10/8/15: Post Season for the Royals Starts Today

Days of abstinence: 15

Days until surgery: 69

Weight:  164.6 pounds

The deal I made with my bosses at work is this:  I’ll work long hours and weekends until the deal that we are working on is done, without regard for how many hours a day or week I’m working, but I am going to take the time I need to take for “play breaks.”  Because Jack and I are quarter season ticket holders, we were able to buy tickets to all of the Royals post season baseball games.  I’m planning on going to every last one of them.  Today’s game starts at 6:37, so I’ll need to leave work around 3 or 3:30.  Tomorrow’s game is in the afternoon, so I’ll need to leave work at around noon.  On Wednesdays we bowl, so yesterday I left work at 5:30 (that still a long day considering my day starts at 7:00 AM and I take very quick meal breaks).  The flip side, of course, is I worked an 11 hour day last Saturday, a 14 hour day on Monday, and a 12 hour day on Tuesday.  I’ll most certainly be working this weekend, as well.  It will feel a little strange this afternoon to leave work early, when we are so busy and have so much to do, but I think this all works out.  I will get the work done and by taking the time to play I preserve my sanity and make sure Jack and I get to have some time together over the next couple of months. 

The ballgame will present another challenge, of course, and that is the opportunity to eat and drink off program.  I won’t do it, but since this is opening day of the post season, the mood will be celebratory and the temptation will be there.  I’ll eat dinner before we leave for the park and we’ll pack some healthy snacks and water.  It’ll be fine, I am confident of that, there will be no beers at the ballpark for Berta. 

I received one email in response to the article that I posted a couple of days ago.  It presented, I won’t say rebuttal exactly, but at least a different perspective of the article than mine.  I appreciated the perspective and the reminder to not to accept everything I read at face value.  Mostly I was reminded that this decision to not eat sugar ever again is very personal, it is my decision and I have made that decision because I believe I have an addiction to sugar and I believe that sugar is bad for my body.  I have made a conscious decision to be as healthy as I can be as I age.  I know I won’t live forever and I don’t have any idea what will kill me or when.  But I do know that I have some control over the way I will age.  I don’t want to slide down a slippery slope of becoming weak, fragile, diseased, and feeble minded and live another 20 years.  I want to be as strong, vital, healthy, and lucid as I can be until I suddenly die, whenever that might happen to be.  Just for fun, I plugged my statistics into an actuarial table just now.  My expected life span is 85.26 years.  That’s 15 year less than I want to live but hey, if I can have another 32 awesome years, that would be great.  And that’s what I’m talking about.  I want (at least) another 32 awesome years.  The first 40 years of my life were hard.  I mean really hard.  Perhaps the first 2 or 3 weren’t that bad.  I don’t remember.  But childhood, in general, was not fun.  College was kind of fun, but I got married while in school and my first child was born the day after I graduated.  That’s another story altogether, but all was not roses and buttercups and I spent most of the next 21 years raising kids by myself (whether or not I happened to be married).  I struggled, I sought and received therapy, and I grew and learned and healed.  My kids are doing great.  I was a single empty-nester for a while and got it figured out.  I am now happily married, have a wonderful and interesting blended family, have a good job, work hard and life is getting fun.  Now that life is fun, I want to live a long time and I want to enjoy it.  I mean really enjoy it.  I want to play kickball and climb mountains.  I want to hike when I want to hike, explore when I want to explore, take on new sports and activities, and stay mentally engaged.  I believe my chances of doing all this go up considerably if I take good care of myself.  I believe taking good care of myself means exercising regularly and having a clean diet (most of the time).  A clean diet means no sugar.  For a while, I thought that I could eat sugar now and then.  I don’t think a little sugar now and then is going to hurt anyone.  My problem, I am convinced, is that I am an addict.  I can’t do a little sugar now and then and not do a little more the next day, a little more the day after that, etc.

OK, it is getting later than I wanted it to and I have to go to work.  But these graphs are from Younger Next Year and they graphically represent the two choices I believe I have.

I can go down the slippery slope of “normal again” and be well into my process of dying long before I am dead, like this:  

Or I can live well and be strong and then all of a sudden die, like this:

I pick option 2.

OK – that’s all I have time for.

Have a beautiful day!

10/7/15: Still Busy

Days of abstinence: 14

Days until surgery: 70

Weight:  165.0 pounds

I spent the time I usually spend blogging writing a letter in response to an email I received yesterday, so I don't have time to blog.  I gotta run, can't be late for work.  All is well.  Feeling strong.  Working too much, but I am managing it.  Exercised this morning with Bob Harper and the Black Fire gang.

