Lazy, Hazy, but not Crazy

I can't believe it's almost a month since I last posted to this blog. For months after beginning a strategy for losing weight last November, I posted every week, usually to give updates on my progress and delve into the successes or struggles I experienced. I transformed my eating habits and lost thirty pounds, and though my goal of forty-four pounds remains something I'd like to reach, I've decided to live with this weight for awhile without "trying" so hard to restrict my eating. And so far I've done pretty well, though predictably, I'm at the high range of the weight I decided to allow myself for "maintenance"-- 180 pounds (I had started at 209).

I don't feel like I've been sitting around doing nothing, but I've been decidedly less ambitious than in the months previous to July 3rd when the fundraising event for AWARE: Artists Working to Restore the Environment was held. I had put so much effort into making that a success (netted over $3,000, $2500 of which I'll be distributing to WV Environmental Council and member groups, the rest of which will be used for upcoming projects), that my wife had mused that I was working harder in retirement than I had for years.

So the rhythm of activity has definitely slowed, and I've actually had time to sit down and read a little in the last couple weeks, ride my bike regularly, play a bit more music, even actually doing a "bar gig" of sorts (tip jar Tuesday at the Boulevard Tavern), dusting off a slew of my original songs many of which have not been played in public much over the years, some of which have only been heard by Rita and a couple others. Not that they've been heard by many others after playing Tuesday night -- it was a pretty empty room. But it was good practice, and when I finished my second set and called it a night with a solo rendition of the fiddle tune, Catharsis, a complex G-minor rockin' contra dance favorite, the eight or nine people at the bar clapped and whistled.

Tonight, old friend Joe McHugh and his wife, Paula, will play for a FOOTMAD Wandering Minstrel Concert I organized for them. They live in Washington state and came here to do a couple programs at the Appalachian String Band Festival at Clifftop, WV, and this is their last stop before heading home. I may also play a little fiddle before the anti-Mountain Top Removal at Kanawha State Forest rally at the WV Capitol beforehand (5 pm).

Rita and I fly out in the morning for ten days in Colorado Springs (visiting grandchild, Jack Martorella, and his parents), Albuquerque (daughter Hannah and husband), and points in between. So this is retirement during lazy, hazy, not too crazy days of summer 2014.

Diet Milestone: 33 pounds gone 11 to go, 3/4 of the way to goal.

My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 29, May 25, 2014 

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 62

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 38 in.

Weight end of this week:  176 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  -1 lb.

Total Gain/Loss:  -33 lbs.

This week, 7 months into my physical transformation through change in diet, I’ve reached a milestone. I am three-fourths of the way to my goal of reducing my weight to 165 pounds from 209 pounds since I now have “lost” 33 pounds. Go to a gym and pick up thirty-three pounds of weights--it's the equivalent of a cinderblock or a small microwave oven. It’s significant. I have not weighed this little for at least twenty-five years.

When I reach my goal of one hundred sixty-five pounds, I will still be as much as ten pounds overweight, depending on what measure of healthy weight you use. My doctor, an internist, recommended not losing any more than that. He says that when his patients reach my age, he wants them to have ten to fifteen extra pounds, so that if they get ill and lose some weight, they have some fat to lose. Otherwise, they may lose muscle mass, which is harder to regain as you age. At any rate, I am already quite happy with the way I look. For those of you who have been reading my blog, I’ve said before that I always felt pretty good about the way I looked in a mirror, but I also know that pictures don’t lie. And now when I see pictures of myself, I’m amazed at how much better I look, the stronger, leaner face, the lack of a potbelly, and a general look of fitness. Yes, under all that blubber I really did have quite a bit of muscle from all the bike riding and regular workouts at the YWCA.

An Op-Ed in the New York Times last week by medical researchers Dr. David Ludwig (Harvard School of Medicine) and Mark Friedman, a physiologist and psychologist, entitled, “Always Hungry? Here’s Why,” and a wonderful interview I heard on the NPR program, People’s Pharmacy, with Dr. Robert Lustig, a neuroendocrinologist and Professor of Pediatrics at University of California, San Francisco, who wrote a book called Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease (link to radio show and podcast) both reinforce the science behind my experiences during my journey to a healthier body weight (I’ve lost thirty-three pounds since November 2013).

