Results after 1 month

Exactly one month ago (August 24) I feel was my "bottoming out" health-wise:  that day I hit my all time heaviest (241 naked) and had my worst blood lab draw (cholesterol totalled 261 with an LDL of 174 and triglycerides of 161). 

Today, after one month of mostly just eating well, my naked weight was down 15 lbs to 226. So the weight loss is working. 

Soon I will schedule another blood test to see if my labs are getting better. 

Certainly I feel better, I'm less lethargic and more energetic than I was months ago. 

Within the last several days I've started to get comments from people saying that I look slimmer. My skin condition mentioned in a previous post is almost completely better, after suffering with it for over a year. I am enjoying the healthy food I'm eating, and starting to learn new recipes that taste even better. 

Overall my health experiment is going as I had hoped. There is a lot of misinformation out there about fdiet and health, but my own experiment on myself using the guides that I believe to be the most accurate is proving to be so. My main guides are Dr. Campbell and the China Study as well as the books and other resources put out by Dr Joel Fuhrman. These I believe are based on the best science, most thorough research--and the most "common sense" compared to other "diets" and guides. But I will continue my own experiment on myself using this approach, and continue to post my observations, notes and results here. 

Soon I really need to step up the exercise some more. More rigorous cardio and lift some weights. Those are two more goals I have set. 

fast food in a parking lot

Here is what I consider "fast food" these days..enjoying a salad in a parking lot. 

Crock pot Chili made for the coming week

Crock pot vegetarian Chili

4 cans of Chili beans (red and black)

Four or five onions diced

Two green peppers diced

One zucchini diced

16 oz portobello mushrooms

2 cups frozen corn kernels

4 cloves garlic

2 tsp Chili powder

2 tsp cumin

1 tsp oregano

2 tsp of turmeric 

Sprinkled on some cayenne pepper and mrs dash seasoning 

1 cup water 

Mix in crock pot and cook on low heat for 6 -7 hrs. 

This will make for delicious lunches and dinners for the coming week. I like to put this over whole grain pasta and add a touch of garlic salt. Plenty of protein, very nutritious. Can't wait to eat this!  

Damn good vegan pizza made tonight!

Yummy vegan pizza.   Even wife and kids thought so.  Lauren (14) said it "tasted like real pizza". Everyone loved the smell of the sautéeing and baking. 

Pre sautéed (using just a bit of water) fresh cut orange and yellow peppers,red onion, and bella mushrooms. Note:  Next time cut the peppers smaller and add the mushrooms toward the end of the sautéeing.    I did use regular pizza sauce (a but sugary).  Ultra thin, whole grain crust used. Added olives also. 

The "cheese" was a fine blend of cashews, nutritional yeast, and garlic salt. 

This was sprinkled on before and after baking. 

I am totally satisfied after eating this. 

Not as much energy today...Subway footling eaten.

Could have been lack of sleep (woke up many times during night) ...I started the day eating well with a spinach and fruit smoothie...but...

All day I had less energy and felt more like I used to before starting the better foods 3 weeks ago.  I  broke down and ate a footling sub from subway for lunch. All the veggies but it also had chicken and some cheese..first I've had cheese or chicken  in 3 weeks. 

Afterward I felt really full and even more tired. Also felt bloated. I think the footling sub was just too much food to digest all at once. That takes energy and made me tired, on top of the lack of sleep. Still feel tired at 6pm. 

Lesson:  Don't eat a footling sub anymore. That used to be my norm but I can't do that anymore. It's just too much food all at once.  Also, get enough sleep.  

The tinnitus has been better the last 2-3 days though.  Yesterday I felt great, no ringing in ears. 

Bowl of cereal kind of sucked

Just had a bowl of honey nut Cheerios--didn't taste as good as I hoped it would be.  Not worth it. Remember that. Eat an apple the next time I want a nighttime snack. 

Folliculitis

Another problem plaguing me for over a year has been diagnosed by doctors as Folliculitis. It's been on my scalp, driving me nuts. At times this past year it has gotten really bad and very sore. It's been embarrassing at times, especially when I'd go to get my hair cut. 

 I was prescribed a triple punch of oral meds (dococycline mono 100 mg), shampoo (ketoconzanole 2%) and topical solution (clobetasol 0.05%). The dococycline made me sick so I only took that a few times, told the doc about it and she said it was ok to stop because the other two topical meds seemed to be working on their own. They did...for a while. After a few weeks the Folliculitis came back and the meds didn't help much. 

But my new diet has helped!

I went off all of the meds a few weeks ago when I started my plant-based whole foods vegan diet. My scalp got better real soon. I'd say it's almost 100% better but not quite--the beer I had over the weekend may have fired it back up a little.  I'm looking forward to having it healed completely and for good. I hope my new nutrient rich diet does the trick once and for all. More updates to come. 

Sept 14, 2015

Weigh in this am was 230.2. Still hovering  around 230 but that surely had to do with the beer I drank over the weekend. I did eat very well and exercised too (25 mile bike ride on Saturday plus lots of brisk walks). 