Have a beautiful day.

10/6/15: Too Busy

Days of abstinence: 13

Days until surgery: 71 (Those days just keep ticking off.  It’s making me nervous)

Weight:  165.6 pounds

As I suspected, the uptick on the scale was temporary, probably due to muscle inflammation.  I’m still sore today, but feeling much better.

I didn’t leave work until 9:00 last night.  My day starts at 7:00, so that’s a long day.  Today will be another long day, but tomorrow I have to leave by 6:00 to bowl, Thursday I need to leave by 4:00 for the first Royals game of the division series, and Friday I need to leave by noon for game two.  I am going to work a lot of extra hours between now and the end of the month, probably until December 16^th, but I told my bosses that the tradeoff is that I am going to take the chunks of time here and there that I need to take for activities that I have planned with family.  So I’ll have crazy long days and I’ll work weekends, but if the Royals make it to the World Series, I am going to every home game!!

I feel good.  It’s a little rough getting up in the mornings when I don’t get home from work until 9:30, mostly because it’s hard to fall asleep right away, but that is to be expected.  My abstinence program is going fine.  I am not having any cravings and I am not getting hungry or cranky between meals.  I pack my lunch and dinner when I know I am going to work late, so that helps a lot.  No worries there.  I’m getting the projects at work done at the pace that they need to be done.  That helps alleviate some of the stress.  All in all, everything is fine.

I put up a quick post mid-day yesterday with a link to an article about the impacts of sugar on our health.  It sites numerous studies that have been done over the last couple of decades.  I encourage you to read it.  I’d appreciate any comments or thoughts you have about it.  I think the more we talk honestly about sugar the better we will be at understanding that it does have serious negative impacts on our health.  At least that is the way I see it.  I am happy that I have made the decision to know longer eat the sweet stuff.

I’ve gotta run.  It’s going to be another big day.  The auditors show up this morning.  Fun, fun, fun.

Have a beautiful day. 

10/5/15: Comprehensive Article About the Negative Impact Sugar has on Our Health. Includes Study References.

I just came across this article during my lunch break (I ate stew and an apple, by the way).  It is a very comprehensive summary of the impacts of sugar on our health.  It contains many, many references to studies that have been conducted over the last couple of decades or more that prove that sugar has a significant negative impact on our health.

The article is long, I only got about half way through it at lunch, but I will read the rest of it tonight.

I encourage you to read this article.  

http://www.globalresearch.ca/sugar-killing-us-sweetly/5367250

10/5/15: A Bit of a Rough Morning. Sore Muscles!

Days of abstinence: 12

Days until surgery: 72

Weight:  167.0 pounds

I had a lot of trouble waking up this morning which is unusual for me, particularly when I get to bed on time; which I did last night.  I was in bed before nine, so getting up at 4:00 to exercise should have been easy.  Most mornings, in spite of my very early hour, I wake up before the alarm goes off.  Not today.  No Siree Bob.  This morning the alarm woke me up and I knew I needed more sleep so I reset the alarm for 4:50 and skipped my exercise for the morning.  This seemed perfectly reasonable to me considering how sore my arms are.  Ouch!

When I finally got up and weighed myself I was surprised to see that the scale had gone up, not down.  If you are like me and monitor your weight daily then you know there can be temporary swings in your weight.  For me, I usually know when it’s coming and it’s usually caused by something that I am aware that I did.  If I eat a big dinner late in the day or eat a lot of particularly salty foods, I know I will be a little bloated in the morning.  I didn’t do either of those things yesterday.  Also, and this is going to sound funny, but I can usually tell if I am going to weigh more or less than I did yesterday by how heavy my breasts are.  When my breasts feel heavy, I know I’m retaining water for some reason and I’ll see it on the scale.  That was not the case this morning though.  In fact, overall, I feel relatively lean this morning; so I was surprised to see the scale result.  Not upset, mind you, just a little surprised.  I am always curious about what causes these fluctuations.  I think it is good to know what is going on inside my body, as much as I can know. 

