Healthy Living 101

[BMR Sales]

Got my 1st Vaccine Shot yesterday ( at a FEMA site)! I never saw so many Happy people in my life!

It was staffed with members of the Air Force and was incredibly organized. I was in & out in 1/2 hour

[Vegas69]

Diet is one of the most over complicated things on this planet. All the fad diets over the last 50 years has brain washed the American public to a large degree.

The Atkins diet.
The NO/Low Fat diet.
Vegetarians
Vegans
And the list goes on to infinity.

There are only three ingredients to the human diet. Carbs, Fats, and Protein. Our bodies need all three in reasonable balance. Scientists have managed to modify and preserve foods where they will last for years on the shelf! If you look at the label and you can't pronounce the ingredients or the list is a mile long, it's probably not something you want to eat on a regular basis. Whole, fresh, and organic foods are the purest. God made it really simple before man and profits got involved. Remember, you are literally what you eat. Fats are crucial so I'm not a fan of the low fat diet. I had six pack abs with plenty of fats in my diet at age 41! It's the type of fats that matter. I'm not one who thinks saturated fats are off limits. I just try to limit them and utilize the poly and monosaturated fats more often that you find in things like beans, avocados, peanut butter, and olive oil. Instead of butter on your potato, try olive oil. Instead of breakfast sausage, try peanut butter and an apple. Etc.. It doesn't need to be every time, but when you start to make those type of changes consistently, it will effect your health over the long run.
I can tell you from experience that when you have your carbs, fats, and protein in the proper balance, your body will react very positively. The American diet is typically overloaded with carbs, unhealthy fats, and way too much protein.

There is no doubt as we age that our tendency for our cholesterol to go up increases naturally. But, sometimes our poor habits compound too. I don't know about you, but I'm constantly taking stock on different areas of my life. I have the tendency to become complacent and start to get off track. Success leaves clues. When you were the healthiest, what worked for you? What adjustments should you consider to move you back in that direction? What new knowledge would you benefit from?

Lastly for today. A majority of Americans have a very ACIDIC diet. A majority of foods are acidic. Meat, wheat, dairy, soda, coffee, and even most sparkling waters! Even tap water is close to neutral. The only way to really offset an acidic diet is with vegetables/fruit and lots of water. Why does it matter? Your body depletes nutrients in your bones and organs to to neutralize your blood. You're making your body work overtime with a crappy/acidic diet. As you can imagine, that can lead down a very ugly road over time. Perhaps you have a fruit for desert once in a while or chase the coffee down with a glass of water. Have a few more salads for lunch. I've found fasting or running lean to really heighten my senses and enhance my energy levels when it's not done to an extreme.

[SSLance]

Update...

So I've been on a portion control diet for about a month with a concentration on greens and a limitation on red meats with total stop of sweets (even no sugar in coffee). It took some getting used to which included a week or so of lightheadedness and weakness before I added back in enough nuts and other proteins to fulfil the cravings and stop the dizziness. I'm down from 178ish to 165 pounds and hit a low of 163.5# at the height of my colonoscopy prep Monday morning.

Speaking of scopes, I'm clean, no polyps and released for another 10 years with no risk.

I would have LOVED to have blood work done exactly when totally cleaned out like that. Everything I've read says your blood is affected almost immediately by changes in environment or what is introduced or ingested into your body and at that point, there was practically zero outside anything introduced into my body.

Anyway, I seem to be holding steady around 165 and am feeling pretty good. I'm comfortable with the change in food intake and am anxious to get tested again to see how the changes have worked on lowering my cholesterol.

[SSLance]

So I'm 3 months into my new eating lifestyle so I thought I'd update you all. What I've learned is grains are bad...and also one of the hardest things to avoid. It was much harder giving up bread, tortillas, pizza dough, and oatmeal than cookies and sugar in my coffee every morning...but I can tell it's working fantastically.

I'm averaging right around 160# on the scale every morning, have hit a low of 158 and high around 163. It's interesting, couple weekends ago I had 4 Mich Ultra beers Saturday night, gained 4 pounds next morning and it took 5 days to get back down to my normal range. The following weekend I drank a bottle of wine myself and didn't gain a pound.

I've settled on two main meals a day and one filler light meal, we mix it up when the light meal happens and doesn't really seem to matter. Some times it's smoothie for breakfast, other times its just a salad for lunch or dinner. We eat a ton of seafood, some white meat, hardly any red meat, and lots of vegetables be it from salads to sweet potatoes to carrots and cucumber slices for snacks.

I could NOT do meatless...my body rejected that idea wholeheartedly. After weeks of light headedness and dizziness every time I stood up we added meat and eggs back in and the symptoms went away. We now eat a portion of eggs just about every day and some sort of meat protein once a day minimum. We are getting creative how to mix things up and in reality, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. Portions are back up from the low but still way down from where I was before.

