I've been tracking my weight lass losing the scale that Chantel got me for Christmas. It's a nice scale and it measures weight and body fat percentage (BF), and water percentage as well. I've heard that these scales are not especially accurate in the BF measuring area, but they are easy. Well I've noticed that the BF and H2O% are closely connected. The higher the H2O% the lower the BF. I don't know why this is but every time I have a good BF reading it means that the H2O% will be high as well. The BF is going down consistently but it jumps around quite a bit.
When I used to follow the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle book the author of that book said that the best way to determine fat content, besides an underwater weighing, which is obviously a very difficult thing to do, is to do a skin fold test. Certainly a skin fold test would not be a subject to jumping around as much as the scale.
So last night I found the old spread sheet that I was using to track my BF last year. (It was pretty easy because it was on Google docs. I really like Google docs.) The skin fold test had gone from 15mm to 9mm which is pretty good I think. Actually I had a bout 2 months worth of measurement and they'd actually gone from 20mm to 15mm. Also, the measurement around my gut had gone from 45" to 42". I would have like to see that measure be better but what the heck.
Here's my quandary. According to the scale I'm at 26% BF, and the skin caliper it is 15.32%. That's quite a big difference. I don't have any idea how to decide which one is right. It's a difference of about 25 lbs. I guess I'll just go through the next phase of the diet and then think about a way that I might be able to figure out a little better which one is the right one, although I think that I lean towards the caliper test, I'm still going to have to think about it.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
New Phases
Nothing much has happened for the last week. Today I went over to see my mother and helped Trisha clean the rocks around her path through the grass. Trish probably didn't need the help, but as she said it's fun to work with other people. Oh yeah I call Trisha "T" now. Here's the story. When I got my new iPhone I slowly started entering the texting world. Turns out that some people seem to communicate better through texting than any other method.
My daughters Teda, Chantel and Nini started the family on texting. I'm not sure how it started with Teda and Nini, but I'm pretty sure husbands were involved. Or boyfriends that became husbands were involved. Or (especially in Chantel's case) Church callings were involved. Anyway our Verizion plan did not include texting. We had a "Friends and Family" plan that allows us to all call each other and Teda and Chantel added texting. When I got my iPhone I added texting one day and Karen pointed out that that was stupid because I had an unlimited data plan so I could get a free texting app and text for free instead of paying for it. Anyway through various machinations it turns out that we now all have unlimited texting on our Verizion plan so we're doing much more texting.
OK that was pretty random but what I'm getting at is that I finally started texting my sister Trish who never answers her phone, but I was appalled to see that the first text that I sent her started with "Trash"!!! What!? How did I do that? The 'a' and 'i' keys are not very close together. Then I realized that the iPhone was helpfully changing "Trish" to "Trash". Now that's not a nice thing to call your sister at all, and Trish seems to accept that the phone is doing it to me, however the very first time it happened was on Facebook so the entire world got to see that. How embarrassing. Well I was texting her today and when I was reading back through the texts it had happened again. So I decided that's it I'm calling her T from now on, and then I realized that Chantel calls Teda T as well so it must be a cool this to do.
That is a new phase for me, but the real new phase is that Karen and I are going to start another dieting phase of the hGC diet today as well. The fun thing is that when you start the diet you do two days of what is called "gorge" days where you're supposed to eat a bunch of fatty foods and stuff to get your body ready for the diet, to make sure that you have fat reserves and what not. Cool huh? And fun. That's what we've been doing today. I decided that I would eat some Atkins junk food so that it would really screw up my system. It did and it gave me horrendous gas. I think that I've been put on the list of international criminal list for crimes against humanity for using chemical weapons. You know very powerful farts. Karen's going to make me go sleep with the dogs, only we don't got any dogs, so maybe I'll have to go sleep at Grandma and T's house because they do have dogs. Actually Karen and I started a pre-gorge day yesterday since the way things are turning out we're having one of our gorge days fall on a fast Sunday, and that just doesn't make much sense at all. We're thinking that the half a day of gorging on Friday then the gorging after fasting on Sunday will count as one day of decent gorging. I don't think it really matters all that much.
My daughters Teda, Chantel and Nini started the family on texting. I'm not sure how it started with Teda and Nini, but I'm pretty sure husbands were involved. Or boyfriends that became husbands were involved. Or (especially in Chantel's case) Church callings were involved. Anyway our Verizion plan did not include texting. We had a "Friends and Family" plan that allows us to all call each other and Teda and Chantel added texting. When I got my iPhone I added texting one day and Karen pointed out that that was stupid because I had an unlimited data plan so I could get a free texting app and text for free instead of paying for it. Anyway through various machinations it turns out that we now all have unlimited texting on our Verizion plan so we're doing much more texting.
OK that was pretty random but what I'm getting at is that I finally started texting my sister Trish who never answers her phone, but I was appalled to see that the first text that I sent her started with "Trash"!!! What!? How did I do that? The 'a' and 'i' keys are not very close together. Then I realized that the iPhone was helpfully changing "Trish" to "Trash". Now that's not a nice thing to call your sister at all, and Trish seems to accept that the phone is doing it to me, however the very first time it happened was on Facebook so the entire world got to see that. How embarrassing. Well I was texting her today and when I was reading back through the texts it had happened again. So I decided that's it I'm calling her T from now on, and then I realized that Chantel calls Teda T as well so it must be a cool this to do.
