We Survived It

We survived the heatwave. Barely. 

It got to 36 one day with high humidity so it felt more like 43.  For all ya Fahrenheit folks that is a heat of 96 with a feeling of about 109. 

And we don't have central air in our home. I debated calling a plumber on multiple occasions to come and install. Not that they would have been able to, but it made me feel like I was doing something to beat the heat. We do have a portable A/C unit in our bedroom but the boys' rooms felt like bake potatoes and they did not sleep well at all. 

We found relief by filling up a tiny little Mr Turtle pool and dipping our feet in it throughout the day.  On the Monday, which was the hottest day, I could not function. I felt like my brain was mush. I could probably not spell my name if someone asked. The dog was out of sorts as well. 

Everything returned to normal on the tuesday with lovely warm weather and a slight breeze. 

On Wednesday we bit the bullet and bought ebikes. We had ordered some ebikes back in april but after multiple delays in delivering we decided to up our budget significantly and buy more elite models and receive them that day!!  I LOVE my bike. 

We've been out riding every day since we got them and can't wait to plan some away trips too! 

BC basically opened up on July 1st (Canada Day) so we were free to visit friends that we have not seen in ages. They bought a home on the ocean last summer and it's gorgeous. Was so lovely to sit on their patio, drink wine and just gaze out at the sea. 

The gorgeous view from their patio 

So how did I do with exercise, eating etc during my week off?  During the heat wave, we did nothing. Drank a lot of water, ate very very small meals and did not exercise AT all. 

After the heatwave, we upped our food, replaced water with adult drinks or coffee,  but did work off a bit when we were riding. 

On 6/30 - which was my "official" weigh in day I was at 168.4!!!  Wooop. 

I am up significantly from that today - 173.2 but I'll reign it in this week and get back to it. Lots of water in my future. 

Heat

We are gearing up for a heat wave.  Other people may laugh as it won't be THAT hot but to us here on the west coast it does not get this hot, EVER. It's not so much the temp that has me scared, it's the "feels like row below the temps"... 

We normally hover around the 22-24 mark in the summer which is just perfect for us. The majority of people in Vancouver do NOT have A/C in their homes and living next to the water, we do get a fair amount of humidity. It's not that lovely dry heat that comes in the desert areas of Canada or the US. 

So the plan this weekend is to drink water, eat salads and just sit. Can't take the dog out as he's just too hairy and too old and too fat to take the heat. Oh and I'm sure he heat will have me all bloated up like a blow fish too... :) good times. How ya'll live like this in the southern states??? 

conversion for anyone not in Canada :) 

and for comparison - this is LA next week:

Man I can whine!!! Oh well, vacation next week. Can't wait for the break.... 

The Shorts

Over the last few years, I've managed to lose upwards of 35 lbs and for the most, kept it off. About 18 did creep back in 2020 but I've lost just about all of those 18 lbs now. I think I have 3 to go. 

So, I've done well. I know I move better, that my body is healthier and that my clothes are fitting so much better. I actually feel GREAT on some mornings when I put on my clothes and look in the mirror. Oddly, I do not have a full length mirror in my bathroom or bedroom so I never really truly know how I look from head to toe. But my upper half looks good to me! 

For the last 10 years or so I have had ONE pair of shorts that I would wear.  They are jersey fabric, loose, with a tie string waist so they have fit me when I was 215 and now at 170.  I caught sight of myself in our security footage last week and could not believe how ugly those shorts were. I always thought they were cute.  They were WAY too big on me and somehow my body looked unbalanced. 

So I decided to pull out my "vacation shorts" and some that I recently bought. Much shorter and more tailored and I actually wore them out shopping this weekend, so IN PUBLIC. I usually would only wear my vacation shorter shorts either on vacation or on truly hot days and only in the backyard. But I am trying to get past the fact that nobody actually cares how I look and they are not staring at me hoping I would have just lost another 10-15 before attempting to wear shorts. 

So I've been feeling good. It's been a struggle but I'm getting there and proud that I feel better in my own skin.  Well guess what, this time when I looked on my security footage, loading things into my car.  I looked frumpy and a lot bigger than I thought I was. UGH

I know it's self-confidence. I know that I am feeling and looking so much better than I was before but I still have issues when I see a photo (or video) of myself and I don't look as good as I imagined I did. 

