Last year I bought a Fitbit Ionic. As soon as I got home I was reading some things about it and realized I could write my own clock face. Being a web developer and seeing that the Fitbit API uses Javascript, HTML, CSS, and SVG, it was a simple transition to create apps for it.
So I create the Y8Z Clock https://gallery.fitbit.com/details/32cd9150-c91c-4597-be83-2da68c447d55
It's nothing fancy, but it had everything that I wanted to see on my clock face. I created it for myself. I added it to the Fitbit app store. I didn't expect anyone to use it, but I've had many support emails about it.
I maintain it for free and because I use it. It has a few options that can be changed on the Fitbit clock face settings page. If you have a Fitbit, check it out. Leave comments here if you have any suggestions. Keep in mind that the development of new enhancements may take a while.
Saturday, June 29, 2019
Water Intake
The other day I saw a cool new water bottle in Target. The price was kinda steep, but it may be worth it. It's called a Hidrate Spark. The gimmick with the Hidrate Spark is that it helps you track your water intake. You install their app. You calibrate the bottle. It uses two CR2023 batteries. It connects to your app via bluetooth, and it reports your water intake. It's pretty simple. You can connect the app to other fitness apps, like Fitbit. So I can easily track my water intake in my Fitbit app now. It cost $45. If you are wanting an easy way to track your water intake, it's definitely a good water bottle for that.
I have only been using it for two days. So far I've been lagging behind in my water intake. My goal is set to around 114 ounces. That is a lot of water to get down in a day.
Today, I was a little behind in steps, and I was running low on hours before midnight. We also had fireworks in town. I ended up getting in a twenty-three hours fast. I made my "feeding" window one hour today. After I ate, I gave myself about 20 minutes before I jumped on the treadmill. I had about thirty minutes before midnight to walk and get in as many steps as I could. I ended up getting around 8200. I kept going till around 2:00 am. My total was two hours and twenty minutes. It's 3:30 am and I have 13,500 steps already for the day. I'm going to get in another two hours this evening and shoot for 25,000 steps today.
I've never been an exerciser. I used to run a bit back in my twenties, but I hurt my left ankle and gave it up. I spent my latter twenties and all of my thirties gaining weight and being pretty inactive. I have a lot of stored energy. Well that's one way to put it anyway.
So, I'm working on getting my water intake up. I thought I was drinking a lot more, but this bottle is telling me different. Also, my first calibration of the bottle made it report the wrong amount of water. It was nearly triple the actual intake. So I had to recalibrate it. After that it seems to work perfectly.
I have only been using it for two days. So far I've been lagging behind in my water intake. My goal is set to around 114 ounces. That is a lot of water to get down in a day.
Today, I was a little behind in steps, and I was running low on hours before midnight. We also had fireworks in town. I ended up getting in a twenty-three hours fast. I made my "feeding" window one hour today. After I ate, I gave myself about 20 minutes before I jumped on the treadmill. I had about thirty minutes before midnight to walk and get in as many steps as I could. I ended up getting around 8200. I kept going till around 2:00 am. My total was two hours and twenty minutes. It's 3:30 am and I have 13,500 steps already for the day. I'm going to get in another two hours this evening and shoot for 25,000 steps today.
I've never been an exerciser. I used to run a bit back in my twenties, but I hurt my left ankle and gave it up. I spent my latter twenties and all of my thirties gaining weight and being pretty inactive. I have a lot of stored energy. Well that's one way to put it anyway.
So, I'm working on getting my water intake up. I thought I was drinking a lot more, but this bottle is telling me different. Also, my first calibration of the bottle made it report the wrong amount of water. It was nearly triple the actual intake. So I had to recalibrate it. After that it seems to work perfectly.
Thursday, June 27, 2019
Twenty Pounds Down
I weighed in this morning 20.2 pounds less than where I was on May 12th. Most of that weight was lost in the first two weeks of keto. I've been slowly losing the rest with fasting and time-restricted eating. I'm really focusing on the time-restricted eating, but I should also incorporate more Atkins/Keto concepts as well. I've allowed myself to have more sugar and carbs than I should. It has kept me from losing another ten pounds probably. I think I'm doing pretty good for the time being. I'm slowly losing fat and my endurance for exercise has increased.
Speaking of exercise, I've been doing a lot more of that lately, and it's more intensive exercise. I'm gradually building up to full on jogging. I try to walk fast and jog intermittently. I usually keep this up for about an hour and a half straight. My heart rate usually stays above 120. When I jog it's more like 160 or 180. I like to try to sustain a heart rate of 130 or more when I'm on the treadmill. When I walk or hike outside, I take a day pack and just enjoy nature. I still keep my heart rate up, but it's more about having a good walk than working myself hard.
Twenty pounds isn't a lot. Twenty-five pounds will be a 10% loss from where I was when I started. My goal is to get down to 165 or 170. I still have about seventy more pounds. If I'm going to do that before my birthday, I need to step it up. It may be time to start alternate day fasting. I'm going to do time-restricted eating for another week, and if I don't see significant loss by then, I'm going to switch to alternate day fasting for sure. That will be difficult, but I think I can do it.
