I need a new way to say "Back in the Saddle."

It's true, I am indeed back in the saddle, back on the wagon, "on" - etc.

My contract at Wizards of the Coast ended and I knew I was to be unemployed. First thought: "Use that time. Get back on the diet and back to the gym." A good idea.

Thinking and doing - I rarely get these two lined up. Took me two weeks of eating even more crap and watching endless Netflix to realize there was no escaping it, the best thing to do was get back on my diet and get to the gym.

So, it's essentially day three. The gastro-intenstinal issues that always accompany my change in diet are in full gear. I've got good groceries in the fridge. I've been to the gym twice. Gave myself a blister on my pinky toe yesterday. If I want to do more treadmill, I'm going to have to tape it up.

Frankly, now that I've had time to think about it, the gym isn't the best deal for me right now. It's not close by. It's a lot of gas for an unemployed guy, it's also a lot of time. Luckily, the last two days I added other errands to my gym going, making it seem like less of a money sink. But, today, I really paid attention to time. I left the house at 10:30, got to the gym about 11. I probably put in an hour of weights. I spent quite a bit of time in the jacuzzi. Two showers all told. A quick errand on the way home and I got back to my door at 3. That drive time is time I could be doing other things. That gas is just expensive right now for a guy with limited income.

I know I sometimes over worry money. And, I'm not saying I'm going to stop going to the gym. My intention of going nearly daily is, however, out the window. A couple of exercises I do are body weight - I can do those anywhere. I have bought various pieces of gym equipment over the last year - simple stuff; medicine balls and resistance bands. Those can go a long way, especially combined with body weight exercises. Plus, I have the Wii - which I bought to get me off the couch but it has become mostly a Netflix machine. There is cardio boxing and other things I can be doing with that. So, I think the gym is going to be two, maybe three times a week.

Also, I ran into another issue today. I don't like the idea of eating a big meal before the gym. However, I nearly passed out in the jacuzzi. I had some soy milk before I left, and a banana. By 2 apparently my body needed more. I keep some granola bars in the car for just such situations. Those were the best store brand granola bars ever made as far as I was concerned. The day before I did about the same routine, longer actually because I went grocery shopping. The difference was a trip to Jack in the Box first. Not the best food choice, but I didn't get lightheaded. Can't wait to shed some of these meds, they are both the things keeping me from more health issues and causing these light headedness issues. Don't get me started on what the beta-blocker is doing to me - it's the first to go if I have my druthers.

I'm going to stay open minded about the gym. The truth of the matter is I like the gym - once I get there. I certainly like the jacuzzi. As my money situation settles out, I'll feel more comfortable about spending gas money. Also, as I get stronger, I will need more resistance than I can reasonably provide for myself at home.

As to goals, well, I'm really hoping to see the other side of 400 by end of year. I know. I know. I've said that how many times before? Doesn't mean it's not a good goal. I also came up with that concept when the end of the year was more than 90 days away, now its about 60 with lots of opportunities for holiday binging. No sense setting myself up for failure and disappointment. Frankly, I'll be happy to see a steady downward decrease in weight and a steady uptick in muscle, no matter what the rate. I'll be happy to stay "on" for 30 days - been a long time since I've hit that tiny goal.

The Recovery

I do this time and again. I fall off the wagon, spend a month or two wallowing in old habits, i.e. eating crap and no exercise. Then I go through the process again of changing my diet (and all the gastrointestinal issues that go with that) only to stay on a diet for a few weeks and fall of the wagon yet again. I've been doing this for damn near a decade now. They say the only way to make a diet permanent is to change your lifestyle. Apparently I changed my lifestyle to a permanent roller-coaster diet.

Sigh.

Anyway, the cars are crawling back out of the pit - clack! clack! clack! I did some groceries yesterday - something I really haven't done since I stopped juicing. I need to do more groceries tonight. (I want to go to the local fruit & veggie stand - it was stacked and packed with a Mother's Day crowd yesterday) I want to primarily do fruits and veggies this time around. A small amount of meat for dinner. I bought some chicken breasts, boneless & skinless. I bought some flat iron steaks. Both meats are low in fat. I want to cook them up ahead of time, chop them up and portion them out - that way it will be simple to drop them on some salad or nuke it just long enough to serve with some steamed veggies. The easier I make my meals, the more likely I'll stick with them. I mean, right? It's a good theory, right? Sounds like a good theory. If I can stay on a diet longer than 30 days we'll call the unproved theory a good idea.

This morning I found one of the drinks to the right; a Naked Blue Machine. Banana, blueberries, etc. It tasted pretty good - but the first drink really did remind me of the whole juicing thing. I want to drink more of these - the blueberries are good for my gout. I want to add more juice to my menu. I still have the juicer, might as well use it, right? Another good theory.

I told someone this morning that if you want to learn about diet or exercise, talk to a fat guy, he's been reading and thinking about it for years. I know how to diet, how to exercise, how to lose weight - I just have to do it. I have to do it. I have to get off the couch, I have to go to the grocery store, I have to get to the gym.

