Yelling Stop: Prof. Dan Lieberman Raising Money for Youth Fitnes...

Yelling Stop: Prof. Dan Lieberman Raising Money for Youth Fitnes...: Prof. Lieberman is raising money for a program that encourages kids to run a mile at school. Consider contributing.

http://www.active.com/donate/youthfitness2011/danlieb

Fourth Belt Hole

This guy weighs the same as me.  Does he need to loose weight?

I don't pay much attention to the scale, it's a horrible measure of fitness. However, I do pay attention to my belt, and before making some changes, it was getting a bit too snug.  In addition to loosing the shoes and being a little more active, I've also dropped a lot of the grains from my diet.  Refined grain products are generally very low in micro-nutrients and provide nothing but calories.  They also provide most of their calories in the form of carbohydrates.  Being hypoglycemic, when I eat too many carbohydrates , my insulin quickly spikes and stores all that excess carbohydrate as fat and brings my blood sugar low, making me hungry again in a couple hours, despite my liver having plenty of glycogen on board.  My new diet has replaced the missing carbohydrates with more fat.  The body can convert fat into keytone bodies, which function like  carbohydrates in most body tissues, but do not cause insulin spikes.  I still eat my fruit, veggies, and dairy products, so I have just enough carbohydrates to keep running those parts of the brain that need them.

Eat More Bacon, Loose Weight

This on the other hand is a big no-no

I'm not religious about my diet.  (I had 4 biscuits when we went out to dinner the other night, and I still eat my breakfast wrapped in a tortilla every morning.)  Sometimes though, not being fanatical about your diet is necessary to stick with it long term.  I can cheat now and then and still overall keep on trending my menu planning in the right direction.  But now that my liver is not constantly overloaded with glycogen, I can tolerate the occasional carbohydrate load better than I used to.

The major benefit of this diet is that I'm not hungry all the time.  It is really easy to control portions and excessive snacking when you're just not hungry.  My blood sugar is stable, I'm meeting all my micro-nutrient needs, I'm eating tasty food when I do eat.  I used to bring snacks to work, and I'd eat them about every two hours, and be hungry enough to be watching the clock ready to pounce on that snack/meal as soon as I could allow myself.  Now I eat about every 6 hours, and I occasionally skip a meal if it doesn't fit in my schedule.

And this morning, I hit the fourth hole on my belt.  I expect to waver between three and four for awhile, but that is a lot of progress from when I wavered between hole one and not wearing the belt...

Still Slowly Improving

Last week I walked more regularly than I have since High School:


02/02/12 0.5 miles
02/01/12 0.25 miles
01/31/12 0.5 miles
01/30/12 0.5 miles
01/29/12 0.37 miles
01/29/12 1 miles

And I was just slightly sore and tired.

I don't have something worthy of going into my DailyMile log every day, but I'm making a lot of little changes, like standing up in meetings, or while working in the lab, doing squats while I have a minute of downtime waiting for something, getting more housework done.  These little changes are nearly impossible to measure, so it's hard to say how much I've improved of late, but it's moving in the right direction.  As the weather warms this spring, and we start to get evening sun back, I need to make a regular habit of walking the puppy after work and really see more measurable improvement.

I've given up on Mind the Ducks this spring.  I've not done enough work this winter, not really increased my maximum mileage at all, although I've improved my ability to recover after a walk and repeat again the next day.