Diabetic

On August 1st 2014 I was admitted to the hospital for a long weekend...I was now full on Diabetic.

The month before I got a very bad case of bronchitis. Despite the meds given to me the coughing never really went away. Each day I felt more and more tired unable to wake up in the mornings and completely lacking energy. I also began to pee a lot and was getting very thirsty. The week before by hospital visit my taste buds seemed to die and only sweet things tasted any good to me.

My wife and I planned a camping trip to Jasper for the weekend before my hospital visit. I was so drained and lacking energy that my wife packed all the supplies herself as she had the day off and picked me off from work. I plan was for me to pack the truck the night before but I was way too tired.

My wife is amazing! Unfortunately, this trip was a bust. On our first night camping I had to get up to pee about 6 times and drank about 3 cans of pop. The next day we had pre paid tickets to go up the Whistler Mountain Sky Tram. I love doing this even more now that after my Dad passed away we spread his ashes up there. I was extremely tired and could not walk around much. The second night we had to get a cabin as I was still peeing too much and couldn't handle sleeping on the ground again.

I was so upset at one point because I couldn't hold my pee so we stopped on the side of a parking lot so I could go. I stumbled into the trees trying to undo my jeans. I was so tired that I peed all over my pants and started to cry when I got back to the truck. On our way home the next day I threw up the big breakfast and 5 ice teas I had drank on the side of the highway. Just one more thing added to make this the worst trip we have been on.

Through all this my wife still tried to make the best of things. I love her so much.

In hind sight the believe I was starting to feel tired long before the bronchitis as I was not that active that summer and not doing a lot of things outside of the house in the yard. The doctors told me that the bronchitis was the trigger for my diabetes.

I have had to make a lot of changes in my life from August till now.

Now I hope I have had a big enough scare to make a proper change in my life.

I have been on diabetic meds for the last 3 and a half months and I feel I have adapted to the new lifestyle but I want to really make a change. We are looking at making a lifestyle change NOT start a new diet.

Low carb, high protein, healthy fats, whole foods. It may come out being some sort of Atkins meets Paleo meets Juicing all brought together with a whole food based supplement called JuicePlus+.

Have a great day!
Ian

Week 12 Day 1: 100 Pound Detox

Since we have had trouble staying of program for the last few weeks we have been put on a special one week detox!

There is a new girl at the weight loss clinic that the company ships around to train staff. She also specializes in rapid weight loss! I'm very excited about this because she herself has lost 100 lbs!! It's nice to be getting info and advice from someone that has lost a lot of weight because you feel they understand you. If I have 150 lbs to lose and someone that has only lost 20 or 30 lbs is advising me I get in a mood...”Who are you to give me advice small fry!?!”

The excitement of being on the program has come back!

She has predicted about a 15 lbs loss for me and about 8 lbs loss for my wife in one week!

So what's the deal?

Well, first we had to spend MORE money to get extra supplements we don't have. Some to give us energy some to stimulate the thyroid and some to help clean the bowels.

Second, she cut our calories per day and gave us special meal plans. The meals are easy and good for on the go like chicken salad or smoothies. Our snacks are gone but we can still eat all the freedom food we want. Peppers, broccoli, asparagus, cucumbers, spinach and the other veggies low in natural sugars. If we are still hungry we're allowed to add a protein smoothie as a snack but I think we're trying to avoid that.

Third, she has recommended at least a 20 minute walk each day. We should lose a lot of weight without it but the loss should be very impressive with the walk each day.

Today was a first full day on detox and I'm already excited for our Wednesday appointment to see how much we lose!

Week 3 – Day 6: Water for Occam

This busy life of shopping, cooking, eating and now a bit of exercise is really taking a lot of our time. I may only try to post one or two times per week. Maybe one long post on Saturdays and a short post Monday or Tuesday nights what I will try for. Saturdays we have more time and Monday evening is our official weigh and measuring night at the weight loss clinic so I will want to update you with the my stats that day.

Speaking of stats I'm trying to record more information for comparison. Something that I'm hearing from everyplace especially from Timothy Ferriss's book “The 4-Hour Body” that I will talk to you more about below. So I will be posting pictures on my pictures page along with tracking my weight, body fat percentage and measurements. I will be posting all the stats on a new page and updating that as I go. If I'm really busy I may just update the stats page without posting a main blog post so check it even if you don't see something new here. Like I said I will try to post my stats every Monday or Tuesday.

