Had Another Birthday

Well yesterday was my 72^nd birthday. I had a wonderful day and enjoyed best wishes from many friends and family. I am still very amazed that I have lived this long and I am looking forward to many more years.

It really was quite an achievement in that my mom was told that I would be very lucky to live to the age of about 35 years as I had very bad asthma as a child. Two different times my heart stopped when I was in the hospital and had to have it started again while I was there. In those days they didn’t have those paddles that they shocked you back to life again, they had to take a long needle and inject adrenaline into your heart through my chest cavity. But thankfully, asthma has pretty much left me as I got older and other than a small spell when I eat something I know I am allergic too.

Anyway my life now is much better after WLS even though it was just 2 yeas ago before the surgery. I can eat most anything I want but still not much more than about a cup of solid food, and I am full. But I could eat that amount several times a day and of course I would gain weight again. So I still must be very careful not let my addiction to food overcome me and I know it has the ability to do that if I give it a chance and don’t weigh and measure everything I put in my mouth.

Yesterday my mom, who is 95 took me to dinner. Because it was Veterans’ Day many of the restaurants were very full. I did not want to spend a lot of time waiting for a table, and my mom has a lot of problems with her legs and hips so I did not want her to have to spend a lot of time getting something to eat. So we went to an Asian buffet here in my town that is quite large and can serve many people very quickly. Well that was a mistake. I was told never to try something in a place like a restaurant that you have not eaten before. Well I did not follow that advice and had some things that I had not had before and I got very sick. I thought I was going to through up but did not want to do it in the bathroom at the restaurant so I was just sick and it seemed like hours before everyone else to finish eating and go home. We did finally go home and I was able to start feeling better.

But all and all, I had a good day and I am looking forward to many more years now that I have a body that can do just about anything I really want to do. I am going to be getting ready to do a lot of remodeling of our home just after the holidays and really looking forward to it as I know now I can do what just two years ago without the WLS would have been impossible. 

Bored

Well one thing I am learning is that if you want to keep your weight off, it is much easier to do if you can keep yourself busy. When the weather around here was good, I could always find something to do around the yard. But now the normal weather for this time of year is in full force and it is too cold and wet to be outside much.

Now because I am somewhat bored, I find myself thinking of eating something all the time. I have been pretty successful as there are not many things in the house that would be that bad for me to eat unless of course I ate a lot of them. We now have herbal tea each day at about 2 PM and will usually have a shortbread cookie with the tea. I of course count the calories in my daily menu plan and record it on MFP, but still it would be easy to eat many of them during the day and that would lead to problems.

There are only so many things I want to look up or access on my computer. Only so much time I want to spend on my other hobby amateur radio. After that I find myself looking for something to do around the house to keep my mind off of eating something because I am bored.

It is my birthday in a couple of days and Jackie got me a home weather station. It is fun to set it up and play with it a little and it did take me away from boredom for a time, but now I have to look for more things to do. I put the weather station on my computer so I can see the display better and it gives me more details than the regular control panel can have on it. I also registered and put my station on the Weather Underground and you can find it on the internet by searching for stations in Lacey, Washington. The name of my station is Slum of Lacey.

Of course we have the Thanksgiving holiday coming up soon and then Christmas so I will be kind of busy during those times, but they involve food so I also got to be extra careful that I do not over indulge with all that great stuff we have around.

After the first of the year, I will start putting in new floors in the house, painting, and remodeling the kitchen a little so for quite a few months until Spring, I will be very busy doing those tasks so I will not have much time to be bored and will probably wish I could actually be bored again. 

Fatso Run, Fatso Run?

I think many of us who have ventured into the world of weight loss over the years have heard of the “ Domino Effect”. To illustrate what I mean by this is something you do in life, had an effect on something else you are doing or trying to do.  

I have friends, and I have done this too, who are struggling trying to lose weight. Many are like me in the past way overweight, not just pleasingly plump, so to speak. In my case way over 300 pounds.

Everyone preaches that you got to exercise to get the weight off. I have no problem with that statement. But here is the kicker. What is exercise? If you are way overweight, and decide on going on an aggressive exercise program at your present weight some bad things happen, at least they always happened in my life.

You may lose weight at first, in some cases quite rapidly. This fact may even motivate you to even up what you are doing. But eventually what happens is that your stress your already over burdened body and it breaks down somewhere. Most of the time in my life that meant my legs. Torn muscles, or tendons are common. Feet also take a beating if the exercise program includes running or fast walking. The damage you do will not only effect you right away, the damage will linger into your later life. I have had both knees repaired and my back still suffers from my routine of running at least 6 miles every other day that I did.

