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Dave’s post reminds me that I haven’t mentioned my weight in awhile.  I’ve plateaued at 190lbs.  I’m still losing fat slowly, but I’m continuing to add muscle so my overall weight stay the same as my muscle and fitness level is still improving.

I’m nowhere near being the strongest I’ve ever been.  I’m relatively sure that I will never regain my college form simply because I worked out for hours a day several days a week and will never have that kind of time to put back into it.  Having said that, I’m willing to bet that I am the fittest I’ve been in 10 years and I’m still improving.  I can say that safely because twice in the past few months someone has guessed my age at a decade younger than I am.  There is a certain social pressure to guess younger than you actually think, just in case.  But that would put a number of people thinking I’m in my early 30s, which is still complimentary enough for me at 38.

I’m happy with my progress and I’m happy with the journey.  I’m going to keep going down this road because I like the ground covered as much as the nearing of the goal.

My blood sugar has been high for more than two days, but low enough that I can soldier on. It’s to the point now that I haven’t had a reading less than 183 for so long I’m dehydrated and weak.

I think I’m about done soldiering. I think tomorrow is doctor time.

Current weight: 196 lbs.

Starting weight:  215ish lbs.

 So I’ve lost around 20 pounds so far, which is right in line with my goals.  With the workouts, I’ve managed to keep my muscle, too.  I’ve probably lost more than 20 pounds of fat, I’ve just added back some pounds in muscle. 

I’m really enjoying the way my body is shaping up.  Clothes fit better (well maybe not my pants so much) and I feel more comfortable all the time.  And, yeah, I’m proud of myself. I weighed myself a few minutes ago and remarked before I got on that maybe I didn’t want everyone to see the number that was about to pop up.  Marilyn quickly informed me that I was being a tad disingenous.  She believes that if I didn’t want everyone to see it, I might have weighed myself somewhere other than in front of everyone. 

 Well, shucks, maybe she’s right.

I don’t know if dogs get sinus infections, but if they do I’m as sick as one.  I don’t tend to get colds or the flu so when the sore throat started on Sunday, I expected to be done with it fairly quickly.

Things got worse and worse until Wednesday when I went to work I was in such bad shape that my partner, Todd, told me to go to Medical and get my temperature taken.  They proceeded to pretty much kick me out.  When I went back to the machine to get my stuff, I told Todd that it was his fault that I was leaving, because I was gonna tough it out.

The Doctor’s office was pretty much a blur. I walked out with 4 prescriptions, at least one of which has to be the most godawful concoction imaginable.  It looks nasty in the bottle and the tasting of it will not sway your initial assessment.  I’d rather get kicked in the eyeball that put that horrid stuff into my mouth again.  It does, however, quiet your cough.  It’s effectiveness resides in it’s ability to horrify a cough into submission.  It’s not so much medicine as a cough bully in convenient liquid form.

I feel weak today, but stronger than yesterday and I’m confident the worst of it is behind me. 

Roughly 2 and a half weeks in and I have lost 10 pounds so far. I’ve been hovering right at 205 for a couple of days. I’m enjoying my body shape much more, the workouts have really tightened up some muscles that had gotten flabby.

On a side note, I’m pleased to find out that I haven’t weakened too much over the past few years. Though this new workout doesn’t do a barbell bench press (or any isolation exercises for that matter), i was curious to see how much I could press. So after my workout last night, I put 300 lbs on the barbell and tried it out. I pushed it up easy. I was tempted to do 4 or 5, but my spotter was a bit nervous and that is a good way to get yourself hurt. Seeing as how I maxed out at about 350 a few years ago and 385 as an all time high, I’m glad to know that I still have a bit of the old muscle to me.

So I’ve finally given in to the combined pressures of my doctor, the dieting industry, my friends and my own fat (yet still vain) backside.

I started a low-carb diet (this one specifically) a week ago. I’ve lost a few pounds, though I’m not exactly sure how many. There aren’t many people in this world that will start dieting without knowing how much they weigh, but there is at least one. Me. I’m going to go with a conservative 3 or 4 pounds.

I finally weighed myself on a reliable scale and came up with 210. Which seems about right since I weighed in at 215 once at a doctor’s office. My goal is to get down to 190. That should be about my ideal weight considering my physique. I’m not terribly tall (5′9″ish) so it sounds like i would still be in the lardish arena. But I’m fairly muscular so that adds a few pounds, I like to think. I would love to think of myself as Athletic, but I’m pretty sure you have to be able to run better than a 15 minute mile to qualify for that.