That is a new phase for me, but the real new phase is that Karen and I are going to start another dieting phase of the hGC diet today as well. The fun thing is that when you start the diet you do two days of what is called "gorge" days where you're supposed to eat a bunch of fatty foods and stuff to get your body ready for the diet, to make sure that you have fat reserves and what not. Cool huh? And fun. That's what we've been doing today. I decided that I would eat some Atkins junk food so that it would really screw up my system. It did and it gave me horrendous gas. I think that I've been put on the list of international criminal list for crimes against humanity for using chemical weapons. You know very powerful farts. Karen's going to make me go sleep with the dogs, only we don't got any dogs, so maybe I'll have to go sleep at Grandma and T's house because they do have dogs. Actually Karen and I started a pre-gorge day yesterday since the way things are turning out we're having one of our gorge days fall on a fast Sunday, and that just doesn't make much sense at all. We're thinking that the half a day of gorging on Friday then the gorging after fasting on Sunday will count as one day of decent gorging. I don't think it really matters all that much.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The Best Laid Plans...
The last time I went to the doctor was right before our quick visit to the Taylors, our cousins in Arizona. I was thinking that that would be the last time that I'd visit in a long time. My BG was under control and I was hoping that I was going to be able to keep from getting sick with the bronchitis now that I had the silver water and the allergy stuff however...
When we were going to Arizona I felt something that felt like a fish flopping in the right side of my abdomen area. That's what it felt like, it was probably a muscle or something, and I felt it a few other times on that trip. It didn't bother me while I was exercising in the week following so I wasn't that worried about it, then last Tuesday for the whole day it felt like I'd been kicked in the groin. Particularly the right testicle. I thought I had a hernia and made an appointment to see the doctor. He said that I had an infection in that area that was causing the problem and gave me an antibiotic to take. It was a wide spectrum antibiotic that makes you sensitive to the sun so I've been wearing long sleeve shirts and a hat (when I remember) since then. I thought it would be something that I would get over quickly, but the doctor said to come back if I wasn't feeling better in 3-7 days. I kept exercising, and on Saturday I went for the first long bike ride I'd done this summer.
I've been planning on taking a long "real" bike ride every week, as opposed to riding my exercise bike in the mornings. However, things have turned out so that I've only gone on one bike ride with Mark when Teandra and Mark were visiting. I rode just under 25 miles and I was pretty excited about it because my average velocity was 11.9 mph which is the highest average I've ever had riding that route. For some reason I thought that it'd be a good idea to stop by Grant Stoddard's house in the morning and surprise him that I'd ridden that far and say "Hey Grant lets go for a ride." I figured I'd knock quietly on the door and then if someone was up they'd hear the knock and if everyone was asleep it wouldn't bother them. Well I knocked and then the dog started barking. Great idea. No one answered and I kind of slunk away with my tail between my legs. Then the next day, Sunday, I asked Grant if he'd been home on Saturday and he asked me if I'd been the one that knocked on their door early in the morning. Man do I have good ideas.
Then I gave Tanner Boren a hard time about him not going on the hiking trip that we're planning on for next week. I called him a sissy and said that was the only reason that he wouldn't be going. Then I started noticing that I wasn't really feeling any better in the infected area. On Monday I was thinking about calling the doctor because it didn't feel like anything was getting better, but I didn't. Then yesterday it felt like I hit a wall. I just started feeling completely fatigued. I called the doctor and got an appointment for today. He said things were about the same and gave me another antibiotic. The thing that has me concerned is that I'm totally fatigued today, and I don't think that's a good thing when you're messing with an infection, that and it's still pretty painful. I woke up this morning weighed myself, then took my medicine and went back to bed, which is something that I rarely do.
I've told the bishop that I don't think that it's a good idea for me to go on the hike next week with painfully swollen man parts that could get worse. Now I'm going to have to put up with being called a sissy by Tanner when I see him next since the only excuse for not going on the hike is being a sissy.
I've also got two painful canker sores. I guess that silver water can not over come stupidity. I had these two canker sores that I kept biting over and over. Both of them were bleeding, and on one of them I could feel a loose piece of flesh. That's got to be a sign of stupidity that you bite yourself until you bleed. Anyway they became pretty painful, but every time they really start hurting I rinse with silver water which seems to take away the pain and help with the swelling. At least that's what it seems like to me. I've had this happen before and it seems like it was much more painful then, although I may have selective memory.
I was also wondering why I would get an infection when I was taking the silver water. The guy who sells the generator one time said that silver water wasn't like a magical elixir that would make you live forever and that there were some things that it can't deal with. When I thought that I remembered that I'd had something like this happen on my mission that had me laid up for a couple of days. However, that was much more painful than this is, but the symptoms seem similar, so maybe the silver water is working. The thing on my mission seemed to go away quicker though. Of course I was 20 then so that might have something to do with it.
