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.

Hey, I just wanted to post a follow-up from my last post!

That one will still remain as Trusted Content, so if you want to read it, please sign up for an account and leave a comment on this entry and I’ll upgrade you.

So!

My surgery went pretty well, was in the OR for 35 minutes (came out 10 minutes early) and was awake by 11:45. I was super-alert pretty quickly and chatty like nobody’s business!

As it turns out, the injury that was repaired was pretty close to as good as it could get, so this is good in terms of prognosis and in terms of recovery time. I’m also experiencing some discomfort and pain, but not a huge amount, and I wasn’t even experiencing any serious throbbing or pain this morning when I got up (I took a vicodin anyway; it had been 7 hours and I didn’t want to get blindsided).

They gave me a list of some post-op care procedures, which I intend to follow to the letter.

Other than that, I’m feeling pretty dang good, certainly a lot better than Thursday.

I am not quite that fanatical about bike riding just yet, but I highly recommend it if you can swing it.

Yes, there are some inconveniences, such as having to shower at work, frequently washing my bike clothes, making sure I have the appropriate food on-hand, and dealing with traffic, but the benefits I have found are:

• Exercise as a part of my lifestyle rather than something “extra” I have to go out of my way to do
• A break in the routine of get up/go to work/come home/sleep
• More restrictive diet, higher quality of food overall
• Health and comfort benefits:
  • Less pain in my lower back
  • Stronger leg muscles result in fewer knee problems
  • Increased leg and hip flexibility
• Most people in cars–not all, of course–smile at you
• Pedestrians usually smile at you
• That freakin’ endorphin rush after a particularly long or difficult ride
• Insights into my relationship with my body
• Insights into my FOO’s relationship with health and physicality
• A sort of community of cycling enthusiasts who are happy to help you out

This is something I have wanted to do for years! I haven’t really explored why it has taken me such a long time to actually get out and do this, but I think it has a lot to do with the relationships I have had over the years, both familial and romantic.

To say that these people were unsupportive would be missing the point entirely. In my family, there has pretty much always been an open hostility towards people who work on self-improvement. If you tried to eat better, you were mocked. If you tried to question commonly-held beliefs, you were derided. If you set a goal and failed, you were never allowed to forget your failure.

My romantic relationships grew out of that history, and thus I have never dated anyone who was fiercely supportive of me, who encouraged me to challenge myself, and whom I could trust with my life!

Of course, to have these things in somebody else, I must first work on them in myself… only then will a woman consent to provide ferocious support to me, because she knows she will receive that same level of support from me!

So, cycling brings a lot of things together for me. It’s not everything, of course, and I am still without a therapist to work on the other things in my life… but what I am also finding is that in working my body, my brain is starting to work again. The beast (which I do not believe I have mentioned before) is starting to stir, and wheels are starting to turn!

However, right now… it is time to relax.

So I dropped my poor Honda off at the garage for the third time in two months… it failed emissions testing because they couldn’t accelerate fast enough between 30MPH and 60MPH.

It’s possible that it’s the catalytic converter, which kinda sucks but I basically bought almost a year and a half extension on getting a new catalytic converter last year, so all things considered, not too shabby.

I really hope this takes care of things, of course, I’m a little tired of bringing my car to the shop!

So by the time I got to the garage, the sun had already set. It was still light, but it was fading fast!

I set the navigation application on my phone to go home, and it said 11.4 miles, and 28 minutes, I think… I should have known it was for somebody who actually had some strength and stamina on the bike!

Still 90 minutes really isn’t bad considering I’ve only had my bicycle for 3 weeks!

However, if I ever do ride at night again (very possible if I continue commuting through the winter), then I will want to make sure I have bright clothing and lots of illumination, to see and to be seen.

Right now, however… it is time for the James to be very unmoving.

[Edit] – I am getting a sort of a mental image of what shape my body will take when I do lose this weight, and for the first time in a long time–if ever–I’m actually feeling excited about this process! Yeah, it’ll be a whole HELL of a lot of work, but the payoff will be SO worth it.

So, here’s an experiment using made-up numbers, but not completely unreasonable ones:

Let’s say that my average income over the rest of my life if I live to 80 is $50k/year. I am 30, so that’s $2.5m in income. If I continue to make the same decisions about food, my life can easily be cut short to–say–55. So that’s $1.25m in lost wages (this applies even if I retire because I will not be able to spend the money that I would have saved).

So, poor decisions about food are costing me at least $1.25m (this is not including the cost of this food, which is usually drive-through or take-out). When you break this down per meal, this comes out to $50k/year, $137/day, or $45.67/meal.

(Of course, the dynamics would change if I were to improve my diet.)

I don’t ever think I’ve had a burger I would now say was worth $50.