The only thing that I can think of that would cause this temporary weight gain is muscle inflammation.  I think the same thing caused my need for extra rest this morning.  I did a particularly difficult workout yesterday, followed by kickball.  The workout was a Daily Burn Black Fire workout called Weighted Tabata.  It goes like this:

After about 4 – 5 minutes of warm up exercises you do eight sets of 4 different exercise.  Each set is 20 seconds long with a 10 second break between sets.  You do as many reps as you can each set, then your score for that exercise is the lowest # of reps you got in any one set.  For instance, the first exercise was a push press.  Hold 15 pound dumbbells in each hand with your arms bent and holding the dumbbells just above your shoulders.  In one movement, bend your knees slightly, then straighten them to stand up tall and at the same time push the dumbbells straight up into a shoulder press.  Do as many as you can in 20 seconds.  Rest 10 seconds.  Then do it again, as many push presses as you can for 20 seconds, then rest 10 seconds.  Do 8 sets.  My first set I did 10.  By the time I got to the last set I was doing 6.  More importantly, by the time I got to the last set, I was lifting to fail.  In other words, I could not do another one.

The next exercise was easier and I timed out on it.  I was not to the point of failure during the 20 second set.  It was a dumbbell swing, like a kettle bell swing, but with a 20 pound dumbbell.  My score on that was 9.  (Therefore, I did at least 9 times 8 = 72 dumbbell swings, since 9 was my lowest score in the 8 sets).

The third exercise was a Bent Over Row using 15 pound dumbbells.  My score was 6 and I was exercising to failure on that one.  And the last exercise was a dumbbell thruster, which was not unlike the push press but instead of bending your knees slightly you go into a deep squat and then push yourself up and do the shoulder press.  Again, I exercised to failure and my score was 6.

The results?  My arms (mostly biceps) hurt today!  Not just that vague muscle soreness but seriously hurt.  Not in a bad, scary way like, “Oh my god, did I hurt myself?” hurt, but more in that, “Shit, that was one hell of a workout, hurt.”  I think my body didn’t want to get out of bed this morning because it was working hard on healing those damaged muscles.  I think the same thing caused the weight gain.  That soreness in those muscles is inflammation.  There is a lot of repair work going on in those muscles right now, and that repair work starts with inflammation, which is going to cause some weight gain.

I think I did the right thing this morning to sleep in for a few extra minutes this morning and to take the day off from a workout.  I’ll drink a lot of water today and eat right.  I’m sure I’ll be even more sore tomorrow, but by Tuesday my muscles should be feeling better.

With regard to food and my sugar addiction, everything is fine.  No cravings.  No desire to go off program.  Susie brought cupcakes to kickball yesterday for Rick’s birthday.  I was not even tempted.  I am feeling confident and strong in my commitment to abstain from sweets forever and ever.  I am not feeling deprived or sorry for myself or like there is something wrong with me.  It just is what it is.  For now, this does not feel like a big deal, it’s just a deal.

I have a HUGE week ahead of me at work.  Very soon I will be able to blog about what is going on.  Until then, all I can say is that we are undergoing a mid-year audit (for good reasons) and I’ve had zero time to prepare for it.  As far as I can tell I’ll be working long days and weekends until my surgery date of December 16^th.  Fun Stuff.  Oh, yeah, the stress doesn’t help with weight loss.  I do believe that stress causes increased cortisol levels which makes it difficult to lose weight.  That said, I took the day completely off yesterday, got all our meals cooked, played kickball, worked out, and had time to sit on the couch to relax with Jack.  I know it is important to have days like that, even when I am extremely busy.  I know it helps keep the stress level in check.

That’s it for now.  Have a beautiful day!!

10/4/15: Two Hour Bonus!

We had two kickball games scheduled today.  One at 12:30 and the other at 2:30.  I planned my day accordingly.  I put up a blog post this morning, made a nice breakfast and ate with Jack, cooked one of our meals for the week, did my work out, and was going to get ready to go when I checked Facebook.  There was a post saying the Gladiators had forfeited the first game of the day and that we didn’t need to arrive until the 2:30 game.  While it’s sad that we didn’t get to play, I’ve been so busy lately, that I was happy to have an unexpected two hour bonus.  When I was cooking this morning I discovered that I had forgotten to put ground beef on the shopping list, so Jack ran to the store and picked up my ground beef for me.  Then he headed to the fields in case everyone didn’t see the post (he is one of our team captains) and I used my bonus time to get two more of this week’s meals cooked.  I’ll fix the fourth and final one this afternoon after the game since it is a recipe that tastes best right when it comes out of the oven.  That is what we’ll have for dinner tonight.

