Why I started thinking about going vegan

Weight loss, weight gain, rinse and repeat: the story of my life. After my amazing weight loss, dropping 99lbs, from 324lbs to 225lbs, I jumped back up to almost 250lbs in a matter of two months. When I saw that I was astonished. I had been exercising, but I slipped up on my eating. Still, 20 pounds? Just like that? I needed help.

You need help, fat boy!

Just to get a professional opinion on the matter, and because I thought maybe medical intervention might be in order (via drugs, not surgery), I went to a medical weight loss clinic. During some tests, it was discovered I have a a complete right bundle branch block (rbbb). In short, this means that due to an electrical issue, the chambers of my heart beat sequentially rather than simultaneously. Usually this is safely ignored (it’s the left bundle branch block you have to watch out for), but it was a show stopper: they wouldn’t do anything until I was cleared by my doctor.

Immediately, I headed to my primary care physician who re-tested and saw the same thing. After comparing it to another EKG from five years prior, he decided further exploration was warranted. (The previous EKG did not show the block.) This led to having an echocardiogram a week later and a pulmonary function test (PFT) a week after that, since right bundle branch blocks, when not benign, are associated with either heart or lung issues. Luckily, it looks as if I’m cleared of both, except for maybe some allergy-related asthma starting to show up. According to the cardiologist, the block had been developing for a long time: there were signs of development in the previous EKG, and may have been intermittent, but never previously caught.

Still, I have heart disease. Sort of. Not the kind normally associated with high cholesterol or cardiomyopathy, but the kind which may be nothing more than a statistical anomaly. Good thing my life insurance is paid up, though.

(For the record, I’m currently at 240lbs. I was told by my cardiologist that the best thing I could do right now is exercise, so I’ve upped my routine to include 6+ miles per day walking at a brisk pace, keeping a heart rate of about 135bpm. Needless to say, I’m really hungry now. Hungry, but holding steady on the weight.)

Why go vegan?

When I found out about this–the rbbb–I started to look at more heart-healthy diets. After some reading I decided that a low-fat vegan diet made sense. It’s ironic that the rbbb was found when visiting a medical weight loss clinic where the plan was to go the Atkins, low-carb route.

There are a lot of reasons why I want to try my hand at veganism, but the two most important to me are as follows:

Ethics

Maybe I’m just a bleeding heart liberal, but I’ve always had a problem eatings things with a face. Not because I’m opposed to eating meat–in fact, I think that it’s a necessity, and a big reason why we humans grew capable of taking dominance of the planet–but because I’m opposed to the industrial complex which produces meat. Hunt it yourself? Have at it. Buying it from the store? You haven’t earned the right to eat that flesh.

Yesterday someone told me how their kid is now asking questions like “where do eggs come from?” This saddened me. A kid shouldn’t ever have to ask where the eggs he eats in the morning come from. They should know, because they should have seen it already. This is not an indictment against this kid’s parent, by any means. It’s a commentary on our society. We’ve grown too far separated from our food, and as such no longer revere it for the blessing that it is in abundance. In fact, we now see it as a curse. Therefore, the ethics of meat eating is quite possibly my biggest reason. Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals crystallized this for me, and put to words a sentiment that has been brewing inside me for quite some time. (To be fair, I do think he takes the sentimental arguments about the pain and suffering of hunted animals a bit too far. Note that I said “hunted”, not “electrocuted in a factory farm and put through a grinder”.)

Health

This the more contentious issue when going vegan. The first question we get is “Where do you get all your protein?!” For more informed individuals, the questions a more like “Where will you get all your zinc/B12?” Those are good questions. As for protein, the answer’s easy: some plants are LOADED with protein (spinach, beans, and quinoa come to mind). As for zinc and b12…well, I’m still learning. For the moment, those will come via supplementation.

Supplementation? What's that?

More important for me is the focus on the reduced cases of heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancer and hundreds of other conditions. The biggest reason, however is that my GERD doesn’t bother me when I go all vegan for a few days, although it does when I eat meat and meat byproducts. An anti-oxidant heavy, alkaline diet will go a long way in treating my GERD, as well as preventing the onset of Barrett’s esophagus. (Note that by vegan I mean fruits and veggies, not a bunch of grains. Processed or not, these still give me heartburn.)

For the record, I’m not knocking some of the other ways of eating out there, such as the so-called Paleo-diets, or the Atkins approach. I’ve done the Atkins diet and lost a fair amount of weight on it back in college. While I’m not interested in doing that now, I do find the paleo-diet is particularly attractive, and this vegan diet may shift to a paleo-diet sooner rather than later. Also, there’s evidence that higher protein diets will actually assist in the recovery of cancer. The theory is that cancer cells use glycolysis for fueling themselves, but are unable to switch to ketosis when the body reduces its intake of sugars. Without fuel, cancer starves.

Nevertheless, a far graver concern for me than cancer is diabetes, which runs strongly in my family (conversely, cancer is unheard of in my family). A low-fat vegan diet has been clinically proven to reverse and prevent diabetes, and although I am not diabetic, I am flat-line hypoglycemic, verified by a 2-hour glucose tolerance test. This means that if I don’t stop it now, it won’t be long before I do become a diabetic. Add to this the anecdotal GERD evidence and you can see why at this point in my life vegan seems like the best way to eat

What approach to take

The first diet that caught my attention was actually a raw food vegan diet. However, I’d tried this before, and after a few days without family support (no way I was selling this to anyone in my family, least of all my wife), this failed miserably. So I decided to scale it back.

Again, I actually thought that a paleo-diet would be a better way to go, but at this time my mind was flooded with the words “heart disease”. Over and over, I saw that a low-fat vegan diet (a la Pritikin) had been clinically proven to reverse heart disease. (The paleo-diet’s evidence was still not as solid.) Unfortunately, this didn’t apply to idiopathic right bundle branch blocks. Still, their claims that it also reversed diabetes, lowered cholesterol, and helped prevent cancer struck me as worth investigating.

After reading around, I found a couple of books to read on the subject matter.

• I’ll be starting with Rip Esselstyn’s Engine 2 Diet. The biggest reason was that it offered a very clear-cut way to get started, including meal plans, recipes, and shopping lists. Also, it’s an easy read, even though I have a few problems with some of the oversimplifications.
• After that I’ll be taking a look at Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever, by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman. If you know about Kurzweil, you know about his emphasis on longevity, which is why I’m interested in the book. True, it’s not strictly vegan, but I’m sure many of the recipes could be adapted, though mostly what I’m looking for is information.
• Next on the list is The China Study. This is one I’ve heard talked about over and over again, and it’ll be interesting to read the information there.

My reading won’t stop there. Books by Rip Esselstyn’s father, Caldwell Esselstyn, as well as those by Dean Ornish will probably make it to my Nook, bookshelf, or both. I’ll also be picking up The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat, because I’m honestly curious. How well I do by going vegan will determine whether I pick this up sooner rather than later.

For now, here’s how we’re starting: first, our fridge is empty. Time to shop. Second, we’re buying kitchen equipment. We needed new pots and pans because ours are ancient, and I want to move away from Teflon.

Family support

As I said, I’ve tried this kind of stuff before. this and other diets. My biggest reason for prior failures? Family.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just weak-willed, but unless I have my wife having a similar diet to mine, I find sticking to any diet difficult. For example, I’ve tried going vegan before, but having my wife bring leftover pulled pork, beef tips, and grilled from her work lunch eventually drove me back to meat. I’ve also tried the other way, going low-carb. Hard to do when chips and salsa are ever present, and when the pulled pork and beef tips are accompanied by corn bread. Given this history, if I’m going to have a chance at success, I need her on-board.

(Note: I’m not blaming my lack of will on her. It’s my life, and my choices which make it up. The fault lies entirely with me.)

Oh, just this once you fuddy duddy!

Considering her love of beef, selling her on a vegan diet wasn’t easy. Inadvertently, I found evidence that the diet could help with one of her more annoying (but not life threatening) medical conditions. Along with showing her that she could lower her cholesterol (which is ~225, although he has an HDL/LDL ratio that’s better than 1/1), and reducing the possibility of cancer (which runs in her family about as strongly as diabetes runs through mine), she decided to try it out. In fact, now she’s excited about it.

(For the record, my cholesterol is already low. Last time it was checked it was about 120 total, with an HDL of 42 and an LDL around 70.)

So what’s next?

Alright, so I’ve laid down my reasons and my plans. Now it’s time to get to work. But I think I’ll keep this on the down-low: I’ve already had people laugh at me and tell me about how they enjoyed a big, juicy burger that very afternoon, while others have, with concern and fear in their eyes, asked me ”So you’re only gonna eat nothing salads? I don’t think I could do that. I need some REAL food.” Then they laugh and try to get me to admit that plant-based foods aren’t “real” food. But this is the kind of stuff that happens whenever you want to do something which differs from what the rest of society does.

Anyway, time to get started. I’m thinking oatmeal, bananas, and all-natural maple syrup.

I am delicious. Eat me.

Side note: Special thanks go out to @thatgirlallie for kicking my butt and telling me to write something.

Before

Now

Before

Now

Note that I had lost just under 90lbs when the “Now” set of pictures were taken. I have since lost 10lbs more. Still, they’re accurate enough. My friend and I both said the same thing: Wow.

Academic Overview

The 48-Hour Bravo pH Esophageal Test monitors the esophagus (the tube connecting the mouth to the stomach) for 48 hours in order to determine whether the heartburn I’m feeling is really acid or something else. In this case “heartburn” actually means the burning in my throat, as if I’d just swallowed battery acid, rather than in my chest, as if my heart had burst into flames. (This might indicate another condition entirely, one called LPRD, or laryngo-pharyngeal reflux disease. It’s sort of like GERD, but felt in the throat, not in the chest.)

During the test, the doctor puts a 26mm capsule down the throat and sticks it to the side of the esophagus. A monitor is then given to the patient which records the capsule’s pH readings. These will, in theory, help determine if the person has GERD. Two days later, the monitor is returned. A week later the capsule will detach itself and go through the digestive track.

