My previous diet-and-exercise regimen, which ran for three weeks this January, was successful from one standpoint: I demonstrated to myself how effectively I can diet-and-exercise, provided I stay healthy. The low-carb regimen works well for me, and helps me select healthy foods (homemade, with lots of vegetables) rather than fabber-crap from the Post Industrial Land of Empty Sugars. I have to be exercising, too, but there’s nothing wrong with doing both diet AND exercise. Duh.
My weight, which had peaked at 187 (as measured immediately after waking up in the morning, before eating anything) had dropped to 180, and I felt great. Then I got sick for three weeks (rhinovirusocerous), and got out of the habit of healthy living. I haven’t been to the gym since mid-February. The only exercise I’ve gotten in 5 weeks, and I’m not making this up: three rounds of Disc Golf, some walking around at BrainShare (walking between “place to sit” and “place to eat”; I’m not sure that counts) and exactly 20 push-ups.
This morning my weight hit 187.5. A new high! I feel like the 1997 DOW Industrials!
(Bloated… artificially larger than I should be… doomed to catastrophic collapse… pick one)
So, I need to get back to the gym, and back on the low-carb wagon. I’ve got decent self-discipline these days — in past year’s diets I haven’t just fallen off the wagon, I’ve leapt from the wagon into the ditch, and then fled naked into the woods to dance with the elves… the KEEBLER elves, and their pet Nesquik Bunny. I’ve broken my Nesquik addiction, though, and my carbohydrate cravings can now be satiated with a really robust salad, some wild rice, and a diet soda.
Which brings me to breakfast this morning… I enjoyed a “last meal” of fried eggs, toast-under-sausage-gravy, grits, and a (admittedly token) diet drink.
The drink: It’s this stuff called “Slim Lite” that they sell at Sam’s Club. It’s a little more expensive than the Diet Vanilla Pepsi I typically resort to, but it has some natural fat-burning stuff in it, including Chromium, and some patented blend of don’t-ask-me-what called “Citrimax.” And it’s a product of a company which uses the word “nutraceuticals” in their company name without batting an eyelash. It’s GOTTA be good for me, right?
Right. Bah. It’s got acesulfame potassium in it, a chemical whose aftertaste has led me to refer to it lovingly as “that ‘mouth-access-denied’ crap.” It’s also got Splenda in it, which is the reason I picked up in the first place. I thought maybe the de-carbed sugar molecules they’re calling “sucralose” would mask the pump-fake-the-taste-buds action of the acesulfame.
It’s been 20 minutes. My mouth does NOT taste like a sugar-plum-fairy used it as a toilet, so I guess I’m okay on at least one count.
Tomorrow — no carbs, and a round of Disc Golf. The day after… well, Tuesday is as good a day to show up at the gym in my fat suit as any other, right?
–Howard
I was wondering how your diet was going! The low-carb thing works really well for me, too; the only problem is keeping the weight off when I start eating carbs again. The answer, of course, is exercise. sigh There’s just no way around it, is there!
I have had to make friends with acesulfame K since moving over here. They don’t really grasp acesulfame/sucralose yet, though. Gar.
Do they really call it Nesquik over there now? Growing up, it was just Quik, and then I got here and I was all, “dude, does everything in Britain have to sound like some sort of medicine?”
It was Nesquik in Argentina back in 94-95, and the bunny wore an N around his neck instead of a Q. What strange foreign devil was this, I asked myself. I even wrote letters on the backs of can labels just to document the weirdness my family would surely never see.
Then in 97 or so? they changed it to Nesquik here in the states.
Makes me a little apprehensive about the letters I wrote home on Argentine toilet paper.
Somehow that heading brought me a mental image of Fred Astaire jumping up and singing “Gotta Diet!”, as in Singing In The Rain. Hrmz. Maybe I should cut down on the coffee.
The low carb diet worked wonders for me, although I never hit my goal.
I started in October of 2003 at my all-time high of 175-ish.
I set a goal of 180-200 (I’d be happy anywhere in that range).
I reached a low of 220 around April/May 2004 before I lost my drive. I started attending too many parties, and I wanted to have fun, which included junk food and sugarry pop, and alcoholic beverages in massive quantities.
At that point, I still made an effort to eat healthy *most* of the time, and I started exercising pretty regularly. So even though I was cheating on the diet frequently, I stayed around 225, and I was happy with that. I felt fantastic being 50 pounds lighter.
Then came the car accident, and the fractured ribs. Goodbye exercise, hello comofort foods. (and the weight snuck in the back door while I was entertaining said comfort food).
Now I’ve started the diet again at 265. I just don’t have the drive to stay on the diet, though. No real incentive, other than not being able to fit 4 pairs of pants I bought back in the summer of 2004. The weight is coming off, but at a much slower pace.
Wow. I just kinda rambled on, didn’t I? Sorry about that. Long story summarized: Keep up the good work! I’m rooting for you. Low carb diets rock. Exercise is good too. Excuse me while I go do some. 🙂
p.s. Are you up for another round of disc golf Friday morning of Penguicon weekend? Assuming the ground manages to stop being a swamp by then?
175-ish?
Uhh… I wish! That was a typo. I was *275*-ish.
I won’t be able to throw on Friday, but Thursday or Wednesday may work out great. I’m going early (Tuesday) and staying out at Haven with Sal and the Aegis crowd.
–Howard
The same man who used to sell me protein shakes and creatine at the gym later got busted for selling X to some of the other members.
Co-incidence? Maybe that’s what they want us to think!
I’d steer clear of the ‘miracle fat burners’ if I were you. You know what they say about gateway drugs… 😉
Low Carb
sigh…an all time high of 187.5? I’m not grotesquely fat, but my all time high was 325. no. that’s not a typo. Though it is an estimate, because at the time I couldn’t find a scale that would accurately weigh me. rather it’s based on the fact that after a week of low-carb I hit 320, and lost a stead 5lbs a week thereafter for a month or so. it may have been higher…or a little lower. I’m down to 285 (Again…I’ve been bouncing between 280 and 290 since I changed jobs and instead of the entire office being on a low carb diet, NO ONE is on ANY kind of diet. yaaay geeks!) and my goal is 250. I wish you luck, howard…but most of all, I wish it were easier.
in one way, you’re lucky to be on such a strict budget – when you’ve got a lot of disposable income, there’s always that slight sense of “oh, this is low CARB candy/ice cream/chocolate/pancakes/muffins/cookies/whatever”. And you get them and eat them and daggone it but “low carb” means something like 17 grams per serving. And even if you eat them with someone else, that’s still 5 servings for you! we finally had to just cut it all out entirely. the easiest way is to eat it all in one go (you feel LOUSY afterwards, but it’s surprisingly less likely to stick around as fat that way than if you eat it steadily over the course of a week) and then just DON’T BUY ANY MORE. yet another reason I’m glad not to have kids – my wife and I can *easily* find the time to go grocery shopping together – and when we do, it’s easy not to buy the bad stuff. I’ll stop rambling now.