Nineteen Forever

195 lbs

Well this should be the end of Mr. 195 lbs for this week. It would have been the end for him earlier than tomorrow's weigh in but beer had to be drunk and life had to be lived. I had an imperative to go share the next to last NBA game for the year here with my dear friend Lee. For once, this last part of the season, the Suns didn't stink up the court. Even when the team looks like they are phoning it in, they still put on a good show. The only thing I used to hate, past tense emphasized, were the seats - they were just narrow as all get out. Now I realize that the seats weren't too narrow, I was just too wide. I missed the full enjoyment of watching Kevin Johnson, Steve Nash and Charles Barkley over the years just because I couldn't be a bit more honest with myself. Sigh.

Before I forget, I must tell you that today marks 90 days of weigh ins. So officially we are at the 3 month mark and counting Saturday's weigh in at 192.6 lbs, I am 40 lbs down. By the 12th of May, if I am still on track, I should be a lower weight than what I was at 19 years old. I now wear a pair of paints with a 32 inch waist which is what I wore when I was 17 years old. I need to remember to mark my jeans with a permanent marker because my son has already, inadvertently, wore my pants to school once.

This whole affair has been like stepping into a time machine; a different mindset comes back to me with each pound lost. I just feel younger somehow. Getting down and knocking out 10 push ups is hardly a chore anymore. I have earned back my sense of taste and sensitivity to certain foods. I had a couple of corn tortillas for lunch with my tasty and cheap fish tacos yesterday and my ass was dragging in the afternoon. I am more aware that food should be treated like a drug than ever before. In the past, I would simply shrug off the afternoon blahs as routine but now I see them as something more, something I shouldn't have to endure or put up with. Really none of us should settle for such abuse. Remember, drugs abuse the user that abuses them. I am not saying skip the fish tacos at lunch but I would think more than twice about the fries. Just knowing the effect food has on my body just makes me wish I would have known all this before I had all those early classes in my 20's fueled by Vivarin and coffee. If my body is a temple, then it was once filled with donut chomping caffeine freaks in monk robes emblazoned with "Who Farted?".

Now I don't want to go off and make my temple, as it were, filled with dour accountants who look over their glasses saying, "Do you really want to eat that?" all the damn time but maybe just occasionally. That would kill the joy of regressing mentally a bit if it was all the damn time. Sure, I have known 19 year olds who think like that and are physical embodiments of Greek statues. Their souls seem to be just as joyful as a statues as well. Happy mediums, ya know?

Tomorrow, I will have a rundown of the experiments this month which include a $20 a week challenge and by the end of the month going gluten free vegan for a week.

Here are pics of the progress thus far from Day 20 to today:

219.2 lbs - January 29th

195 lbs - April 12th

Break On Through (To the Other Side)

193.6 lbs

Ah, I have the swagger of Jim Morrison right now minus the drug abuse, rotten leather pants or bathtub. Yes, yes, yes. Bye, bye, 195 lbs until this coming Sunday. If I am good enough, I won't see you for long 195, you fat bastard. Instead of feeling like I am in limbo, it feels more like playing limbo - how low can you go?

Now I posed a question on what should be my next experiment yesterday and the winner is (due to underwhelming response ha!) - eat on $20 from things bought at the 99 Cents Store. But here is the kicker, I am also going to do a vegan diet modified by my friend Melissa who offered an option #4 that was not even on the table. That week will be difficult and I know it has been difficult for Melissa since she has to also limit certain things in the vegan diet because of Celiac Disease in her family. There are no glutens allowed and also Melissa has to make sure there is no processed sugar or soy. Celiac Disease is a serious allergy to gluten, particularly. It causes the small intestine to basically stop processing food efficiently when gluten is present and gluten seems to be everywhere, even in whole foods. The damage to a person's digestive tract who has this disease, after eating gluten, is devastating. So Melissa's job each week is to make sure her children are able to grow up healthy and strong with a very limited dietary palette and she has to do this without the benefit of processed foods. Hats off to Melissa! I used to watch her chow down on burgers when we were younger, so she has to have the strength of Atlas to pull it all off on a daily basis.