For more details on the test, including getting ready, check out the Cleveland Clinic’s information site on it.

My Experience

I went over to Tampa General Hospital to get implanted with the Bravo pH capsule. I got there, as per instructions, at 1:30 P.M. Got checked in, found the waiting room which overlooked Tampa Bay and Bayshore Blvd. The Wife, there with me, cracked a smile when she realized she “could see [her] old high school from here!” The soft music playing in the background made the scene like something out of a travel video. A few minutes later we looked at one of the nearby televisions and realized it was playing a travel video.

After an hour of watching, waiting, and enjoying the aroma of hot chocolate–especially aromatic considering I’d not eaten anything in almost 24 hours–the nurse stopped by with a device the size of a small-to-medium camera which I would, for the next two days, wear around my neck. This would be the external monitor, which would record all the transmissions sent from the tiny device which I would soon have implanted in me. Additionally it had three buttons which I would press every time I felt I had heartburn, regurgitation (food coming up to the back of my throat) or chest pain. Then she gave me a diary and told me to write down all my symptoms along with the time they occurred, making sure to use the time shown on the device itself, and not any other time piece. Beside the time, I would later find out, there was also a display of my current esophageal pH. I would later find this a very useful tool with which to experiment.

With all that said and done, I was brought in for the procedure. I laid down on a bed, clothes and all, and my gastroenterologist came in. He told me to gargle some numbing liquid–”DON’T SWALLOW IT!” he repeatedly reminded me.

“Aren’t you going to put me to sleep?”

“Nope. The procedure will take about a minute. The stuff you just gargled will numb your throat to quell your gag reflex.” As he said that, the nurse stuck a plastic ring in my mouth to keep it open, then strapped it to the back of my head. (Frighteningly S&M-ish.) Then he continued, “Alright, now I’m going to put this down your throat.” It was at that very moment that he pulled out this long, thin hoobajoob, about the size of my arm, out from under some desk. Oh, shit, I thought, as he asked me to turn to my side. “To make this a bit more comfortable I’ve lubricated the device with a bit of water-soluble KY-jelly.” Seriously, I didn’t need to hear that.

As I lay on my side, the doctor stuck the device in my mouth. When he got to the back of my throat he ordered me to swallow. As soon as I did he shoved the hoobajoob all the way down to just above my stomach. That’s when he turned the suction machine on. “Alright, now this will take about a minute, so just relax.”It took everything I had not to start heaving. All I could do was count. Seventy-two seconds later, he pulled out the hoobajoob. A monitoring device about the size of a #2 pencil’s eraser and ferule had been implanted in my esophagus. It would take about a week for it to dislodge itself and go through the Chamber of Doom.

The whole process, the laying down–the gargling stuff, the implantation–all took about ten minutes. It would be an hour before I ate or drank anything, as per doctor’s orders, seeing as the numbing agent I gargled also numbed the control valve which keeps food from accidentally finding its way into the lungs.

The Testing Period

Normal esophageal pH is somewhere between 4 and 7. If it goes lower it indicates that acid is being refluxed, since the stomach’s pH is between 1 and 2. If it goes higher it might indicate bile reflux, although the stomach sometimes as alkaline periods. (The pH of bile is above 8.) Sudden drops of pH (from 7.1 to 5.3, or 6.1 to 3.8) indicate acid reflux. During the testing period my pH went as low as 1.8 and as high as 8.6, possibly 8.8. All this as per the pH display in the Bravo monitoring device I now had hanging around my neck. (It really did look like a camera.) The vast majority of the time it stuck between 4 and 7, usually between 5 and 7. What this means, I have no idea. I will when I get my results back.

I was told to eat foods which would cause my symptoms, so the first thing I did was head to my parents’ house, where my father, a pizza restaurant owner for years, would be making pizza. It was delicious. Deeeelicious. I topped the pizza off with a small Starbucks frappuccinno. Yes, evil, I know, but these are foods I KNOW would bring about symptoms. There was one small hitch with my plan, however…

Did I tell you I have a bad gallbladder? Yeah, I do. Having it taken out sometime soon (probably in the next week). Runs in the family. Also doesn’t help that I spent more than my fair share of time pigging out to crapstacular food. Mia culpa, mia culpa. Problem now was all those highly acidic foods were also fatty enough to cause problems.

My gallbladder took its revenge on me not immediately, but rather the next day. (It holds grudges.) While I had heartburn after the pizza (the pH reading dropped as low as 2.0 for brief periods, but stayed mostly above the 4.0 mark), it wasn’t until the next morning that the problems really started. After my breakfast–a sandwich made of egg whites, wheat bread and kale, followed by a cup of vanilla almond milk–I started feeling bloated. Real bloated. Then suddenly I started having pains. I was having a gallbladder attack. This was at 9:30 A.M. It would be almost 7:00 P.M. that night before the attack passed. In the meantime, my pH fluctuated between way-too-acidic (pH 3) and way too alkaline (pH 8). Since I wasn’t able to eat or drink during this time, the test was pretty much ruined.

I tried to salvage the situation on the final day. I was feeling well enough to eat what I would regularly eat, including low-fat foods that would cause me symptoms, foods like barley, oats, and juice (although it never dawned on me to try out BBQ sauce). For the most part the worst food of the bunch was the barley, which always gives me problems after a while. Don’t know why, really. It goes down fine, but then about an hour later I start burning up. Same with oats. The pH monitor corroborated this observation.

Anyway, the test ended at 4:00 on the dot; that’s when the monitor shut down. I dropped it off at the hospital and was finally rid of the thing. I should be receiving the results sometime this week. At that moment all I cared about was that I could finally go back to doing things like sipping water throughout the day and eating mostly fruits and vegetables, things which I know keep my heartburn at bay, medications or no.

The hardest part of this test, gallbladder problems aside, was that I couldn’t take anything for the discomfort I felt. I couldn’t chew gum, couldn’t suck on hard candies, couldn’t drink water to wash out the acid, and certainly couldn’t take antacids. Hopefully, however, this test shows that things aren’t as bad as I thought they’d be, even though they’re obviously not good. Now that it’s over I’m only concerned with one thing: getting rid of the bad, un-salvageable gallbladder. That’s a story for some other time.

In case you haven’t had the pleasure, an EMG is used to test nerve and muscle function. The first part of the test involves being tazered repeatedly to check the nerve reactions. Also, to see whether or not your arms and legs flop around like fish when electrocuted. The second part involves being stuck with needles like you’d get at an acupuncturist’s, except unlike at the acupuncturists, these needles hurt, especially when the doc asks you to flex your muscles while the needles are inside. (Believe it or not, they’re listening to the muscles, which apparently sound like scratching an old vinyl record) Perhaps people in charge of performing EMGs would do well to invest in a few acupuncture courses.

About a week before the EMG I had an MRI of my brain done. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an open MRI, and while I’m not claustrophobic, I had to suppress some anxiety: being inside a tube where the walls are inches from your face and where you can’t even lift your arms will make anyone skittish about being there. My only saving grace was a well placed mirror, angled so I would see the outside of the tube, thereby giving the perception of some open space. My mom had actually come to the testing with me, so the sight of her in that small mirror was the biggest source of comfort. Still, I had to keep myself from going off the deep end of and wandering into panic attack territory, even unto needing to be taken out a couple of times between scans.

These tests were done because of complaints I had about headaches, facial and lip numbness, shooting pains in my right arm, numbness on my back and right thigh, and constant twitching on my right leg. To allay any suspicions of mini-strokes, multiple sclerosis, peripheral neuropathy, herniated disc, carpal tunnel, or various other nasties, the MRI and EMG tests were ordered. As I said, all normal. Turns out the headaches and facial and lip numbness were all due to migraines possibly brought on as a side effect to medication (particularly Nexium, but maybe also Domperidone) while in my other body areas I had longstanding pinched nerves.

Needless to say, I was relieved.

Brain tests aside, I’ve also recently been tested of Addison’s disease as a possible reason for my gastroparesis. It was a final test, and looks like it’s negative. No Parkinson’s, no MS, no scleroderma, no kidney issues. My only known issues are GERD and a malfunctioning gallbladder. (My HIDA/CCK resulted in an ejection fraction of 19%. Normal is above 35%.) The condition is therefore officially diagnosed as idiopathic, most likely post-viral in nature. Frankly, I think any actual gastroparesis I might have had has improved to the point where it’s simply dyspepsia amplified by a faulty gallbladder. Testing is ongoing, however. Gastroparesis or not, here’s where things stand:

• Current weight: 238 lbs
• Cholesterol: LDL 59, HDL 30, Total 119 (I have to improve my ratio, badly.)
• Blood pressure: 110/68 (average)
• Resting pulse: 60
• Fasting blood sugar: 84

Compare this to me 2.5 yrs ago:

• Weight: 324 lbs
• Cholesterol: LDL 110, HDL 37, Total 165
• Blood pressure: 160/100
• Resting pulse: 78
• Fasting blood sugar: 92

Come to think of it, the gastroparesis may have been a blessing in disguise: I don’t know that I could have lost that much weight otherwise. I certainly didn’t believe I could. I just wish blessings would stop disguising themselves as bodily injuries and health issues.

Anyway, my current goal weight is 200 lbs by year’s end. Maybe that’ll finally put an end to my GERD problems. (The condition has improved with weight loss, but it’s far from gone.) Well, that and the removal of my gallbladder, which my current doc has yet to approve. Of course, all of this is pending test results.

For those who can’t attend: While I have my own set of questions to ask him on subjects mentioned in his book Ending Aging, I’m interested in knowing what you would like to ask him. I’ll take a list of these questions and ask… as many as I can, which may well be zero. If allowed, I’ll even record it and post it on this blog. (Probably won’t be allowed, copyright reasons and all, but I’ll try it anyway.) Posts your questions in the comments sections. I’ll update this post in a couple of weeks with questions I plan to take (if anyone asks any questions). By the way, if you’re a real hard-core anti-aging researcher (and someone with considerably more brains that lil’ ol’ me), you may want to check out his first book, Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging.

