theboondork's RV blog

I'm the perfect weight...... if I was 7 feet tall.

12/10/2018

Another beautiful sunset at Ben Avery gun range.

Today dawned kind of cloudy and chilly but it cleared up and warmed up pretty quick turning into a very nice day.

I hopped up on the bathroom scale this morning and was rather perturbed to see that I still weighed 206 pounds, which was exactly what I weighed when I left my daughter's house the middle of October. I thought I was eating less since I'm on the road, and exercising a little more, very little more, but apparently not. I don't like it when I weigh over 200 pounds. I'm far more comfortable at 180 or even 190. But apparently I'm looking at those weights in the rearview mirror.

Here's what the problem appears to be. When I'm living at my daughter's house in the summer I'm being fed by too many good cooks that don't like to see a man starve, so I eat really well and put on weight. When I get on the road I eat less, but I eat far less healthy. And to make matters worse I snack a lot, which comes with being lazy and having plenty of free time to consume mass quantities of everything guaranteed to give you a stroke in 15 minutes.

I need to change my evil ways but I have found the older I get the more difficult it becomes. So the more weight I pack on the more lethargic I get, and the more lethargic I become the more weight I pack on, it's a vicious circle which can't possibly end well.

I'm pretty sure if I just stopped the nighttime snacks I would start losing weight. But nighttime is when I don't have much of anything to do except sit around and play on the computer or watch a little TV, and that's when the snacks just seem to jump into my hands.

Unfortunately this problem has been made substantially worse by this being the holiday season. If you're not aware of this already then take my word for it, the time from Thanksgiving to New Year's day is the worst time imaginable for trying to lose weight. Especially for people like me who were taught at a very young age that if you didn't eat all the food on the table there would be kids starving in China.

That didn't make a lot of sense to a 10-year-old me, and it makes even less sense now that Chinese kids all have cell phones. On the other hand you could say that by scarfing up all the food in the house when I was a kid makes me personally responsible for all those Chinese kids now having a better life. So I need to keep eating everything in sight to keep those Chinese kids from falling into poverty, losing their cell phones and eventually starving. That's a lot of pressure on me...... I think I'll go make a sandwich.

theboondork

One of the tour balloons taking people up for what must be an incredible sunset picture. These balloons are huge and have a basket that looks like it will carry 10 or more people.

12 Comments

Tim

12/10/2018 05:32:17 pm

Interesting that you should write about this - I have been on a quest the last few months to 1) Lose weight and 2) Drop my blood sugar. So, at the first of October, I started on the Keto diet, along with intermittent fasting, and have dropped a lot of weight. How much weight? I have no idea because I decided that I wasn't going to weigh myself since the scale is a terrible way to tell if you're dropping fat (water weight, muscle gain, etc. can affect the scale). However, I have dropped my blood sugar considerably, which is great and had to punch two new holes in my belt and need to do a third. Tomorrow, I have my annual physical, so we'll see what the doctor and the scale says.

The Keto diet may seem extreme, but I love it and it's been really easy to stick with - just think, you can eat all the bacon you want (which I burned out on after the first couple of weeks)! As far as the intermittent fasting, I just eat lunch and dinner and skip breakfast (and no snacking at all). It's been easy as well. Caravan Carolyn has been doing this for about a year and has dropped a lot of weight.

Oh, and I feel a lot better and my food bill has gone way down. I do have to pass on all the holiday goodies, but there are Keto substitutes. I did make some of the Keto deserts when I first started, but I'm strangely not interested in sweets anymore..

Tom

12/10/2018 07:14:38 pm

I glanced at the Keto diet just to see what it was and will read more about a little later. I've always been leery of anything with the word diet in the name, for the obvious reason that everybody goes on them, they all work to some degree or another because they all involve eating less food than you ate before. But very few people can stay on them because there's always some kind of regimen that sooner or later starts to interfere with life.

I also have doubts about the science behind some of these diets when last year's health food becomes this year's food of certain death, eating fatty foods comes to mind. Or some years ago when I had to stop cooking my popcorn in coconut oil, which was really heartbreaking since popcorn is one of the few items I can actually cook. And now coconut oil is a health food which you should not only be eating but you can rub it all over your body and you'll stay young forever.

My way to lose weight in the past was simply to eat less. I eat the same thing always did I just ate less of it and I always lost weight. The problem now appears to be I'm having trouble eating less, maybe I've lost some willpower, maybe gaining weight doesn't bother me as much as it used to, whatever it is I need to fix it before I'm relegated to having to weigh myself at truck stops.

I appreciate the heads up, I'm going to dig deeper into the Keto diet and see what it looks like, I just hope it doesn't ban coconut oil.

Tom

12/11/2018 09:06:19 am

I just got back from my annual physical and I've lost 21 lbs since my last visit and dropped my blood sugar way down (started the diet about 2 months ago). So far, I'm very happy with this diet and exercise program.

What sets this diet apart from other programs I've tried is: !) I never am hungry; 2) The food tastes great and I can get most of it anywhere; 3) I feel really good; and 4) I don't have any negative side effects (such as gas, bloating, light headedness, etc.).