Eventually because of the pain and injury, you stop the routine or in your mind only suspend it. But slowly the weight that you lost in this effort comes right back on and maybe even more and you go into what I call the “ Oh Well What the Hell Mode”. This is where you tell yourself I don’t need to be skinny, life is short, may as well eat and do what I want. Does this sound familiar?

The problem is the Domino Effect. Body breaks down, so weight comes back on. I know it is discouraging and everyone says you got to exercise to lose weight. And I agree with that……. BUT.

But you must, in my opinion, diet your way down with very moderate exercise first. You have to find the caloric level of eating that will allow for fairly fast weight loss and only do light exercise until you have reduced your body mass down quite a bit. In my case I lost from over 300 pounds down to about 225 before I felt that when I exercised that I was not stressing my body anymore. I could workout without having my heart beating very fast, and my legs and feet were not feeling an excessive amount of pain and what pain I had only lasted for a short time.

I am not a doctor so I can not advise you of what weight you should be before you can do strenuous exercise, so best to get the opinion form a professional. Once your body mass is low enough you will be able to workout without doing long term damage. You can continue to diet and work out but now you will be able to accelerate your weight loss with the exercise and not hurt yourself and slump back into not being able to do physical things, which will defeat your weight loss efforts.

It is a balancing act, cause and effect. Just don’t go to far on eater leg. Not too much exercise without dieting first. And then and only then can you up your activity. Not the other way around.

This has been my experience over the last 50 years or so of weight problems for me. I hope it helps you. 

New Weight Loss Help

Jackie and I recently got a new device to cook our food. We are always looking at improving how and what we eat. Especially now that I have had WLS it is important that I have very little fat. We have always cooked our meat on an open rack in the oven letting the drippings fall into another pan under the rack and getting as little as possible retained in the meat.

There is just the two of us in the house and when we cook meat in such a small amount. It is not very cost and time effective to use the big oven to cook just 4 ounces of food for each of us. We were looking at a way of being more effective and to be honest our oven is very old and Jackie does not like having to clean it so often. 

A friend of mine had tried several of these cooking devices like the ones you see on late night TV. He actually bought most of the popular brands and used them for some time. After doing an evaluation he decided that the best device he used was the cooker manufactured by Sharper Image. 

Jackie and I got one and we agree that it is very good. It cooks the food very quickly and has a rack so that the excess fat falls to the bottom of the big glass bowel. You can cook the meat or what ever you want even frozen. It takes only a very short time and the energy use and clean up is just great. The meat is browned and crispy if you want it that way. We even do fries in it and they are crispy on the outside and soft and tender on the inside. 

In our mind this is a very good device if you want something that cooks things very fast and well. It makes life a lot simpler and costs less in energy and cleanup is much faster. The Sharper Image has a large glass bowel that is kind of heavy, but it will last longer than some that have some kind of plastic bowels. It is large enough that you could cook a complete meal in  it and it would work for a larger family if you need that. 

For Jackie and me, it fit’s the bill very well, and we love it. 

Burp!!!!

Things around here are pretty much returning to normal. My weight is stabilizing, I weigh every other week on Tuesdays. I bounce up or down a pound of two but for the most part I am still under my goal weight but not losing to a dangerous area any more. I am still having big time problems with heart burn or over active stomach acid problems. They are better than they were when I was on vacation. Seems like they come on when I am hungry or it has been awhile from the time I had something to eat and my stomach is empty. 

The Doctor is sending me for some tests next Tuesday. The kind of tests where you drink some yucky stuff and they take pictures of it going through your system. He for some reason thinks I am having a blockage or something like that. I don’t think so as I have no problem eating anything these days. In fact I am worried that I am eating too much. I do weigh and measure everything and log it into MY Fitness Pall software on the internet, but still I worry that the weight will start to creep up on me. 

We paid off all our vacation bills I think. We did charge some things while we were in England, got the bill and paid it, but there still may be a few linger changes still out there. It cost us a lot more than we had planned, but we had a wonderful time and the memories will last us for the rest of our lives. 

Now on to working on the house. Going to put new floors in most of the rooms and paint. We are still not sure what we are going to put in the kitchen but one thing for sure is that Jackie wants a new stove so I will be working on the cabinets to make room for a slide in gas oven and stove top. We will be working on that just after the first of the year. First we have to get though the holidays and have them paid for, then we can buy the supplies needed and get to work. I hope to have it all done by April. Wish me luck. 