It's something I know I have to work on. I love myself much more than I did years ago but it will be a struggle for awhile longer. 

Until then, I will press on and in the meantime, I need to go add some sunless tanner to my legs cause them babies sure are white compared to the rest of me! 

The Stubborn Snacker

 Me? Yeah, I'm stubborn, but not even close to my husband's stubbornness! Drives me crazy sometimes! 

The one thing that he is being really stubborn on now is his health. He keeps promising me that he's going to go see the doctor for an annual (more like 5 years for him) and have a check up done. He doesn't want to go because our family doctor is going to tell him he's fat.  He doesn't want anyone to tell him he's fat, even though he is and even he complains about it. 

But I do truly worry about his health. He's always been a very very healthy guy all his life. No blood pressure issues, no diabetes, blood work always excellent. But up until the last 3-4 years, he's also always been at a fairly healthy weight. When I met him he was about 170 lbs, which in my mind was waaaay too skinny and after we had 2 kids and about 20 years of marriage and after I gained a bunch of weight he went up to about 220. Not huge, not totally unhealthy but just a bit fluffy... Dad bod. :)  He's also 6'3". 

I'd say in the last 4-5 years he's gained another 60-75 lbs. Hard to tell on him as he is a big guy and he can carry that weight just about anywhere, but he is carrying a lot of it in his mid section right now. Right where the doctor's tell you to be careful with. 

When I lost all my weight in 2018, I really thought he would join in with me but it seems to be worse now. 

Some of my habits have changed, including my need to go to bed early each night. I tend to go to bed between 8:30 and 9:30 each night. I like to do my skin care routine and settle with a book at night. I find it helps me sleep a bunch better. 

The issue is when I go to bed, he snacks. A Lot. 

I don't want to nag him to stop eating and to make better choices, but I do. I try not to, but now the boys are nagging him as well. It seems to have the reverse effect on him. When we nag, he tends to snack more when we are not around. 

Not sure what else I can do but just be there to "support" him. I eat a low carb diet which can have some higher fats in it. That is fine because I'm not eating carbs along with it. The problem is that he eats what I eat PLUS the carbs. So bad bad bad.  I do buy carbs as my boys eat them so they are in the house. 

I really don't want him to have to hit a rock bottom to wake up and so something about it, but I fear that is what is going to happen. 

 I hate wanting to help so bad, but he's not wanting my help. Pains me every single day. 

0621

June 2021. 

It's June - I can't believe it. 

Where has the time gone?

This past weekend was my birthday weekend and we celebrated Covid-19 style... so basically the same as every other weekend. :)  It's all good. had a few meals out with the hubs,  dinner at home with the  family and a few friends came by for drinks and a fire on Saturday night.  Another year older. Yay Me. 

So here we are in June so almost halfway through the year so I figured I'd check where I have come from since January. 

Weight wise - at the start of January I was 177.5. Last Wednesday I was 170.4 so a 7 lb difference or around 1.4 lbs per month. The January weight would have likely been a bit higher due to Christmas/New Years as well. 

So many ups and downs in my weight that I honestly thought I was further along in my journey to get to 155 than that. 

I have made some changes over the last 6 months with my food and my supplements and although I do think my insides are healthier, I'm not too thrilled with the changes on the scale. 

2 weeks ago I decided to change up my eating a bit. Reduce the number of snacks that I have in a day and see if it changes anything. The jury is still out on the results. I have not yet tested my fasting glucose as I will wait a few more weeks and get a good month in before I test again. The transition to no snacking was not as hard as I thought it would be. After a few days of "thinking" I was hungry during my snack time, I managed to get through them and now I can easily get through between breakfast and lunch and then again dinner, without having to grab a treat. 

I have not been tracking my food but without the snacks, I should be in a range of 1000-1500 a day which is good for me. 

I'm still weighing every day and see the fluctuations happen. Last Friday I saw 168.4 which is the lowest in a few years so that did get me excited. We will see what happens tomorrow but so far, not looking like it's going to be that low. 

I'm not hungry....