For those of you who don’t know who he is and are wondering why I’m so excited or why you should care: Click on these links and read: SENS, Methuselah Mouse Prize, Rejuvenation Research. Also, watch this (Flash) video from his appearance at the TED conference:

Edit: Here’s another video.

I’m going up to Tampa this weekend to visit family, and my mom asked me to give her a list of what I can eat. So this post is for you, mom. Read it, enjoy, and remember that so long as the rules listed here are followed, I’m not limited to the foods mentioned herein. For the rest of you, here’s my very real, healthier eating regimen. It did not develop overnight, and every day I’m making improvements based on my research. Feel free to take what you like and discard what you don’t.

Now this post is all about food. I’m not talking much about supplementation. In fact, since my stomach is so weak these days (what, with the heartburn and all), I kind of have to keep that to a minimum, meaning that the bulk of my nutrition has to come from food. You’ll notice that some things are absent, like lots of beans and rice. That’s because I can’t seem to handle them well right now, but feel free to add these for yourself. What doesn’t work for me may work spectacularly for you.

Anyway, so, what am I eating these days? Well, what I’m eating is determined by a few rules which I’ll outline here, in no particular order:

• Organic as much as possible. Seriously, if the cost of the organic and the cost of the “traditional” is close enough, why not spend the extra bit to ensure that no pesticides get into your body?
• At least 60% raw foods. Obviously this means fruits and vegetables, but I just wanted to clear that up. Sure, I enjoy sushi, but that’s not part of my 60%. For those who can’t handle lots of raw fruits and veggies for one reason or another, steamed (and even boiled) are fine: you just won’t get all the nutrients.
• Nothing fried. Ever. Period.
• No artificial sweetners. This one I’m a little lax on, since sometimes it’s impossible to avoid them. Still, minimizing these as much as possible is the key. Between artificial sweetners, regular sweetners (honey, maple syrup, molases) and no sweetner, I’ll usually go for the no sweetner option, then the regular sweetners, then the artificial. High Fructose Corn Syrup is completely off the table, however, as is white sugar.
• Lots of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant-rich food and spices. Things like blackberries and turmeric have become staples at my house.
• Avoid gluten as much as possible. Going gluten-free isn’t all that easy, and it can be expensive, but my health has improved many-fold since I started really limiting my gluten intake.
• Avoid dairy as much as possible. Mostly this is to decrease mucus formation.
• Try lots of different salads. Yes, lettuce, spinach, tomato, broccoli, onion, peppers, and carrots are good, but expand a bit. Try some of the different types of kale, for example, or collard greens. Shitake mushrooms are also very good for you, as are bean sprouts, alfalfa, and radishes.
• Most fat should come from olive oil. That means increase olive oil and reduce other fats, not increase olive oil to the point where the total ingested is greater than the total fat content ingested via other foods.
• Most meat is fish, and that only 3-4 times per week. As for protein, nuts, soy and beans do good.
• Lots of papaya. It helps with digestion. (Taking DGL helps, too.)
• Tea. Lots of it, but keep it caffeine free. Rooibos is my favorite, and it has all the advantages of green tea. Also, avoid coffee in all forms.
• Make your own salad dressings. Seriously, it’s like 100 times better for you. And feel free to experiment. If you like mayonnaise and mustard, why not put them together and see how they taste? Need to water it down a bit? How about adding some vinegar or… well, water? And try a few spices out. In fact, make a game of it: get a few spices one day and start trying out flavors. Who knows, you might find something that’s utterly disgusting to everyone else, but which you consider heavenly.

Alright, now that those are out of the way, here’s what my basic diet looks like, and you can sort of see where these items apply:

Breakfast:

• 6 boiled eggwhites. Sprinkle with turmeric, salt (potassium or sea), ground flaxseeds and olive oil. Accompany with gluten-free crackers and fruit for some extra flavor. At the very least, add some fruit: a pear, an apple, or both.
• Buckwheat cereal with raisins, banana, and walnuts. This is eaten with either vanilla flavored soy, rice, or almond milk.
• Papaya smoothie: Papaya (or frozen concentrate with chunks, which Goya makes), banana, strawberry, soy/rice/almond milk, honey and protein powder. Proten powder can be replaced with high-protein powdered multivitamin breakfast drink.

Snack:

• Yogurt, fruit, and/or vegetable.
• If breakfast was not enough, a smoothie as described before is also a good choice, and very filling.

Lunch:

• A full salad. In addition to veggies, I’ll add turmeric, chickpeas, and raisins. Dressing is usually a mix of 3 parts olive oil, 3 parts balsamic vinegar, a bit of apple cider vinegar (maybe 1/2 part, more if you can stand the acidity), 1 part turmeric, a bit of sea salt, and 1 to 2 parts honey. Adding some tempeh or fish here is also good, but not necessary.
• Papaya smoothie is good here, too.

Snack:

• Same as before.

Dinner:

• Same as lunch. Just make sure it’s 3-4 hours before you go to bed.
• Sushi, or even better, sashimi. Nothing tempura. This is rare though, both because of cost and because usually sushi is accompanied by soy sauce, which contains gluten.

Desert:

• Peanut butter/jelly/raisin/banana mix with gluten-free crackers
• Soy ice cream.

Obviously, the meals mentioned here pretty much all lend themselves to being split up into 6 or 8 meals, so for those with digestive issues (count me among your number) this can be a very easy diet to follow.

And you may be wondering about calories. Fact is, I haven’t really looked at how many I’m eating, though I’ll venture to say it’s probably around 1900. All I know is that I’m never really hungry, I’m eating lots of nutritious and delicious food, my blood pressure is now that of someone 10 years my junior, I have lots of energy, and I’m losing weight.

Now if I could only get to working out more often. That’ll be my next project.

So what am I doing to fix my digestive system? A lot, actually, and I’ll be doing more.

First and foremost, medication: I’m currently on Prevacid, 30mg, once per day. While the medication seems to be doing what it’s supposed to be doing (calming down my heartburn, fixing my system), it’s also showing one very interesting, very negative side effect. It’s really, really expensive: around US$6 per pill. Ouch. Luckily, I have insurance, which means it goes from $6 to $5 a pill. Awesome, right?

To get around paying hundreds of dollars a month to save my esophagus, I’ve started to investigate buying medications from online from Canada. Risky, I know. But my research has taken me to the American Association of Retired Persons’s (AARP) website, which helped me find pharmacies and consumer groups they recommend for safe medications. That led me to PharmacyChecker.com, a site designed to help people find reliable, safe online pharmacies that ship to the US. Through them I was able to find a pharmacy that sold Prevacid’s generic cousin, Lansoprazole, for about 1/3 the price, or $2 per pill. (It should be noted that Prevacid is sold for as low as $1.50 per pill outside the US, and generics can be under a dollar. Now, if the difference between the cost outside and the cost here was less than FOUR FREAKING DOLLARS PER PILL, I wouldn’t mind paying the extra amount. Really, I mean, these guys did the research, they deserve to make some money. Just not by price gouging.) Mind you, cheaper isn’t necessarily better, and you have to read the customer reviews to ensure that you’re picking one that won’t take forever and a half to get you your meds. That’s why I chose to pay $2 per pill — including shipping — instead of $1, for now. Still, if you keep on top of things you’ll generally be pleased.

For the record, I received my pills over the mail a few days ago. They’re made by a company out of the UK, owned by an Israeli company. (From what I’ve read, Lansoprazole is only available in generic form in a few places, including the UK.) I started taking it last night. Let’s see how these work out. After taking them this morning (third dose) I found myself feeling pretty itchy in the stomach area (front and back), something that didn’t happen with Prevacid. Maybe it was a one-time thing.

Outside of the drugs, I’m also using a few supplements which I’m hoping will help both speed up the process and, more importantly, keep me healthier in the long run.

NOTE: The products I mention here are all linked to iHerb.com, which is where I get my stuff. If you decide to buy any of this stuff, use the referral code NOR434, which will save you $5 on your first order. (Disclaimer: I’ll also get a 2% kickback. It’s a win/win! Though I mostly did this because of the $5 savings because, let’s face it, 2% likely won’t be all that much, unless someone decides to spend $10,000 on stuff.)

For starters, I’ve started taking Deglyicyrrhizinated Licorice (DGL) (say THAT 3 times fast). Licorice has long been used to help ease stomach inflammation and DGL takes away the component of licorice responsible for high blood pressure, something I also have to keep a close eye on. Frankly, I hate the taste of licorice, but this stuff has helped out some. I first heard about it by reading Dr. Andrew Weil’s website.

In addition, I’ve also been taking Triphala, an Indian mixture of fruits which are known for helping gastrointestinal function. (FYI: The item linked is recommended, by name, by Dr. Andrew Weil, mostly because they actually standardize on the amount of tannin in the mix.)

Finally, I’ve been taking Natural Factors Liv-Gall Cleanse, which is designed to help liver and gallbladder function. It’s made from milk thistle, turmeric (which I also consume fair amounts of daily on my salads), dandelion and artichoke leaf. I just started using this so I can’t yet comment on its effectiveness. However, I have been feeling very good over the past few days.

Note that this is in addition to the stuff I was taking before.

One thing Ie noticed: I was on a very, VERY bland diet for the past two weeks or so (buckwheat cereal and almond milk, mostly) and when I started returning to more normal foods, I found myself getting some of the heartburn symptoms back. I’m not sure if it was because I was reintroducing foods, or due to the types of foods I’m reintroducing. In any case, after a few “breakthrough” days (when I had to take double-doses of Lansoprazole), everything returned to normal and now I’m feeling great eating the foods I knew to be safe before: vegetables, fruits, fish, and soy. I’m still uneasy about deserts (soy ice cream has caused some trouble recently, as has soy yogurt).