By watching Melissa's posts on FB and posts from other friends, I have noticed how intolerant people are to other people's dietary needs. One post in particular caught my eye and here is the story. For those who are link impaired, the story basically goes a little something like this. A waiter, claiming to be a Chef in a high end restaurant caused a furor by openly saying he was poisoning those who have Celiac Disease by surreptitiously putting gluten in their food. He openly mocked them and posted it on his Facebook page. The idiot nearly closed down a restaurant that was very accommodating to those who could not have gluten in their diet. It also caused a furor among those who have the disease. I would call him a bastard but bastards have guile, he is just a self important imbecile.

The same goes for those folks who whine about people who have peanut allergies. They act like it is imagined or something relatively mild like lactose intolerance. So many imbeciles have killed or maimed those with the allergy because somehow they thought they were funny or know better. My point is that why should we be making it hard for those who do not have a choice in what they can eat? Hey I have no problem with the way I or others might want to poison ourselves. I do have a huge issue with those who would choose to poison other people. People with food allergies have it hard enough as it is. I would think if you asked the same people who think that people with Celiac Disease or any other food allergy are just faking it whether it was appropriate to make fun of someone in a wheelchair and they would say no. I also feel the same way about those who ridicule the obese because, quite honestly, if they had their choice they wouldn't be.

There is the plain and honest truth, a lot of us have choices but a few of us don't. Perhaps the obese woman in the motorized cart at the grocery store has been on a medicine that makes it impossible to lose weight. Maybe the really big guy at the bank has a genetic disorder that doesn't allow him to process food properly. You never know.

For those of us who are overweight and do not have any particular medical reason for being so, the choice is pretty simple but fairly difficult to make. One word comes to mind when I see someone who has lost a lot of weight through diligence alone - courage. The same word comes to mind when I hear of people living day to day in an environment that could kill them. Imagine a world where the next bite you take might kill you, maybe that will make your own choices easier because we do, actually, live in that world. The thing is, the food we eat is a whole lot deadlier to a few of us even without overindulging. As my friends and I have learned, food is a drug, use it wisely.

The Little Things

195 lbs

So we are back at the bottom again. 195 lbs has now become my nemesis. I blame myself for this. I really need to up the exercise and with my chest hurting this week, it just was not in the cards. By tomorrow, I should be as good as gold and I plan on waking up early and doing a very small amount of running. It will be interesting to see what effect it has on all of this. I have hardly ever been a morning exercise person. It just has never appealed to me. Lunch time and evening yes, morning no. I am going to give it a shot.

I have some catch up to do. I think I promised some science last week but I need to focus on some little things first. It's more of a mental clean up around the blog here, mainly spurred on by helping my friend Tammy who is trying "4-Hour Body". Here is a laundry list of errata and other items I needed to address or have addressed elsewhere:

• I keep using the term human biome but to be accurate the term is microbiome. There is some pretty important stuff coming out scientifically in this arena which will change the way we eat and also help us understand our bodies better. Think along the lines of the human genome project and you'll get the picture. Mapping the microbiome is going to uncover lots of surprising things about how we use food and how the critters in our system convert it.
  
• I can't say I am doing "4-Hour Body", I'm really not now. My friend Tammy is however. Comparing our diets, I can tell you that I haven't fallen off the wagon, I've just changed horses.
• It might seem like I am not experimenting at all but I keep adding and subtracting things as I go along. This week I added Niacin and if you would like to know why, here is a nifty link to the Mayo Clinic. In addition, I have been adding small amounts of lemon to my bottled water. Lemon helps to even out blood sugar spikes and makes the large amount of water I drink very very tasty.
  
• Someone asked me a very good question last week, why binge? Basically it resets your metabolism so it isn't falling through the floor from "reduced" calories during the week. Right now, I am fighting a plateau or set point so bingeing becomes even more important to help me break the 195 lb barrier.
• I think, after waffling a bit, I am at the final 10-15 lbs. 15lbs more lost would be fantastic. I am also calculating what I will need to do to maintain that weight. Basically if I skip the ridiculous amounts of sugar I used to eat, I'll be fine. I am also going to switch to whole grains again for any bread fix I might need.
  
• There are a number of experiments I want to do and if you are a regular reader and have come this far down the page I am looking for your vote on what will come next. Below is a list. And you can choose 1,2, or 3.