I just finished my lunch hour and for the majority of it, I sat on the couch trying to figure out what to eat for lunch. Nothing felt appetizing and really I wasn't feeling very hungry. 

So why do I feel the need to eat. I did not eat breakfast so my brain is telling my body " You need to eat". But I don't. 

In the end, I ended up making a quick protein smoothie and although it tasted fine, it didn't wow me and now about 30 minutes after having it, I feel pretty much the same. Not full, not hungry... just eh. 

I have spent the week, trying to make the conscious effort to not snack between meals. I did give myself Saturday and sunday off but even at that point, I didn't really snack too much, although there was some grazing before and after dinner. 

I don't think it's affected my weight very much as the scale looked to be hovering around the same value as Friday but we will see what tomorrow brings. It is also my TOM (albeit 10 days late) so that might have an effect on weight as well. 

What I do want to see if my blood glucose readings this week. I'm going to fast Wednesday night and take my blood glucose Thursday morning before my coffee (2 hours after I wake up though) to see how it looks. I'm hoping that with a week of no snacking and hopefully better controlling my insulin levels that my blood glucose is better. 

It's not bad... actually, it's great during the day but my fasted blood glucose was 6.1 at my last check up. That's just too high. It should be under 5.5. Last week, before I started the no snacking venture, it was sitting at 5.3 in the morning. So we will see if it's better, worse or the same this week. 

I know that eating a low carb diet will affect blood glucose and some people become glucose sensitive so I want to try to stay on top of that as best I can. 

So not only is the number on the scale important, but so is BP and Glucose... so the goal is to try and keep them all at a healthy range. 

The Book and my takeaways

I finished the book I mentioned in my last post - The obesity code - Unlocking the secrets of weight loss by Jason Fung. 

I took away some very interesting concepts in the book regarding weight loss, the usual gain after the loss and how our bodies work. 

He writes that the key to weight loss and beating obesity is to regulate our insulin levels in our body as  it is insulin that actually makes us fat. Not calories, not carbs - although carbs are basically insulin creators, but it's managing our insulin. 

One key to regulating and managing our insulin is through fasting. I know that when I eat, my insulin levels rise and then has to recover so if I'm eating every 3-5 hours, my body is constantly building up insulin and then recovering, but then before it can stay low long enough, it goes up again because I've eaten again. 

I'm not ready to do a 24-36 hour fast. Yet. I do really want to do one.  But not yet. Soon, hopefully as I know a longer fast helps do a full reset in our bodies which I do believe we need every once and awhile. 

One tip that was mentioned in the book was to eliminate snacking.  It makes sense as it's added calories but the reality is that it's not the added calories that causes the problem, but the constant fluctuations of insulin in our bodies. 

So my first thing I'm going to try is to not snack between meals. I don't eat breakfast but I count my coffee as breakfast so I will try to have my coffee (breakfast), lunch and then dinner. Nothing else. At least Monday to Thursday.  I know on the weekends, it's a bit harder to manage as we are usually out and about or visiting/entertaining. 

I tried this yesterday and let me tell you, snacking is literally a habit. I finish work and I usually go and grab my cheese plate, maybe some meats or veggies with dip and flop in front of the TV and eat. I'm not hungry, I just do it out of habit. 

Typically, I eat lunch at 11:30.  I then grab a handful of nuts at 2. Then I have my "after work" snack at 3:30. Then dinner between 5:30-6:30. Usually, I'm done eating after dinner,  but on some occasions, I might grab a quick snack at 7:30 before bed. I'm in bed at 9. 

So I eat at 11:30, 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30??? Seriously... I'm eating all day long! 

Yesterday I changed it up. I had my coffee at 7:30, lunch at 11 and then dinner at 5:15. That was it. And I didn't die. I wanted my snacks out of habit. I thought I was hungry but after 10-15 minutes, any hunger feelings were gone. I grabbed a cup of green tea at 3 as my "snack" to hold me over. 

So, I'm going to give this a try. My food tracking sucks but I think I can easily track WHEN I eat. Sometimes my lunches are a bit small, so I might up the food a bit more at lunch or dinner to ensure I'm getting enough calories in the day to sustain life! :)