Now for some bad news...I gained 2 LBS one visit to the weight loss clinic. It was a little upsetting but they gave me the suggestion that I may not be drinking enough water. I always thought I drank enough water before joining the weight loss clinic and after we joined I started drinking more water. I was averaging 10-15 cups of water before program and was getting 13-17 cups after joining program. So it was even more upsetting to have them tell me I need to drink more water!

Well the next day I began drinking more water and now I'm averaging 15-20 cups of water each day. Guess what? The next weigh in I lost 3 LBS!!!! Crazy what the right amounts of water can do. Funny but at the same time I was reading the part in Timothy Ferriss's book about how he recommends large amounts of water also. Needless to say I got this message compounded into my brain this past week and it paid off!

Now that we know the program is starting to work we have begun telling some of our friends and family about it. I was nervous about telling people because we have been trying to lose weight for so long I didn't want to hear any negative comments. We have chosen not to tell people about how much money we spent pre-paying for 25 weeks of the program again just to avoid any negative comments. Our health is important and we are at the breaking point.

Two friends we told last night where very supportive and asked us a lot of positive questions while giving us a few tips. The experience of telling them was better then I expect from say our close family members. These friends are very into cooking so they got very interested in our meal plans and we even made plans to have them over for a healthy smoothy tasting. This should be fun we have it planned for two weekends from now.

Our friends were also very interested in the vitamins and supplements that we're taking as part of the program. When we joined the weight loss clinic the girl doing our consultation was explaining the program and showed us a book called “Nutrisearch Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements” by Lyle MacWilliam. This book shows independent research about the quality and absorption rates of over 1500 nutritional supplements available in the United States and Canada. This was the real kicker that got me to agree to dish out the money for the program. The company that makes the weight loss clinic's vitamins we would be taking got a 5 out of 5 star rating! It's crazy but common big name vitamins like Centrum rated 1 star or less and many of it's products rated 0 stars. Anyway I think this book will be very useful when you're trying to choose the right vitamins for yourself or family.

4-Hour Body – Review Part 1

So the new book I bought last weekend “The 4-Hour Body” by Timothy Ferriss is great! Don't bother reading any more of my review because if you want to transform your body, lose weight, gain muscle, recover from any injury, improve sleep or improve your sex life you need this book...BUY IT!

Ok...I'm a little mad that I spent all that money joining the weight loss clinic when all I needed was this book! That being said the money spent has been a real motivator so I don't really have any regrets. My plan is to stay with the weight loss clinic for the full 25 weeks we paid for and lose as much weight so we can adjust to a new healthy lifestyle. While doing that I will begin implementing some of the ideas set forth by Timothy.

The ideas Timothy sets forth in his book are simple to the point of non-believable at first. He always backs up his crazy ideas with research of top people and pictures or facts of his personal experience.

Have you heard of Minimal Effective Dose (MED) or Occam's Protocol?

That's when taking a certain amount of a drug or doing a certain amount of something is the minimum amount needed to get a result. You only need 1 or 2 pain killers to get rid of your headache so why take 3 or 4? In regards to bodybuilding if you want to gain muscle mass you only need to do enough exercise and the right exercise to stimulate the hormones in your body to start building muscle THEN give your body several days of rest. Muscle building hormones stay in your body building muscle for days and over training can hinder your muscle growth.

Occam's Razor: “Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity” or rephrased as “The simplest answer is usually the correct answer ” but I like to say KISS – Keep It Simple Silly!

Occam's Protocol page 193 of his book is what I plan to be using to gain muscle mass in the weeks to come. I may not start if for a few weeks as we adjust to our healthy lifestyle more. The Protocol is a workout plan that has 2 different workouts that should only take about 30 minutes to do and are alternated every 3 or 4 days. So workout A today then 4 days later workout B another 4 more days before workout A again and so on for about 4 hours of workout time per month. This is where the book got it's name...you only need to work out 4 hours per month to build a great body!

I also read the section on weight loss but I will not get into that until after we complete the 25 weeks at our current program. At the start of the book Timothy recommends reading the basic parts of the book first and then reading the parts that interest you like a reference book. If you're only looking to gain muscle mass then just read those pages or just read the pages on improving your sex life.

I will post more reviews of the book another time also I will not be updating my stats here because I'm about to build that new stats page to keep everything in order.

Have a great day!

-Ian