1. Eat for a week on nothing but food bought from the 99 cents Store - healthily and under $20 (not including tax).
2. Try losing weight on nothing but fast food for a week.
3. Cut most fat and and go all carb for a week - nothing is out of bounds as long as the fat stays under 20 grams per day.

I personally would like to do number one. It sounds like it would be most the useful and most difficult. Number two is fairly easy, except for breakfast and the timing I would like to still maintain for eating. I could also do number three with some abandon and more than likely still lose weight.

Let the voting begin!

Washing of the Water

195.6 lbs

Geez, that was one heck of a drop in body weight but at least I know why. I did quite a bit of reading and I am fairly sure I will be avoiding ibuprofen in the future. The effect on your kidneys is frightening. It basically impairs them and your kidneys are what excrete excess salt using something called prostaglandin. Essentially, what prostglandin does is dilate your blood vessels to get rid of excess salt in your body. What ibuprofen does is not only block your body from producing the type of prostglandin that causes inflammation, it blocks them all. So basically your kidneys are running very inefficiently and that decreases their ability to get rid of salt which in turn increases water retention. Why I went back up yesterday instead of going down was because of my ibuprofen intake the previous day. Oh and another nasty little side effect, increased blood pressure. Lovely. Lose the pain, get a stroke, fan-freaking-tastic.

So what appears to have happened is that the levee broke and I was able to rid myself of all that water stored up in my body. I still firmly believe that this is what happens from Sunday to Tuesday each week after my binge day. My inadvertent experiment with ibuprofen proved it by proxy. On a day where I would normally be ridding myself of all the water and waste from Saturday, it stopped cold and did a little jump. Once the dam broke it plummeted farther than it has on any day during this whole thing. There are some great benefits to keeping tabs on yourself physically and a little experimentation never hurt anyone unless it is with over the counter medication or certain drugs.

The one thing I really noticed was the heavy feeling of carrying so much water in my body. My clothes felt funny on my body. Frankly, I felt fat, it was not pleasant. Now I can hear all the women out there screaming, "It's called bloating, you idiot!" I can't imagine what the fairer sex has to go through each month. Oh sure the tampon commercials make it look like such a joy. Who wouldn't want to live in a world where flowers suddenly appear and floating bits of cloth turn into clouds before your eyes once a month? Tell me that. It would be a really cool experience, like an acid trip without the brain damage just because you got your period. But words like bloating, in commercials, are meaningless to most men. Even typing the word "bloating", just sounds funny in my head. I really had no concept of what it meant until recently. I can certainly empathize to a certain extent now.

You learn a lot from the little things. I gave myself a quick education on water and its role in the human body beyond what I normally knew because of ibuprofen. Getting deep into the human biological aspect of water was interesting. How the kidneys and liver work in concert to use the fluid and food you ingest is an amazing process and it is one I have abused or have taken for granted for years. Certainly, the specific toxins (salt is a Godsend and an enemy) water rids your system of each day is enough impetus to make sure you drink more each day. Since I live, literally, smack dab in the middle of a desert it even becomes more important. Water is pulled out of your body at an alarming rate in a cold or dry climate due to the low humidity. Before you know it you are dehydrated and your organs start to shut down.

Beyond general health, water is your best friend if you are trying to lose weight. It helps you feel fuller and studies show that people who drink more water have significantly lower weight gain over their lifetimes. Water, scientifically, is one of the least understood substances on earth. Scientists are often baffled by its ability to change state and transform under certain conditions. It's like the stuff was some sort of magic elixir. I am here to tell you that it is.

Eat the Rich

198.2 lbs

Oh no! Something new! I have never ever had an up tick this early into a week. I know what caused it, stupid ibuprofen - lots of it. I have a pulled muscle in my chest and it hurt like heck yesterday. It is still a little sore today. If you want to really scare the living hell out of yourself I strongly suggest starting the day with a sharp pain in the middle of your chest. I was in full freak out mode until I realized that it hurt when I pushed something or pulled something with my left arm. Basically, the muscle was pulled where it attached to the breast bone. I am not sure if it is chondritis which is basically a problem with connective tissue in that region since this seems to be going away. Damn if it didn't hurt and make me want to run to an E.R. at 6:30am in the morning. After I figured out it was not some problem with the most important organ in my body, I was a little better. An ice pack my wife made and some rest did wonders. I am not a huge fan of ibuprofen at the moment. I took at least 1000mg yesterday and it did nada.