If all else fails, I'll go back to a strict no carbs diet. That worked well for the first three weeks. I'm mainly concerned with my metabolic rate. I want to speed it along as much as possible. I worry that fasting will slow my metabolism. However, I've not given time-restricted eating much of a chance to impress me. I've only started doing it. I'm just extremely skeptical of its benefits. I especially don't think that it'll result in weight loss, or I should say "fat loss."
I suspect that I will not lose as much on it as I did on keto. The version of keto I was doing was extreme, and losing weight on it was inevitable. If all else fails, I'll go back to that. It's so strict that it seems unnecessary, and if I went with an actual keto diet, I'd have to track so many things, I'd just give up. For now, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.
Time-restricted eating is a somewhat new concept that is based on circadian rhythms. The idea is that you only eat during a small window of time during the day. I'm going to spend the next few days reading some of the scientific studies on the subject and seeing what have been discovered.
Speaking of exercise, I've been doing a lot more of that lately, and it's more intensive exercise. I'm gradually building up to full on jogging. I try to walk fast and jog intermittently. I usually keep this up for about an hour and a half straight. My heart rate usually stays above 120. When I jog it's more like 160 or 180. I like to try to sustain a heart rate of 130 or more when I'm on the treadmill. When I walk or hike outside, I take a day pack and just enjoy nature. I still keep my heart rate up, but it's more about having a good walk than working myself hard.
Twenty pounds isn't a lot. Twenty-five pounds will be a 10% loss from where I was when I started. My goal is to get down to 165 or 170. I still have about seventy more pounds. If I'm going to do that before my birthday, I need to step it up. It may be time to start alternate day fasting. I'm going to do time-restricted eating for another week, and if I don't see significant loss by then, I'm going to switch to alternate day fasting for sure. That will be difficult, but I think I can do it.
If all else fails, I'll go back to a strict no carbs diet. That worked well for the first three weeks. I'm mainly concerned with my metabolic rate. I want to speed it along as much as possible. I worry that fasting will slow my metabolism. However, I've not given time-restricted eating much of a chance to impress me. I've only started doing it. I'm just extremely skeptical of its benefits. I especially don't think that it'll result in weight loss, or I should say "fat loss."
I suspect that I will not lose as much on it as I did on keto. The version of keto I was doing was extreme, and losing weight on it was inevitable. If all else fails, I'll go back to that. It's so strict that it seems unnecessary, and if I went with an actual keto diet, I'd have to track so many things, I'd just give up. For now, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.
Time-restricted eating is a somewhat new concept that is based on circadian rhythms. The idea is that you only eat during a small window of time during the day. I'm going to spend the next few days reading some of the scientific studies on the subject and seeing what have been discovered.
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
Current Weight Loss Goal and Plan of Attack
May 12, 2019 I weighed 256.7 pounds. This was the most I've ever weighed. Today I'm down to 239.0 pounds. I'm pushing my way to -20 pounds, but as insulin resistant as I am, it's very hard to take off weight. Yesterday, I walked five miles on a river hike and then in the evening I did another three and a half miles on the treadmill. I ran half a mile of that.
I've read that you produce more HGH if you have intermittent high-intensity exercise, so I've been running for a tenth of a mile, walking two tenths of a mile, running a tenth of a mile, etc during my treadmill exercise. This gives me an hour or so of cardio. I'm actually just amazed at this stage that I'm able to run that much without passing out.
I've noticed a significant increase in my ability to do activities, especially cardio. I don't feel that walking a couple miles per day helps a lot, but I don't think it hurt either. So I'm upping my goals. My current step goal for a day is 12,500. That's around five or six miles. If I do intermittent running during that, I can burn around 3500 calories per day easy. I'm trying to up that number to 5000 calories per day.
I'm currently eating once per day. I would also refer to this as a 20/4 fast. I go twenty hours without eating and then allow myself to eat in a four hour window. This is usually pretty easy for me to do, since I spent three weeks of no carbs or sugar. Those three weeks reset a lot of things in my system, and one of the biggest things is that it lowered my hunger nearly to none at all.
Usually, I will get hungry about two times during my twenty hour fast. Yesterday, I had my ruck sack loaded with low carb/sugar snacks, but I didn't eat any of them. I was hungry at one point on the hike, but I consciously stopped myself from indulging. So I was able to wait till 5 o'clock in the evening before I had anything to eat. I hadn't had anything since around 9 pm the previous day so I had my twenty hours with no food.
My one meal per day is currently not the healthiest choices. Don't get me wrong, it's not terrible. I typically avoid high carbs though I probably need to roll it back a bit. I'm not trying to get myself into ketosis at that point so I'm not worried about following a Keto diet during my one-meal-a-day.
