Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Last night's Weight? 278

I did my weigh in at the Human Performance Center last night after my workout, and was presently surprised. I haven't used the elliptical trainer since last Monday, because Tuesday I was diagnosed with a muscle tear in my right thigh. So I've only been doing a leisurely 5 miles on the exercise bike, 2 miles on the treadmill, and a few laps in the pool. It's enough to get the metabolism going, but not enough to strain the leg injury. A 32 minute workout on the elliptical breaks me into a full sweat, but it also works that thigh muscle pretty hard. The Doctor who treated me suggested I do a better job of stretching before I work out, and the staff at the gym were very helpful in showing me some easy ones to do before I hit the equipment.

Today's topic is my bad eating habits. How did I get them, and what I am doing about it.

I've always been a bigger guy, athletically active, but I am broad in the chest and back, and fairly muscular. I dropped a bit of weight when I joined the Army back in the early 1980's, but the trade off was a method of eating that was detrimental in the long run. In basic training, you are processed through your meals, and given 5 minutes or less to eat. That's how I ate all my meals, as fast as I could. Now when you get up at 5:30 AM everyday and do calisthenics and run several miles, your metabolism adjusts and keeping your weight down, isn't a problem. But after I was discharged, and a civilian, I started adding 10 or 15 pounds a week each year. The gain is just gradual enough that you don't take note of it until the cumulative effects start to show on your joints and in your overall health, with high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and joint pain becoming the driving forces in my daily life in the early 2000s.

Once I got married, in 1996, and the pace of my life picked up, I ate more and more prepared food, but my weight wasn't bad, because I had a physical job, and I played sports at night. Then I hurt my back in early 1998, and as the pain gradually increased, I stopped Bowling, playing basketball, and even taking walks. And the weight piled on. Even if I watched what I ate, the diminished physical activity had my metabolism in a permanent lull, and short of starving myself, I couldn't lose weight permanently. All losses were short term.

Having the joint of my degenerating right hip replaced helped, but my metabolism was like a computer that needed to be shut off and rebooted to function correctly, and that is what the gastric bypass operation seems to have accomplished. That's enough for now, I'll have another entry next week,

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