The 15-20 pounds I've lost have all come from my belly. Everything is is virtually the same...arms, legs, face...all still appear close to as before. This is supposedly the hardest weight\fat to loose and what I've determined is by not flooding my body with bad food it is given it the time and energy to burn off the bad fat instead of overworking processing the junk. And by junk, I mean mostly grains... Physical activity really hasn't changed other than I'm more diligent about getting two 1.5 mile walks in twice a day and averaging 10,000 steps every day.

I'll go get my blood tested again soon, very curious how my triglycerides and cholesterol have changed with the diet modifications.

The wife has hooked up with a holistic Doctor and is starting the process of blood work and testing on her to see where she's at and which direction the Dr wants her to go. Depending on how that goes, I may switch over to her as well. We've learned a ton about the natural way for one's body to heal itself and want to continue down that path vs just pumping pills into one's system to mask issues. So far the Doc seems pretty positive about the lifestyle choices we've made and wishes more of her patients started at a point like that vs well past the unhealthy stage most of them are in.

Anyway, happy summer everyone. Our car stuff has pretty much stopped for the summer, Barney has been driven once in the last month so not much to report on there. We are concentrating now on fixing our new truck up for off roading and will spend the summer messing around in it instead of the car. Hope you all are doing well...

[ADY]

Congrats! Recommend reading Grain Brain. Going totally grain free is definitely not for everyone, but for some it can really help. My wife tried a no gluten/dairy/sugar detox for a month to see if it would help with her migraines. Although she didn't see much relief from migraines, she definitely saw some weight loss.

[Vegas69]

I love to see the momentum Lance!

I went up to see a good buddy in Idaho last weekend. After a few days or bacon, sausage, burgers, steaks, etc.. I literally came back with a food hangover and some extra baggage. HA I rarely eat like that for more than a meal here and there.

I just feel far better when I eat clean. It's seems to be getting far more important with age too. Portion control is something I need to focus on. I feel better running a bit leaner as well.

I've gone mostly gluten free, but I haven't eliminated the grains due to convenience and the mountain of vegetables I would need to eat to replace a cup of rice.

I'll be interested to see your numbers after your major lifestyle change!

[SSLance]

So, I'm pretty happy with this...



I tipped the scales at 158.0 this morning, right at 20 pounds less than I was middle of February when the first blood test was done.

The Triglycerides is the biggest change by far. I've NEVER been any where close to that number before.

I have lots of questions and to be real honest, I'm REAL curious what the doc is going to say when she sees these and then I tell her that I did this without taking a statin...

Have a great weekend everyone! Think I'll celebrate with some cake...

[Vegas69]

Wow! You've demonstrated what a change in lifestyle can do!

[OLDFLM]

Todd and Lance,

Would love to see a typical diet plan for what you guys are doing!

[SSLance]

Originally Posted by OLDFLM

Todd and Lance,

Would love to see a typical diet plan for what you guys are doing!

So after some experimenting trying basically a plant based diet, we basically just added back in meats and eggs. Absolutely no grains of any kind and nothing out of any box and no added sugar anything... Otherwise, whatever you like. Salads, veggies, fruits, meats (seafood, white meat mostly, some red meat) and mixed nuts for snacks in between. We typically have 2 full meals a day and a third light meal of just a salad or a protein based smoothie to hold us over. We also mix up when the light meal happens just based on our schedule and how hungry we are. If we have a heavy lunch with meat, a salad or smoothie for dinner will do. If we have a heavy dinner a smoothie for breakfast holds me over well. I will say this, an 8 ounce smoothie isn't enough for me, 16 ounces does the job though.

We'll grill meat up once a day usually, like if we have pork chops for dinner we'll grill one or two extra then the next day we'll mix cut up pork chops in with some eggs and veggies for breakfast. Or if we cook salmon for dinner, we'll cook an extra piece up and put it on a big ol salad the next day for lunch.

I've found that I can't limit portion size too much like this as I'll start to get dizzy when I stand up...so I'm eating plenty of calories (don't count them though). As long as I get a small serving (like 6-8 ounces) of meat 1-2 times a day and then just load up on veggies, I stay satisfied.

We also mix in a lot of sweet potatoes, we'll cook them in the air fryer whole then just slice in half and eat right out of the skin. The wife is great with seasonings so we don't use and condiments like ketchup or mustard or anything like that. For salad dressing she mixes up different kinds of vinegar and olive oils with cranberry whatever and creates her own dressings. I prefer iceberg type lettuces while she likes what I call stick lettuces like spinach and arugula and our salads are chunked full of radishes, peppers, onions, beets, carrots, celery or just about any other veggie. She'll stock up on veggies once a week, prep them all and keep them in containers in the fridge so prepping a salad at mealtime isn't as big of a chore.

Honestly, the hardest part was not having the convenience of a bread to use for sammich making for lunches. Giving up the breads and pastas is WAY harder than giving up sweets. I just make up for it with more nuts, meat and eggs.

Best part is our meals are very tasty and I stay very satisfied. Starving yourself doesn't work for me, satisfying me with non-grain foods is easier and more effective or so it seems so far anyway.