Yesterday my favorite diner was serving broccoli casserole, which I love. They only serve it one day per week so I had two sides of that. I had chicken fingers with honey mustard. I had mac & cheese. I had a roll. I had collard greens. Finally, I had half/half sweet/unsweet tea. So the mac & cheese, roll, and the tea were not the best of choices, but I only get to eat once per day so I try to enjoy it.
At that point in the day, I'd already reached my step goal for the day. Around 9pm I decided to try to get another few miles, so I jumped on the treadmill and stayed on it for just over an hour. When I was finished my hunger pains were getting strong, so I allowed myself to have a banana.
Let me step back and make an excuse for myself here. I'm not in a rush to lose weight. I'm currently experimenting with a lot of different diet ideas. However, the three weeks I spent without carbs and sugar corrected a major problem I had with eating certain foods.
The three foods that I couldn't eat prior to those three weeks were mushrooms, avocado, and bananas. Those three foods used to hurt my stomach horribly. A Claritin taken about an hour prior to eating would help me avoid this pain in the past, but I didn't like to risk it. Basically, I'd be doubled over for about three hours feeling like I was getting kicked in the stomach.
I love bananas, avocados, and mushrooms. Realizing that I could eat them again thrilled me. So I take every opportunity to indulge in those foods as I can at the moment. Last Sunday, for example, I ate a lot of fried mushrooms during my one-meal-a-day.
Should I be eating them? Probably not. I should go back to no carbs/sugars for a couple of weeks, but I'm hoping that intermittent fasting will be a better solution. The only thing I'm really concentrating on right now is the calorie in and calorie out aspect. When I eat 2000 calories in a day, I want to make sure I'm burning at least double that. It's a slow and steady race that I'm running. I don't care if it takes me six months or a year to get down to 170 lbs. The goal is to get down there, not race to it. I'd rather increase my activity to get faster results.
I should reiterate that DIET is the key to fat loss and changing yourself physically. Exercise is about twenty percent of the recipe. Diet is every bit of eighty percent of it. You absolutely have to set goals for yourself. For me, one of my goals is to enjoy foods when I get a chance, and to consciously limit myself every chance I can.
I don't alway do the right thing. I'm not perfect. I'm striving for perfection on my diet. I'm definitely not hitting it, but that's okay. I may spend a whole week fasting soon and take care of a lot of my weight in one go. Who knows. I just know that I need to enjoy my new lifestyle the best I can. If having a banana because I can eat them again after a decade of not being able to is a bad thing, then I screwed up. I just think it's reasonable to have the banana. Do I need the fructose? Definitely not! However, four months ago I was drinking about 90 ounces of Coke per day and eating whatever I wanted and not exercising at all. So, I think I'm on the right track and it's best not to get discouraged.
I've read that you produce more HGH if you have intermittent high-intensity exercise, so I've been running for a tenth of a mile, walking two tenths of a mile, running a tenth of a mile, etc during my treadmill exercise. This gives me an hour or so of cardio. I'm actually just amazed at this stage that I'm able to run that much without passing out.
I've noticed a significant increase in my ability to do activities, especially cardio. I don't feel that walking a couple miles per day helps a lot, but I don't think it hurt either. So I'm upping my goals. My current step goal for a day is 12,500. That's around five or six miles. If I do intermittent running during that, I can burn around 3500 calories per day easy. I'm trying to up that number to 5000 calories per day.
I'm currently eating once per day. I would also refer to this as a 20/4 fast. I go twenty hours without eating and then allow myself to eat in a four hour window. This is usually pretty easy for me to do, since I spent three weeks of no carbs or sugar. Those three weeks reset a lot of things in my system, and one of the biggest things is that it lowered my hunger nearly to none at all.
Usually, I will get hungry about two times during my twenty hour fast. Yesterday, I had my ruck sack loaded with low carb/sugar snacks, but I didn't eat any of them. I was hungry at one point on the hike, but I consciously stopped myself from indulging. So I was able to wait till 5 o'clock in the evening before I had anything to eat. I hadn't had anything since around 9 pm the previous day so I had my twenty hours with no food.
My one meal per day is currently not the healthiest choices. Don't get me wrong, it's not terrible. I typically avoid high carbs though I probably need to roll it back a bit. I'm not trying to get myself into ketosis at that point so I'm not worried about following a Keto diet during my one-meal-a-day.
Yesterday my favorite diner was serving broccoli casserole, which I love. They only serve it one day per week so I had two sides of that. I had chicken fingers with honey mustard. I had mac & cheese. I had a roll. I had collard greens. Finally, I had half/half sweet/unsweet tea. So the mac & cheese, roll, and the tea were not the best of choices, but I only get to eat once per day so I try to enjoy it.
At that point in the day, I'd already reached my step goal for the day. Around 9pm I decided to try to get another few miles, so I jumped on the treadmill and stayed on it for just over an hour. When I was finished my hunger pains were getting strong, so I allowed myself to have a banana.