When we were going to Arizona I felt something that felt like a fish flopping in the right side of my abdomen area. That's what it felt like, it was probably a muscle or something, and I felt it a few other times on that trip. It didn't bother me while I was exercising in the week following so I wasn't that worried about it, then last Tuesday for the whole day it felt like I'd been kicked in the groin. Particularly the right testicle. I thought I had a hernia and made an appointment to see the doctor. He said that I had an infection in that area that was causing the problem and gave me an antibiotic to take. It was a wide spectrum antibiotic that makes you sensitive to the sun so I've been wearing long sleeve shirts and a hat (when I remember) since then. I thought it would be something that I would get over quickly, but the doctor said to come back if I wasn't feeling better in 3-7 days. I kept exercising, and on Saturday I went for the first long bike ride I'd done this summer.
I've been planning on taking a long "real" bike ride every week, as opposed to riding my exercise bike in the mornings. However, things have turned out so that I've only gone on one bike ride with Mark when Teandra and Mark were visiting. I rode just under 25 miles and I was pretty excited about it because my average velocity was 11.9 mph which is the highest average I've ever had riding that route. For some reason I thought that it'd be a good idea to stop by Grant Stoddard's house in the morning and surprise him that I'd ridden that far and say "Hey Grant lets go for a ride." I figured I'd knock quietly on the door and then if someone was up they'd hear the knock and if everyone was asleep it wouldn't bother them. Well I knocked and then the dog started barking. Great idea. No one answered and I kind of slunk away with my tail between my legs. Then the next day, Sunday, I asked Grant if he'd been home on Saturday and he asked me if I'd been the one that knocked on their door early in the morning. Man do I have good ideas.
Then I gave Tanner Boren a hard time about him not going on the hiking trip that we're planning on for next week. I called him a sissy and said that was the only reason that he wouldn't be going. Then I started noticing that I wasn't really feeling any better in the infected area. On Monday I was thinking about calling the doctor because it didn't feel like anything was getting better, but I didn't. Then yesterday it felt like I hit a wall. I just started feeling completely fatigued. I called the doctor and got an appointment for today. He said things were about the same and gave me another antibiotic. The thing that has me concerned is that I'm totally fatigued today, and I don't think that's a good thing when you're messing with an infection, that and it's still pretty painful. I woke up this morning weighed myself, then took my medicine and went back to bed, which is something that I rarely do.
I've told the bishop that I don't think that it's a good idea for me to go on the hike next week with painfully swollen man parts that could get worse. Now I'm going to have to put up with being called a sissy by Tanner when I see him next since the only excuse for not going on the hike is being a sissy.
I've also got two painful canker sores. I guess that silver water can not over come stupidity. I had these two canker sores that I kept biting over and over. Both of them were bleeding, and on one of them I could feel a loose piece of flesh. That's got to be a sign of stupidity that you bite yourself until you bleed. Anyway they became pretty painful, but every time they really start hurting I rinse with silver water which seems to take away the pain and help with the swelling. At least that's what it seems like to me. I've had this happen before and it seems like it was much more painful then, although I may have selective memory.
I was also wondering why I would get an infection when I was taking the silver water. The guy who sells the generator one time said that silver water wasn't like a magical elixir that would make you live forever and that there were some things that it can't deal with. When I thought that I remembered that I'd had something like this happen on my mission that had me laid up for a couple of days. However, that was much more painful than this is, but the symptoms seem similar, so maybe the silver water is working. The thing on my mission seemed to go away quicker though. Of course I was 20 then so that might have something to do with it.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Three Weeks Have Flown By
Wow three weeks have just flown by. The last time I wrote on the blog was the day after the Los Conchas fire started. That fire is the biggest in New Mexico history. Last I heard it was something like 140,000 acres, which I actually have no idea how big that is but I'm sure it's pretty big. Sounds big.
I didn't mention this last blog but when I left for work on June 27th I hadn't heard that the lab was closed. I missed the train that morning, which turned out to be a blessing, and as I'm driving towards Santa Fe I see this hugh cloud and I'm hoping that it might rain, but when I get to it I see that it's all smoke, so I look up towards where Los Alamos is and it's dark up there and I think to myself that no one could possibly breath in that so I decide to call the hot line to see if maybe work was canceled. What the heck it's worth a try. The hot line says that the Lab is closed and I was passing an exit on the freeway and slammed on my breaks and took the exit and came home.
Apparently I was the only person in my family who hadn't heard on the news, or some other source that the Lab was closed. So I decided that I would start to clean off the side yard. I say side yard but it is actually the area out the outside of our fence next to the road that the city says that we're responsible for and every year they come and say that we need to weed it. Karen has planted some wild flowers there and they look really nice for a couple of weeks, but pretty scruffy the rest of the year. When we first moved in we tried putting down some crusher fines to keep the weeds down, but we didn't get enough delivered the first time, and perhaps we couldn't afford to cover it all at that time but I didn't finish. Also, the red lava rocks that we'd laid down had a bunch of weeds grow up in it and it looked bad. I'd been thinking of cleaning it up and decided to start while I had this unexpected time off. I started on Monday and thought it would take a day or two to finish. I actually finished with everything that Saturday so it took 6 days instead of a day or two. I think it looks a lot better now. Karen says she misses the wild flowers but I don't.
