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.
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