Let me step back and make an excuse for myself here. I'm not in a rush to lose weight. I'm currently experimenting with a lot of different diet ideas. However, the three weeks I spent without carbs and sugar corrected a major problem I had with eating certain foods.
The three foods that I couldn't eat prior to those three weeks were mushrooms, avocado, and bananas. Those three foods used to hurt my stomach horribly. A Claritin taken about an hour prior to eating would help me avoid this pain in the past, but I didn't like to risk it. Basically, I'd be doubled over for about three hours feeling like I was getting kicked in the stomach.
I love bananas, avocados, and mushrooms. Realizing that I could eat them again thrilled me. So I take every opportunity to indulge in those foods as I can at the moment. Last Sunday, for example, I ate a lot of fried mushrooms during my one-meal-a-day.
Should I be eating them? Probably not. I should go back to no carbs/sugars for a couple of weeks, but I'm hoping that intermittent fasting will be a better solution. The only thing I'm really concentrating on right now is the calorie in and calorie out aspect. When I eat 2000 calories in a day, I want to make sure I'm burning at least double that. It's a slow and steady race that I'm running. I don't care if it takes me six months or a year to get down to 170 lbs. The goal is to get down there, not race to it. I'd rather increase my activity to get faster results.
I should reiterate that DIET is the key to fat loss and changing yourself physically. Exercise is about twenty percent of the recipe. Diet is every bit of eighty percent of it. You absolutely have to set goals for yourself. For me, one of my goals is to enjoy foods when I get a chance, and to consciously limit myself every chance I can.
I don't alway do the right thing. I'm not perfect. I'm striving for perfection on my diet. I'm definitely not hitting it, but that's okay. I may spend a whole week fasting soon and take care of a lot of my weight in one go. Who knows. I just know that I need to enjoy my new lifestyle the best I can. If having a banana because I can eat them again after a decade of not being able to is a bad thing, then I screwed up. I just think it's reasonable to have the banana. Do I need the fructose? Definitely not! However, four months ago I was drinking about 90 ounces of Coke per day and eating whatever I wanted and not exercising at all. So, I think I'm on the right track and it's best not to get discouraged.
Monday, June 24, 2019
My Activity Level Changes
I made the decision to increase my activity level back about five months ago. I had been tracking a lot of my health stats for almost a year with my Fitbit Ionic. So, I was able to start with a good baseline.
I was also able to track how effective exercise is compared to diet and exercise combined. When I started my "healthier me" journey, I didn't want to change my diet. I honestly didn't feel like I was eating badly. I felt like I could fix myself more if I just started exercising.
At first my exercise wasn't that extreme. I just wanted to get over 10,000 steps per day. So, I started walking in parks and my treadmill. The only part of my diet that I changed was that I stopped drinking Cokes, which I was consuming at a rate of roughly 20 ounces per day. I changed over to all water with the occasional sweet tea or Coke.
Also, being from the south, most sodas are called "Coke" here as a generic term, but I'm literally referring to Coke as a brand. I don't like "diet" drinks because artificial sweeteners all affect me badly and I don't trust them. I preferred real cane sugar sodas but those are usually more expensive and I was almost to the point where I was physically addicted to Coke.
Even though I cut out soda and started walking regularly, I wasn't losing weight. I actually gained about five pounds over the course of three months doing this. Here's why I think this is the case. When you are overweight like I was (and still am), starting to exercise has the negative affect of adding to your hunger. Don't get me wrong, exercise is great for you no matter when you start doing it. However, if you start exercising before you change your diet, you will end up eating more. Your body burns more energy straight from your food, so you eat more.
It's as simple as that. If you want to seriously get benefits from exercise, you have to also change your diet. Making both of those changes at the same time seems way more beneficial to me. If nothing else, I would change my diet before I started exercise, if I was advising someone else about it. The dietary change can zap your energy at first, but it is a necessary change if you want to significantly change your health.
Furthermore, the diet change is important to get your body to burn the correct energy sources during exercise. I don't think that I've accomplished this yet, but with enough commitment in diet, I will be able to train my body to use stored body fat for energy. The positive thing I have going for me right now is that my food intake is way below my caloric usage. I'm burning close to 3800 calories per day on average. On days that I jog, I can get this number well over 4000. CICO works, but you have to really focus on CI in a way that doesn't feel like torture.
My biggest recommendation when it comes to "calories in" is to get carbs/sugar completely out of your diet for at least three weeks. Don't cheat. If you cheat just a little bit, you'll ruin the effect that you are trying to achieve. Don't try this if you are under a doctor's care or have known issues with your glucose levels. If you are taking medications for anything like this, don't listen to me. I'm talking about anyone who is traveling down the road toward type 2 diabetes.
Insulin resistance is real. I haven't went to the doctor and been diagnosed with it, but my Google MD chops show me that I've been insulin resistant for quite some time. My skin was developing dark patches around my neck. I kept gaining body fat. I felt hungry all the time. If you are in this situation, you should research insulin resistance and how to reverse it. It takes an extreme change in your diet to make it happen, but I'm confident that once I have that fixed, I'll have a lot less issues with my health.