The meals this week are:

Roasted chicken and vegetables (that’s the weekly staple)

Plantain Nachos – this is a delicious dish.  I make the nacho chips by tossing thinly sliced plantains in melted coconut oil, placing them on a baking sheet in a single layer, and baking them at 350 degrees for half an hour.  They are terrific.  The taco meat is a hamburger base with a great combination of onions, garlic, tomato paste, chicken stock and spices.  We eat the entire concoction like a taco salad with a bed of greens, a handful of plantain chips, and a nice scoop of taco meat.  We top it with homemade guacamole, chopped tomatoes, green onions, peppers from the garden, and whatever else we want.  It’s really pretty yummy.

Beef Stew

Oven Fried Chicken Legs (aka World’s Best Chicken), green beans (from the garden), and baked potatoes.

Over breakfast, after I warned Jack that I talked about him in my blog this morning, I asked Jack why he was uncomfortable with the idea of me abstaining from sugar for the rest of my life (see previous post).  I was expecting him to say that he was concerned that he would not be able to enjoy some of the things that he likes to eat, or that he would feel bad about eating them in front of me.  That is not what he said at all.  In fact, when I asked him about that he said he wasn’t worried about that because I had already assured him that that would not be an issue.   What concerned him was how I was going to feel later, after surgery and after I was healed, and after life got back to “normal.”  He was worried that I would feel bad about myself if we were at an event where sweet treats were being served and I couldn’t have any.  His concern was that I would find abstinence unbearable, and that made him sad.  I assured him that that would not be the case.  I know that there will be rough moments, there might even be moments when I say something silly like, “Why me?”  But I also know that 99% of the time I am going to be OK with this.  I appreciate his concern.  It’s all going to be OK.  That is one thing I know for certain.

For now, I need to put on my red KCBlueBalls Kickball shirt and go score some runs. 

Have a great afternoon!!

10/4/2015: Is This a Big Deal?

Days of abstinence: 11

Days until surgery: 73

Weight:  165.8 pounds

I do not eat sweet treats.  I don’t eat sugar or sugar substitutes.  I have determined that eating foods with added sugars in them is bad for my health, therefore I have made the decision to never eat them again.  Is this a big deal?  If it is a big deal, why is it?  It doesn’t seem like it should be a big deal.  Who really cares, anyway, if I eat sugar or don’t eat sugar?  Anyone?  This decision impacts no one but me.

And Jack.

It impacts everyone else that cares about me only in the fact that (I believe) I will live a longer and healthier life and if someone cares about me then that should be a good thing.  Right? 

The internet is an amazing tool.  I just googled “why is it hard for people to give up sugar” and got tons of hits.  All but one said the same thing, “I gave up sugar, had a difficult withdrawal period, and now I feel better than I have ever felt in my life.”  There were countless studies, mostly from the UK and Australia, sited that discussed the negative impact sugar has on our health.  There was one article, one lone article, that said all this talk about sugar being bad for you is poppy cock.  It’s not sugar that is bad for you it is overconsuming calories that is bad for you, and sugar is just calories, after all.  That theory seems to be getting totally debunked these days.

So why does it feel like a big deal to say, “I don’t eat sugar.”  There really is only one answer.  It’s because sugar has been my go-to fix.  When I’m feeling “used and abused” I turn to sugar to comfort me.  Keep in mind I am neither used nor abused and I know that.  I have a comfortable, safe life.  I am loved and I love.  I have a nice home, a good job, a loving husband, two cars in the driveway, and a cupboard full of food.  I have a supportive family, with siblings, grown children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, cousins, a parent, an aunt (I’m getting old, that generation is getting small), etc. who love me and care about me.  I am most definitely not “used and abused.”  But sometimes I feel that way.  Sometimes I spend too many hours at work or I take on too many projects and I start to feel ragged and worn out.  If I’ve had a particularly hard day or even if I get really bored, sugar has been my go-to pick-me-up.  For whatever reasons, when I sit down on the couch at the end of a long, difficult day and eat a bowl of ice cream, it’s comforting.  Just for a moment, it’s comforting.  That feeling doesn’t last long, but there, for a minute, while I am eating it, I feel sublime.  The feeling is fleeting.  It does not last long.  But it is a powerful moment.  For that moment, while I am eating that ice cream, it is all I think about.  It is an escape from the world.  I am sure it is exactly why an alcoholic drinks, or a drug addict pops a pill, or a gambling addict walks in a casino; it’s an escape.  For a moment, the world falls away and nothing else matters.

