Take care of yourself

Re: Take care of yourself (LiveSTRONG)



Adam,

Have you tried Buffalo meat? It's generally leaner than beef, yet remains in the "red meat" category. I've come to like it a whole lot more. It's a little more pricey, but I can still get a big pack of Buffalo burgers for eight bucks or something like that.

 

Re: Take care of yourself (LiveSTRONG)

borntorun is correct: all things in moderation.

about five years ago i drastically overhauled my diet and overall i eat much healthier. but i still eat whatever i want and i've kept off 25 of the 30 pounds i lost (i also work out a lot).

the main eating habits that work for me:

1. eat the not-so-good stuff in moderation, both in terms of quantity and frequency.

2. always remain cognizant of what i eat and ate. this means if i ate poorly on tuesday, i probably enjoyed myself because i love almost any food that's unhealthy. it also means i'm eating well on wednesday, thursday and friday.

3. never, ever set foot in a fast food restaurant unless it has plain, raw sandwiches (think subway, schlotzky's, etc.) i haven't been in a mcd's, bk, taco bell, etc., in years. nothing exciting about a plain turkey sandwich or wrap on wheat with baked chips for lunch but if i can't pack my lunch, that's what i'm eating rather than the burgers/fries/chicken garbage.

4. no soda. ever. that shit is like drinking poison. the only carbonated beverages i consume are beer and tonic when i get a gin & tonic.

 

Re: Take care of yourself (LiveSTRONG)

Wildbill: Never had buffalo meat but I am definitely going to look into it when I hit the Kroger this weekend. Thanks much for the suggestion, that sounds good.

As an aside, I guess I'm not your average "dieter" or whatnot. Not to say I'm special or anything, cause hell I ain't, but the moderation doesn't work for me. I train and do the triathlons, like I said before, so junk food crosses my lips next to never. It's not that I'm so much concerned with what I eat as I'd sometimes like to find better things the few times I do splurge on junk. Junk food honestly makes me feel lethargic and ill. Just one of those things, I suppose. Fast food, pop, candy -- just really don't interest me, it's not a moderation thing because I just don't eat it.

More than likely I'll some day resort to the fried, sugar and chocolate coated delicasies our culture treasures. Until then, I'm gonna try the buffalo and any other suggestions are greatly appreciated. Cheers!

Oh and just so you know I'm not a robot...I plan on drinking a ton of beer Saturday before, during and after the Steeler game and taking a couple days off training.

 

Re: Take care of yourself (LiveSTRONG)

A Handel's Messiah Moment tonight:

I was in the local Mongo Mart doing some off-night shopping, picking up some stuff for around the house, etc.

At Mongo Mart, they have the grocery section off to the side taking up about 1/3 of the store, probably about three acres. I zipped through there, picked up my low-fat whole wheat tortillas to make my shaved-turkey sandwich snacks, rolled into frozen foods, and picked up about a dozen of their low-cal entree meals.

I had what I needed, so I headed for the checkouts.

Directly opposite the checkouts is the men's wear section. I wandered through there absent-mindedly. I haven't been able to buy at Mongo Mart for 15 years or so, because even their big and tall stuff only goes up to 2X, and in some cases, 3X, and frankly I've been way beyond that for a long long time now.

The only things I could buy at Mongo Mart were gifts, for my more conventionally-sized relatives.

So pretty much every piece of clothing I've bought in the last 15 years -- really almost 20 in some cases -- has been bought at the Big & Tall Man's shops. Expensive as hell and usually ridiculous looking. And early this year, before my Come To Jesus Moment, I was even outgrowing those places -- even there, I had to special order stuff and order stuff online.

Then came April, and my little jaunt to the hospital. Now, here we are, nine months later, and I have dumped, as of this week, about 175 pounds.

I'm still anything but svelte -- I could still probably lose 80 more pounds if I really want to, and I will -- but as I walked through the men's department tonight, I saw a jacket that looked pretty cool.

So just for giggles, I slipped it on.

It fit.

 

Re: Take care of yourself (LiveSTRONG)

Phenomenal! 175 pounds dropped and still going strong...that is an amazing story. Keep up that work, way to go!

 

Re: Take care of yourself (LiveSTRONG)

Star, when you say "little jaunt to the hospital," do you mean you had gastric bypass? Or had you gone in for another reason.

Either way, awesome freakin' work, man. That's amazing stuff.

 

Re: Take care of yourself (LiveSTRONG)

Starman > meh.

Hell, Starman > everyone.

This is how it's done, people. Don't be fat anymore. It sucks -- even if you don't realize it -- and it can be corrected. Really, it's not even that hard after the first two months...

 

Re: Take care of yourself (LiveSTRONG)

No, actually, what I had was a TIA - transient ischemic attack, for the med students in the crowd. A minor stroke, for the ordinarly mortals. I was in the hospital for a week.

No real major aftereffects that I can really tell. I was pretty f-ed up for a couple days, though, and I was scared. The doctors say I was extremely lucky.

In any case, it was a hell of a wakeup call. I knew I had to do something, and in a big way.

I had been thinking about the surgery before that. I had talked to the doctor in kind of a cursory way about it. Virtually everyone agrees the surgery does work - but there were a lot of horror stories about complications, aftereffects, etc.

Plus, even when it works, it means in many cases, you can never eat really sugary food again in your life - your body cannot digest it anymore.