I'm down nearly twenty pounds from when I started my journey. Today I'm going for a nine mile backcountry hike at dawn. I'm loading my day pack with about twenty pounds, including water and some emergency items. This means that I'll be carrying my start weight with me through the woods. I will probably burn 5000+ calories today and most of that will occur before noon. Then I'll come home and get at least eight hours of sedentary coding work done.
It's hard to fit a lot of activity like this into busy lifestyles. I will touch on this subject in future posts.
To Coffee or Not To Coffee
A year ago, I would wake up and have coffee and Coke. I would get my caffeine from a cold drink and a hot drink all at once. Mainly, I don't like super hot coffee. I let it cool for about fifteen minutes before I start drinking it. I'm not alone in thinking coffee is too hot. That's one of the main reasons most people I know drink their coffee with cream.
I prefer my coffee black, so I let it cool down instead of adding creamer to cool it down instantly. I know people who add a little cold water to their coffee as well, but I don't like to dilute it.
On a low carb/sugar diet, it's okay to have black coffee. You just can't add sugar or creamer to it. From what I've read, coffee, by itself, is a great way to give your metabolism a kick. Personally, since I started eating better, I have noticed that coffee doesn't affect me the same way it used to. Maybe I'm not drinking as much or maybe it is another of the changes that have occurred in my body.
Coffee used to mess with my stomach if I drank it on an empty stomach. It seemed to increase the intensity of my hunger. Since I've gotten rid of a lot of those hunger feelings, I don't notice this affect so much.
If you must add something to your coffee, I highly suggest MCT oil. It's pretty expensive but it is great on Keto and tastes great in coffee. I would describe it as making coffee smooth. A twenty or so ounce bottle of MCT oil runs about $20 in my area, but it only takes a tablespoon full or so in your coffee. MCT oil is a great source of fat calories in your Keto diet. Getting the fat percentage into your diet seems to be one of the biggest challenges to the Keto diet. Adding MCT oil to your coffee goes a long way at solving this problem.
I prefer my coffee black, so I let it cool down instead of adding creamer to cool it down instantly. I know people who add a little cold water to their coffee as well, but I don't like to dilute it.
On a low carb/sugar diet, it's okay to have black coffee. You just can't add sugar or creamer to it. From what I've read, coffee, by itself, is a great way to give your metabolism a kick. Personally, since I started eating better, I have noticed that coffee doesn't affect me the same way it used to. Maybe I'm not drinking as much or maybe it is another of the changes that have occurred in my body.
Coffee used to mess with my stomach if I drank it on an empty stomach. It seemed to increase the intensity of my hunger. Since I've gotten rid of a lot of those hunger feelings, I don't notice this affect so much.
If you must add something to your coffee, I highly suggest MCT oil. It's pretty expensive but it is great on Keto and tastes great in coffee. I would describe it as making coffee smooth. A twenty or so ounce bottle of MCT oil runs about $20 in my area, but it only takes a tablespoon full or so in your coffee. MCT oil is a great source of fat calories in your Keto diet. Getting the fat percentage into your diet seems to be one of the biggest challenges to the Keto diet. Adding MCT oil to your coffee goes a long way at solving this problem.
Sunday, June 23, 2019
The Hardest Foods to Quit on Keto and Atkins
Quitting carbs cold turkey is pretty difficult at first for many of us. We have been taught for a long time that we have to have carbs to have energy. I'm pretty sure that the eating suggestions we've had most of our life were wrong. We were told to avoid cholesterol and fats, but when I was growing up it wasn't normal to hear people bad-mouthing carbs. Sugar, on the other hand, has been universally bad-mouthed as long as I've been alive. However, sugar is much worse than we've been told.
We've all been told that sugar will rot your teeth and give you diabetes, but no one told me that sugar was physically as bad for your body as drinking alcohol. Drinking a glass of wine per day is fine. Drinking two bottles of wine per day is terrible. A few fruits in your diet may be good for you, but eating a whole chocolate cake along with ice cream, not so much. Cake and fruit both have sugar, but the amount you intake has a significant impact on your health.
Over the years I've developed insulin resistance. It's not surprising. Of the contributing factors which lead to insulin resistance, I was guilty of most: excess body weight, belly fat, lack of exercise, smoking and low amounts of sleep. All of those factors contributed to my insulin resistance. So if you are insulin resistant like me, you should immediately cut your carbs/sugar intake, and here are foods that you have to avoid completely:
- Sodas
- Breads
- Potatoes
- Anything with sugar, including sneaky things like ketchup and BBQ sauce.
- Beer
- Fruits
- Rice
There are many other foods that you can't eat when you are avoiding carbs. Carbs are in just about everything. There are some foods that are completely free of carbs. For example, pork rinds are all protein and fat. On a Keto diet you have to eat a lot more fat than you are probably used to consuming. Butter is all fat. Bacon is all protein and fat. Most cheeses are protein and fat. Cutting out the carbs gets easier after a few days, especially if you are snacking on protein and fat any time you get hungry. Eventually you stop being hungry.