Also, looking for information online yielded the following, from Answers at Yahoo! Canada: “Yogic asanas which are beneficial in toning up the liver and gallbladder are: sarvangasana, paschimottanasana, shalabhasana, dhanurasana, and bhujangasana . . . Water Treatment: Regular applications of hot and cold fomentations to the abdomen improve the circulation of the liver and gallbladder. They also induce concentrations of the gallbladder, thereby improving the flow of bile. A cold hipbath improves the general abdominal tone . . . Exercise is essential as physical inactivity can lead to lazy gallbladder type indigestion which may ultimately result in the formation of stones.” In addition to the medication, I’ve also started doing some yoga in the mornings. I’ll slowly begin introducing the rest of these recommendations.

The end result’s been that using all of this stuff, one month after I started therapy I’m felling much, much better. I’m no longer in constant pain, I can eat just about anything (except for fried or very fatty foods), and am feeling better than I have in a long time (except for the odd joint/muscle pain here and there, something I need to investigate). I feel human again.

Here’s an interesting lesson I’ve also learned: you know how people always say things like “wow, you’re so courageous to be battling this chronic disease!” every time someone’s battling with something like cancer or ALS? For a long time I’ve always thought “you know, it’s not a matter of courage. They’re battling for their lives!” After going through what I did with this — months of constant pain, inability to eat, inability to sleep, dizziness, nausea, weakness, anxiety, depression, etc. since the gallbladder issue led to GERD, gastritis, esophagitis, and eventually some malnutrition — and after reading the emails from the Yahoo Gatroparesis group, I finally understand WHY it takes courage to go through a chronic illness: because when things get really bad in life the alternative starts looking really, really good. I salute all those who choose to continue living, even when it’s an every day battle.

A couple of weeks ago, I found out that I’m allergic to pretty much everything: dogs, cats, hamsters, roaches, grass, trees, dust… everything but mold and food. Ah, I see, I thought. So this is why I wake up every morning with post nasal drip. To help alleviate the symptoms, The Wife and I started taking a number of measures to reduce the number of allergens in the air: dusting the house more often, vacuuming more, keeping the dog off the bed and away from me, and requesting a move to an apartment without carpet.

By the way, did I mention I got a dog? About six months ago? It’s a puggle, a beagle/pug mix that’s both incredibly energetic and cute. Also for the last month, this dog has been metabolizing food directly into hair. While I knew I was allergic to dogs, for the record, I was essentially blackmailed into getting this one. (We couldn’t find a free or cheap hypoallergenic dog the Wife liked, and the puggle was both free and is incredibly cute. Think: the wrinkles and color of a pug on the body and energy of a beagle.) Needless to say, the beast hasn’t been good to my allergies.

Anyway, but even worse than the dog, I have dust. Lots of it. I mean, c’mon, I live in Florida, God’s waiting room. People here essentially fart the stuff. And it doesn’t help any that the apartment complex I live in uses a non-standard sized AC vent, so I can’t go to Lowe’s or Home Depot to simply pick up an AC filter there so I can replace the crap they put there with something that actually, you know, filters the air. No, I have to wait 3 months before they change the air filter that was supposed to be changed on a monthly basis. Disgusting.

So as you can see, even though I did everything I could, I still needed to do something to improve the air quality in my house. I started doing a bunch of research and found the Consumer Report list of recommended air purifiers. Near the top of that list was the Whirlpool Whispure 510. (At the top was its no longer produced cousin, the Whispure 450.) I looked for it on Amazon ($430), but found it cheaper at a store that specializes in clean air technologies. In fact, they had a sale and I got the units for about $130 less each. (Open-box units. Most people don’t like that aspect, but I don’t mind as much.)

You should know, I live in an 800sqft, carpeted apartment. The units I picked up clean a maximum area of 510 feet each. Result: with two units I can keep my house almost allergen free. Also, I’m an exagerator. So sue me.

I ordered the units about a week ago, with free delivery, and got them last night via UPS. Without hesitation I got them into the house, opened the boxes and started them off. Then the Wife and I grabbed our dinners and started watching Babylon 5. (I have the entire show on DVD and we’re up to the fourth season, when Sheridan gets captured by Clarke.) About 30 minutes into the show, I turn to my wife and ask, “Is it just me, or does the air seem thinner, lighter?”

She nodded. “Yeah, it feels cleaner.” This was all the proof I needed to justify my purchase.

Waking up every morning with post-nasal drip sucks. Seriously, when the first thing you feel in the morning is gunk at the back of your throat, it’s not a good feeling. I woke up this morning without post-nasal drip. It was awesome. If you have allergies, especially if you’re allergic to dust, I highly recommend the WhisPure 510. Not that I’m a great source of information or anything, but I’ve tried a few air purifiers and this has been by far the best one.

Disclosure: I’m getting a 3% kickback from Sylvane.com, the store I bought the units from, for this piece. They don’t want me to mention prices or the kickback, but I can’t keep that information secret: if I’m getting paid for a post, you’ll know. Here, I’m (hoping) to get paid for this post (mostly for the link, actually). Still, I really do recommend them. I wouldn’t be writing this about them or the product if I didn’t. (In fact, if you’re a long-time reader, you know I’m not averse to slamming a product or company when it needs slamming.) Also, the shipping was free and fast, and they often run specials, so check them out.

Edit:
1) I got my money! Same day, too. That was awesome.
2) Just went to my apartment for lunch. The place smells like a doctor’s office now. I mean that in the best possible way: the air’s totally, undeniably clean. It’s awesome. Now it’s time to see if the purifiers can pass my second test: cooking with turmeric.

My Own Numbers
Looking around on the web, I’ve seen a number of calculations which allow me to figure out exactly how many calories I need to maintain, gain, or lose weight. Here are some of them:

(Note that for all of these I’ll be using my own stats: I do light activity, walking 3 times per week, about 3 miles per day. Some weeks i do more, but recently this has been the pattern. I’m currently at 271.4 lbs (or 123.104 kg), 6’1 ft (or about 1.83m), and 28 years old. Oh, and male. Can’t forget that part. And since some of the numbers I’ll be running are in pounds, you folks using the metric system can use this handy dandy converter.)

Calculation 1

1. First, calculate your base metabolic rate (BMR), or how many calories you burn by simply existing, though hopefully you’re doing more than just laying in bed and watching daytime television, and therefore simply “existing.” (Unless you’re in the hospital getting better, then in which case, for the love of God, stay in bed watching daytime television so you can continue existing, at least corporeally. And better yet, instead of watching TV, read. Like you’re doing now.)
   • If you’re female:
     BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) – (4.7 x age in years)
   • If you’re male:
     BMR = 66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) – (6.8 x age in years)

   For me, this would be the following: BMR = 66 + (6.23 x 271.4) + (12.7 x 73) – (6.8 x 28) = 2865.45.

   (I know this seems like a lot, but… well, frankly, this isn’t the only one, and it’s the most conservative equation I’ve yet found.)

2. Second, calculate your daily activity. If you exercise above and beyond simply walking to your car or through the grocery store, then this is where you put it. (Of course, if you walk miles to your car or spend hours scooting up and down the isles at the grocery stores, then by all means count that as exercise, I guess. In fact, forget I said anything about cars or stores.)
   • If you get little or no exercise (leading a sedentary lifestyle), take your calculated BMR and multiply it by 1.2.
   • If you get some exercise (light exercise 1 to 3 times per week), take your calculated BMR and multiply it by 1.375.
   • If you get a moderate amount of exercise (exercise 3 to 5 times per week and do the equivalent of 20 miles weekly, walking 3-4 miles per hour), take your calculated BMR and multiply it by 1.55.
   • If you’re into hard exercise (very active, and working out 5 or more times per week, full workouts), take your calculated BMR and multiply it by 1.725.
   • If you’re a mountain climber, lumberjack or polar explorer (or anything that would be defined as “extra active”, meaning very hard exercise and a physical job or rigorous training), take your calculated BMR and multiply it by 1.9.

   (To see how different activities compare to others as far as burning calories is concerned, check out this article from the Harvard Medical School.

   In my case, I’m in the light exercise category, though I sometimes go to the moderate exercise category, and sometimes, rarely, I’m totally lazy. (I haven’t done hard exercise in a few months.) Using my previous BMR, for light exercise, I need 2865.45 x 1.375, or 3939 calories per day if I don’t wish to lose or gain weight. If I’m not exercising (and not laying in a hospital bed, then I need 2865.45 x 1.2, or 3438.54 calories per day if I don’t wish to lose or gain weight. At least, according to this formula, though it seems kind of high to me. Of course, being at 271.4 lbs, if I don’t do any exercise, then I’ll probably end up with diabetes. Needless to say, this is less than desired.

   So, if I wanted to lose weight, I should probably either eat 500 calories less per day than the required for my daily activity, exercise a lot more, or do a combination of the two, by eating less and exercising. (I’ve been taking that last approach recently, and have lost about a pound a week since January 1 of this year. I started the year at about 276.5. I can’t say it’s even felt like trying, really. When I want to feel “full”, I stuff myself full of salad, and always make my own mostly-vinegar based dressings. I also don’t really drink sodas, don’t eat fatty meats, don’t eat pasta or too much bread, and my only real big sinful pleasure is a Starbucks Frappuccino. A few times a week. Though I make it a point to exercise some more on the days I do have one.)

   If I wanted to maintain the same weight… well, I’d probably eat more and do some exercise. check out this bit from the Harvard article linked above:

   A sedentary (inactive) lifestyle increases the chances of becoming overweight and developing a number of chronic diseases. Exercise or regular physical activity helps many of the body’s systems function better and keeps a host of diseases at bay. According to the US Surgeon General’s report, Physical Activity and Health (1), regular physical activity:

   • improves your chances of living longer and living healthier
   • helps protect you from developing heart disease or its precursors, high blood pressure and high cholesterol
   • helps protect you from developing certain cancers, including colon and breast cancer
   • helps prevent or control type 2 diabetes (what was once called adult-onset diabetes)
   • helps prevent arthritis and may help relieve pain and stiffness in people with this condition
   • helps prevent the insidious loss of bone known as osteoporosis
   • reduces the risk of falling among older adults
   • relieves symptoms of depression and anxiety and improves mood
   • controls weight

   Finally, if I wanted to gain weight, I’d probably exercise more (if I wasn’t already) and eat more of the right foods. (And no, the Starbucks Frappuccino is not a “right food”, I know. But… well, it’s not all that bad. At least if you get the light one. Check out the nutrition info on the Starbucks site, or better yet, check out the Calorie King database.)