I just had an interesting moment when I wrote the words, “The world falls away and nothing else matters.”  A moment that made me anxious and caused me to get up from the computer and heat up my coffee and think about what it means, if anything.  Perhaps it means nothing.  Sometimes my thoughts are ridiculous and this may be one of them.  But those words, “The world falls away and nothing else matters,” implies that for a moment, I have totally isolated myself from everyone and everything.  For a moment, I am completely and totally alone, and that is a good thing.  The funny thing about this is that I don’t think it is a good thing to be completely and totally alone.  In fact, I think the opposite is true.  I think being actively engaged in a community is key to being mentally and physically healthy, particularly as I get older.  The truth is, outside of work and my relationship with Jack, I find it difficult to be actively engaged in a community.  It is something I really have to work at, and do work at, but I often feel like I am not working at it hard enough.   Huh.  I’ll have to think about this.

Anyway, here we are.  I’ve been completely sugar (and all crap food, for that matter) free for 11 days.  I am no longer having cravings for sugar.  There is no reason in the world why I should ever eat sugar again.  It’s completely unnecessary, and really, it’s not that hard.  As I’ve said before, I don’t cook with it anyway and I do cook all my own meals.  My love affair with sugar has come to an end.  It’s that simple. 

The one person this impacts the most, aside from me, is Jack.  I don’t talk about Jack in this blog much, mostly out of respect for his privacy.  But Jack and I are a team and it is impossible to tackle this subject without dragging him into it a little bit.  Jack appreciates the fact that I am an excellent cook and he appreciates the fact that the food I prepare for him is very healthy.  He is much healthier now than he was when we got married almost 7 years ago and he knows it is because his diet has improved so much.  He is also a key partner in keeping healthy food in the house.  I don’t like grocery shopping, at all.  I wouldn’t care if I never went in a grocery store again.  Jack does all of our grocery shopping.  He’ll go to multiple stores to get exactly the ingredients I want.  If I am cooking and don’t have something in the house he will stop what he is doing and go get it for me.  Yes, I do all of the cooking, but the fact that Jack does the shopping is huge.  It makes maintaining our healthy eating regimen so much easier for me.  Also, if I ask him to, he will help me cook.  Occasionally, rarely even, I will be really pressed for time and I will ask for his help.  But mostly, I cook and Jack and I both like it that way.

But, and there is a but, Jack likes his sweet treats.  He seems to be struggling a little bit with the concept of me being a sugar addict and abstaining from sugar for the rest of my life.  Jack has participated in numerous food programs with me.  For the first six months or so that we were married I only prepared vegan foods.  He was OK with that.  Then it was vegetarian for a while.  I eventually added poultry and fish.  We now include pasture raised beef and pork in our diet.  When I decided to give up all wheat, he went along for that ride.  Then when I decided to do the Whole 30, he participated in that.  He’s been more than supportive, he’s actively participated in my various food program experiments because he has come to realize how much a healthy diet has improved his quality of life.  He recognizes, as do I, that the Whole 30 food program is the program that makes him feel and look his best.  Ever since we’ve been married he has fully participated in and not minded my various attempts at providing us with an optimal diet.  But when I came home after my first therapy session and said that I may be coming to terms with the fact that I am a sugar addict and, therefore, I may be coming to terms with the fact that I will never eat sugar again, he flinched.  He visibly flinched.  He does not like this idea.

I have thought about this a little but not a lot.  Mostly I have been inside my own head and I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about this.  But this thing with Jack is nagging at me.  He and I have to come to terms with this.  I have told him that it is my choice to not eat sweet treats, not his.  I am not going to ask him to give them up.  I am not even going to ask him to keep them out of the house.  I am not going to ask him not to eat them in front of me.  I acknowledged that I may have a weak moment now and then, and in those moments I might ask him to keep his treats away from me, but for the most part, I don’t think his treats being in the house will bother me.  Once I’ve made up my mind that this is forever, I’ve made up my mind.  Yet he still seems uncomfortable with my decision to abstain from sweets forever.  Is it because he is afraid that I will never bake cookies for him again?  He really likes my cookies.  I don’t know.  He and I will have to talk this through and figure it out.  I know that we will.  That’s what being in a partnership is all about, after all.

Now that I have had several days to process the concept that I am a sugar addict and all of its implications, I have had to conclude that never eating a sweet treat again is not that big of a deal.  So what?  What is sugar anyway?  It’s just sugar.  It’s just this thing that wreaks havoc in my body.  It has a huge allure, I am not denying that.  But I don’t need it and I most certainly don’t want it, anymore.  I’m done with sugar, and that’s that.   I’ll never eat it again.  I’ll figure the rest out as it comes.

That’s it for today.  I have cooking to do, a couple of kick ball games to play, and a week to plan for.

Have a beautiful day!