Saturday 30 May 2015

My new retired life

My move went pretty smoothy. I'm now living on a beach on Vancouver Island and I'm not even rich. The fresh breeze coming off the water is amazing and my breathing is already improving.

I've started a walking regimen and a tan. Haven't had a tan in about 35 years and I'm not lying on a beach to get one. Walking and looking after my flowers or sitting outside reading is doing it.

I created a little patio with two patio chairs, table and patio mat where it's shady and perfect when it gets too hot outside. My apartment is tiny but extremely bright.

Yesterday I sat on a bench looking out over the beach and smelled the wild roses next to me and burst into tears, I was so happy. On my morning walk today I picked a few wild strawberries along the highway.

I'm back on track after being on the road for 4 days transporting my cats with my sister's help but she needs to eat too often, so now that she's heading for home I'm back to eating once a day.

The food here is so fresh I'd almost forgotten how that tasted. Rebuilding my health in retirement is the plan.

Tuesday 14 April 2015

Rest in peace

Just found out my cousin, aged 70, died. She suffered from diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea and depression, among other health issues. Her motto was "we take pills for that." Rest in peace.


Sunday 8 March 2015

Doctor Stupidity

My sister went to her doc for a checkup and blood work. She's been losing weight on a low-carb diet and has lost about 90 lbs. He wouldn't give her most of her lab results except the cholesterol numbers which were:

Total cholesterol: 7.26 (281)
Trigs: .96 (85)
HDL 1.95 (75)
LDL 4.87 (188)

Besides the slighly high Total her trigs and HDL are fantastic and her LDL isn't bad either. Guess what the doctor did? He gave her a prescripton for Lipitor which she has no intention of taking. What an ass.

But let's say you are less informed that she is? You'd start down the road of prescription drugs which would make you sicker and sicker.

Friday 6 March 2015

The actual purpose of this blog

I don't post much because this blog is only useful to me for the blog list you see to the right where all my favorite and infinitely more intelligent bloggers are listed. This is how I keep track of their latest entries.

As to me, I'm just an ordinary senior citizen that has been on a 10 year long quest to find what works for me health and diet wise. I have discovered and experimented with many, many things during this time and finally told myself that it's time to put into practice what I have learned. So far by doing a fairly low carb diet and eliminating most of my illnesses and health issues I have not reached an ideal weight.

Now I'm going to do an all meat, some eggs, some dairy, and a bit of coffee and I'll just tell everyone I am allergic to all veggies, fruits and grains. This is actually true as I am allergic to salicylates, fructose and grains. This is a self-diagnosis but since I've become allergic to doctors some 20 years ago and doing much better without them, and since this applies to me, this is a correct diagnosis.

(please bear in mind that English is not my first language)

I was doing very well doing IF and ketogenic until early February when a friend of mine from out of town came to stay with me for a week (she eats carbs and several times a day and we were going out for lunch and dinners with her relatives). By mid February when she left I was somewhat off my diet and it took me two weeks to rein in the cravings but I'm not blaming her. Starting at the end of February I went with my all meat diet and have lost about 7 lbs of weight that I'd gained (water mostly). So that's where I stand at the moment. I am naming this diet the AB diet, AB standing for animal-based since it's not actually zero carb or all-meat.

Sunday 1 February 2015

Is there such a thing as a normal craving?

January was a month for weird and unusual cravings. There were none of the usual cravings such as ice cream, donuts, cakes, pizza, cheesecake or any other high-sugar sweets.

What I was hankering for was buttermilk. For two weeks I'd go to the supermarket and look at the carb-count on a cup of buttermilk and it was 13 grams which resulted in the carton going back on the shelf. Noticing that the buttermilk was only available in the 1% fat version also made me frown.

Finally I gave in and bought a liter. I decided to measure out a 1/2 cup buttermilk to 1/2 cup coffee cream and I've been drinking it for 3 days now and the weight is falling off me. Well maybe not falling off but going down.  Don't know if it's the buttermilk or maybe something in it that my body needed.

Could have been worse I suppose.

Saturday 31 January 2015

Not much progress

January was almost a complete failure. I lost 1.8 lbs. The cheating I did over my 65th birthday and Ukrainian Christmas took it's toll but not to the extent that I lost my way. I pulled myself up and ate clean for the rest of the month and prevented a huge gain.

Stats:
Average cals: 1475
Daily carbs averaged: 30
Protein: 17%
Fat: 75%

All the cheats were included in the stats.

Motto for February:

Do or do not. There is no try! - Yoda

Wednesday 31 December 2014

December Update

December wasn't as great as November but I lost 3 lbs anyway. Seems that I need to continue IF and almost all meat with some dairy. The foods I eat now do not cause any inflammation and if I stick to them I will probably lose more in January. I've now lost a total of 30 lbs from my highest weight.