Best news of the day? In the 5 weeks of just eating whatever and no exercise since losing 20 pounds on the juice fast, I am only back up to 464. I was pretty shocked by that this morning. I didn't backslide all the way. Good deal - maybe that bodes well for this time out.

Indeed, it sucked.

I did the juice. For a while.

As you may have guessed from the last entry, the green juice was indeed a problem. I just couldn't get past the taste and smell. The real nutrition is in the green juices; the kale, the chard, the spinach and so forth. I like these things. But, when you juice them, all you get is the concentrated chlorophyl and it smells and tastes like fresh mowed grass. I'm sure that smells delightful, to a cow, but I'm not much of a fan of grass to begin with, drinking the stuff was hard! Toward the end I was burying the chard and kale behind enough fruit that I could drink it, but I was worried about the sugar numbers and my diabetes.

The juices were filling, but not satisfying. I spent the whole week fixated on cheeseburgers. Weird, but it was where my head was at. With them being filling, with my fears of bumping my sugar with the fruit juices and with the gross-out factor on the green juices, I found myself often coming in at or below 1200 calories for the day. Not good. Starving myself was not an option.

I started to get some … cramps. Maybe not cramps, maybe spasms is a better word. The deal is that a muscle would contract and not release. It wasn't painful, it was sudden and alarming. Last Friday night, while in bed, my thigh flexed and wouldn't release. I kicked out my leg to try to get it to un-flex and the whole leg fired off: thigh, calf, foot and even my toes, all flexed and wouldn't relax. This lasted for over a minute while I lay there wondering what I was going to do? I don't know if it was lack of calories, lack of sodium, lack of potassium or what - but this freaked me out.

Nine days in and I was done with the 15 day juice fast.

That's the bad news. The good news came when I got on the scale Monday morning and saw that I had dropped 20 pounds. Well, I guess it's good news. Certainly seemed like a scary way to do it at the time.

In the process of all of this, I started a food diary out at MyFitnessPal. I've been keeping track of exactly what I'm eating - like I did out here years ago. It also keeps track of my exercise. It's not as good as Fitocracy for exercise tracking, but the food diary has really helped me see and control what I eat. I have even squeezed in some fast food - but I have found myself repeatedly playing with the fast food options before going to get the food. (The smaller fries, one burger instead of two ...) Yesterday I played with it until I decided to go home and eat something I already had that was better for me - saved myself 500 calories in the process.

In a few weeks I will get back on the scale. Sooner if I find myself waning. I've had some soymilk and I'm about to go make myself an omelet - all of which will get into the diary. I want the sacrifices I made on that juice fast to indeed be a reboot and to keep these good numbers going. I'm tired of being fat, sick and nearly dead.

I want to be healthy.

The Fast & the Furious

After some convincing, I sat down and watched the movie "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead." It's a good flick, I recommend it - whatever your health level.

I have been thinking about a vegetarian diet or a juicing diet for a while. I'm a Midwestern meat eater to the core, but I am so struggling with getting the weight off, maybe it was time to change my attitude entirely.

As I sat watching the movie, I had a couple of things going through my mind. First, Joe Cross - the producer and focus of the movie, is a shill. Nothing wrong with that, but it's good to know when someone has something to sell. The difference: Joe lost a great deal of weight using his own method and we got to see that in the movie. Quite the product demonstration. Joe is pushing a lot of juicers for Breville!

But, Joe wasn't the most convincing part of the movie for me. The one that made me damn near cry was a guy named Phil. Phil was a trucker, so, like me, he has a sedentary job. Phil was an inch shorter than me and thirty pounds lighter. But, when he took off his shirt - that was my body! In the course of 10 months of a fruit & veggie juice fast, Phil lost 200 pounds. He checked with his doc every few weeks and was healthy all the way.

A few days later I bought a juicer.

This last week I have weaned myself off normal food. I filled my fridge with fruit and vege. I've added juice here and there to supplement my meals. Yesterday I was entirely vegetarian. Last night, I had my first "Green" juice; Kale, Cucumbers, Celery and Apples - it wasn't the best, I should have added some lemon and maybe some ginger. Today is the first day of juice only. I've had Carrot & Orange for breakfast, I have the rest of the green juice I made last night for lunch (I'll get through it somehow) and then I will buy more veggies and juice something good for dinner.

While researching this, I was shocked by how much protein these juices have. The whole thing about concentrating all those veggies and fruit down to just the juice, getting rid of the insoluble fiber, really makes a glass of nutrition. The pic above is my first juice creation: Carrot & Apple in a reusable cup. It was really good and very sweet! (Maybe too sweet. Gotta watch that.) The juicing is easy and even kinda fun, but it's messy. The machine gets coated! It's like cleaning out a lawn mower. And, on top of that, I have had several spills - my kitchen is VERY clean, if a little sticky, in a few spots!