For me, the driving force behind my hungry was my sugar/carb intake.
Hello, World! Rather, Hello to a Healthier Life!
It's been some time since I was actively blogging. I have spent a couple of years away from it entirely, due to personal issues. I'm coming back to it as a way to record some of the lifestyle changes I'm making. I hope that some these post will be an inspiration to others on their journey to a more healthy life.
I've made great improvements to my live over the last couple of years. Between the fall of 2016 and the fall of 2017, I was dealing with a turbulent relationship and the ending of my thirteen year marriage. I was left completely heartbroken and confused about a lot of things. At the beginning of 2018, my divorce finalized and I was extremely depressed. I wasn't eating much. I was smoking more than I'd ever smoked before (around two packs a day). I was sleeping four hours per day. My weight went from 240 down to 213, which normally would be a good thing, but was the result of not eating, smoking a lot, and pacing many hours per day in a stressed filled depression.
So even though I was down to 213 lbs, I didn't feel good or look good. Also, 213 is not a huge improvement. It's still about 50 lbs more than my ideal weight. Starting in the summer of 2018, I started to improve my life and health in steps. The first step was to quit drinking. Though I didn't drink a lot, it was still necessary to quit drinking beer in order for me to continue to the next stage. It's very easy for me to not drink. I have never had a problem with alcohol. I don't like to drink very much anyway. That was simple to quit.
The next step was to quit smoking. This was the hardest step of all. I quit smoking once before in 2008 and that lasted until 2011. So I had fully quit for three years not long ago. I started back because I lived with a spouse who also smoked, and she had no problem lighting one up around me. So eventually I couldn't stand it and had to light one up myself.
When I quit in 2008, I used the prescription medication Chantix. I had huge success with it back then and felt like I could use it again with similar success. The second time around, it was much more difficult. I'm not sure if they changed the amount of the actual drug in the prescription over the years, but it didn't seem to be near as potent. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. When I used it in 2008 to quit, I had a ton of side-effects, such as weird dreams and strange sensations in my head.
So in August of 2018, I started taking Chantix. Back in 2008, I had taken the medication for about two weeks, and that's all it took to quit. This time I had to take it for two months. Even then, it felt more like quitting cold turkey. I was almost not able to quit, but I did it. My last cigarette was on August 18, 2018.
I knew that quitting smoking would increase my appetite and weight. I was expecting that. I also used certain foods to curtail my cigarette cravings. At first it was chips. This wasn't a healthy choice of course, but I rationalized that it was better than smoking. Another thing that happened after I quit smoking was that I stopped walking so much. I had been going outside to smoke, and I would pace the entire time I was smoking. Sometimes this would be for an hour or so. That's a lot of walking. So when I quit smoking, I also inadvertently quit walking, which meant that I was burning way less calories.
I soon switched from chips to yogurt. I did this primarily in an attempt to fix some stomach issues I was experiencing. The yogurt helped the stomach issues, but added a ton of sugar and carbs to my diet. I gained weight fast.
By the beginning of 2019, I was over 240 pounds. The third and final food that I used to curtail my cigarette cravings was apples. The only reason I had for that was that they are better for me than yogurt somewhat and I was on an apple kick.
By May of 2019, I had reached 256.7 pounds. The heaviest I've ever weighed. Some people would love to get down to 256.7 pounds, but for me this was moving too close to 300. The sad thing is that I had increased my activity. I had been walking nearly every day for two months trying to slow or reverse the increase in weight, but the additional exercise didn't seem to have a profound effect on this weight gain. So on May 12, I started a 0 carb diet. I cut all sugar out of my diet along with all breads, potatoes, etc. Anything with a single carb, I would not touch. The first three days of doing this were rough. I had no energy. I was dead tired and slept a bunch. However, after that third day, I was full of energy.
I told people that I was on a Keto diet but that was only partially true. I wanted to get into ketosis, but I wasn't tracking my micros and macros. I wasn't tracking my ketone levels. I wasn't tracking anything but my weight. It dropped about ten pounds the first week. I continued this 0 carb diet for three weeks. Where most people measure their carbs by "net carbs", meaning they subtract things like grams of dietary fiber and grams of sugar alcohols, I was strictly measuring it as gross carbs. I wasn't eating any carbs. I wasn't using sweeteners or anything. If I was hungry, I'd have some pork rinds or avocado or a hamburger without the bun.
Going "no carb" was a revelation for me. I realized a few things about my body that I hadn't realized before. The main thing I realized was that sugars and carbs increase my appetite/hunger significantly. I should describe hunger a bit first. Before I started this "diet" my hunger was ferocious. When I got hungry, it literally felt like my stomach was trying to eat itself. It was a strong pain. What I didn't realize was that this huge amount of pain that I felt during hunger was a direct result of eating a lot of carbs/sugar. I suspect that it was more related to sugar than just carbs, but what I know for certain is that cutting out carbs and sugar completely, almost removed all hunger from my life. I found myself going most of the day without even getting hungry a little.