Today I felt a bit dizzy most of the day. All out vertigo seems looming but held it off. Drank only one cup of coffee this morning and had no soda.  Until now evening) I gave in to my diet dew addiction. Took a Dramamine also. 

Should walk the dog tonight. Went for a nice walk at lunch time. Weather is perfect. 

Lunch was my yummy vegan chili I made yesterday in the crock pot on top of whole grain noodles. Dinner was the same. At work people said it smelled delicious and it was.  Lots of beans and stuff, farting a lot now. Need to chew the food better. 

Prepped food while I watched first half of Packer game. Veggie Packer.

Spent the first half of the opening day of NFL football prepping food and making meals for the rest of the week.

First I started a vegan chili in the crock pot.  
Ingredients: Onions, baby bella mushrooms, fresh tomatoes from our garden, three varieties of canned beans, two green peppers, and more
Note to self:  Added too much chili pepper and too much spice (Mrs Dash).

Mushroom Stew:
Once the chili was started in the crock pot, I also sliced up another 1.5 lbs of mushrooms (shiitake and baby bella) plus an onion, a red pepper,
Note to self:  Cut off shiitaki mushroom stems -- They were rubbery chewy in the stew.

The kids liked the chili pretty well.

Got it all prepped and done by halftime to I could watch the Packers beat the Bears in the season opener at Chicago.  Well done Packers.  It just crossed my mind that my favorite team was named after a meat packing company.  I have not eaten any meat for almost 3 weeks (one hamburger at a friend's house on Friday night because there wasn't much else to eat there).

Here is a pic of the mushroom stew.  Turned out pretty tasty, though as I said I added too much spice and should have cut the stems off of the shiitake mushrooms.

Weight record from Nov 2008 through Sept 13, 2015

One thing I have recorded over the last 5 years pretty consistently was my weight, using my bathroom scale, naked, in the morning before showering. These were recorded in scattered notes and an app I tried using a few time to count calories (counting calories sucked, by the way..more on this in future posts).  But one good thing the counting calorie app did for me is gave me a place to record my weight.

Just recently I put all of these notes together into a chart using Google Docs. 

Here is how my weight has fluctuated over the last 5 years. 

I've added some notes using red text.  Yes, I did try eating healthier and exercising more with some success in the past.  In late 2007 and into 2008 I had a dramatic 35-pound weight loss. At that time, I had read Lee Labrada's book "Lean Body Promise" and followed that pretty closely.  I have to say the good things were it gave me some good weight exercises and a plan.  I also cut calories significantly but that book does recommend eating a lot of meat, cottage cheese, and other high-protein foods.  At the time I wondered what this would do to my cholesterol and my heart, but hey, it was working so I kept at it for a number of months.

Since 2008, my weight has bounced around quite a lot.  You'll see I was a regular New Year's "resolutioner" where my weight would generally go down some right after the first of the year, only to continue it's general upward trend afterwards.

Also I did keep working out, often times very rigorously between 2009 and 2013.  I found the weight room to be sure, and regained some pretty good fitness there and with running/biking/pilates/etc.   Ran several half marathons and other 10k races.  But, I was still a bit of a "clydesdale" in that I remained a pretty heavy runner through it all.  Later in 2008 and continuing on until recently (Sept 2013) I had maintained my "Sconnie Diet" consisting of lots of cheese, meat and beer.

My health experiment: Post #1: An intro to my journey to better health.

 I am doing an experiment on myself.  Trying to get myself healthy.

I wasn't planning to do this as a public "blog" but I did want to document this experiment of mine.

Originally was going to do this using personal notes, but since there are millions more people looking to get fit, and because success stories are fun to read, and much misinformation out there I decided to write up the results of my experiment on a public blog.

Within the last 3 weeks I have totally changed my diet and stepped up the exercise.  The diet is the biggest change so far though:  I have gone almost completely vegan.  This is a big, big change for me.  I remember first hearing of "vegans" years ago and thinking to myself how crazy that seemed.

More on this in future posts.  For now, I just want to get this blog started as I document my journey to (hopefully) much better health and happiness. 

Probably nobody will read it but that's OK...Really this is more just for me anyway.

So in case you want some more background here it is:

I'm age 43.  About three weeks ago I saw my maximum weight ever ... 241 (that was naked, on my scale).  Weigh-ins at the doc and for my health assessment were like 245.

OK that was bad enough... But I can easily look around me and see many people much fatter than me. This is Wisconsin after all:   Everything is cheese, beer, brats, sausages etc.

But then something scarier started happening in recent years:  My cholesterol kept going up and up. Late August (Aug 24 to be exact), right about the time my weight peaked, so did my cholesterol with a total of 261.  The LDL "bad" cholesterol was 174 (should be less than 100!) and the triglycerides were high too (161).

Scary for anyone, but especially scary for me as I have such a history of heart disease in my family (grandparents, dad, uncles and aunts who have died young from heart attacks, or have had bypass surgery, and even a heart transplant).

So... Here it is, my blog documenting my journey to better health.