Low Carb Lollygagging

Lollygagging... I love that word. It's one of those fun words that maybe very old people throw around when speaking in serious tones in reference to the activities of younger people.

There are a lot of words that I think are fun just to say them or work them into a sentence. I really need to make a list of some of the words and phrases like that that I like to use just for fun sometime. You gotta love the English language. So many fun words and fun things to say and how to say them, yet so little time.

Lollygagging means just fooling around. Hijinks is a word like lollygagging, except that it implies you are maybe up to a little "no good" in what you are doing, while you are doing whatever it is you are doing. I am serious about my low carb living, but I want to have fun and live a little and laugh a little while doing it. Life can't be all serious anyhow, can it??!!

So what is low carb lollygagging? Well, just plain fartin' around and having a good time, enjoying life... and losing weight and feeling great on a low carb lifestyle. I have started this blogspace to record my personal journey of weight loss and weight maintenance down to a new me, which is really just the old me (of course a wee bit older and wiser) without all this blubber. Ideally I would like to lose on down to my old High School weight. Somewhere around there where I feel good, am healthy, and living life well.

Why low carb? Well I'll get to how I got to low carbing it in a little bit. So far I have lost over 37 lbs on the Atkins low carb lifestyle and I am just loving it!!! I am down from around 400 lbs (maybe more than that) to 363 lbs as of early this morning. I am losing weight while sometimes eating 4000 and 4500 calories, though truth be told many days I am eating more like 2000 - 3500. I am always full, not hungry. And especially not the burning intense hunger I felt on a low calorie diet I did before for almost two years straight.

When I was in my thirties I lost 100 lbs and kept it off for over two years. I lost the first 50 lbs on a NutriSystem prepackaged food program, and lost the second 50 lbs doing pretty much the same thing but eating MAJOR RABBIT FOOD (salads from McDonalds and Burger King, etc) and low calorie TV dinners like those from Healthy Choice and similar. But I was major league hungry most all the time, and I was having to work out like crazy - first walking and then running 3 - 8 miles each day and weight training as well for an hour to two hours each day.

Sometimes while on that low calorie diet I was soooo hungry, almost painfully so. I would get light headed sometimes. Sometimes I would not feel well. But I toughed it out to lose the weight and meet my goals. But then life intervened, I got busy with work and with my family and I stopped watching my weight and slowly over the years I added pound after pound till one day I found myself at 400 lbs.

Now, on this low carbohydrate Atkins diet I am losing weight, almost never hungry, and never having the tremendous hunger, cravings, nor most of the effects of hardly eating anything - on a low calorie diet. My blood sugar which before at 400 lbs was fluctuating up and down (getting shaky and jittery when I needed a sugar fix and tired and kinda sleepy headed when I ate). Now it is rock steady. I took it with my wife's blood sugar meter twice and once it was 90 and once it was 130 (after I had eaten).

My blood sugar is produced through a process called gluconeogenisis in the liver where my body uses stored fat to change it into glucose (sugar) for my blood stream. It does so in the amount I need it, at a constant level, and I feel great - ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL - most all the time.

This is probably the most important benefit I am deriving from this diet (strike the work diet and insert "way of life" or "way of eating"). Probably more important than the weight loss itself.

It is wonderful having really regular blood sugar and feeling good - way better than before.

Besides the even blood sugar, I am not popping Alka Seltzer's like candy anymore. The plop plop fizz fizz was practically a way of life for me, and I justified it as more than just an antacid since I figured it might just be the healthiest way to take aspirin and thin the blood a little on a regular basis. No aspirin pill sitting on my stomach dissolving a hole in my stomach. I don't know if aspirin can even do that, but that was the mental picture I had in my mind. With Alka Seltzer the aspirin was all dissolved in water, and posed no threat to my innards. I used to have bad acid problems after eating on a regular basis. I would eat and later sometimes, depending on what it was (onions, late night pizza, whatever) I would practically get sick with stomach acid.

While in my thirties I developed a hiatal hernia (falling apart, huh) and acid would roll up my esophigas and burn it. On rare occasion I would wake up with thick nasty burning acid even up in my sinuses and mouth. Then I developed GERT (gastro esophegial reflux disease). I would eat something that triggered a response (usually steak or beef cubes, or roast beef, or those little mini shredded wheat would do it) and things that should be going down the esophigas started moving up. It felt awful and often led to puking and choking and gagging. Anyhow - gross stuff aside, my stomach has been very acid for years and years, and often I would have to take Prilosec of Prevacid or something like that for a day or several just to knock my stomach's acid production back and let my guts heal.

Well, you would think with all this meat, and eggs, and cheese and peppers and onions and all, I would be having MAJOR problems. Not one bit. I have stopped taking Alka Seltzers on account of stomach acid problems, and have not taken one Prilosec or similar pill since I started. People at work used to muse as I drank my water bottles with Alka Seltzer in them (looking like dirty dish water or something).

Another plus.

So low carb is working out for me so far. I have lost 37 lbs when I have written this, in a matter of a couple months time. I cannot remember when I started this, but it was around the 15th of October, 2006 (but my wife says it was closer to sometime in the weeks before Thanksgiving in November). I can never get dates and times straight. My wife can barely navigate out of our driveway to the mailbox and back - she is so directionally challenged. OK that is an exaggeration and probably unfair to her, but she IS SPACIALY CHALLENGED. I am TIME CHALLENGED. We all have our gifts and our uniquenesses in life. :)

So low carb is really impressing me as a wonderful way of life. I am losing weight, my blood sugar problems have all disapeared, and I am not having acid problems at all, I am never hungry (I get to eat, be full and comfortable) and I am feeling great!!! I hope that more than a diet, I can maintain this as an ongoing way of eating and way of life.

How did I get into low carb? Well a series of chance meetings with a number of people I know. One fellow at work lost alot of weight on it. He gained some back since, but still he lost ALOT. Then I met a doctor at an urgent care clinic, a nice irish fellow here in Tennessee who told me he lost weight and kept it off for ten years and counting. I asked him how and he said meat and veggies, no potatoes, no bread, no pasta, no rice, no sweets, and no cokes. Wow. 10 years!!! Then a good friend had the stomach surgery and lost radical amounts of weight (he was big like me at the time) and sufferred with low energy, intolerance of some foods, and real misery and hunger.

Then the straw that broke the camels back. The last straw. The thing that upset my applecart.

My brother called. The one who was fat like me. He called and told me that HE had lost 80 lbs on the Atkins program. WOW. My brother. So I went on the "IF HE CAN DO IT, I CAN TOO" program (Atkins) the next day.

I am writing this blog as a way to keep track of my progress, serve as a wasteland and dumping grounds for my innermost and deepest thoughts (sometimes not so deep) and deep dark secrets (please don't tell anyone - it's just between you and me), and as a cathartic outlet to release the little inner Mark Twain, Studs Terkel, or John Steinbeck in me. Yeah, I should flatter myself by disparaging their good names in this way - by comparison to little ol me. Hardly fair to them.

Why blog it?

So I can log some interesting things I am learning about the low carb lifestyle, news, about myself, my progress, about fun and stupid and impractical stuff and maybe not-so-interesting and who-knows-what that I am thinking about stuff.

Lollygagging. Serious Lollygagging. With a purpose.

You are welcome to visit here anytime, my good friend (after all... we are like brothers or sisters, you and me). And there is always room for one more good friend in our life, right?

Best Regards,

ndurance1@gmail.com