As long as I fed myself protein or fat when I felt a little hungry, I rarely would feel hungry. It changed my life. Just that one little change was enough to change my eating habits. I never ate what I considered a ton of sweets, but I suddenly was afraid of sweet foods. I didn't want to touch deserts or anything with sugar because I didn't want to start getting hungry like I used to. I tested this enough to know that it was the truth too.
After my three weeks of 'no carbs' I started what basically amounts to a OMAD (one meal a day) diet. I usually eat once a day and fast around 22 hours. This isn't always the case, and I've allowed myself to have some sweet things, but when I do I feel it the next day in hunger pains.
So it has been a month and 11 days since I started my new lifestyle. I walk more than I was before. I also incorporate as much jogging into my walks as I can. My family and I go on a lot of hikes and walks together. I've lost 20 pounds. Well, I was 237.3 pounds when I weighed in this morning. So that's technically 19.6 pounds. It's not a huge drop for 42 days, but it's still decent. I'm mainly focused on dropping fat and inches. I've definitely felt the difference in the way my clothes fit. I have also noticed stretch marks appearing around my love handle region. I feel a lot slimmer and my family tell me that I'm looking a lot slimmer.
Another significant change which has already occurred is my heart rate. Before I started this "diet" my resting heart rate was at a terrible 80 bpm average. It was as high at 87 some days prior to the diet change. I know this because I always wear my Fitbit Ionic. Over the last 42 days, my resting heart rate has dropped to around 64 bpm. That's significant. I can look down at my watch when I'm reading a book and my heart rate will be 50 at times. I've not seen a heart rate like that for at least a decade.
My goal weight is 165. I plan to start weight training and exercising a lot more in general after I get my weight below 200. I'm doing that because walking/jogging is hard on your feet and knees, especially if you are overweight. I know from experience that running too much when you are overweight can damage your joints and such. I have a left ankle that pops every other step due to an injury I had back in 2004 when I was jogging at just over 200 pounds. I would prefer to not jog until I'm down to 180, but I'm already jogging for 0.1 mile sprints during my walks. I do that mainly because I've read that intermittent high intensity exercise followed by low intensity exercise helps drive up HGH production, and I can use all of that I can get.
Tonight/This morning, I walked five miles. I did five sprints of 0.1 miles each, giving me one half of a mile jogged out of five miles. That's not bad for a 41 year old overweight guy who just quit smoking last year after smoking for over 20 years.
I have discovered a lot in the last two years that I wished I'd known when I was 21. It's actually quite ridiculous that I'm just now learning some of these lessons.
I've made great improvements to my live over the last couple of years. Between the fall of 2016 and the fall of 2017, I was dealing with a turbulent relationship and the ending of my thirteen year marriage. I was left completely heartbroken and confused about a lot of things. At the beginning of 2018, my divorce finalized and I was extremely depressed. I wasn't eating much. I was smoking more than I'd ever smoked before (around two packs a day). I was sleeping four hours per day. My weight went from 240 down to 213, which normally would be a good thing, but was the result of not eating, smoking a lot, and pacing many hours per day in a stressed filled depression.
So even though I was down to 213 lbs, I didn't feel good or look good. Also, 213 is not a huge improvement. It's still about 50 lbs more than my ideal weight. Starting in the summer of 2018, I started to improve my life and health in steps. The first step was to quit drinking. Though I didn't drink a lot, it was still necessary to quit drinking beer in order for me to continue to the next stage. It's very easy for me to not drink. I have never had a problem with alcohol. I don't like to drink very much anyway. That was simple to quit.
The next step was to quit smoking. This was the hardest step of all. I quit smoking once before in 2008 and that lasted until 2011. So I had fully quit for three years not long ago. I started back because I lived with a spouse who also smoked, and she had no problem lighting one up around me. So eventually I couldn't stand it and had to light one up myself.
When I quit in 2008, I used the prescription medication Chantix. I had huge success with it back then and felt like I could use it again with similar success. The second time around, it was much more difficult. I'm not sure if they changed the amount of the actual drug in the prescription over the years, but it didn't seem to be near as potent. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. When I used it in 2008 to quit, I had a ton of side-effects, such as weird dreams and strange sensations in my head.
So in August of 2018, I started taking Chantix. Back in 2008, I had taken the medication for about two weeks, and that's all it took to quit. This time I had to take it for two months. Even then, it felt more like quitting cold turkey. I was almost not able to quit, but I did it. My last cigarette was on August 18, 2018.
I knew that quitting smoking would increase my appetite and weight. I was expecting that. I also used certain foods to curtail my cigarette cravings. At first it was chips. This wasn't a healthy choice of course, but I rationalized that it was better than smoking. Another thing that happened after I quit smoking was that I stopped walking so much. I had been going outside to smoke, and I would pace the entire time I was smoking. Sometimes this would be for an hour or so. That's a lot of walking. So when I quit smoking, I also inadvertently quit walking, which meant that I was burning way less calories.