I can't do this forever, it is indeed a "reboot" - right now I am shooting for 15 days. If I can get through to end of day on Friday April 6th, I will consider fasting further. I'd like to go as long as I can and lose as much as I can, but anything would be good. However, it won't be easy. Last night I left work late, I was very hungry and all I wanted to do was pull through a drive-thru. I counted them off as I went home: KFC, BK, Wendy's, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Jack in the Box, another Micky D's - but I bypassed them all and went home for my poorly made Kale juice. I'm a good boy. Today at work, my stomach is growling and the VPs are walking around passing out pastries. Where were the Veeps with pastries last Friday??

I will need to keep going to the gym, but with a different attitude. I'm likely going to lose some muscle in all of this. So, I want to make sure it comes off my legs and not my heart. Good, solid - but not insane, cardio. I'll keep my half hour on the treadmill in the morning. I want to add some light upper body. I want to start going swimming at night, if nothing else to keep me from sitting in front of the TV wishing I was munching on something, or worse - finding something to munch on. No munching! No chewing for 15 days!!

So, I am going for this. I am being careful. I'll see my doc eventually. If anything changes, you know from reading here I'll stop. If I need more food, I'll drink more - there's no possible way I can drink the calorie levels I currently eat. I want this to work.

The Veeps are standing outside my cube right now with huge boxes of pastries from Panera. Uuugh! This is gonna suck ...

Sometimes the Answer is "F*** You!"

I figured out why my gout was kicked off by the whey protein powder. The answer sucks.

The other day I heard a segment on NPR about yogurt. It reminded me that I used to eat a lot of yogurt. I like yogurt. I miss yogurt. I gave up yogurt when I realized I was lactose intolerant.

The NPR segment claimed yogurt was good for the lactose intolerant set. Really?

So, I set out on a scouting mission around the Internet to see if this was correct. Sure enough, several sites extolled the virtues of yogurt. The bacteria that makes yogurt breaks down the milk proteins, making them more edible for those with milk allergies and it breaks down the lactose into a substance that is great for maintaining colon health: lactic acid.

ACID. Whenever I see that word these days I stop in my tracks. Uric acid is the gout culprit. But, any kind of acid will make the kidneys work harder and can allow lactic acid to build up.

This got me thinking: What's the effect of lactic acid on gout? I was right to fret, it will interfere with the kidneys processing uric acid.

Then I thought: Lactic acid in whey protein powder? Yup! They use bacteria, much as they do in yogurt, to break down the proteins. This makes the protein more "bioactive" - easier to digest and thus easier to get the most bang for the buck. Which is great and all, except for the fact that those little bacteria make lactose into lactic acid. Razzlefarking-summaglitchin-grumblegrumblegrumble .... !

In conclusion: I still cannot drink milk. I still can't eat yogurt. I can't eat whey powder. And, likely, my colon is going to fall out.

That is all.

Screw everything, except consistency.

I have repeatedly failed to achieve success, so, it's time to change priorities. How's that for sounding like a politician?

I'm 40 years old. I weigh @475 (haven't gotten on a scale in forever) - the simple truth is that I may never be able to fix my body, repair the damage done. I could very easily have a heart attack tomorrow. My body is very messed up, as anyone who has read this blog is surely aware.

Constantly starting and ending diets and exercise programs, for whatever reason, is at best frustrating. It's likely doing more harm than good.

I need to find a simple, consistent routine. Routine gets a bad rap - but my routine, my bad habits, is what got me where I am. I think routine is the path out. A diet and exercise program that becomes routine isn't a diet and exercise program anymore - it's a life style change. Can you think of anyone more in need of a life style change than I?

This morning's Treadmill Revelations:

1. Food is not a form of entertainment.
2. Exercise is not a form of entertainment.
3. I get as many endorphins from a half hour on the treadmill as a half hour lifting weights and the treadmill is simpler - just walk.
4. Lifting weights is no more or less entertaining than the treadmill, see #2.
5. The goal, right now, is weight loss. The diabetes, the congestive heart failure, the sleep apnea - all of these are related to the 300 extra pounds I'm carrying.
6. When I weigh 200 pounds, I can care about finding entertaining exercise and general fitness. I'm a drowning man, worrying that my clothes are wet is a distraction.
7. I'd rather never lose weight than continue to stop and start diets and workouts because of sickness, injury, frustration, depression, blah, blah, blah. Eating a salad and thinking about my next workout is better than eating a candy bar and wishing I could lose some weight.
8. I'm sick and tired of the "I've just changed my diet and my body is revolting" aspect of dieting. Every time I start dieting or change my diet, my body decides it's time to camp on the couch, or camp in the bathroom! (As for the protein powder, well, it kicked off my gout. It shouldn't, but it did. There is some anecdotal evidence that I'm not the only one with this problem.)

Eat right, get on the treadmill - everyday. K.I.S.S.