I mean, on that glorious day this fall when I clock in at 199 pounds*, I'd love to have a piece of chocolate cake and a bottle of real, legitimate Coca-Cola Classic, and not vomit for three days and crap rivers for a week.

Anyway, since whether you have the surgery or not, you have to drastically reduce your food intake, I figured what was really the difference? I might as well see if I could do it without the surgery. To my own terrific astonishment, so far, I pretty much have.

That's not to say I wouldn't have had the surgery - if nothing else had worked, I probably would have. It very much was becoming a matter of life or death.


*-I might make it 189 for the class reunion next year. I heard one of my old girlfriends got divorced. ;D

 

Re: Take care of yourself (LiveSTRONG)

Starman,
My dad had a TIA a few years ago. Hope you're OK.

 

Re: Take care of yourself (LiveSTRONG)

I wouldn't mind reading that story in GQ some day --- the whole thing, from the weight gain and TIA to the weight loss and reunion and finally to the 189 pounds and getting the girl.

Congrats dude.

 

Re: Take care of yourself (LiveSTRONG)

Aaahhhh, we'll see.

First of all, I'm not exactly svelte now - I still have probably 80-90 pounds or so to dump, so I'm definitely holding back on the self-congratulations. Don't want to get into that complacent, self-satisfied attitude -- that's how I got there in the first place.

And if anything, if I start to get carried away with how much I've lost, I have to go back and revisit how bad I was -- which was pretty bad. Not sure I wanna do that too much.

Many people have given me mad props over the weight loss, but I'm real careful to downplay it for that very reason, and also -- believe it or not, it hasn't been that hard.

Passy's take is dead on (and he's dumped a ton too) -- the first couple weeks is the bitch. But then you get over that psychological hump, and you "get your mind right."

Me, I went on a very drastic diet -- 300-500 cals a day -- which a lot of people seem concerned about, "it's not good to lose weight that fast."

Well, maybe. (But a doctor told me, when you're way, way heavy, there's almost nothing you can do to lose the weight that's worse, health-wise, than it is to keep it on. He said, "Hell, if I knew it would work, I'd almost tell you to take up smoking, if it would get that weight off you." He was kidding, of course -- there are a lot of fat smokers out there, too. And of all the bad habits I ever took up, at least smoking wasn't one of them. : )

Bottom line, I know myself at least a little bit, and one thing that really isn't my strong suit, is patience.

;D : Yeah, I can hear the peanut gallery now. ;D The Ayatollah of Arbitrary Judgment will deal with you all later. ;D

Anyhoo, when I was in the hospital, I did some pretty tough self-examination. As draconian and merciless as I get on thugs and punks and drunks running on the field, sometimes I get as bad on myself. As well I should.

Hell, before I went in, I didn't even know what I weighed. Other than it was a hell of a lot.

But I did the math, listened to the doctors, and came to the conclusion, that if I went on a nice, moderate, gradual diet as many advised -- 1,500-1,800 calories a day -- it would take me something like three years to lose the weight I wanted, that is, needed, to lose.

Well, I don't have the patience to do that. Everybody who's ever fought this battle knows exactly the feeling. You spend two weeks dieting (well, sort of), step on the scale, and whoop-de-freakindoo, you've lost two pounds.

Or, maybe, gained one.

Either way, you get this attitude of "WTF." Then, you figure, "ahh hell, who cares, I'll have a slice of pizza, what's the difference, I can get back on the wagon tomorrow," and off you go. Then you have three slices of pizza, then you stop at Mickey D's and try one of those yummy mushroom-onion burgers, yum yum, and you know the rest.

Plus, I don't have the time to waste. I'm in my, uh, mid-forties, and there are some things I'd still like to do with my life. I shoulda done them in my 20s and 30s, but I didn't. I didn't for some good reasons, and for some not-so-good reasons, some of which revolved around the fact I was basically a disgusting fat slob.

Anyway, I decided if I wanted to do it, I wanted, in the lexicon of Mikey and Nike, to "just do it."

So while I was in the hospital, which I had never been before in my life, I discovered one thing: Hospital food sucks. Really. I mean, it really, really sucks.

So they pushed food in front of me, and I didn't eat it. Nothing. I'd nibble maybe a piece of toast, and throw it down. Repeat for five days, and I left the hospital virtually having eaten nothing for five days.

The doctors said, "well, if nothing else, you've lost 14 pounds while you were in here."

As everybody also knows, the hardest part about any diet program is to start. There's always lunch tomorrow or pizza with the guys Friday night or your girlfriend's birthday next week or some reason to put it off another week, and oh by the way I have two pounds of steak in the freezer, yadda yadda, and plus I have a bag of those yummy kettle-drum potato chips in the pantry. And of course let's not forget the pint of chocolate-chip cookie-dough Haagen-Dasz I have in the fridge, too. :

I realized I didn't have to make any decisions -- I was already off and running. I was already started.

I knew, if I didn't get on the horse and ride it, who knew when I might be ready again? It was time.

So, all by myself, I went on the drastic diet - radically low calorie intake coupled with a moderate but consistent exercise program (stationary bike and Soloflex).

I've stuck pretty much on it for 9 months now. (Although I have eased back a bit since I passed the 150 mark -- I probably do average 800-1000 calories now.)

I guess my feeling is, "nothing succeeds like success."

Again as Passy says -- the main thing is to simply DO it. Get yourself out of the mindset that it cannot be done. It can.