Tag: weight loss

Something Else to Fail At

I wasn’t going to write about this until it was all over at some point in the far off future, but I’m going to fail at it the way I fail at most things so why not share?

On Monday November 8th I viewed an orientation video for weight loss surgery at Lowell General Hospital. I spoke to my insurance company to make sure the procedure would be covered and I submitted a form to request an initial appointment. The form said to expect a response in five business days. That was six business days ago.

Sure it’s only one day over… I’m sure they are just busy. I’m sure it’s not the universe trying to convince me to wuss out and not mutilate myself in the name of healthier living. I’m sure I’ll be fine the way I am, right up until the heart attack ends me before I’m sixty.

Fuck.

Back At It-Ish

The five day weekend is over. Not that I had a five day weekend, but I digress. I’m still isolating in Harry’s room, and today is the first day that I will be on video conferences with folks at work. I’m going to have to explain the Harry Potter book cover poster on the wall behind me. It’s actually not a poster, it’s a puzzle. Harry was able to put it together and hang it up without having it fall apart. How amazing is that? What the camera can’t see is the Star Wars poster off to my right. That one would need no explanation.

I have the windows open and the mini USB fan on low. The goal is to keep the air moving. Something about all of that time at my parents house in the sweltering heat with fans blowing right on my face all day has made me really want to have the air moving around me as I work.

I closed all three exercise rings yesterday. I weighed myself today. Closing the three rings once did not magically reduce my weight at all. What the hell? It was my first weigh in since mid August and I was up a pound and a half since then. I think we can probably attribute that to stress eating over the weekend so I think maybe what I have learned is that Intermittent Fasting is helping me hold my weight steady more than it’s helping lose weight. I will take that as a huge win. Now the exercise can start lowering that astronomically high weight total, and then we can throw in some diet and some bariatric surgery to get it down the rest of the way. Wait, what?

Okay. Punching in to work. Have a good Tuesday, everyone. Labor day is past, summer is over, it is officially winter in New England. Bite me, Mother Nature.

Until next time……

Weight Loss Surgery

A few years ago I had my doctor refer me to a bariatric surgery information session. I went, and then booked the first consult. Not long after I canceled the consult. I just chickened out.

I think I’m going to start the process over again. I think it’s time to take a serious look. At my age, the time for screwing around with my health is long over.

I’m scared shitless, of course, but I’m going to do it.

Wish me luck.

Intermittent Fasting

I just started my lunch break and in doing so I just ended last night’s intermittent fasting fast. I started the process 162 days ago. I haven’t missed a day. My Zero app tells me I missed a day, but that was due to a sync mess up when I tried to track a day on my iPad instead of my iPhone.

For the most part, the process has been pretty easy for me. I stop eating at 9:00PM and don’t start again until 1:00PM. There have been a few days where I had to end the daily fast a little early for whatever reason, and there have been a ton of days where the fast went long. The longest was a touch less than 24 hours. The shortest was… about 14 hours, I think. Over the last few days though it has not been easy. I don’t know what changed, but I have found myself bordering on ravenous at about 8:50 each night this week and have had to start my night’s fast 10-15 minutes late. Then the next day, by 10:00AM I am hungry enough that I am feeling a little sick.

Why? What’s different? My stress level is through the roof, but it’s been like that for three weeks. Why did the hungries start three days ago? I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

I haven’t gotten to the point where I am going to skip a day, or even stop all together. I’m thinking about it. I have come close to ending a night’s fast early, or start it an hour or two later instead of just a few minutes. I also haven’t exercised this week, and I didn’t weigh in on Tuesday. I don’t know what to do. I would like to ride this out and get back into the groove, as it were. I just don’t know. I told myself I wouldn’t do it if it made me feel sick, and it’s starting to make me feel sick.

We’ll see.

That Was Unexpected

I got onto the weight loss wagon back in September. I started the intermittent fasting silliness and I started making sure I closed the 30 minute exercise ring in my AppleWatch Activities app. I never stopped with the fasting thing, that’s still going on every day. The weight tracking thing fell away just before Christmas, as it does. My last weigh in was December 15th. The exercise thing temporarily ended on the day my father went to the hospital.

Yesterday was the day I officially went back on the wagon. I closed all three rings for the first time in over a week. My weigh in day was on Tuesday before, so I weighed in today…..