Now if I were rich man (cue Fiddler on the Roof music), I could have simply called up my private physician and he would have walked me through a self diagnostic. I don't have that luxury and most of the people I know, don't have that luxury. To be fair, most of us have at least some basic access to medical care. What we don't have and what delineates us from the rich, is the money and resources that allow access to personalized physical regimens and specialized diers. If you want to be healthy and thin, all you have to do is pay the price. That doesn't sit right with me. It also does not sit well with my chef or personal trainer. Oh I know what you are saying! Oh he can afford a chef and personal trainer - the bastard! But you have to understand, they work very cheap. They are me. I always knew there would be perks to having a split personality disorder.

Okay, I don't really have a split personality disorder yet (a man must have his goals) but I do take care of myself by myself. I can assure you, that was not always the case. I realized all it took was a little discipline and some reading. You can do it too. No matter what the diet and exercise industry tells you, you don't need a personal trainer or a private chef or a home pilates master, you just need you.

Now having said all that, there is a distinct advantage the rich have that is an intangible. They can push responsibility off to someone else at certain points. They also can have outside motivation for a price. Want to lose weight? Just dial up Henri and he will make sure you eat a healthy meal. Feel a little flabby? Jillian will be there to slap your fat ass around the gym. Speaking of healthy meals, that is also another advantage, they can afford to eat healthy. But everyone can afford to eat healthy, we just do not have the personal will or discipline to take that extra time from watching the Oprah network to cook or prepare something that doesn't have 20 mysterious chemical names in the ingredients. Processed food will make you fat - that's the facts Jack.

What about my flabby ass? Well, you can also be your own personal trainer and set goals and map out and organize how you will get there. All it takes is just a few organizational skills which can be easily acquired and, of course, the D word - DISCIPLINE.

So I keep using the D word. Do rich people have more of it than others? I really don't think so. Now those from wealthy families have always eaten well and have been involved in a lot of activities since birth. The same can not be said about the poor and middle class in our nation. There is a whole different mindset that tells us that Little Debbies are a wholesome snack. Our go-to eating establishments aren't some place that serves lean beef and veggies, they are fast food joints that serve crap and they are more ubiquitous than traffic lights.

I personally think, with a little work in this land of plenty, we could all eat like we are rich. In a land where a dozen eggs are $1.50 and ten snack cakes are $1.99, it's just a matter of choice. Christy and I were walking through the 99 Cents store one day and we both came to a realization - you can eat pretty well in America for very little. There were fresh veggies and whole grain breads and, hell, they even had supplements. The rich might not have to work hard for their good health but with just a little extra work on our parts we can eat and exercise just as well as they do.

In the end, all I know is that when the big one comes and we are all reduced to cannabilism, I am hitting the rich section of town because I bet they are all tastier and a whole helluva lot better for me. Lean meat - yum!


Listen to my boy Lemmy, tell you all about it.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

197.6 lbs

Not quite losing like I want or should. I am, however, increasing muscle mass but I hope to see below the 195 mark this week or even lower. I got a really good chance of making it this week because I had fun on binge day and that usually helps break the "wall" I hit every few weeks or so. I tend to notice this "wall" happening when I get a slight up tick in my weight on Saturday morning. Hopefully what I did on binge day did the trick.

This Saturday we did a few special things for binge day. We had donuts in the morning as is per the norm these days. At lunch Christy and I ventured out to the Carlsbad Tavern in Scottsdale. There is a particular burger there that I love and I had never taken Christy there before. The restaurant is basically New Mexico cuisine with a few twists. The burger that I mentioned earlier is a habanero burger and it even includes warnings in its description on the menu. Like they say, you order it, you own it. It's one of the Food Network's best burgers in America and it is mostly certainly its hottest. The thing actually has ground habaneros inside the burger and even the side salad has a jalapeno dressing.