Calculation 2

1. First, figure out your BMR by taking your current body weight (in pounds) and multiplying it by 11. In my case, this is 271.4 x 11, or 2985.4. Again, the BMR (base metabolic rate) is the number of calories you use up by simply existing. (I wonder what Descartes would say about that?)
2. Second, figure out your metabolic factor. This is where you take into consideration what you feel your metabolism is like. For example:
   • if you look at a taco the wrong way, or breathe in too deeply at a restaurant, do you start gaining weight? (“Is it just me, or did the air just get fatter?”) And is it hard for you to take off weight, even when dieting? Then you, my friend, have a slow metabolism, and you’re probably one of these people who have been “heavyset” all their lives. (I count myself among this number.)
   • Now, what if it’s not that bad for you? What if you’re the type that can gain weight if you try (or simply ignore all conventional rules of health) and don’t have much trouble losing weight if you really want to? Then you probably have a moderate metabolism, and you’re probably not fat, but you’re not skinny either. And it’s probably been that way most of your life.
   • Finally, we have the high metabolism folks. You’re the envy of the industrialized world, the person who can eat just about anything and still look great in a bathing suit. For you, gaining weight is pretty hard, and you’ve likely always been the skinny kid. And if you want to lose weight–though you probably don’t–then it’s as easy as thinking about it, or at least it seems that way to the rest of us.

   Now it’s time to pick your metabolic percentage:

   • For you with slow metabolisms, here is your metabolic percentage, based on your age:
     • Under 30 years of age: 30%
     • 30 – 40 years of age: 25%
     • Over 40 years of age: 20%
   • For you with moderate metabolisms, here’s your metabolic percentage, based on your age:
     • Under 30 years of age: 40%
     • 30 – 40 years of age: 35%
     • Over 40 years of age: 30%
   • For you with fast metabolisms, here’s your metabolic percentage, based on your age:
     • Under 30 years of age: 50%
     • 30 – 40 years of age: 45%
     • Over 40 years of age: 40%
3. Now, multiply your BMR by your metabolic percentage to get your metabolic factor. Since I’m 28 and have a slow metabolism, I have a metabolic percentage of 30%. That means that my metabolic factor is 2985.4 x .30, or 895.62.

   (By the way, you can speed this up with exercise, but not all that much, really. You can maybe move one metabolic level up. For example, if you’re under 30 and have a naturally moderate metabolism, but are a long distance runner, then you probably should use the fast metabolism numbers for your age bracket.)

4. Finally, add the BMR to the metabolic factor to get your total calories needed per day to maintain your weight. In my case that’s 2985.4 + 895.62, or 3881.02. Like with the previous calculation, this number seems a bit high to me, but whatever.

   Like before, if you want to lose weight, then you’ll probably want to either cut back 500 calories per day, or do 250 calories more of exercise and cut back 250 calories from your daily intake. If you want to stay the same, then… well, keep your caloric intake, though I’d still recommend exercise. Finally, if you want to gain weight, start eating more of the good foods, and keep exercising.

Online Calculators

If doing math is not your thing, or of you want to see other calculations (like those which take your height and specific age into consideration), then take a look at the following links. These are some of the online calculators I found. Try out a few and see which you like. Most of them will give you different results, though.

• American Cancer Society
• ShapeFit.com (everyone remember Tony Little?
• CalorieControl.org (this seems to be the most accurate, at least to me.)
• WebMD’s Metabolic Calculator

As you’ve probably guessed, there are more online, and a simple Google search will turn up a whole internet-load of them.

Conclusion: On Food

Throughout all of this, you’ve seen me say that these numbers seem kind of high. The fact is that they might be, or they might be correct. All of them. But the question stands as to whether they’re correct for me, or more importantly, for you. As of now, I’ve been eating about 2,100 calories per day, though I should probably cut down on the fats (like olive oil, which I use copiously, or nuts) and increase my fruit and vegetable intake. That seems to be working fine, since i allows me to eat like I want without feeling like I’m overeating or under-eating, or like I’m depriving myself of any of the foods I enjoy. Of course, your goals will probably be different. If you’re looking to gain weight through weight training, then you might want to head over to Strong Lifts and see what you should be doing. There’s a ton of info on the web and while all of it isn’t good, it’s usually a good place to start, since it’ll help you develop questions you can ask your doctor, nutritionist, fitness instructor, or the local fitness and nutrition guru.

Of course, one recommendation I (and I’m sure everyone else you talk to) will make is to, at the very least, work at improving the quality of the food you take in. Remember, high-nutrition is what you want, not high calories. (This is the basis of the whole CR movement.) What’s been amazing to me has been the complete shift in my taste buds once I started doing things like watching my sodium intake or eliminating partially hydrogenated oils. I no longer eat Chinese food (well, on very rare occasion, and even then, I can only stomach very little of it), I rarely eat pizza anymore (a special treat for once in a while, but too much makes me feel like crap), I no longer eat fried foods (my stomach just can’t handle them anymore), and I’ve even stopped eating high-glycemic breads, like bagels. The end result has been that my fruits and veggies are now more flavorful than ever, and that I enjoy eating because I can eat until I feel full — which takes less than before — without feeling guilty over the calories, since they come now mostly from salads. (And raisins. I love raisins. Especially in my salad.) I’ve also found that by switching the way I eat, I now eat a lot in the daytime — at 8, 10, lunch at 11:00, snack at 3:00 — and very little at night (dinner at 6:30), which capitalizes on my metabolism cycle.

By the way, if you’re switching what you eat in order to eat healthier, even if you’re eating the same number of calories (and therefore getting more nutritional value for every calorie you put in), you’ll want to watch out for the “healthy fast food” trap. Now, I know most of us will at one point or another tell ourselves, “Hey, that place over there is fast food, but if I get something from their healthy menu, it won’t be bad!” The fact is that many of these places put stuff in the food that otherwise wouldn’t be there. They don’t do this to be evil, mind you, just as a way to mass-produce and mass-distribute the stuff. In fact, check out this article on some of the surprise ingredients in fast food. Now, that’s not to say that eating a Whopper from Burger King is just as bad as a Veggie sub from Subway, but the best thing to do is to buy the food at the grocery store and make it at home. Yes, it’ll take some time, but you’ll be much healthier and happier for it.

I hope you’ve found this article helpful. If you have, or if you have any questions, feel free to post them there! Finally, remember that when it comes to what to eat, how much to eat and when to eat, the rules are simple: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables.

Will. Discipline. Hard work. Five years ago, at 415 pounds, Roman Grandy dwelled in a cavelike place where none of [those] existed. It was a world of Oreos, fried pork chops, deep despair and self-loathing. Roman, now 35, had been headed that way for decades… [When he was 30], he ran into his childhood snacking buddy [and best friend]. Equally overweight, his friend was trailing an oxygen tank. A few months later, Roman’s mother said that his friend had died of a heart attack.

(You can read the whole thing here.)

That last line tore at me, deeply. A lot of what this guy talks about in this story — the looks, the jeers, the squeezing in and out of cars — I’m all too familiar with. Though I never made it to 400 lbs — and I do thank God for this, because it wouldn’t have been hard for me to do, given my lifestyle — I know his feelings. (As he so aptly puts it, “It’s different for a thin person. They’ve never been where you’ve been. I know what it’s like to squeeze into a car, to squeeze out of a car.”)

Anyway, as regular readers know, one of my goals for this year is to drop 50 pounds in a healthy manner. Reading stuff like this makes me realize just how doable this really is, even if I’ve never in my life been what could be considered “thin”. I just keep reminding myself that after losing those 50 lbs, I’ll be the lightest I’ve been since 8th grade.

Mike’s question:

Have you ever spoken to anyone who suffers from panic attacks who has symptoms that are occurring daily? I mean either everyday, at night or in the morning, I feel this “body buzzing” or palpitations, and at several points throughout the day one or another types of symptoms hit me: A little dizzy, not breathing right and so-on. The only difference is that sometimes its worse than other times, and it makes it difficult to figure out what the triggers are.

First of all let’s talk about the symptoms themselves:

The body buzzing you’re talking about is called paresthesia, and it’s caused by your blood’s sudden drop in oxygen. People get panic attacks because, for one reason or another, the body suddenly produces an extremely large amount of adrenalin. (It’s as if the adrenal gland is suddenly stuck on “ON”.) This causes your body to think it’s going into exercise mode. Because nothing is happening physically yet (you’re not running around or trying to kill a bear or something), your mind kicks in the “fight or flight” response. (This is why when people have panic attacks they want to just get away from where they are.) When fight or flight kicks in, your body goes into intense physical activity mode, and because you likely haven’t been doing intense physical activities, some parts go out of whack, like increased carbon dioxide production by your body, which gets dumped into the blood and depletes the cells of oxygen, which then causes you to get that tingly sensation.

The palpitations are very similar. Palpitations are actually caused (usually, in this case) by your heart thinking it’s not beating right. Think about it this way: your heart’s pumping all the time. Inside, it’s like your heart has a battery which tells it when to pump. Your heart also has a backup battery, which kick starts the heart if the first battery, for some reason, stops pumping (like carrying an extra battery in your car, in case the first one fails). Once in a while, that second battery kicks up, like a twitch, even though the first battery’s doing fine. This causes there to be a sudden overlapping in signals, which causes the heart to go from and even (and silent) “thump… thump… thump” to an uneven “thuthump,thump, thuflomp… thump… thump… thump”. This uneven beating can last for a little while, but shouldn’t last more than a few beats. (If it does, or if it happens a lot during the day, see a cardiologist.) Thing is, most people can’t feel that irregular beating. Some people are really sensitive to stuff like this and can feel it. I’m one of those, and frankly, it scares the crap out of me when I do.