On July 4th we went to the ward breakfast in the morning with Goosy, then in the afternoon we went to a party with her that someone from her work was giving. Goosy really is growing up when she get invited to "adult" parties from work that we get to go to. (The Goosy growing up part gets way worse in this blog than this.)
The Los Conchas fire was gotten under control and we had to go back to work. On the first day that I went back Karen asked me about my crappy lungs and how I would fare in smokey Los Alamos. A few years ago I was tested for asthma and while I don't have asthma the doctor told me: "You have crappy lungs. It's a good thing you don't live somewhere with pollution like LA." I told Karen I'd be OK, but by 9 that morning I was starting to get very congested lungs and was losing my voice. I looked at the Park and Ride schedule and found out that the last bus had left about 3 minutes before, so I called Karen and asked her to come pick me up, and she very kindly came up and picked me up. I took the rest of that Wednesday off, and Thursday. I also went and bought a hepa filter for my cubicle for when I got back to help keep the air around me cleaner. It seems to have worked. Right now the air up there is pretty clean and I think that I'll start trying to figure out how to bring the filter home.
That Thursday Cathy called and said that she was going to be taking Grandma Evans to Arizona to see Aunt LaVon at their Arizona family reunion. She said that Beth (my cousin) would be there, Lisa would come as well from Mayer and did we want to go with her? Cathy loves to plan things out in advance. It was a lot of fun to be go and see everyone and get to spend time with my sisters, and to see my cousins. We hadn't seen everyone since the last time we went there. It was fun to spend time with Grandma as well, but she doesn't visit very well. We stopped at Earls in Gallup and ended up getting Karen about $100 worth of jewelry. Gooey went with us as well. It was a fun weekend, even if it was thrown together at the last minute.
I went back to work and the HEPA filter worked pretty good, but I had to leave my cage quite a bit, and my lungs started to get a little congested. It was especially bad when I walked to the bus stop because the fire was still burning down south and the smoke would get blown in and it was very smokey and that was bad. However, I saw that a couple of people had gotten the face masks that Occ. Med. was handing out. I asked if they worked and was told that they worked really well, so on Tuesday I went and got a mask and got made fun of, but it seemed to help a lot.
This last weekend we had the youth conference and had a very interesting service project. We went to the Catholic cemetery and picked up trash and weeded. We picked up a ton of trash. They divided up the cemetery into six zones and I was working in the first zone and didn't realize how much was getting done until I took my first full bag on weeds to a trailer and saw how heaped it was. By the time we were done it was a mountain of trash. I was talking to the high councilor that was there and he said that the caretaker was pretty much overwhelmed with gratitude. It was a hot day, and Karen got a touch of heat stroke, and I was pretty wrung out so we left in the afternoon when Karen stood up to sing a song and said that she nearly passed out.
So that's pretty much what has happened in the last few weeks. Karen and I are in the 3rd week of the maintenance phase of the hCG diet. Karen is following the rules pretty good but I'm not. However, things seems to be going to way that I would like them to. I've gained 8 lbs but 6.9 lbs of that is lean body mass (muscle) and 1.1 lbs of body fat. I was worried about how much muscle that I lost during the dieting phase and I've gained about half of it back. I have to admit that I was hoping I would be able to gain the muscle and lose more fat. Actually I'm amazed that I'm able to gain weight at all with how few calories I'm eating. I'm averaging around 2100 a day, as well as I'm still exercising pretty vigorously in the morning (now that I have some more muscle) so I would think that I'd be losing weight but I'm not. The body is a pretty amazing thing.
I also went and had another HA1c test. It was 5.5 which averages out to 111 which is pretty good but I was hoping that it would be a little closer to 100. I don't know when I'll go back and get the next test I'll just have to wait and see. However I've gone from 7.6 (171) to 6.4 (137) to 5.5. That's pretty good and I'd have to say that I've got my BG better under control. I'm taking 2 grams of metformin a day because I like eating fruit, and I'm pretty sure that it would be higher without the metformin. In fact I've forgotten to take it a couple of time and I can see that my BG has gone up every time. Hopefully after the next round of the diet I'll get my weight down even further and the control will be better. I'll just wait and see, but right now I'm thinking that it's worth taking the the metformin to be able to eat fruit. Fruit is the only thing that I've added to my diet that I didn't eat before.
I didn't mention this last blog but when I left for work on June 27th I hadn't heard that the lab was closed. I missed the train that morning, which turned out to be a blessing, and as I'm driving towards Santa Fe I see this hugh cloud and I'm hoping that it might rain, but when I get to it I see that it's all smoke, so I look up towards where Los Alamos is and it's dark up there and I think to myself that no one could possibly breath in that so I decide to call the hot line to see if maybe work was canceled. What the heck it's worth a try. The hot line says that the Lab is closed and I was passing an exit on the freeway and slammed on my breaks and took the exit and came home.