The hardest part of the whole thing is the food preparation which is a bit more involved now. That, and finding food I can eat. Unsurprisingly, the stuff you just “heat and serve” tends to be pretty carb heavy. In fact, almost everything in a supermarket is pretty carb heavy, which might explain why we are a nation of porkers. To get an idea of what I eat now, take away everything that has added sugar in any form (corn syrup, dextrose, etc, etc) and white flour. Now take away anything that is naturally high in sugar like fruits, corn, carrots and potatoes. So that leaves me with meat, cheese, eggs and veggies, pretty much. Now this phase only lasts another 3 weeks and then the fruits and whole grains get to come back into my diet. But for now I’m making lots of omelets and salads and such things. Good thing I like omelets and salads.

The second part of the diet is the exercise plan. It’s designed to cover an entire body workout in about 30 minutes, so there are no isolation exercises. You don’t curl anything. A sizable portion of them are body-weight exercises that include pull-up and push-up variations.

It had been quite some time since I had been in the gym and it’s very nice to be back. I’ve always enjoyed working out, but I had managed to tell myself that I didn’t have time or energy or blah, blah, blah for it. It comes to the point that eventually you have to think up more reasons to exercise than excuses not to. My personal vanity is one of the biggest reasons I have going now. I have a 20 year (!) class reunion coming up next May and I’m not going sloppy. I’m just not. Period. I’m not trying to be the best looking guy in the room, that’s probably not even in the realm of possibility for me. I’m trying to be as good-looking as I can be. Which, quite frankly, shouldn’t be all that hard.

I was initially quite scared of altering my carb intake because of the changes necessary in my insulin intake. It has been actually quite easy for me to change over and I’m very happy so far with my blood sugar control. That and I’m using about half the insulin I was using. Which is saving me money. Nice side benefit, eh?

So all in all, I’m pretty happy with my diet and it’s progression. I will try to keep you updated on any progress I make.

I had, at one point, been able to say that I worked out all my adult life. About 7 years ago, that stopped being true. In the past 7 years I have worked out on and off, but there have been periods of years between gym time.

Recently, my buddy Todd (who works at the plant with me) got serious about losing weight. I told him that once he got under a certain weight I would join him. Sure enough, he made it and then some. So I’m working out after shift with him now.

When you have the exercise history that I do, it’s a very simple task to look in the mirror and think, “this is the fattest I’ve ever been”. As soon as I started working out, the old feelings (good ones) that I associated with being physically fit started coming back. That certain hardness in my muscles when I pick something up, the energy that comes with exercise, the way my clothes fit just a bit better. Until I felt that again, I didn’t realize how much I missed it.

I’m sticking with this.

The exercises that Todd has me doing are absolutely ridiculous things that superheroes would weasel out of. He got them out of Men’s Health (that is the actual workout we are doing) with some super skinny, super muscular guy doing them with ease. Heh. The thing about these exercises is that they look simple. Let me tell you now- they may be simple movements, but they are not easy. I have about 5 more weeks of them before we move on to another 6 week program. I’m bound and determined to master them before we move on.

To go along with the exercise, I have decided that some of this lard needs to go. I have adopted an 1800 calorie diet. That’s not much food for a grown man. Again though, once I started pushing away from the plate sooner and skipping some of the junk I had become accustomed to gnawing on, I immediately started feeling better. I don’t even know if I have lost any weight yet, maybe not. But I darn sure feel better. And that is at the heart of it all, isn’t it?

Monday night at work I got some money out of the ATM and wanted some change. I had eaten the “lunch” (in quotations cause it was 11 p.m.) that I had brought but I thought that maybe I could get some dessert in the cafeteria and get some change. Two birds thing, ya dig?

I walk into the cafeteria and the first thing I see are these scrumptious looking brownies. They look exactly like the brownies that Marilyn cooks and, man, are those some delicious brownies. I pick one up and head to the cashier.

Just so happens that the cashier is eating one as I get up there.

“There aren’t any nuts in these, are there?”

She shakes her head no. I pay my little dollar, get my change and sit down to enjoy this delightful looking brownie.

I take a bite and think, hmm, this has an odd texture. I swallow the morsel just as I realize that the brownie didn’t have an odd texture. It was my tongue. It was already starting to swell from the layer of peanut butter in the middle of the brownie.

Ahhh, nuts.

I’m not just a little allergic to peanuts. I’m violently allergic to them. Always have been.

I spit out what I can, head immediately to the bathroom to wash my mouth out and spit out anything remaining. I then go straight to my crew leader to tell him that I was in trouble and needed medical attention.

I head down to medical and talk the security guard into giving me some Benadryl to suppress the histamine reaction. He looked at me a little askance because I think he believed that it was just for sinus problems. Doesn’t matter, though, he gave it to me.