It's not the first time I had this burger. Either the burger has become milder over the years or I have become desensitized by eating so much hot stuff while living here in the Southwest. In the past, upon eating one of these fire breathing monsters, I would sweat profusely and on one occasion I even lost hearing in one ear as my hair felt like it was growing out my head. The thing goes beyond hot and keeps going. Now, to be fair, I did do a very sensible thing before eating one this time, I drank some milk. It used to be standard with your order for them to offer a glass of milk (they don't now) but I had to request one this time (in the past I shooed it away). I am glad I did. I still got a small endorphin rush and my hair felt like it was growing slightly but it was nowhere near the gastronomical armageddon I had endured previously.

I love very very spicy food. Right now, at my work desk, sits a bottle of the hottest stuff I have ever put into my body - Blair's After Death hot sauce. But still, it is only 50,000 scoville units which is roughly 10 times hotter than a jalapeno. Supposedly what I ate over the weekend was pushing 100,000 scovillle units. I can tell you that it really wasn't even close to being as insane as After Death. I usually only put a drop or two of it on anything I eat because the smoky taste that I crave will turn into the searing pain that I don't. Besides the possibility of chemical burns, hot sauce is very good for you.

The endorphin rush is a plus but there are also nice side effects that the capsaicin in peppers provide. Mainly, it lowers blood sugar and cholesterol in your body. Oh and if you are up to it, like me, it tastes yummy. I have become a connoisseur of sorts when it comes to my peppery condiments. I generally avoid anything with a filler food such as carrots. If I wanted carrots, I would buy them and I definitely don't want anything screwing with the taste of my hot sauce. I am looking at you too, Mr. Tomato - stay in ketchup and salsa like you should!

At this very moment, as I type this on my lunch break, my hair feels like it is going all wolf man like as I ingest a diablo shrimp salad covered with hot sauce - with a little added After Death. It is so very good. Try a little bit of hot sauce on everything, it's fantastic.

The Goonies 'R' Good Enough

195 lbs

I kind of expected it not to drop that much, so for once this week it has been within expectations. I had little sleep last night and that pretty much kills a weigh in. But you know what? I am changing physically. It sort of feels like am Eddie Murphy in the Nutty Professor. Except I don't turn into a swaggering asshole. Well, at least not more than normal. I never thought this level of transformation was possible frankly. I even said so a couple of months ago. That got me to thinking, do we all cast ourselves as being one way or another as if there were a die somewhere that stamped us out as we are forever? For some weird reason this made me think of The Goonies.

I started to think of the proverbial chubby kid, as comic relief, motif that permeated most 80's movies. The Goonies was one of them and Stand By Me was another. I am sure if we sat around together we could come up with a dozen more easily. Now I had read an article, a few weeks ago, about the casts of the two movies I had mentioned. I found it interesting that both of the chunky kids in each movie had grown up to be very healthy looking people. Here is Chunk doing the truffle shuffle.


Here is what he looks like now:


He has grown up to be an entertainment lawyer and he barely looks like the same person now. I bet he is eternally grateful that he did not have to go through life truffle shuffling every time someone recognized him in public.

Now let's look at Jerry O'Connell, the kid from Stand By Me:




Here he is now. A little something for the ladies out there:



Oh and ladies, you are welcome.

But you might say, "Hey, they are kids, they lost the baby fat!" Well true baby fat is brown fat and brown fat helps burn calories the same as muscle. Yes, you will lose body fat as you grow older but that's only if you are able to maintain a certain calorie level that matches your age appropriate height and weight. Calories do not count for much but in this case, they do. Now let's see, what about an adult that has transformed themselves even though most of their adult lives we have seen them as something else entirely different. I have just the guy, John Goodman.

The man used to be 400 lbs only 9 months ago!




How did he do it? Some fantabulous Hollyweird miracle diet containing the placenta of a giraffe and fried monkey balls? No, he took accurate measurements. John said in an interview that he would lose 60 lbs every Spring and would regain it once Winter hit (an upcoming subject for the blog - warning: the science mobile will show up). The trick for John was to measure his body fat % which is and will always be a much better assessment of your overall weight loss than almost any other. That's all it took, careful and accurate measurements. That's is also what it takes to keep it off. Continuously losing more muscle than fat each time you crash diet will send your body into a spiral that is hard to pull out of without some serious exercise via weight training. The catch-22 is that is hard to get that exercise when you are really obese but it is not impossible, you just have to ease into it. Always remember baby steps, not baby fat, are what wins the race.