Here are some of the negatives: 1) You may get the "Keto Flu" which is when you're body is switching over from burning primarily glucose to ketones. For me, it started on my third day and lasted for about 12 hours and then I was fine and felt really good. 2) You have to cook almost every meal yourself, because you never know what is in restaurant food and most prepackaged food won't work on this plan. 3) It's hard to eat out and you have to pass up all the sweet stuff and high carb foods.

So, basically this diet is high fat, moderate protein, and low carb. The low carb is what really helps with the fat lose and lower blood sugar levels because your insulin levels don't spike, which is the fat storage hormone. The moderate protein is there because too much protein can turn into glucose, but I've read conflicting reports about the importance of keeping protein moderate.

On YouTube, the three sites I follow is Dr. Berg, Dr. Bosworth (Dr. Boz for short), and Keto Connect (for recipes, etc.). They all have really good information.

This diet is not for everyone, but for me it's been a god sent and I wish I had discovered it years ago.

12/11/2018 11:04:18 am

Here's a good example of how lazy I am. I started writing a response to your comment and the response ended up being so long I decided I would just turn it into my blog post for today and kill two birds with one stone. I may be lazy but at least I'm imaginative.

Tom

12/11/2018 02:47:31 pm

Oh, one other note; I started at 216 lbs and I'm now at 195 lbs, so I lost about 10% of my weight. (Just in case anyone thinks I might be 650 lbs, in which case 21 lbs might not be very impressive).

12/11/2018 03:33:36 pm

You've done quite well losing that much weight and its bound to be good for you, but the proof of the pudding, sorry I used that metaphor to someone on a diet, is will that weight still be gone in a year.

That's always been my problem, I lose it then I gain it back, it's not a matter of if, it's always a matter of when. It seems like my willpower diminishes somewhere along the line, or my situation changes and I end up shopping in the candy aisle at Walmart.

I hope your diet works out better, and you willpower last longer than mine ever does because I really like to see people that are successful in whatever endeavor they choose.

Tom

Linda Sand

12/11/2018 03:37:13 pm

Another good source for keto information is Mark's Daily Apple blog.

12/11/2018 07:06:42 pm

Thank you for that suggestion, I look him up.

12/12/2018 08:49:35 am

I talk about this a little bit in the other blog post, but for me, the weight lose is secondary to the blood sugar stabilization. I really don't have a choice anymore. I have to stay on a low carb diet or I'll see a rise in blood sugar, medications to control it (and the side effects), and the complications from Type 2 diabetes. For me, it's not just a diet, it's a lifestyle in order to stay healthy. And, this is easy and I don't feel deprived. In some diets, I was starving and was just looking forward to the day that I could go back to eating "normally". Now, I feel like I am eating normally, just have cut out all the junk.

But, as I mention, I'm just sharing my results and not trying to evangelize for this diet. Will I maintain the weight a year from now? I don't really think in terms like that anymore; right now, I'm worried about what am I doing today to control my weight and blood sugar. It's like being an alcoholic (I'm assuming) - you just try to stay sober one day at a time.

12/12/2018 02:31:14 pm

You said the magic word, "lifestyle". that is the key to getting healthy and staying healthy. The word "diet" has the connotation of eating odd things in strange ways, which no one can keep doing for long so the diet almost always fails.

Changing our lifestyle is what most of us need to be doing because it's the only thing that really works. We need to simply eat less and move around more. Unless of course there's a dietary reason for eating certain foods. It sounds so simple, why do I have such problems doing it?

Once you mentioned lifestyle then I realized you weren't on a diet, and were on the right track. And I think with the things you have motivating you, sticking with it shouldn't be a problem.

You might also find that living the full-time lifestyle is so much better than trading the hours you have to live for money, it may give you even more incentive to take care of yourself.

Tom

12/13/2018 02:06:56 pm

As you've said: less calories in + more calories out = weight loss. The reason that Keto is helpful with that equation is that your appetite goes way down, plus you are reducing your insulin load into your system. Whenever I've tried to strictly reduce calories by not eating as much, but still eating a lot of carbs, it never sticks because I'm always hungry and counting down the days until I can go back to a "Standard American Diet" (which for me anyway, means I'll gain the weight back). Now, I'm never hungry and can go a long time between meals, when on most diets I'm eating more often and it's hard to reduce the calories in part.

I think you're right about the full-time life style giving me inspiration. I do want to be healthy enough to fully enjoy it.

12/13/2018 05:25:48 pm

Being free enough to live your life the way you want to live it is always a great reason to stay alive. Carpe diem.

I haven't had a lot of time to read up on the keto diet just yet I've been packing up and getting ready to leave tomorrow morning to find some new scenery. It also doesn't help that I have a one track mind and only want to concentrate on one thing at a time and can't get much else done until I get tired of thinking about whatever that was. In other words I'm no multitasker, some say I'm no tasker at all

I do find the keto diet interesting and at least it would allow me to eat some of things I actually like instead of the bean sprout and soy protein type diets. When I get settled into the Wickenburg Arizona area I will scour the Internet and become a keto expert overnight.

Tom

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I'm the perfect weight...... if I was 7 feet tall.

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