Ludwig and Friedman note that scientists studying weight loss and nutrition have often gotten it wrong in their understanding of the correlations between calories and weight loss or gain. A calorie is a measure of energy in food. It seemed logical that the number of calories you consume minus the amount of energy measured in calories that your body expends should determine whether you gain or lose weight. But some research now indicates it’s not that simple for multiple reasons, including the way our bodies adjust metabolism depending on the types of foods we eat and even the proportion of fat and muscle in our bodies, squeezing more energy out of calories in some instances and passing calories out of our systems unused in others. To make losing weight more difficult for people with excess fat, Ludwig and Friedman found that fat cells require more calories to maintain than other body cells. They postulate that fat cells ‘grab’ incoming calories, causing the body to need additional food to do other necessary tasks such as nourishing muscle and organ cells and performing necessary body functions.

This creates additional hunger, seemingly caused by the existence of fat itself. Compounding that are the effects of the consumption of sugars and other foods with a high glycemic index, which I think of as the “white foods”: white potatoes, white bread, white rice, and anything made with white flour including regular pastas, most cereals, and in addition, all corn and corn products. Among the sugars are honey, corn syrups, fructose, and even fruit juices. And these days almost all processed foods have added sugar in some form, often "high fructose corn syrup."

When I searched for Glycemic Index chart I found wildly
different numbers in different charts. This one seemed
to match what I believe is true, though it has fruit juices
classified at the high end of Low.

If you got thrown by the words, “glycemic index,” let me give a brief explanation of this important concept. For diabetics, knowing the glycemic index values of foods is critical to their ability to control blood sugar levels because of their lack of insulin production. All food must be broken down to its most basic element, glucose, a form of sugar, for your cells to absorb its energy. Sugars and the white foods are the easiest foods for the body to convert to glucose, which spurs insulin production. Insulin helps our cells absorb the sugar, getting it out of our blood stream. We want it out of our bloodstream because high blood sugar levels cause the blood to be ‘sticky’ and not circulate well, causing cholesterol to build up in the cell walls leading to increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and various other ailments. 

 

The lower glycemic foods make the body work harder and take longer to break down into sugar. Lustig’s research and work with obese children has led him to discover that hunger decreases dramatically when the white foods are eliminated and carbs in general are reduced, and blood sugar levels remain steadier. This was my experience when I reduced carbohydrate intake following the recommendations in a book called the 2 Day Diet: diet two days a week and eat normally the rest of the week, by Dr. Michelle Harvie and Professor Tony Howell.

But why? It’s because high glycemic index foods cause blood sugar levels to spike, spurring glucose production, sending the sugars to the cells and a quick drop in blood sugar. In other words, the spike is followed by a dip, and the low blood sugar levels cause your body to cry out for more food. It is a classic addiction pattern, compounded by the fact that no one can live without carbohydrates. You can’t completely remove carbohydrates from your diet; you would starve. I used to snack on corn chips between meals. Of course this was just keeping the roller coaster going. It's funny how obese people like I was don't stop to ask ourselves, "Why am I hungry?" We know our bodies don't "need the food," after all, we're carrying enough fuel in the form of fat to keep the engines of our bodies running for months. And, in most cases, obese people get hungry every every or two. And not just a little hungry, desperately hungry. Well, it's not for most of us a case of some basic flaw of character or terrible childhood trauma, it's body chemistry. An addiction to simple carbohydrates.

What you can do to break the addiction, however, is avoid high glycemic index foods and replace them with low glycemic index foods: low fat meat and fish in reasonable quantities (4 oz. or less), nuts, low fat dairy like low fat cottage cheese and nonfat yogurt (without the syrupy fruit—use fresh or canned fruit); all the green vegetables you can eat of any kind, including tomatoes (yes, they turn red, but start green, just like peppers), eggplant, summer squash. Sweet potatoes and winter squash, lima beans and other beans are in the medium range and fine in limited quantities. Vegetarians will depend on them for protein. Whole grain (make sure its 100% whole grain, though, and doesn't have added sugar) foods like oatmeal or Cheerios, whole wheat bread and pasta, brown rice and such are relatively low in their glycemic indexes, but should not be overeaten. A tennis ball size serving (about ¾ cup) or one or two slices of bread constitutes a serving. I have had many satisfying lunches of just half a sandwich, an open sandwich, or a light wrap made with a small "light" tortilla (or on a low carb day that the 2 Day Diet recommends twice a week, I might use a piece of lettuce or cabbage as the wrap).

