I’m fit as a fiddle.

Except I’m suffering extreme fatigue and depression, probably each feeding the other. Poor diet and lack of exercise contribute to both, and the depression and fatigue make me want to eat junk for quick pick-up and not work out. So I went to the doctor for both peace of mind and to get a little inspiration.

Well, my doctor gave me both in spades as they say. As far as exercise, she okayed me to do whatever I enjoy – in moderation, of course. That’d be the exercise bike, building up to 20 minutes a day. I told her I like to throw the weights around, too, but not to the point where I’m going to try to score steroids in the back alley behind the gym and get all shredded and veiny and hulkish. She okayed that, too. And she also guilted me by saying, “You don’t really need me to tell you how to eat?” “No,” I admitted, sheepishly. “I’ll eat more fruits and veggies and less processed foods.”

One thing that she is absolutely gung-ho over, to the point of blurbing all about it on her web page, is yoga. Yoga, she says, would give me increased body awareness and help reduce stress and fight fatigue. There are different types of yoga, and I must remember, she chided, that yoga is not a competitive sport.

I did give yoga a whirl when I first got out of the hospital three years ago. I kept at it for six weeks … until I made it a competitive sport, competing against myself. I tried to do more and do more longer, and take on more energetic and muscle-building forms of yoga. All when I should have kept it up for its relaxing qualities. As a result, I stopped doing it, and haven’t done it since. But, man, when I did do it I was soooooo limber and flexible. I’m like a ninety-year-old man now compared to how I used to be. And I noticed that the more loose and flexible I am, the better and healthier I just naturally feel.

So, I’m going to give the relaxation yoga DVD a whirl again tonight after the kids go down. Probably won’t see any serious changes for two weeks or so, though I could be wrong. If I do notice positive changes, I’ll let you all know. Maybe I’ll mark the calendar to review my work-out program on this public anonymous blog in a month’s time. I’m going to stick with it for now, because I have no choice. I’m grinding my teeth down to the roots in my sleep and the bags under my eyes will soon need their own zip codes, or at least those four-digit suffixes denoting their own PO boxes …

Tetanus Shot

When I was a kid, nothing scared me more than “getting a tetanus shot.” I’d see a rusty nail and I’d think – tetanus shot. I’d see a saw hanging on the wall in our basement – tetanus shot. Fish-hooks on my dad’s gear in the garage – tetanus shot. I was in near paranoia up until age ten or twelve or so of cutting myself on a piece of metal. You know, because that would necessitate “getting a tetanus shot.”

Now this is not without justification. When I was three or four we lived in a two-family house a few towns over. A group of older kids would always be hanging around. One time, playing hide and seek while I was bumbling about on my tricycle, a boy snuck over the edge of the balcony on the house and lowered himself down. Onto a pile of boards, and his foot went directly onto a rusty nail. Cloudy memories of him yelping in pain, hopping away, drops of blood on the cement sidewalk. It was around this time that I first heard the dreaded phrase, “tetanus shot.”

I probably got one when I was a wee young-un, but of course I don’t remember. I do know for certain that I’ve never had one as an adult. Never had cause to.

Today, however, I got a tetanus shot.

Don’t go thinking I suddenly started working with scrap metal or something. Nor have I turned my garage into a wood shop. No, I simply went for a routine physical, and as an afterthought, my doctor asked me, “When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

Those of you who know me or who have read this blog, know that this is the Me 2.0. The fearless me. Fearless as regarding shots and the like, thanks to my ordeal with the ticker three years ago (my how time flies!). In the past four or five years I’ve must’ve had two hundred shots – blood work and pre-op self-administering lovenox, mostly – and have developed somewhat thick skin towards them, no pun intended.

So I casually said I didn’t remember. She recommended one, because of a recent local outbreak of adult whooping cough. Apparently the tetanus virus – or whatever – helps defeat that as well as diphtheria, though there are no local outbreaks of diphtheria.

I nodded and signed the paperwork. A few minutes later a nurse came in to give it to me. Right in the deltoid muscle of my right arm.

Outwardly I was placid, but inwardly I steeled myself for pain. The image of me holding Little One’s legs down as an inch of hypodermic steel went straight into her thigh popped into my mind. The nurse swabbed my shoulder liberally with icy antiseptic, and I sort of felt something –

And that was it. No pain, barely a scratch. Must be what an acupuncture needle feels like, was my first thought.

“You’ll probably be sore tomorrow morning,” the nurse said as she stuck a band-aid on my upper arm. “Might be stiff, might be limited mobility, but only for a little while.”

“Okay.” I kinda doubted her. I even doubted for a second that I received an injection.

That was four hours ago. I did have a metallic taste in my mouth for a while and my right shoulder is now a bit sore, like I did a couple extra reps of a little too heavy weight doing some lateral dumbbell raises. Oh well.

My whole point is, I guess, that things are never as bad as how we fear they’re going to be. Almost wished I had to get a tetanus shot at age eight. Would’ve saved me a couple of years of useless anxiety.

(And wait – isn’t all anxiety “useless”?)

Well, that was the highlight of my day. Yours?

Happy and Unhappy Eating

When I’m being good, I will eat:

A half-cup of unsweetened oatmeal with a cup of stove-boiled filtered water, topped with half-an-apple cut up and a teaspoon of cinnamon for breakfast.