Apparently I was the only person in my family who hadn't heard on the news, or some other source that the Lab was closed. So I decided that I would start to clean off the side yard. I say side yard but it is actually the area out the outside of our fence next to the road that the city says that we're responsible for and every year they come and say that we need to weed it. Karen has planted some wild flowers there and they look really nice for a couple of weeks, but pretty scruffy the rest of the year. When we first moved in we tried putting down some crusher fines to keep the weeds down, but we didn't get enough delivered the first time, and perhaps we couldn't afford to cover it all at that time but I didn't finish. Also, the red lava rocks that we'd laid down had a bunch of weeds grow up in it and it looked bad. I'd been thinking of cleaning it up and decided to start while I had this unexpected time off. I started on Monday and thought it would take a day or two to finish. I actually finished with everything that Saturday so it took 6 days instead of a day or two. I think it looks a lot better now. Karen says she misses the wild flowers but I don't.
On July 4th we went to the ward breakfast in the morning with Goosy, then in the afternoon we went to a party with her that someone from her work was giving. Goosy really is growing up when she get invited to "adult" parties from work that we get to go to. (The Goosy growing up part gets way worse in this blog than this.)
The Los Conchas fire was gotten under control and we had to go back to work. On the first day that I went back Karen asked me about my crappy lungs and how I would fare in smokey Los Alamos. A few years ago I was tested for asthma and while I don't have asthma the doctor told me: "You have crappy lungs. It's a good thing you don't live somewhere with pollution like LA." I told Karen I'd be OK, but by 9 that morning I was starting to get very congested lungs and was losing my voice. I looked at the Park and Ride schedule and found out that the last bus had left about 3 minutes before, so I called Karen and asked her to come pick me up, and she very kindly came up and picked me up. I took the rest of that Wednesday off, and Thursday. I also went and bought a hepa filter for my cubicle for when I got back to help keep the air around me cleaner. It seems to have worked. Right now the air up there is pretty clean and I think that I'll start trying to figure out how to bring the filter home.
That Thursday Cathy called and said that she was going to be taking Grandma Evans to Arizona to see Aunt LaVon at their Arizona family reunion. She said that Beth (my cousin) would be there, Lisa would come as well from Mayer and did we want to go with her? Cathy loves to plan things out in advance. It was a lot of fun to be go and see everyone and get to spend time with my sisters, and to see my cousins. We hadn't seen everyone since the last time we went there. It was fun to spend time with Grandma as well, but she doesn't visit very well. We stopped at Earls in Gallup and ended up getting Karen about $100 worth of jewelry. Gooey went with us as well. It was a fun weekend, even if it was thrown together at the last minute.
I went back to work and the HEPA filter worked pretty good, but I had to leave my cage quite a bit, and my lungs started to get a little congested. It was especially bad when I walked to the bus stop because the fire was still burning down south and the smoke would get blown in and it was very smokey and that was bad. However, I saw that a couple of people had gotten the face masks that Occ. Med. was handing out. I asked if they worked and was told that they worked really well, so on Tuesday I went and got a mask and got made fun of, but it seemed to help a lot.
This last weekend we had the youth conference and had a very interesting service project. We went to the Catholic cemetery and picked up trash and weeded. We picked up a ton of trash. They divided up the cemetery into six zones and I was working in the first zone and didn't realize how much was getting done until I took my first full bag on weeds to a trailer and saw how heaped it was. By the time we were done it was a mountain of trash. I was talking to the high councilor that was there and he said that the caretaker was pretty much overwhelmed with gratitude. It was a hot day, and Karen got a touch of heat stroke, and I was pretty wrung out so we left in the afternoon when Karen stood up to sing a song and said that she nearly passed out.
So that's pretty much what has happened in the last few weeks. Karen and I are in the 3rd week of the maintenance phase of the hCG diet. Karen is following the rules pretty good but I'm not. However, things seems to be going to way that I would like them to. I've gained 8 lbs but 6.9 lbs of that is lean body mass (muscle) and 1.1 lbs of body fat. I was worried about how much muscle that I lost during the dieting phase and I've gained about half of it back. I have to admit that I was hoping I would be able to gain the muscle and lose more fat. Actually I'm amazed that I'm able to gain weight at all with how few calories I'm eating. I'm averaging around 2100 a day, as well as I'm still exercising pretty vigorously in the morning (now that I have some more muscle) so I would think that I'd be losing weight but I'm not. The body is a pretty amazing thing.
I also went and had another HA1c test. It was 5.5 which averages out to 111 which is pretty good but I was hoping that it would be a little closer to 100. I don't know when I'll go back and get the next test I'll just have to wait and see. However I've gone from 7.6 (171) to 6.4 (137) to 5.5. That's pretty good and I'd have to say that I've got my BG better under control. I'm taking 2 grams of metformin a day because I like eating fruit, and I'm pretty sure that it would be higher without the metformin. In fact I've forgotten to take it a couple of time and I can see that my BG has gone up every time. Hopefully after the next round of the diet I'll get my weight down even further and the control will be better. I'll just wait and see, but right now I'm thinking that it's worth taking the the metformin to be able to eat fruit. Fruit is the only thing that I've added to my diet that I didn't eat before.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Hurray Last Day of the Diet (this phase at least)
Today is the 43 day of the diet, the very last day, and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow and being able to eat again. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with my BG. My BG has been excellent on this diet. I've finally gone from taking 2 grams of metformin to cutting one of the tablets in half.
