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Mornin’

It’s been five weeks since I had surgery–so far, so good! Everything is as it should be, which is all I can really ask for.

A lot of my time has been consumed with work, but that is due to me taking an offer from my boss to make up for the time I won’t be working later this year.

Now that I have the boring bits out of the way…

I’ve made some changes to my diet. After watching a video and reading the transcript of an interview about the science behind obesity, I’ve decided to cut carbohydrates as much as I can, especially grains.

Here’s the first video by Dr. Gary Taubes:

And here’s the transcript of an interview:

Gary Taubes, interviewed by Seth Roberts November 30, 2007 from Seth’s blog

Now, there’s a part of me which says, “of course you’re going to latch onto this diet–you’re obese and desperate to lose weight!” Well… yeah, that’s true, to a point. But I did start eating this way about 7 years ago for about 5 or 6 months and my weight dropped to 240lbs, and I never felt healthier.

However, the woman I was dating at the time was a pretty cold-hearted person and pretty much undermined my food strategy, and I had no support from my friends or family.

I mean, they had to have noticed how healthy I looked as I lost the weight, and nobody said a damn thing to me when I started putting it back on.

In 2003, I was not in a stable place in life. It is pretty difficult to do anything long-term in the realm of self-improvement when the sands around you are constantly shifting, and I would remain unstable for several years.

My peak weight was probably over 310lbs in 2007/2008. I lost some weight (down to the 280s) when I cut normal soda out of my diet without making any other changes. Now, I am down to the mid-260s (I weighed in at 266lbs right before my surgery, which was probably due to an overall decrease in calories, which is part of why I needed surgery), which means I am about 25lbs from my weight in 2003, which, incidentally, was my weight when I graduated high school.

Granted, I was probably just at the level of obesity then, but how many people can say that they have returned to their high school weight more than a decade after college?

I’ve never been at a sustained healthy weight as an adult, but my feeling is that it is somewhere in the 180-200lbs range. Being 6′3″ with (I assume) a moderate-to-large frame, it might be in the upper end of that range… but of course, it’s not the number as much as how I look and feel and how my habits effect my weight that will determine the “resting zone” (so to speak) of my body weight.

And yes, Virginia, James will be exercising. I’ve been restricted in part due to the surgery (I still have stitches!) and in part due to working a lot. I do find that exercise becomes far more enjoyable the less I weigh, especially walking around, and I’m prepared to take advantage of whatever nice weather we have this winter.

Finally, the best for last: I believe I have found my therapist! I have my first therapy session this coming Monday. I found that when I approached it as me interviewing her for a job that the questions I wanted to ask came quite easily.

[edited to add] – I had my first appointment with this therapist and it was quite nice; we did some body work and I have to say that I much prefer this approach to all the other therapists I’ve encountered–we’re not discussing content but working with form.

New awarenesses:

• The distance between now and 1979
• Carrying an intergenerational burden
• The degree of tension in my back
• The imbalance of tension in my back

I won’t promise a report like this every therapy session; I just wanted to put these out there since it was so novel and so nice.