For me, that diet, described as a Mediterranean diet in the 2 Day Diet book, has become a way of life. I no longer have to measure portions or keep track of how much of each food group I eat, because basically I now eat as much as I want. It's just that I don’t want very much. My appetite has been reduced so that a salad with a few ounces of canned tuna, sardines, smoked oysters, or a small piece of salmon, chicken, or a couple thin slices of turkey is a satisfying meal. A couple tablespoons of cottage cheese with some canned peaches or pears, fresh strawberries and couple walnuts…a great breakfast or snack between meals. 

One small serving of brown rice with as much broccoli or stir-fry veges as I want, and the equivalent of a small pork chop, chicken thigh or fish portion makes a great dinner. And yes, I sometimes have beef as well if that’s what I want. And if I’m at someone’s house and they serve a rich lasagna dripping with fat and cheeses, I don’t decline it, I just take a portion that is half or less of what we’ve come to think of as a normal serving: about ½ cup in volume. Then I eat it very slowly and eat a lot of salad or other green vegetables. And if they don’t serve any green vegetables, fine, I eat some when I get home.

One food that most people have a hard time believing is not part of a healthy diet is fruit juice. Dr. Lustig recounted a really smart demonstration he and his colleague, a nutritionist, do on visits to schools. They give two students six oranges each. One is given a juicer; he uses the six oranges to make a 12 oz. glass of orange juice, drinks it down, and says, “Now what’s for breakfast?” The other student starts eating oranges. By the time he finishes orange number four, he’s so full he feels like throwing up. In other words, according to Dr. Lustig, though some fruits are considered medium or high glycemic index foods, they have a self-limiting ingredient that keeps us from overeating if we eat the whole fruit: fiber.

I love that science explains why I’ve been successful on this diet. And if you struggle with your weight, there’s one takeaway I hope you get from reading this; it’s that I didn’t succeed because I have superior willpower. I’m succeeding because I stopped feeling hungry all the time. Yes, I did need some willpower in the first month or two. You can go back and read about how I held myself back at parties…or didn’t, and if I didn’t, I forgave myself and started fresh the next day. But as I learned when I (finally after many tries) quit smoking 20 years ago, breaking an addiction takes at least a month. But once you break your carb addiction, you’ll be home free. Go for it!

Losing Weight, but Experiencing Growth

May I be healed.

May I be free from suffering.

May my heart be filled.

May I find peace.

I don’t remember where I got this mantra. I believe it comes from Buddhist philosophy or the yoga tradition, though I probably got it from a self-help psychology book. I’ve been reciting it for years, not as a regular exercise, but in times of stress, or sometimes just to help me relax before going to sleep.

Reciting this gives me a sense of contentment and even joy. But it has no intrinsic power; it isn’t in itself anything more than a prayer or a wish, words. I learned it during a time in my life, after my divorce, when I was trying to understand myself and my emotions. Why did I stay in a relationship for so long that was dissatisfying and eventually painful? And then how could I, at age 40 (then), “fall in love” at the drop of a hat, then be so pained when it didn’t pan out?

Songwriting and performing was one of my responses to my pain, and I had a period of creative awakening, writing over a hundred songs in the early 90’s from which I chose some and made a solo CD of original acoustic music I titled, “Lessons Life’s Taught Me.”

I also started a seeing a therapist who helped me explore childhood pain, how those early experiences stay in our minds, coloring and magnifying our emotions and responses in the present. I learned not only how to recognize that so that I could keep the present in better perspective, but through a method described by John Bradshaw in his seminal self-help psychology books (The Homecoming, etc.) as “inner-child” work, I actually reduced or eliminated some of the early pain, making me much better equipped to operate as an “Adult in transactions with other people.” I refer there to elements of a kind of psychological model called TA, or Transactional Analysis, popularized in a book written some 40 years ago titled I’m OK, You’re OK, in which, to give the barest and simplest summary, people have three choices or possibilities in any interaction with another person: to be playing a Child role, a Parent role, or an Adult role. To play either Child (needy, immature, manipulative, emotional, also possibly full of wonder, curious, naïve, joyful) or Parent (authoritarian, directive, worried, angry…), often forces the other into the opposite role and causes “tapes” from childhood experiences to run in the background coloring the interaction. Even if only one person can consistently maintain the Adult role, generally logical, not emotional, there is a better chance of keeping the interaction on the Adult to Adult level.