We discussed sending me to the ER and I was thinking that I could tough it out. Five or ten minutes later, my tongue had gone back down and I felt bad, but not imperiled. The security guard and my crew leader talked me into chilling out a bit longer just to see. About 10 minutes after that, I started wheezing and coughing and my nose started running. I changed my mind at that point and told them that I should probably go to the ER.

Ben, a crew leader from Curing, drove me to the ER and I was admitted promptly.

They put an IV into my arm without an actual IV. It was just the thing the IV attaches to.

Then they forgot all about me. I sat there, thinking that someone was gonna be right there. For an hour. At that point my breathing had gotten to a whistling wheeze and I felt a little light-headed. I got up and walked to the nurses station and informed one of them that I was having a hard time breathing.

Things happened quick after that. A doctor saw me about a minute later, and another minute after that the nurse comes into the room with several syringe things that fit into the IV hookup they had implanted in me.

She told me what each one was before she shot them into my IV, but really all I heard was the first and part of the second. Benadryl was the first one (HA, I knew I was right about that) and the second was a steriod. “Steroid” was the only word I heard because my head was already spinning. My breathing became easier instantly.

Have you ever gotten so drunk that when you laid down on the bed and closed your eyes the world seemed like it was spinning? Try that sober. With your eyes open.

The nurse sat me up all the way and I immediately clutched my stomach.

“Are you feeling sick?”

All I could do was nod. If I had unclenched my jaw, it would’ve been all over.

She rushed out of the room and came back quickly with one of those little pink plastic trays they use for everything in hospitals. I unclenched my jaw.

I threw up everything. Repeatedly. I threw up my knees.

Since work had begun that night, I had eaten 2 pickled sausages that I had bought from the gas station, 2 hot dogs, some potato chips, a peach, plenty of Diet Mountain Dew, a small bite of brownie and a half dozen cinnamon breath mints. Most of it was still there. Man, what a smell.

The nurse kept repeating, “I’m sorry”, over and over again. I guess for being a party to my regurgitation. All I could think was “Thank you”, over and over again. I could breathe. Between heaves, of course, but breathing nonetheless. And puke breath is better than no breath at all, I say.

The next couple of hours were very boring in comparison to that. I passed in and out of consciousness as the chemical combo they shot in me had my head wrong but, again, my breathing right.

Ben came and picked me back up and got me back to the plant at about 6 a.m. My shift doesn’t end until 7:15 a.m., so I went back to my machine for the last hour. Heck with it, why not? I needed some more time for the shakes to go away before I got on the road.

I call my lovely wife and tell her the story on the way home and get to the house grateful that the night is finally over.

As I’m getting ready for bed I take all the little bits of paper and releases and whatnot that I got from the hospital and look over them. I find the one that has the post-discharge instructions on it, guess what it says.

“Stay away from peanuts”.

Thanks, Doc. Wish I had thought of that.

I had an appointment today with a dermatologist. My GP seems to think that my multitude of moles need to have an eye kept on them. So off I went today for my first visit.

I knew that the Doctor would want to have a look at my back and legs, so I wore shorts to make it an easier inspection. Turns out that they were gonna want a more complete look than that.

I wasn’t prepared for that.

They told me I could keep my boxers on, but I would need to shed the rest of my clothing. Well, this particular pair of boxers has a nasty habit of coming open at the fly. Most of them don’t, but this pair does. Everyone has a pair of undies that require them to make discreet adjustments now and again. I wore my pair to this appointment.

So after I disrobe I am handed one of those hospital gowns. I breathe a small sigh of relief, no matter that these things are pathetic attempts to maintain a bit of modesty, at least my randomly open barn door is going to be shielded.

So in come the doctor and her resident. The doctor looks old enough to be my grandma. The resident looks young enough for me to have babysat her.

Great.

After the introductions, we began the exam. Turns out that the teensy-weensy gown is somehow in the way. I’m asked to take it off.

Fantastic.

So, off it comes. I fixed my gaze steadily on their eyes when they addressed me, the wall cabinetry the rest of the time. The exam went amazingly fast. I was told that though I have a lot of freckles and moles, none seem to be grounds for concern. They were gone in no more than 3 minutes.

They breezed out telling me that I could leave as soon as I got dressed. Only then did I have the courage to look down at the problematic barn door.

I still haven’t rounded up my horses.

There is nothing to show you how old and fat you have gotten like playing tag with your 2 kids (combined age of 6.5 years).

My lovely wife has been losing a bunch of weight lately.  My buddy Todd has been losing alot of weight.  I have not.  I’m getting very close to my breaking point.  I’m not gonna be able to stand being the lardbelly of the groups I hang out in.

Let me sit down and think about this for a minute.  Maybe some donuts will take my mind off it.