As for the other symptoms, again, they’re caused by the different effects adrenalin has on your system. Check out this Wikipedia page on panic attacks and follow the links for information. I, as a hypochondriac, have found that learning about what’s going on is rather comforting, since I know when to say “this is serious” and when to say “this is normal”. Knowing these distinctions has been one of the keys to my overcoming panic attacks, especially in the beginning.

Now, the question remains as to how we stop the adrenalin from being dumped into our system in the first place. There are two possible reasons for this happening. In the first, we have an actual physical problem with the adrenal gland. Only a doctor can tell you whether this is truly the case. In the second (which is over 20-times more common) there’s no physical problem, there’s just stress in the system. Usually this stress is caused by a specific set of triggers which, unless identified, will keep going off. The downside is that this is a pain in the ass, since it’s scary as all heck. The upside is that this is just your body trying to defend itself: it’s doing what it’s supposed to do in protecting you from all harm, real or perceived. Problem is, it’s doing it at the wrong times.

The question in hand is how to find the triggers, especially if the attacks are happening all the time.

Here’s the deal: from my experiences the triggers could only be really spotted during the big attacks, the ones where you feel like you just HAVE to run away somewhere safe. The small attacks had me thinking I was claustrophobic, since all of my attacks happened in enclosed areas and I always wanted to run outside. The big attacks provided the clue here, since they only happened when a certain precondition was met. (In my case I felt under pressure because I felt someone or something was watching or judging me.)

What I found more interesting is that at first I couldn’t identify where the attacks came from because I nothing new seemed to be happening to me. Indeed, it was as if they simply showed up one day, since I had always felt (and feared) that feeling of being watched (but hadn’t identified it as such).

To identify where this was coming from I made a list of what was going on during each attack: what I was thinking, what was going on around me, the sounds, the smells — everything. From there, I drew up a couple of possible conclusions. Of course, the actual answer wasn’t yet among these, but that didn’t matter.

First, I thought that maybe it was my relationship with The Wife that was the problem. I was hesitant to tell her this for very obvious reasons. Instead I looked at other things — unhappiness with the job, possible bodily stress from having recently lost a bunch of weight — but this was the most pressing thing. Specifically, it was involving the idea of kids, since at that time she and I had been discussing kids and the finances required to take care of one (or more), and two of the big attacks came while we were at Toys R Us (KIDS!) and when people in my office were talking about running a marathon for autistic kids (KIDS!). Also, at the time, we were having a few problems in communication, specifically dealing with our differences in modes of expression (I can talk about that later if you so desire).

For the record, the small attacks were most often triggered by me being afraid of an attack (loopback). However, often they would strike up as soon as The Wife and I got together. That wasn’t a good sign at ALL. If SHE was the cause of my attacks then… well, I’m sure you can imagine the possibilities I refuse to delve into.

Eventually I manned up and talked to her about this. While it felt good to get it out in the open, it didn’t resolve the problems. Sure, the attacks stopped for about a week, then *WHAM* another round of attacks hit.

On the bright side, it wasn’t The Wife causing my attacks. (FYI: Confrontation here helps. If you think your attacks can be attributed to a person, or rather, something about that person, then confront them with it. Be totally honest and tell them “You creep me out!” No, just kidding. Don’t tell them that. Tell them, however, that you’re trying to work through this, and you’ve narrowed down the possible reasons to something this person’s doing, so you need to let them know so they can either change that (if they can) or so you can figure out how to cope with it.)

On the down side, I still had the attacks. This is when I started wondering whether this was biological. I went to a cardiologist, got a heart monitor they stuck on me for a month, and went about it that way. The results? I was sensitive to heart palpitations, which just means I’m more in tune with my body than most people. However, this was not abnormal in any way, shape or form, and most people went through that every day. It has no adverse effects, other than being annoying and scary to those of us who can feel them.

My biggest clue came when I had an attack in my car. I was driving from the library back to work (it was my lunch hour), and while I only had 5 minutes before I had to be back, I still had to fill up the car with gas and grab lunch. I was listening to a recording of George Orwell’s “1984″ (which is ALL about being watched by “Big Brother”) when it struck me. Now, up until then I had NEVER had an attack in the car. In fact, I actually looked to the car for refuge, since I feel freer when I’m driving.

I lowered the windows, went into a neighborhood road, and turned up the music. About 10 minutes later the attack subsided. (By the way, there are 2 types of attack: the big ones, which only last about 20 minutes, and the small ones, which can drag on for hours.) Was it my job or office that was the problem?

I had experienced problems at jobs before — especially during my last job, where I WAS constantly watched by the owner, who sat behind me and would yell regularly at me — but this one had been great about that. I had my own office (still do), I could work from home (still do), and I had a fairly flexible schedule (come in a little late from lunch? Make up at the end of the day, no problem). Also, while there are stressful periods in my job, this was not one of them. In fact, I was utterly relaxed.

I thought back to the idea of kids. Why kids? Money. Kids made me think about money. Jobs made me think about money. One of the attacks came in a toy store, when The Wife and I were thinking about money. So money had to be it, right?

After thinking through that, I realized that wasn’t the case. We weren’t having money problems at that time. In fact, we were saving more than ever. (Well, actually we’re saving/investing a lot more now, almost 20% of our incomes. Within a year, it’ll be 30%!) But yet, this seemed to be the tying factor.

That night, I watched Spiderman, an it hit me: with great power, comes great responsibility.

A kid means a lot of responsibility. A job is a lot of responsibility. Handling money properly is a responsibility. So was I afraid of responsibility? No, I figured that this wasn’t it, but having responsibility means you’re responsible — or accountable — to someone or something. In the case of money and kids, it’s the future: what does the future hold? The future is looking at your actions now in order to shape itself. The future, I felt, was watching me, and it wasn’t happy with what I was doing (I had at that time abandoned a long-worked at financial plan which wasn’t working out as I’d expected, but in which a lot of hope had been vested). At my job, I felt I was slacking off because I wasn’t being barked at all day long, and I felt I was being watched then, like the calm before the storm. And of course, both of these dealt with money, which is what I have to subside on now, which of course means I’m being watched by my creditors (bills). The Wife is a responsibility, and I was therefore feeling that my actions were being judged by her, as well.

I was being watched.

Once I realized this, once I put this all together, it started to make sense. I had always been a workaholic. In fact, I can’t be happy UNLESS I’m working and under some pressure (something my psychologist has been working to break me out of, for obvious reasons). This, conversely, had an effect on my stress levels, which fired up my adrenal gland, which released adrenalin and triggered the attacks. If I felt I wasn’t doing work, then I felt as if I was slacking off and my fears of failure and disappointing those who were watching me (the future, my bills, my boss, life…) would fire up an attack.

I talked about all this with a lot of people: my wife, my parents, some friends who had themselves experienced attacks, and by that time my psychologist. That last one was most important because he showed me how that tied in to everything that was going on in my life at the time, including how I handled my relationships, how I viewed myself, and how I coped with stress. He talked to me about something called over-excitabilities and positive disintegration, developed by his teacher Kazimierz Dabrowski. In short, where most people receive one amount of stimulation they’ll return one back. I was returning four-fold back.

At this point, he taught me how to meditate and calm my mind. I’m still working on this, but my recent delving into writing and reading for fun (as well as profit) has helped this immensely. No longer do I feel like I owe something to other people in excess of what I truly owe then, and no longer do I feel at the mercy of my environment, but realize fully instead that I control it.

To delve further into this, he gave me an IQ test, as well as a number of other personality tests. Almost as predicted, the tests showed that I’m prone to over-excitabilities. This was the reason my stresses got to the level they did, causing panic attacks.

I won’t guarantee that this is what’s happening to you — those of us who have attacks do so for very different reasons — but my methodology is what I want you to understand. It was that very deliberate noting and studying of observable evidence which led me to the right conclusion. It took me about 2 months to get all the evidence I needed, but once I did, once I put everything together and found the answer.

It is my sincere hope that this helps. If you read this and find this helpful, please drop me a line telling me so, and if applicable, how you may have had to modify it in order for it to work for you.

It was Monday morning. The 20 minute drive from home to work through the crowded interstate and cluttered local roads was accompanied by the book-on-CD version of Issac Asimov’s I, Robot, instead of the usual political talking heads and local news chatter. Calm drive, really, just full of traffic. Got there around 8:30 AM.

By about 10 I had already settled down, checked my email and started on some work which I knew would eat up the better part of the week. That, of course, is what they pay me for, so no complaints there. In fact, I was still playing out some of the nuances from I, Robot in my head. At about that time, I started feeling a sharp pain in my chest. At first I thought my shirt got caught on a couple of chest hairs (yes, I have chest hair. Not much, but it’s there). I scratched it thinking it would go again, but it didn’t. Suddenly, I felt tingles going through my chest and making their way into my arms and hands, which had become numb. I started feeling dizzy and as if I was about to black out. Suddenly, my heart misfired and started speeding up:

Thump… thump… thump… KAthump… flump…………………. flump……………………. thump..thump..thump.thump.thump.thumpthumpthumpthumpthump…

I stood up. This can’t be, I thought. Was I having a heart attack? I needed to walk around.

I got out of my office and walked up and down the office building, thinking that if I just walked around a little my heart rate would calm back down. Maybe… maybe if I got some water…

thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump…

I had always been able to control my heart rate to an extent. Unlike most people, I can feel my heart rate by simply concentrating on it, and with a little controlled breathing I could usually speed up or slow down my heart as needed. Not today. My hands felt cold, numb, and they were trembling wildly. My tongue felt as if it had grown in my mouth and was now trying to choke me, I felt short of breath, as if having an asthma attack, and I felt disconnected, like if everything I was seeing was part of a dream.

