Thursday, November 8, 2012

Perception



November 8, 2012

Last month when I posted to this blog, my weight was 160.0 pounds.  As you can see in the sidebar to the right, my weight as of Monday was 163.2 pounds.

When I weighed myself this past Monday and found my weight to be up a pound from last week and 3 pounds higher than a month ago, I thought I could feel the extra 3 pounds.  I started thinking about how I perceive my body weight which I believe falls into the category of body image.  It seems odd to me that now at 163 pounds I feel that I need to lose weight and a year ago at a little over 180 pounds I thought my weight was pretty good.

I believe that part of the reason is that since my job ended in September I have not been getting my weight workouts. I think the regular weight lifting helps me feel strong and not focus on the extra "stuff" for lack of a better word, around my middle. I plan to get back to lifting weights as soon as possible.

In my post last month I indicated that I was taking Rip Esselstyn’s 28 day challenge and would be making an attempt to eat a gluten free, vegan with no oil diet over the next month.  I had blood drawn at the end of September to check levels of blood cholesterol and sugar which would be compared to similar tests done at the beginning of November. I also stated that I would be recording my food consumption in my Calorie King diary so I would know how many times I strayed from my food plan.

First off, since my weight was in my goal range I quickly abandoned recording my food consumption in Calorie King. My feel for my diet during this time period is that I stayed pretty close. I know there were a couple poor food decisions during the month and several other times that I either intentionally or unintentionally had a small amount of a food item I was trying to avoid. 


5/24/2012
9/29/2012
11/5/2012
Total Cholesterol
161
161
149
LDL
90
77
73
Triglyceride
53
34
39
HDL
61
77
68
Glucose

88
87

So in the end, total cholesterol and LDL both went down and are in the range that Rip states makes one heart attack proof. However, Triglyceride went up and HDL went down which is the wrong direction for both of these markers to be moving.  I will say that I felt better eating primarily plant foods and that on the 2 occasions during the month that knowingly had a meal of animal foods, I felt worse and my digestion was much more sluggish.  While I don’t think I will become a zealot anytime soon and have no intention of giving up my wool socks like some vegans, I do intend to continue with primarily a plant based diet. 

I do want to share that I found a product during the past month that I think is wonderful and I have been using in place of salad dressing. I had been using regular balsamic vinegar on my salads and alone, it has a fairly strong flavor. This past month I switched to white balsamic vinegar. The flavor is milder and it is just fine alone with no oil.

So here we are through with Halloween but looking that big fat turkey straight in the eye.  My weight is now the highest it has been since August 27th and the holiday eating season looms large. Plus, to kick off the holiday eating season, I will be on a cruise ship for 7 days the week of Thanksgiving. Clearly my challenge now is to get to 2013 within my goal range.  Stay tuned, I will post an update about a month from now.