Karen had been telling me that I should maybe stop taking the merformin because I was getting reading in the 70s which is below normal. The morning that I woke up with a 78 was the day that I decided to try and stop taking it. However, in the afternoon of that day my BG was up to 106, so I decided to start taking half a tablet at a time. When I was telling Mom about it she thought that it's funny that I now think 106 is too high. Going to the half a tablet twice a day seems to be working nicely.
So the diets done pretty well. I'm down 33.4 lbs. Unfortunately I've noticed that I lost 14.26 lbs of LBM according to my scale. That's not very good, but they say that the scales are notoriously not very active, but that they can show you trends which can be helpful. The hCG Made Simple site said that you should exercise lightly. However, it also said that if your used to exercising you can continue, but if you lift weights that you should probably cut back. Well I couldn't do my body weight exercises. I tried but while I could do one day of them, the next day I was just wasted and couldn't exercise. Losing that much muscle mass probably explains what is going on.
The next phase is called the maintenance phase, and it says that
"Now that you have lost weight, it is imperative that you step up the exercise a notch and allow your muscles to tone, your metabolism to kick into full gear, and your body to secure itself as a fat burning machine!"
So that sounds to me like they're expecting you to put some muscle back on. I hope so. I really can't imagine that I'm not going to lose weight on this next phase of the diet. I'm supposed to have something like 2700 calories a day, or maybe that's back when I was 34 lbs fatter. Anyway I'm just going to follow the rules of their diet and see what happens. Hopefully I'll be able to put some muscle back on in this phase and maybe lose some more fat.
I guess that I could go back to using the calipers on measuring the fat percentage but that's harder than using the scale so we'll just see what happens.
Karen had been telling me that I should maybe stop taking the merformin because I was getting reading in the 70s which is below normal. The morning that I woke up with a 78 was the day that I decided to try and stop taking it. However, in the afternoon of that day my BG was up to 106, so I decided to start taking half a tablet at a time. When I was telling Mom about it she thought that it's funny that I now think 106 is too high. Going to the half a tablet twice a day seems to be working nicely.
So the diets done pretty well. I'm down 33.4 lbs. Unfortunately I've noticed that I lost 14.26 lbs of LBM according to my scale. That's not very good, but they say that the scales are notoriously not very active, but that they can show you trends which can be helpful. The hCG Made Simple site said that you should exercise lightly. However, it also said that if your used to exercising you can continue, but if you lift weights that you should probably cut back. Well I couldn't do my body weight exercises. I tried but while I could do one day of them, the next day I was just wasted and couldn't exercise. Losing that much muscle mass probably explains what is going on.
The next phase is called the maintenance phase, and it says that
"Now that you have lost weight, it is imperative that you step up the exercise a notch and allow your muscles to tone, your metabolism to kick into full gear, and your body to secure itself as a fat burning machine!"
So that sounds to me like they're expecting you to put some muscle back on. I hope so. I really can't imagine that I'm not going to lose weight on this next phase of the diet. I'm supposed to have something like 2700 calories a day, or maybe that's back when I was 34 lbs fatter. Anyway I'm just going to follow the rules of their diet and see what happens. Hopefully I'll be able to put some muscle back on in this phase and maybe lose some more fat.
I guess that I could go back to using the calipers on measuring the fat percentage but that's harder than using the scale so we'll just see what happens.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Julie Got Baptized.
This blog needs to go under boy is Max dumb category. I wrote it but for got to post it last week.
Man have things been hectic, so I haven't had a chance to blog for a while. Obviously.
The biggest thing that has happened in the last couple of weeks is that Julie Stringfield got baptized, and the amazing thing is that she asked me to baptize her. I have to admit that I was surprised and honored by her asking me to baptize her. We'd heard that she wanted to get baptized, but Chantel said that she didn't want everyone to know about it. Wesley Hendricks knew about it and when I talked to him about it he said he knew about it and that Chantel was going to be speaking at it. Chantel hadn't said anything about it so I just thought whe hadn't mentioned it. Julie said that she wanted to talk to Karen and I before the baptism, and we'd tried to set up a couple of appointments but they fell through. Julie had sent a text message to me, but she sent it to my work blackberry and I don't check it that often, but on the Thursday before the baptism I checked it and saw the text message, and wrote her back giving her my and Karen's phone numbers. She got in touch with us and met us that night. That's when she asked me if I'd baptize her, and she asked Chantel to speak. I later asked Chantel if she'd already know about it and she said that she hadn't. See that's funny because she then got to stress out for the next few days before the baptism.
A funny thing happened during the baptism. I didn't know how to do the baptism. I didn't get the hands right and so the branch president had to try to get me and Julie standing correctly so that I could hold her hands with my left and raise my right to the square. When we finally got it right everyone had a good laugh. It was still a great experience, one that I'll always remember. The Stringfield's had BBQ at Julie's sister Jessica's house. That was a lot of fun. I'd never really met Julie and Jackie's sisters before and I really liked both of them. The younger sister had had some oral surgery and she had to have her jaw wired shut, so I felt a little sorry for her, but could empathize because Karen and couldn't eat anything either. We went to Julie's Sacrament Meeting the next day for her confirmation. Over all it was a great weekend.