I soon switched from chips to yogurt. I did this primarily in an attempt to fix some stomach issues I was experiencing. The yogurt helped the stomach issues, but added a ton of sugar and carbs to my diet. I gained weight fast.
By the beginning of 2019, I was over 240 pounds. The third and final food that I used to curtail my cigarette cravings was apples. The only reason I had for that was that they are better for me than yogurt somewhat and I was on an apple kick.
By May of 2019, I had reached 256.7 pounds. The heaviest I've ever weighed. Some people would love to get down to 256.7 pounds, but for me this was moving too close to 300. The sad thing is that I had increased my activity. I had been walking nearly every day for two months trying to slow or reverse the increase in weight, but the additional exercise didn't seem to have a profound effect on this weight gain. So on May 12, I started a 0 carb diet. I cut all sugar out of my diet along with all breads, potatoes, etc. Anything with a single carb, I would not touch. The first three days of doing this were rough. I had no energy. I was dead tired and slept a bunch. However, after that third day, I was full of energy.
I told people that I was on a Keto diet but that was only partially true. I wanted to get into ketosis, but I wasn't tracking my micros and macros. I wasn't tracking my ketone levels. I wasn't tracking anything but my weight. It dropped about ten pounds the first week. I continued this 0 carb diet for three weeks. Where most people measure their carbs by "net carbs", meaning they subtract things like grams of dietary fiber and grams of sugar alcohols, I was strictly measuring it as gross carbs. I wasn't eating any carbs. I wasn't using sweeteners or anything. If I was hungry, I'd have some pork rinds or avocado or a hamburger without the bun.
Going "no carb" was a revelation for me. I realized a few things about my body that I hadn't realized before. The main thing I realized was that sugars and carbs increase my appetite/hunger significantly. I should describe hunger a bit first. Before I started this "diet" my hunger was ferocious. When I got hungry, it literally felt like my stomach was trying to eat itself. It was a strong pain. What I didn't realize was that this huge amount of pain that I felt during hunger was a direct result of eating a lot of carbs/sugar. I suspect that it was more related to sugar than just carbs, but what I know for certain is that cutting out carbs and sugar completely, almost removed all hunger from my life. I found myself going most of the day without even getting hungry a little.
As long as I fed myself protein or fat when I felt a little hungry, I rarely would feel hungry. It changed my life. Just that one little change was enough to change my eating habits. I never ate what I considered a ton of sweets, but I suddenly was afraid of sweet foods. I didn't want to touch deserts or anything with sugar because I didn't want to start getting hungry like I used to. I tested this enough to know that it was the truth too.
After my three weeks of 'no carbs' I started what basically amounts to a OMAD (one meal a day) diet. I usually eat once a day and fast around 22 hours. This isn't always the case, and I've allowed myself to have some sweet things, but when I do I feel it the next day in hunger pains.
So it has been a month and 11 days since I started my new lifestyle. I walk more than I was before. I also incorporate as much jogging into my walks as I can. My family and I go on a lot of hikes and walks together. I've lost 20 pounds. Well, I was 237.3 pounds when I weighed in this morning. So that's technically 19.6 pounds. It's not a huge drop for 42 days, but it's still decent. I'm mainly focused on dropping fat and inches. I've definitely felt the difference in the way my clothes fit. I have also noticed stretch marks appearing around my love handle region. I feel a lot slimmer and my family tell me that I'm looking a lot slimmer.
Another significant change which has already occurred is my heart rate. Before I started this "diet" my resting heart rate was at a terrible 80 bpm average. It was as high at 87 some days prior to the diet change. I know this because I always wear my Fitbit Ionic. Over the last 42 days, my resting heart rate has dropped to around 64 bpm. That's significant. I can look down at my watch when I'm reading a book and my heart rate will be 50 at times. I've not seen a heart rate like that for at least a decade.
My goal weight is 165. I plan to start weight training and exercising a lot more in general after I get my weight below 200. I'm doing that because walking/jogging is hard on your feet and knees, especially if you are overweight. I know from experience that running too much when you are overweight can damage your joints and such. I have a left ankle that pops every other step due to an injury I had back in 2004 when I was jogging at just over 200 pounds. I would prefer to not jog until I'm down to 180, but I'm already jogging for 0.1 mile sprints during my walks. I do that mainly because I've read that intermittent high intensity exercise followed by low intensity exercise helps drive up HGH production, and I can use all of that I can get.
Tonight/This morning, I walked five miles. I did five sprints of 0.1 miles each, giving me one half of a mile jogged out of five miles. That's not bad for a 41 year old overweight guy who just quit smoking last year after smoking for over 20 years.
I have discovered a lot in the last two years that I wished I'd known when I was 21. It's actually quite ridiculous that I'm just now learning some of these lessons.
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