Since the vast majority of people do not escape early childhood without some emotional pain, and relatively few ever go through therapy to help them deal with it, it follows that there are likely a lot of people walking around dealing with various levels of childhood pain coloring their responses to the world. In extreme forms, it might look like road rage, but for most it’s probably just difficulty communicating in relationships or pettiness, overreactions of hurt feelings, anger, sadness, in a given situation.

But before I go any farther, let me correct any impression that I think therapy is the only path to healthy emotions and relationships. Some people, I’m sure, successfully work through programs or exercises provided in self help materials. Others find the same kind of liberation from childhood pain in their religious or spiritual experiences. I actually believe that the goals, or at any rate the potential results of religious practice and that of psychology amount to much the same things.

Fast forward twenty-two years, and you’ll find me, retired in my early 60’s, remarried for the last eighteen years, and in the midst of another awakening of my creative soul, my muse, call it what you will, but not limited it to music. In the past couple months, I must at least partly attribute it to my change of diet, I’ve had a host of creative ideas, many of which I’ve acted on, and to my great satisfaction, they are yielding interesting results.

MCHMess (that’s my word for the chemical spill/water crisis around Charleston, WV that began on January 9, 2014 and continues to affect the conversation here), has had a big impact on me. Those of you who’ve been reading my blog know it hasn’t affected me like most people: I’m not afraid to drink our tap water, though of course I didn’t drink while the advisories were in effect and didn’t choose to drink during the period that odor from the chemical lingered in the water in my house.

No, my assessment was that the efforts to contain and clean up the spill were effective, the chemical, while nasty and not a substance that should ever have gotten in our water, is likely not dangerous at the low levels it has been found in some tap water since the “Do Not Use” order was lifted, and that the CDC got it right or very close to right when they set the “screening level”, the level at which it was not likely to affect public health. That reasoned position is not very popular in the affected region.

My response to the spill, however, was to spur me to action on environmental issues well beyond chemical storage, which is, of course also important. I decided it was time for me to do something more about Mountain Top Removal (MTR) coal mining and to learn more about fracking and its environmental impact. It’s time to get serious about doing something about Climate Change as well.

I attended some meetings and some rallies. I wrote new verses to Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land and sang it at big MTR rally at the Capitol in Frankfort, KY, and again at the Capitol in Charleston. I walked the halls of the Capitol on E-Day, a day when WV environmental groups have a big lobby effort. And soon after that I decided that meetings and lobbying weren’t my best use of time. I decided the people already doing that needed more resources, more money, so I would do what I love to do and do pretty well, create and promote music events. I began talking with others about my ideas, including WV artist Mark Blumenstein, and a Charleston area software engineer and musician, Kevin Crump, and out of those conversations came AWARE: Artists Working in Alliance to Restore the Environment. And now, AWARE is about to “go live” as a project of West Virginia Citizen Action Group which I direct. The website is not quite ready for public viewing, and I’m not going to spend time in this space describing the project, but briefly, we will raise money through holding events: concerts, art shows, craft fairs, and encourage others to do so in our name and send us proceeds. We will distribute the money we raise to environmental action groups in West Virginia (possibly expanding in the future).

I’ve gone far afield in this long blog post, but if you’re still with me, I’ll wrap up shortly. Starting up this organization has been as creative an act as I’ve ever engaged in; it came, as great songs sometimes do, with inspiration and because I was open to my “muse”. Part of my openness to my muse at this time is, I believe, due to changes in my body from losing weight and eating differently.

My metabolism is different, and there are no doubt chemical/hormonal changes—I’m sleeping less (my brother is concerned I may be going through a thyroid induced energy burst which runs in my family and I’ve agreed to be tested), and I’ve been finding when I do my little Yoga routine that is basically a series of stretching exercises I haven’t ever done on a regular basis, I’m compelled to expand the stretches, hold them longer, and try new positions, sometimes experiencing “rushes” of energy as I “open up” into a position my body hasn’t been able to make since youth (and I didn’t do yoga then).

And I’ve found myself reciting the mantra I opened with more, but felt like I needed to revise it to reflect my current thinking. This is what I tell myself now:

May I be one whole being: body, mind, and spirit.

May I be free from fear, anxiety, and the slavery of painful emotion from the past

May my heart be filled with unconditional love.

May I be at peace

My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 22, April 6, 2014 

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 61

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 38 in.

Weight end of this week:  179 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  -2 lbs.

Total Gain/Loss:  -30 lbs.