….and I was down six pounds.

So I stopped being careful with food and I stopped exercising and… I lost weight. Six pounds in almost two months isn’t all that much, but it’s still good.

I did not see that coming.

A Thanksgivmas Miracle

I kinda can’t believe it. After a full blown Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday, a weekend and a Monday full of Christmas cookies, and turkey dinner leftovers like you wouldn’t believe last night….

I lost half a pound this week.

It’s a Thanksgivmas Miracle.

I’ll probably gain five pounds celebrating this moral victory, but for right now it’s totally worth it.

Oops

We ate dinner tonight at around 7:00 PM. Jen worked while she ate so I sat with her in the office. As I ate the chicken and the quinoa I watched an episode of The Flash (Grod!) and messed with iCloud settings for GarageBand. We recently switched from individual iCloud accounts to a big giant family sized account and for some reason GarageBand was still looking to my individual while the stuff I uploaded today was in the family. I rebooted and it fixed things (have you tried turning it off and on again?). After that I started mixing the song I shared here a few minutes ago.

At about 8:30 I thought I should probably have a snack. My daily intermittent fast starts at 9:00 and the thought of having the usual 9pm to 1pm fast become 7pm to 1pm seemed like something to avoid.

Five seconds later my watched buzzed. It was 9:00 and time to start tonight’s fast.

I never stopped for the snack.

Oops.

Welcome to December

Hello and welcome to December 1, 2020. It is really hard to believe we are here, but we are. We are just a couple of weeks away from the first day of Winter. When the lock downs started back in March it was at the very end of Winter. All of Spring, locked down. All of Summer, locked down. Pretty soon all of Autumn, locked down. If you stop and think of it, it is pretty overwhelming. For that reason, I suggest you don’t stop and think about it. Just put your head down and keep moving forward.

I’ve done 10 album in a month projects over the last 10 months. Today marks the start of project #11. I think I want to restrict myself to just my Les Paul, a Klon Klone overdrive pedal, and my two 15 watt tube amps. I need to put new strings on the Les Paul, but I can do that tonight. I still have five songs left on the re-recording project too so those might be Les Paul. We’ll see.

November was noteworthy for this here little bloggie. It had the most page views in any month since I created the account. It also had the most unique visitors of any month since I created the account. How about that? The numbers are still teeny tiny in terms of most real bloggers’ goals but for me it was kinda cool. Thanks for dropping by, everyone. Ya’ll come back now, ya hear?

Today is my weigh in day. I was down a little. That’s nice. I hit a minor milestone. That’s nice too. I was paranoid that I was going to be up, and out of fear I did my entire 30 minute exercise first thing this morning. I doubt it had any effect on the scale, but it sort of made me feel almost better at the time. I find myself doing this on most Tuesdays now. Whatever works, right?

Sunday Night

Sitting in my room waiting for the new episode of the walking dead spin off, World Beyond to start. I had a horrible sleep yesterday, but an epic super sleep last night. I raked a chunk of the front yard this afternoon and I did my 30 minutes of exercise, and somehow all of these things have combined to make me super tired tonight. I’m so tired my eyes are blurring.

I just started tonight’s fast. I’ve been playing with intermittent fasting for 82 days. This is my 82nd fast in a row. I haven’t missed a day. Who woulda thunk it? I doubt my weigh in on Tuesday will go well but given that it’s Thanksgiving, I think anything that isn’t a huge increase will be a win. Also… I might be imagining this… I can’t say for sure… but I think my jeans might be feeling a smidge loose today.

Is Walking Dead World Beyond good? We get the last two episodes of the first season tonight and I still can’t tell for sure. It’s not bad, I can say that with some certainty. I just can’t figure out if it’s good. Gimple, am I right? I just wish AMC would have more variety in their commercials. I mean, if you’re going to blitz us with a commercial break every four minutes, the least you could do is mix it up a little.

Okay. Shows on and my eyes are giving up the fight. I, your humble narrator*, will talk to you tomorrow.

*The “your humble narrator” is a reference to A Clockwork Orange. David Prowse was in that movie. He passed away today. He was in another memorable movie. He didn’t have any lines but his character did. He played the character on screen and then some guy named James Earl Jones added the voice later. What was the character that David Prowse played?

Darth Vader.

Rest in peace, Lord Vader.