The weekend before was fun as well. We got to go see Alex the Younger, and Chio (and there parents were there as well). One of Iwalani's missionary companions got sealed in the Dallas Temple and they asked us if we wanted to come with them. Well of corse we did. Chantel came with us, and we all rode in Iwalani and Jeremy's Impala, so that was a little tight. We left on Thursday after work and drove all night. It was possible because we had 5 drivers to help with the driving. We came home the following Monday which was Memorial day. It was a lot of fun, as it always is, to visit with them.
Finally the hCG diet is going pretty well. I'm not dropping weight as fast as I did during the first two weeks, but it is still coming off. I've also had to poke a couple new holes in my belt, so that's pretty dang exciting. The really exciting thing is that my BG is very low. My weekly average on my meter is around 94 and I've had a few readings in the low 80's. I think is partly the diet, and also the losing of weight. The lower the weight the better the better insulin sensitivity.
Man have things been hectic, so I haven't had a chance to blog for a while. Obviously.
The biggest thing that has happened in the last couple of weeks is that Julie Stringfield got baptized, and the amazing thing is that she asked me to baptize her. I have to admit that I was surprised and honored by her asking me to baptize her. We'd heard that she wanted to get baptized, but Chantel said that she didn't want everyone to know about it. Wesley Hendricks knew about it and when I talked to him about it he said he knew about it and that Chantel was going to be speaking at it. Chantel hadn't said anything about it so I just thought whe hadn't mentioned it. Julie said that she wanted to talk to Karen and I before the baptism, and we'd tried to set up a couple of appointments but they fell through. Julie had sent a text message to me, but she sent it to my work blackberry and I don't check it that often, but on the Thursday before the baptism I checked it and saw the text message, and wrote her back giving her my and Karen's phone numbers. She got in touch with us and met us that night. That's when she asked me if I'd baptize her, and she asked Chantel to speak. I later asked Chantel if she'd already know about it and she said that she hadn't. See that's funny because she then got to stress out for the next few days before the baptism.
A funny thing happened during the baptism. I didn't know how to do the baptism. I didn't get the hands right and so the branch president had to try to get me and Julie standing correctly so that I could hold her hands with my left and raise my right to the square. When we finally got it right everyone had a good laugh. It was still a great experience, one that I'll always remember. The Stringfield's had BBQ at Julie's sister Jessica's house. That was a lot of fun. I'd never really met Julie and Jackie's sisters before and I really liked both of them. The younger sister had had some oral surgery and she had to have her jaw wired shut, so I felt a little sorry for her, but could empathize because Karen and couldn't eat anything either. We went to Julie's Sacrament Meeting the next day for her confirmation. Over all it was a great weekend.
The weekend before was fun as well. We got to go see Alex the Younger, and Chio (and there parents were there as well). One of Iwalani's missionary companions got sealed in the Dallas Temple and they asked us if we wanted to come with them. Well of corse we did. Chantel came with us, and we all rode in Iwalani and Jeremy's Impala, so that was a little tight. We left on Thursday after work and drove all night. It was possible because we had 5 drivers to help with the driving. We came home the following Monday which was Memorial day. It was a lot of fun, as it always is, to visit with them.
Finally the hCG diet is going pretty well. I'm not dropping weight as fast as I did during the first two weeks, but it is still coming off. I've also had to poke a couple new holes in my belt, so that's pretty dang exciting. The really exciting thing is that my BG is very low. My weekly average on my meter is around 94 and I've had a few readings in the low 80's. I think is partly the diet, and also the losing of weight. The lower the weight the better the better insulin sensitivity.
The Diet's Almost Over!
I've got to tell everyone that I'm excited that this phase of the diet is almost over. I'm not really hungry while on this diet, but I do miss eating. We only get the same stuff everyday, and I'm even worse than probably most on the diet because I just eat the same thing every day.
I've learned a few things on this diet. One, it looks like I can maybe start eating fruit again. It hasn't hurt me while I'm on this diet, in fact this week I've had a couple of BG reading that are below 80 which is the below the low normal for BG. Karen thinks that I should stop taking the metformin, but I keep saying that I'm going to keep using it until I run out of it, and use it while I'm on the maintenance phase to see what happens when I'm eating more food. The second thing that I've learned is that it's very convenient to have food planned out. I put all my food in a bag and so I know what I have to eat all right there so it's easier to plan. I've read that this is a good way to handle a diet, but I've never done it, because I'm lazy. Of course it's pretty easy to put all of 500 calories in a little bag for a day, and I've actually forgot a couple of times to do that. I just need to make a commitment to doing this though because I think that it will help a lot.
As of this morning I've lost 26.8 lbs. That's great, but I'm more happy with what's going on my BG. Right now my 7 day average is 89, and by the way that's below 90. The 30 day average is 94 and the 90 day average is 105. This shows that the trend is down and that's great. I hope that it stays low when I get on the maintenance phase of the diet.