A fruit salad consisting of an apple, a banana, a dozen or so grapes and/or blueberries and two tablespoons of low-sugar granola for lunch.

A “Naked” fruit smoothie and a packet of 15-20 dry roasted almonds for my mid-afternoon snack when my blood sugar dips.

Salmon or chicken baked for dinner, with a big side of boiled vegetables and maybe some brown-rice based carb.

A low-sugar granola bar at 9 pm for a late-evening snack.

And a big, 16-ounce glass of water between every meal.


When I’m being bad, I will eat:

A pint of sugary cereal, such as Cinnamon Life or Kashi Crunchies, with a cup of skim milk for breakfast.

A can of soup mixed in with a cup of pasta and a 12-ounce diet Coke for lunch. I alternate this with either two pepperoni slices of pizza or an Italian hero and a soda if I’m out running errands.

Lots of little chocolate candies for my mid-afternoon snack, chased with another glass of milk. If no chocolate is in the house, I’ll have chips or pretzels with a second 12-ounce diet Coke.

Boston Market or Chipotle or, on occasion, sushi for dinner if we have money in the bank; otherwise cheese macaroni or tortellinis with the girls or some likewise quickie dinner.

A pint of Ben & Jerry’s at 9 pm.


Okay. Whew.

I actually felt confident, excited, and upbeat writing the first part of this post. And immediately came down from my psychosomatic high with the details of my bad days.

I’m bad to good by about a ratio of about 3.667 to 1 by my off-the-cuff calculations. A lot of the time I make it to lunch before derailing myself.

I do believe that at least 50 percent of my situation – some of which I explicitly mention in this blog, others I only hint about – are directly related to my diet. We are truly mind-body holistic units, the status of one intimately affecting the other in either a vicious or virtuous circle.

Being the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life, and also being in the longest, most dangerous “rut,” I have no choice but to begin here at the physical level. For a whole host of reasons, proven and suspected. A year ago this May I stuck to a similar healthy eating plan and lost ten pounds in twelve days. I’m looking for comparable results by Memorial Day.

Happy Eating!

Fat Smash

Three-and-a-half years ago, the wife and I went on a special diet. This guy’s diet:

The author is Dr. Ian Smith, and you may or may not know him from a reality show called Celebrity Fit Club. Yes, we watched it for a season back then, which is why we picked up the book. Well, after a rough first day or two on the diet, we both wound up losing weight. I lost 7 pounds in the first nine days.

Guess what? Nine days ago I tipped the scales at the heaviest I’ve ever been in my entire life. That’s scary. Mid-life crisis scary. I couldn’t even fit into my fat pants anymore. So, we took one of our B&N gift cards and picked up Ian Smith’s book, and went on the diet.

Results?

Again, I lost 7 pounds in the first nine days.

Hooray! I can now fit into my fat pants again. (FYI, the wife lost 5.5 pounds.)

What’s all this business about “the first nine days”?

Smith’s diet works on three phases. Phase I, which last for nine days, is the detox phase. Your severely limited in the types of food you can eat, but not the quantity. Your allowed a wide range of fruits and vegetables, some oat meal, some brown rice, a tiny bit of cheese, egg whites, and some other odds and ends. No meats, pasta, sugar, or breads. And you’re only allowed water and green tea.

For nine straight days.

It isn’t so bad as it sounds. In fact, your body quickly grows accustomed to the healthy food. The effect is like a man crawling out of the desert to an oasis of cool, refreshing water. Sure, the first day I had a killer headache that would not go away, and two minor headaches later on. It’s the bad stuff coming out of your system. Yes, I had random cravings here and there, mostly for chocolate, but they only last for 30 seconds or so, and each time they pop up they’re weaker in intensity.

Want a concrete example of my change? My standard lunch would be a can of Campbell’s Chunky Soup mixed in with a cup of pasta. That’s something like 1200 calories and 10 or 12 grams of fat! And I’d have this every single day of the week. It was a ritual for me. On the Fat Smash Diet, I now have a giant fruit salad consisting of half an apple and a banana, all chopped up, plus two dozen grapes, two dozen blueberries, and a quarter cup of granola. You know what? It’s actually delicious. I now look forward to it (I have to say that granola’s essential). So now I’m eating about a third of the calories and a fifth of the fat, on a daily basis, and getting so much more in vitamins, nutrients, and fiber.

Phase II lasts for three weeks. This is the foundational phase. We’re allowed to eat skinless, broiled meat, a lot of seafood, some more dairy, and some healthy cereal. This is where you train your body to expect to eat better nutritionally and calorically. Phase III, the construction phase, adds more variety and trains you to work in “treat” foods.

Of course, you’re expected to exercise throughout the program.

So, we’re staying on the program during the holidays. Yes, there will be cheat meals, but we made a pact not to seek them out. If a plate of pasta is laid out in front of us by our hosts, well, we’ll eat it, but not gorge ourselves on it. And then eat extra clean at the next meal.

Nine days ago I was 30 pounds heavier than when I left the hospital in February of 2009, and though that was not a healthy weight for me back then, I’m looking to settle in about 10 pounds heavier than that. All while increasing my cardio and firming up a bit with some free weight exercising.

I heartily recommend Ian Smith’s book.