Sometimes Computers Stink

I have not posted much lately because some @#$%@#%#%$ hacked my web site and I have had to rebuild it completely. Looks like they came in via a script entry. I am not sure but the only way I could get it all out was to delete the site and start rebuilding it.

It was kind of a blessing in disguise as I had a lot of hanging orphaned files out there that needed to be cleaned up and I wanted to do a re-design anyway so now was a good time.

I am taking steps to make sure this does not happen again, however if hackers can break into the Pentagon, I am sure they can hack me if they want to. But why would anyone want to spend the time hacking a personal family web site. I have no “hot topic” things on it that I can think of that would make anyone mad, but who knows these days with so many nuts out there.

Anyway that is why I have been kind of skinny on this blog. I hope to get back to normal again.

And my progress on my WLS is going fine, except after my vacation in London, I gained a pound, but now this last week I lost a pound and a half, so I am back in the hole again. I am almost 10 pounds under my goal.

I am trying to eat more and have an additional snack, but I am still very afraid of eating a lot because I start to feel I am grazing when I have 3 meals and 2 snacks during a day. But the scale is not telling me I am gaining so I guess I should just stop worrying about it.

Back to working on the web page. Go here to see my progress.

http://www.w3oz.com

Thanks

Our Trip to London England

Jackie and me in London

Well, well, well, what a month of August it was for us….Jackie and I. As I posted in July we had a party for our 50th anniversary. As part of our celebration, we had planned for over a year to go someplace we have always wanted to go and that was England.

Both my genealogy and Jackie’s have many roots in England. We had heard of all these famous places like Stonehenge, Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London for example. Well we saw them and much more. What a wonderful time we had during our time there which was only 8 days but that was plenty and we saw everything we had planned on seeing.

We had a formal tour ran by a wonderful company called Globus. The tour guides were more like college history professors. I think I learned more about England than I had ever expected to know. They were just wonderful and the accommodations were top notch.

The only thing we did not like was the English cooking. Someone has to introduce them to some of the spices of the world. To be blunt, it was as bland as could be and some of the food was just not eatable.

A funny story happened while we were there. We had both wanted a good English meal of Fish and Chips. Well our first day there we went to a pub and ordered F&C. What came was pretty good chips, but the fish, well let me say was like an old thin piece of road kill, very flat with the skin still on it. It was as hard as shoe leather. The batter on the fish was not even done and very bad tasting. I could not eat mine and just had a few chips.

Well along our tour we ran across another place and again ordered F&Cs. But we did not pay enough attention and did not notice that the fish was going to be fish patties, not what we had expected. Again the coating on the fish was hard and burned, but the actual fish or what ever it was kind of ran off the plate. It was awful and we again ate some of the chips but left the rest.

Well we were getting the feeling we were not going to find any good F&C in England after all. We got to a city by the name of Salisbury, They have a very old and big cathedral there that we visited. It was very impressive. As I was leaving one of the people who worked there as a greeter asked me how our tour was going. Now I know this man had know idea who I was other than I was an American tourist. I said great we just loved what we were seeing, except we were disappointed that we were unable to find a good F&C dinner. He said well I can tell you were you can find the best F&C in the world. I expected him to say some restaurant there in England. But no he said, the best I have ever had was at Ivor’s in Seattle Washington. He said I have been there many times and believe me they are the best. I could not believe what he said. I told him I have had that dinner many times and expected to find some better in England. He said to his knowledge there is non better in England.

But on our next to last day there we did find a good F&C dinner at a restaurant in the Hilton hotel we were staying in. Kind of expensive, $100 counting the tip but at least it was good. Actually more than I could eat.  I did my best to stay on my program and I have not weighed myself yet, I plan on doing that next Tuesday as that is my normal day to weigh, but I don’t think I have gained anything. Jackie put on about 3 pounds but it is already coming off.

I am just so happy that I had the WLS so I could walk and enjoy the tour. A little over a year ago I would have never been able to take this tour without skipping many of the tours because I would have been too heavy and my legs and feet would not have been able to carry me along. This time, I had absolutely now health problems, and I was not tired or sick at all.

But we want to stay home for awhile now and work on our home and get it in shape. We plan on taking another tour in a few years but for now we just love looking at the 529 photos I took and the hours of video so we can remember the great time we had.