Speaking of the maintenance phase. The diet plan says that you should not let your weight fluctuate +/- 2 lbs from your weight on the last day of your taking the hCG. However the level of calories that they suggest is very low between 1800-2000 for a man. That's near the level where you body goes into starvation mode. I personally don't see how that level of eating won't cause you to lose weight during the maintenance phase. I'm hoping that I'm going to lose weight. We'll see.
One thing that I read about while reading about the hCG diet that was interesting. It said that our digestive track is basically like any other great ape, and that it's designed for use to digest food that we're eating all day long just like the apes. The cruise around all day grazing on whatever they can find. That make a lot of sense, especially with a lot of people saying that your diet will work better if you eat a lot of small means during the day instead of a few big ones. The hCG people said that eating a couple of big meals, a day especially when there are a lot of refined carbs in it, can overwhelm the endocrine system and it start locking away the fat as abnormal fat.
A few more things about the diet. It's hard to exercise on it. I started out tying to do my weekly turbulence training, and I started a new phase of that as I started the hCG diet, and I just was not able to do it. Karen was worried about me and now it looks like she's right. Anyway I finally started just doing the exercise cycle and pushups. I got to where I could do those again, and decided that I'd try going back to phase 1 of turbulence training. So I did that on Monday and the next day I'd gained two pounds! I just don't see how that happens, and I was totally wasted and could not even do the exercise cycle the next day. Later in the week I read an article on the Dr. Mercola site about it being possible for the body to gain muscle on a reduced calorie diet. Maybe that explains what happened. I don't know that I'm even going to try do turbulence training next time we do another phase of the hCG.
Well as you can see the hCG diet pretty much rules my life right now. One funny thing about this is no one has to worry about cooking me anything for Fathers Day, and next week is my 50th birthday, and no one can do anything for me because I can't eat anything. I guess that really show how central eating is to any celebration that we now have.
I've read some interesting books and listened to some interesting lecture series, but I'll be writing about them on my other blog.
I've learned a few things on this diet. One, it looks like I can maybe start eating fruit again. It hasn't hurt me while I'm on this diet, in fact this week I've had a couple of BG reading that are below 80 which is the below the low normal for BG. Karen thinks that I should stop taking the metformin, but I keep saying that I'm going to keep using it until I run out of it, and use it while I'm on the maintenance phase to see what happens when I'm eating more food. The second thing that I've learned is that it's very convenient to have food planned out. I put all my food in a bag and so I know what I have to eat all right there so it's easier to plan. I've read that this is a good way to handle a diet, but I've never done it, because I'm lazy. Of course it's pretty easy to put all of 500 calories in a little bag for a day, and I've actually forgot a couple of times to do that. I just need to make a commitment to doing this though because I think that it will help a lot.
As of this morning I've lost 26.8 lbs. That's great, but I'm more happy with what's going on my BG. Right now my 7 day average is 89, and by the way that's below 90. The 30 day average is 94 and the 90 day average is 105. This shows that the trend is down and that's great. I hope that it stays low when I get on the maintenance phase of the diet.
Speaking of the maintenance phase. The diet plan says that you should not let your weight fluctuate +/- 2 lbs from your weight on the last day of your taking the hCG. However the level of calories that they suggest is very low between 1800-2000 for a man. That's near the level where you body goes into starvation mode. I personally don't see how that level of eating won't cause you to lose weight during the maintenance phase. I'm hoping that I'm going to lose weight. We'll see.
One thing that I read about while reading about the hCG diet that was interesting. It said that our digestive track is basically like any other great ape, and that it's designed for use to digest food that we're eating all day long just like the apes. The cruise around all day grazing on whatever they can find. That make a lot of sense, especially with a lot of people saying that your diet will work better if you eat a lot of small means during the day instead of a few big ones. The hCG people said that eating a couple of big meals, a day especially when there are a lot of refined carbs in it, can overwhelm the endocrine system and it start locking away the fat as abnormal fat.
A few more things about the diet. It's hard to exercise on it. I started out tying to do my weekly turbulence training, and I started a new phase of that as I started the hCG diet, and I just was not able to do it. Karen was worried about me and now it looks like she's right. Anyway I finally started just doing the exercise cycle and pushups. I got to where I could do those again, and decided that I'd try going back to phase 1 of turbulence training. So I did that on Monday and the next day I'd gained two pounds! I just don't see how that happens, and I was totally wasted and could not even do the exercise cycle the next day. Later in the week I read an article on the Dr. Mercola site about it being possible for the body to gain muscle on a reduced calorie diet. Maybe that explains what happened. I don't know that I'm even going to try do turbulence training next time we do another phase of the hCG.
Well as you can see the hCG diet pretty much rules my life right now. One funny thing about this is no one has to worry about cooking me anything for Fathers Day, and next week is my 50th birthday, and no one can do anything for me because I can't eat anything. I guess that really show how central eating is to any celebration that we now have.
I've read some interesting books and listened to some interesting lecture series, but I'll be writing about them on my other blog.
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