Something is definitely wrong, I finally admitted to myself. I didn’t want to go to the hospital, didn’t want an ambulance called, but if this really was a heart attack then I better just admit it.

It couldn’t have been a heart attack, could it? I’m too young. Sure, I’m overweight, but I’ve lost a lot of weight recently. I’d been eating healthier than I had in years, and exercising more. This couldn’t be happening to me now, could it? And if I went to the hospital, if I admitted something was wrong, would I die?

I went to the office manager, still trying to convince myself that if I could just get my mind of whatever I was thinking this would all go away. “I’m not feeling too well,” I said. I then asked her to talk with me. Scratch that, I told her to talk with me. After a minute the realization had grown in my mind that I should be going. Apparently she felt the same way.

“You want to go ahead and go home?” she asked, in her light Brazilian accent.

“Actually,” I said, struggling with the words, “I think you need to call an ambulance.”

While calling 911, one of the other workers stopped by. “Are you OK?” she asked.

“Uhm… no,” I said, with a shaky voice. I was now sitting in the office manager’s seat with my legs on another chair, raised, parallel to my hips.

The worker then left and came back with another person, an ex-nurse now working as a computer programmer. She did a couple of minor checks on me and talked to the 911 operators. After a minute she told me, “I don’t think you’re having a heart attack, but I don’t know what’s going on.”

She stayed with me for what seemed like a long while. In reality it had only been about ten minutes since I first started noticing the symptoms, but every minute lasted for an hour.

Just before the EMTs came I called The Wife.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Hey, hon,” I said in my still-shaky voice. “Listen, I’m not feeling well, I need to go to the hospital.” As I said this, the EMTs walked in. “I want you to know I love you. I gotta go.” Click.

As I got poked and probed by the emergency medical technicians (EMTs), an EKG revealed that my heart was healthy. Pumping fast, but healthy. My blood pressure was high, 151/73, but that, I was told, was expected after whatever I had just gone through.

I was taken to the hospital which, lucky for me, was right across the street. There I was again poked and analyzed, turned and x-rayed, and poked again. (Blood was drawn six times, from six different places during my time there. By students. I’m still sporting some of the bruises.)

A few hours later, after The Wife had come to the hospital, after a visit from my boss who observed that my shoes had not yet been taken off (“That’s a good sign,” he noted), and after trying my best to extract information from whoever was looking at me at the time (including the x-ray technicians, who let me look at my x-rays, see my heart, and commented that I had “huge lungs,” after revealing that at least one of them was a deep-sea diver), I was let go. By now it was 2:00 PM and all I wanted to do was rest, and enjoy the fact that I was alive. (In fact, the original name for this portion of the story was “Yesterday I Died. I Was Born Today.” This seemed a bit too melodramatic, though vis-a-vis what I discovered next.)

For the next few days I took it fairly easily. I worked from home, slept a good amount, and made sure I had nothing to worry about. I opened the windows, spent time out in the porch, smelled the air, and tasted my food with a curiosity that can only be attributed to someone who’s appreciating life for what it is.

I had a meeting with the cardiologist a couple of days after the incident, as well as a meeting with my family practitioner. Nothing new came from any of those meetings.

The cardiologist — a surprisingly attractive Brazilian woman who looked like she was in her late tweens/early 30s and therefore almost too young to be a cardiologist; I felt as if in a television show — took another EKG and scheduled an echocardiogram, but said that neither the blood work nor the EKG revealed anything abnormal. (“Your EKG looks good,” she said to me. “Phenomenal, in fact.”) She ordered another blood test to check for thyroid problems, which I had revealed to her run in my family. I don’t know much about these, however, only that my grandmother has problems with her thyroid, and that she’ll fall asleep in the middle of telling you something. By this time I didn’t fear the sting of the needle any more: I had apparently been downgraded to pin cushion, and a pin cushion need not fear piercing. I was also ordered to pick up a 30-day heart monitor to record any future incidents. Aside from caffeine-induced heart palpitations, I hoped this thing didn’t record anything else.

The family practitioner — Dr. MK I’ll call her, since I’ll likely be referring to her in the future — said something along the same lines: EKG looks fine, bring back the blood test results, and keep wearing that heart monitor.

The days following the initial incident I had felt fine. In fact, I felt better than fine. I felt great! Better than I had in… years? Certainly seemed that way.

As I studied this another possibility arose, one which had been mentioned by a few people, but which I didn’t want to accept: that what I had gone through was a full-blown panic attack. I went to the usual sources for information about this sort of thing — WebMD and Wikipedia — to see what they said about it. Here’s the Wikipedia description:

A panic attack is a period of intense, often temporarily debilitating, sense of extreme fear or psychological distress, typically of abrupt onset. Though it is often a purely terrifying feeling to the sufferer, panic attacks are actually an evolutionary body response often known as the fight-or-flight response occurring out of context. Symptoms may include trembling, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, chest pain (or chest tightness), sweating, nausea, dizziness (or slight vertigo), light-headedness, hyperventilation, paresthesias (tingling sensations), and sensations of choking, smothering and dreamlike and disconnected sensations. During a panic attack, the body typically releases large amounts of adrenaline into the bloodstream. Many first time sufferers of a panic attack believe they are dying, going insane or having a heart attack. Many say panic attacks are among the most frightening experiences of their lives.

This sounded exactly like what I had gone through, almost to the letter. In fact, the list of symptoms on the page was almost verbatim what I had told the doctors I was feeling. This looked promising, although frighteningly so. Still, the more I read the more I began to be convinced that this was it, especially in light of what was now quickly becoming the second choice, Hyperthyroidism. Hopefully that first panic attack would just be an isolated incident.

It wasn’t.

I was at a meeting that Friday, again at work, when suddenly there it was again: the tingling sensations, the pain in the chest, the racing heart rate — the works. I took my chances and instead of calling another ambulance I went outside for a while to walk, quickly, up and down the sidewalk. Luckily, my office is in a medical office complex, so if something went wrong I could get to a door quickly enough. I was hoping to burn some adrenalin by walking and stop some of the other side effects of the panic attack, if that’s what it was. For all I knew, I was having a heart attack.

After a few minutes, and after being joined by someone willing to talk with me during the ordeal, I felt myself calming down again. My heart rate came back to normal range, I stopped trembling, and my skin was no longer numb or tingly. Yet, I was scared now, very scared. What if these things kept going on forever ever time I came to work? The racing heart, the moments of pure fear, the need to run away from wherever I was, the vertigo, the nausea, the fainting feelings, the numbness, the choking… Would these things just keep going all the time, everywhere?

That weekend I had a few more episodes, none as bad as the first, or even the second, but bad in their own right. I could no longer tell what the trigger(s) could be. On one night, I had them for so long I eventually just passed out on my bed. After every attack I was hungry and very, very tired. That night I simply could not stay awake any more. Thank God for that. I didn’t want to stay awake.

The next week I had the echocardiogram. Pulse was around 58, which seemed right. I have yet to hear from any doctors about it so I can only presume that if they found something it wasn’t too bad. I remember when I had broken my knee a few years ago. They called me back that night to run a more invasive test, to make sure no veins or arteries were pinched. These guys, thankfully, don’t take chances, which in this case made the old saying “No news is good news” a truism.

I also had a meeting with Dr. MK wherein I revealed my latest findings. She suggested Zoloft if I wanted a pill for it, especially since the attacks were not isolated, but were now becoming somehwat commonplace, but I told her I didn’t want a pill. She then wrote me a referral to go see a psychologist to see if we could get to the root of the problem. Even if it was biological, the psychologist could help put my mind at ease. The fact that this may be panic disorder has not escaped me.

During this time, a conversation started up in itazuraßeau’s blog in which the topic of panic attacks came in. (If you click on the link you can see part of our conversation, the public part at least. You may want to turn off your speakers. By the way, Beau, a.k.a. itazuraßeau, is an old friend of mine from college who I spent time with when working on the USF music school computer labs. Oboe player. Very good. He’s now living in Japan.) He has helped me understand the issue a bit better and as served as a bit of a sounding board for me, one which talks back and offers useful advice, some of which I may share later here. Most of this advice revolved around medications and why not to take them, advice which The Wife, a psychologist by training, echoed loudly.

Anyway, so to the point of this post: now you understand why my posting has slowed as of late. I just haven’t felt like writing and frankly, for the moment I’m not going to do things I don’t feel like doing. Might sound childish and amateur, but frankly all I care about now is getting whatever issues are causing the attacks resolved. I have a few suspicions, but I don’t care to go into them right now, mostly because they’re just that: suspicions. If I start attributing stuff to them I may be doing something detrimental by building up walls which would later have to be torn down.

You may also be wondering why I’m letting all this out in public. Mostly is to bring light to the situation. Also because the original purpose of this blog includes it being a way in which I can learn of myself better. If you’re wondering, no, I’m not going insane, at least not any more than most other people. I’m just, apparently, dealing with a bunch of stress, stress I didn’t know was there. (That this happened now is surprising because the past two years have made for one of the calmest periods of my life.) Then again, if you’ve known me personally for any amount of time, you probably know stress something I normally feel that I thrive on and enjoy. Guess I got that one wrong.

So, will I keep my writing going? Yes, but on my own schedule, something I haven’t always felt at freedom to do. I’ll try to continue posting at least twice a week, and depending on time constraints and other considerations I may post more, but for the time being, until I get all of this sorted out my posting may be a bit erratic. My apologies in advance.

Take it easy. I’ll work on doing the same.

Do you like spicy food? If you do, then you’re probably attracted to the capsaicin, since that’s the stuff chili peppers are made of. Literally. Capsaicin is the chemical compound in chili peppers which makes them spicy, or more precisely, gives them piquancy.

