Back in early August, I started two things. First was to start to record my daily body weight which I took every morning.
The second thing was to start to eat clean.
My body weight in my view had become excessive, with my mid-summer weight coming in at around 253.6 pounds. I do recall seeing the scales tip north of 260ish last winter. I know that is not healthy and not me, but somehow I wasn't doing much about it.
Around August I started reading about clean eating and it was like a light bulb came on in my head. The more I read about food and what our body needs the more I could see how our American food industry is overrun with terrible junk. It seemed to me the highly processed junk foods we eat all the time are purposely designed to keep you hooked on high carb/high-sugar (Same thing) foods that really only make you sick and make you fat.
Well, I just cold-turkeyed the whole thing.
In one day, I just wrote off junk food and sugar and high-salt foods. We cleaned out the pantry leaving it practically bare. We took two carloads of crap out of there and gave it all away. Next, we cleaned two freezers out down to practically nothing. The same thing happened to the fridge. I started consuming vegetables, lean beef, chicken, and beans while watching the salt and sugar. I started studying labels and discovered that there are only very few products out there that are any good at all. I'd reckon that easily 90% of the stuff on the Kroger shelves is poison.
Starting this all off, my blood tests were not promising. I had begun to have plaque in my arteries. I was in the final climb to becoming diabetic. I was maybe a year from developing Cirrhosis of the liver. My glucose was in the 130's. Now, on the flip side I was exercising and had cut out sweet tea, and ice cream, but here's the truth: You cannot out-exercise bad eating.
Here's another: 75% of your health is in what you eat.
So starting there, I began my walk back to health and vigor. Now I do not expect a lot of the latter, about to turn 70, but some would be appreciated. I also have another cliff to scale and that is getting a new arrival, the auto-immune disease Rheumatoid Arthritis under control.
I will need medical treatment to get the RA, and smart folks are on the hunt there, but I can report great success everywhere else. While getting like, constant blood tests and MRIs and X-rays and Cat-scans and Ultrasounds and even an angiogram of my heart, I now know quite a bit about my body.
Yes, I have plaque in my arteries, but not very much. The heart workup shows me to have the heart of a 50-year-old man, so that's good. It seems I have a bit of a small liver issue, but diet can correct that. They studied my Kidneys and found them to be in great shape, they looked for a brain but did not find one, so there is that...
But not by dieting, but just eating good non-processed foods, and very little sugar, I have had an almost daily decrease in body weight. This morning I tipped the scales at 223.3. That is over 30 pounds that have shed and gone somewhere. I look and feel much differently. I started on the third belt hole and now I have progressed all the way to the last hole and need to punch a new one. All my clothes fit and except for this RA keeping me in a lot of pain most of the time, I try to remain active.
I feel that once the Doctors place me on the correct RA medication, I will be hitting the gym at a body weight I have not been at since at least the 1990's!!!
I can also say this is not easy and you need to be purposeful. You can't snack, should keep cheating to a minimum, and exercise your military self-discipline. You need to prepare healthy meals and eat them alone. You need support and you should educate yourself. I am reading "It Starts With Food."
You will go through a roller coaster for a time. You ARE addicted to sugar and when you remove that, all sorts of crappy things will happen to you. Good one day, bad the next. Emotional mood swings but a couple of successes. After a couple weeks things will start to normalize as you grow used to the new you. It is not easy but a good soldier can get it done, and so far, I think it was/is a good move.
