Night before weigh in at the end of Week 4

Sept 15, 2010

I sit here at my desk munching on raw carrots, tomatoes with a little dressing and I worry, “How will my weight check be tomorrow? (The end of the 4^th week)  Will I have lost anything? Did I backslide?”  Some of the signs are good, I have had to increase the level on my exercise equipment to get my heart rate up.  My patterns of exercise are steady.  I am pretty sure I have cut almost all carbs out of my diet, yes there are some in there but I think they are under the recommended 20 a day to start which is supposed to jump start the weight loss.  And most of all, if I don’t have on a belt or suspenders (suspenders mostly cause this even happens sometimes with the belt) then my pants are starting to fall off cause they are loose in the waist.  My blood sugar is steadying out, fewer and fewer spikes, and I can walk from the far parking lot to my office without feeling like I am having a heart attack.  I also have noticed that my legs don’t hurt as much as they have been in the past few months, the edema from the diabetes is still there but it is getting better.  Another couple of weeks and maybe my legs and ankles will look normal again.  And yesterday I did something that I haven’t done in many many moons, I was crawling around on the floor moving computer equipment and wires.  My knees hurt like hell when I was done, but I didn’t have to get someone to do it for me like a cripple. (It’s my blog so I don’t have to be PC)

It gets discouraging sometimes though, people who are supposed to be dieting with me tell me things like, I am just not cutting back as drastically as you are.  And then they have chips and salsa, or a sandwich, or mashed potatoes with dinner.  If you’re not going to do the diet, just say so, and if you’re going to do it, they actually do it.  But don’t feed me BS.

Another friend of mine is starting on the diet, she has many of the same problems that I have as far as health, knee, leg and feet issues, high blood pressure, etc.  Her doc recommended a low carb diet from what she said, smart doc, cause we can live without the bread and potatoes but don’t take my meat and dairy.  Discussed some exercise options with her yesterday, she hadn’t heard of recumbent exercise bikes (a lot of people haven’t) and didn’t realize that you could do a good strong cardio workout with them without killing your knees, maybe I should have told her that her leg muscles are gonna feel the the burn real bad at first, but this goes away after about 10 minutes…..why ruin the surprise, besides it’s a good burn.  I always loved that burn, it was the burn of muscles working.

I will say one thing, when I was allowed to eat rice, potatoes, bread or any other big carbo food;  I really couldn’t have cared less.  Now that I cannot have them, oh boy do I crave them  But every time I think about how much I want the carbs, I also think about how much I want to lose the weight.

8:50 PM – Realized something, it’s almost 9PM and I haven’t had a chance to exercise today.  My legs are killing me, so I decided to not push it off til tomorrow.  Did 30 minutes on the bike and my body is feeling a whole lot better.  Even had increased the workout level to 4, so I think my body is now to the point where if I don’t exercise my body is starting to crave it.  This is a very good sign.  Stand by for tomorrows weigh-in, even if it is not much or in reverse it is the beginning of a new stage of my diet/exercise program.  HUAH!