If you don’t like really spicy food (and I’m not talking about the Taco Bell green sauce here: that stuff’s like water) you’re probably wondering why people would put themselves through the torture of eating spicy foods. (After all, can you really taste anything when your mouth feels like it’s on fire?) The following might offer a bit of an explanation as to why some of us seemingly enjoy torturing ourselves:

From Wikipedia: “It is theorized that the pain induced by capsaicin causes the human body to release endorphins. Eventually, enough are released to create a sensation that is frequently compared to ‘coke high’”.

So there you have it: people who like spicy foods are cocaine addicts. OK, they’re not really, but you see why people like the stuff. It gives them a high! Also, it causes them to sweat, usually while dancing in pain, pretending like they really enjoy the sting.

Anyway, so how do we know how piquant (spicy/hot) something can be? By using Scoville units. Here’s a comparison chart:

• 0-100 – most Bell/Sweet pepper varieties.
• 500-1000 – New Mexican peppers
• 1,000-1,500 - Espanola peppers
• 1,000-2,000 – Ancho Pasilla peppers
• 1,000-2,500 – Cascabel Cherry peppers
• 2,500-5,000 - Jalapeno Mirasol peppers
• 5,000-15,000 – Serrano peppers
• 15,000-30,000 – de Arbol peppers
• 30,000-50,000 – Cayenne Tabasco peppers
• 50,000-100,000 - Chiltepin peppers
• 100,000-350,000 – Scotch Bonnet Thai peppers
• 200,000 to 500,000 – Habanero peppers
• Around 16,000,000 Scoville Units is Pure Capsaicin

By the way, for those of you who think yourselves “manly” and “tough” because you put some Tobasco sauce in your soup, remember that the Tabasco sauce you get in restaurants rates at around 1,000 – 2,000 Scoville Units. Wuss.

So, how do you get some of that “pure capsaicin” stuff? A friend of mine once told me about something called Dave’s Insanity Special Sauce which boasts a rating of 14,000,000 Scoville units. That, it seems, is about the closest you can get to pure capsaicin. (If I’m wrong, soneone correct me here.) A couple of drops will easily spice up an entire cauldron of your best gumbo. More than two drops and you could accidentally start killing people off, or at least scare the neighborhood animals (and most humans) away, unless you happen to live in Thailand or India. (Any readers from any of those places? Give a shout out if you are.)

Here’s a recommendation: after handling any of these peppers or sauces, make sure to thoroughly wash your hands before making the horrible, horrible mistake of, say, taking a wiz or scratching your eyes. I can tell you, from experience, that neither is a fun situation. Make sure to wash well. In fact. you may want to rub your hands in the dirt for a while after handling the hotter peppers and sauces, then washing them (then playing in the dirt again, then washing them again), just to make sure every trace of the stuff is gone. Last think you want to do is give yourself an accidental pepper spraying. Especially in the genitals.

Anyway, that’s about it. Now you know something new, so go and scare someone with your new-found knowledge.

First off, “The Biggest Loser” competition at my office has ended. Apparently, yours truly obliterated the competition by losing 12 lbs during the first round (everyone else lost < 5 lbs) and losing another 12 lbs during the second round (when everyone else gained weight). After that point everyone else quit.

Bastages.

Still, just because the competition is over it doesn’t mean that I’ll stop losing weight, right? Well, sort of. See, I’m a fierce competitor. If I actually stand a chance at winning, if I smell blood in the water, I always go for the kill. I don’t look to win, I look to dominate. I don’t do a lot of trash talking — in fact, I don’t generally do any, it’s not my style — but when I set my mind on a goal, I get it done (especially when money’s involved).

Unfortunately, the opposite is also true: no competition, no movement.

Luckily, after the goal had been set, I started to pay full attention to the process. (Remember: without a goal there is no process, but if you seek your goal without looking at the process you will most certainly fail in the long run.) I looked at what I was eating and improved my eating habits by leaps and bounds. The result was once the competition was over, I still continued to lose weight.

Unfortunately, I’ve seemingly hit a plateau. 280-ish. (Actually, it’s more like 277-ish, but I’ll round up to compensate for any scale-related inconsistencies.) Part of it is my fault. My driving force before wasn’t better health nor was it better looks. It was winning the competition, but doing it in such a way so as to be able to lose weight even after it had ended (as I knew it eventually would, though I didn’t expect it to happens so soon).

Well, I won. And I kept losing weight. Just not as fast. Mostly because I started eating more, reintroducing things like bread to the diet. But I was losing weight still… sort of.

I decided at this point that I should start exercising more. It was right there and then that I figured out I’m getting older. I went for a workout session with Mr. Renato, one which, while difficult, was not out of the range of normalcy. Until the next day, that is, when I realized I had just done some major damage to my lower back.

As I said, part of it was my fault. Part of it wasn’t. After a week of pain and visits to the doctor and chiropractor, I found the problem: irritated syatica.

Crap.

This little incident pretty much eliminated any ability I had to work out. Heck, I couldn’t even walk upright or sit for a few days. For three weeks after that I was pretty much confined to bed rest and chiropractic sessions. And ice. Lots of ice. On my lower back. Take that, comfort!

About a week ago, my back started feeling much better. I started doing some light working out again — mostly using the elliptical glide and a bike — but wasn’t able to last for more than 20 minutes without a lot of pain. This was fine because apparently I also got whatever has been going around and by the end of the week I once again found myself in bed, this time with a cough and a fever.

Needless to say, with all these ups and downs — mostly downs — my dietary plan has gone by the wayside, mostly because standing up and cooking has until recently been almost out of the question since it hurt like heck to do so. While I still tried to eat mostly salads and proteins, easy-to-grab things like nachos kept finding their way into my house, and eventually… well, you know. I have The Wife to thank for that. Really. It’s her fault.

Really.

OK, fine, it’s my fault for eating the stuff. And for telling her she could get it for herself. And telling her I wouldn’t eat it, even though I might have been hungry. And then bugging her ’til she gave me some. And then eating her food when she wasn’t looking. “Honey!” I would say, “Hurry back, your food is getting all cold… (and eaten…)”

Damn tasty nachos.

Anyway, so my weight now is lingering somewhere between 275 and 280, which is still pretty good, compared to where I was, but not good from the standpoint of my goal of 200lbs. Simply put, I’ve fallen off the wagon by getting trapped in the same “no time, fast food’s easy” hole that got me into the upper stratosfatassphere. With my back finally feeling good enough for me to do some working out (it’s still very painful at times) and my cold/flu/whatever almost gone, it’s time I drop the excuses and get back on track. I wonder if I can get anyone to compete with?

P.S.
I’d like to take this chance to congratulate Stuart “Syage” Brownstein on his amazing one-year weightloss achievement of dropping almost 100 lbs. He started at 380 and is now at a leaner, friendlier 292. A-fracking-mazing.

I was 34 and had always struggled with my weight, but for 15 years, I had allowed it to get out of control. I ate as if it were my hobby. I was unable to do the simplest physical activity…I couldn’t walk to my car from my apartment or office without being out of breath, and my knees ached from even that small journey. Lying in bed, I could feel my heart pounding. I awoke several times each night struggling to breathe. Still, I was in denial. I knew I was obese, but I never considered what I was doing to myself. Loved ones offered concern and suggestions, but I saw them as just “getting on my case.”… By the second week of July 2006 — just nine months — I had lost 200 pounds! I was now hiking the hills and canyons, as well as playing ice hockey. I was able to discontinue my blood pressure medication. Throughout, I never felt that I was depriving myself. I viewed it as a chance to rediscover the real me.

Awesome. This is the kind of story I like to read, not just on product advertisements and Billy Banks books (no disrespect to Mr. Banks), but in sources like CNN.

It’s funny, but one of the things he says there, that “Loved ones offered concern and suggestions, but I saw them as just ‘getting on my case’”, is something I think every overweight person has gone through. The only time I’ve really found it annoying, though, was when someone who I didn’t really know, or I just recently met would start telling me things like “You know, you should really change your diet and stop eating so many hamburgers,” without knowing the first thing about me. Usually these people were naturally skinny and unable to get to my size even if they tried, and they almost always came off as being judgmental about people who weren’t like them.

…jackasses…

Anyway, as of this morning I’m at ~287 lbs, so I’ve lost about 2lbs this week. Hurray! I also see Mr. Renato this weekend. Time for another butt kicking session.

As I mentioned in the first post of this series, my caloric intake has been between 900 and 1300 per day, mostly proteins and vegetables, with almost no bread or starches, and few fats from things like cheese. (Nuts and egg yolks still make an appearance here and there.) I talked to Mr. Renato and he’s rather impressed I’ve been able to keep that up. This, however, wasn’t the only thing I talked to him about. With the good comes the bad:

Recently, every time I have gone exercising I’ve always ended up sore. Really sore. I mean, sure, it’s normal to be a bit sore for a day or two after a good workout — in fact, I love that feeling. What I’m talking about here is soreness that lasts for half a week, even when the workouts are simple things like walking a couple of miles or playing Dance Dance Revolution.

I told him about some information I’d recently read which stated that one of the side effects of a CR lifestyle was a slowed healing process, and Mr. Renato agreed that this is what’s happening. He went on to explain that I’m now living on about half the calories I used to eat, and that this makes for a rather dramatic change since my body isn’t used to not having a ton (no pun intended) of spare nutrients (“Oh noes! We’re at NORMAL human levels! The horror!”). As such, my the body takes longer to heal itself after injury. This is also why my joints are not just getting sore, but staying sore longer.

He said I’ll probably be feeling this way for a month or two, while my body gets used to the change in lifestyle. After that I should be back to normal. In the mean time, he suggested that I should avoid going too hard on myself at the gym (or the dance mat). My jaw dropped: I never ever ever thought I’d hear those words from him. Next he’ll be telling me to eat more ice cream.

If you have any thoughts about any of this — losing weight, being overweight, calorie restriction (and by extension super-longevity), or exercise — chime in. I’d love to hear from others who are also overcoming weight issues, have overcome those issues, and from people living a CR lifestyle.