Weight Update for Feb 27

Looks like over the last week, I've pretty much just maintained everything:

weight: 215.4 lbs
fat percentage: 47.8%
hydration: 35.8%
muscle: 25.6%
bone: 11.0%
cal: 2351

The main difference was in fat percentage (it went up a bit) and muscle percentage (which went down a bit).  I'm not sure what influences those numbers on my scale and why they seem to change so often (especially during a week that felt fairly similar to a normal week, other than the added stress from world events) - I'll have to look into it!

Weight Update for Feb 20

 Alright, first weight update post-period.  I even managed to weigh myself on a Sunday, which is the one day a week I'm hoping to use:

weight: 215.4 lbs
fat percentage: 46.9%
hydration: 36.5%
muscle: 26.1%
bone: 11.0%
cal: 2351

This is fantastic to see, that I didn't gain weight during my period!  I'm also very excited to see that my fat percentage is down a little more than a full percentage point since February 12th! Overall I'm very happy with these numbers.

I'm also beginning to suspect that the main reason, at least over the last while, that I had trouble getting any of the weight I had gained off was due to the amount of peanut butter I was consuming.  I've started trying to limit that more (and to have smaller portions in my smoothies and whatnot) on top of trying to eat in a more cholesterol-friendly way (which, coincidentally, is also a low GI way).  

Exercise Goal Change

We're nearing the end of February, and I realized that my exercise goal for the year isn't quite working the way I had hoped.  The problem is that we've had a lot of snow over the last month and a half (and it's been quite heavy snow).  Between walking to and from work, then having to clean up the snow, I'm having a hard time fitting in exercise videos.  So I decided to modify the goal so I'm not stressing out about it.  Rather than mandating exercise videos, I'd like to fit in two times of non-walking exercise into my 150 minutes a week.  Exercise videos are preferable for the stretching, but shovelling, mowing the lawn, gardening, skiing, snowshoeing, swimming, dancing, and things like that will count too.   I would rather welcome whatever other exercise I happen to need or want to do every week instead of stressing out that I've shovelled for hours but didn't have time for yoga. :)

Cholesterol Down

After my doctor told me I should try lowering my cholesterol through diet, I went and got Cholesterol Down: 10 Simple Steps to Lower Your Cholesterol on 4 Weeks - Without Prescription Drugs by Dr. Janet Brill. I wanted to learn what I could about cholesterol, and hopefully get some tips (and potentially a new diet?) to help bring my cholesterol down.

I don't know if there's a more up to date version of this book, but the copy I read was from 2006, so I'm sure there are at least some more modern studies on cholesterol and the various foods that Dr. Brill recommends.  In some of her discussions on different foods, she noted that scientists haven't come to a consensus on why different foods lower cholesterol (like garlic), so it's possible that there are more studies and theories on those foods as well.

Dr. Brill's recommends the following 10 steps every day (or nearly every day) to reduce your cholesterol: 

1. Oatmeal - 1 bowl a day (with added oat bran) - Cheerios were okay too, but you need to eat a lot of them!
2. Apple - 1 a day
3. Flaxseeds - 2 tbsp a day
4. Beans - 1/2 cup serving a day
5. Metamucil (Psyllium Husk) - 12 capsules a day
6. Almonds - a handful a day
7. Margarine with Phytosterols -twice a day (or supplements - 3 at two meals)
8. Soy Protein - 20 to 25 grams a day
9. Garlic - 1 fresh clove plus 1 kyolic garlic capsule  a day 
10. Walking - 30 minutes a day (not split up)

Although it wasn't included in these steps, she also recommended a daily multivitamin.

I was really struck by how some of these foods are also low GI foods, like oatmeal, apples, and beans, so that made me happy to have been making muffins out of my copy of The G.I. Diet by Rick Gallop over the last few weeks.  His baking recipes usually call for ingredients like wheat or oat bran, and I one of the muffin recipes I made used apples (the other one used pears, which apparently contain more cholesterol-lowering pectin than apples!)

I also really liked that she explained how everything worked to lower your LDL cholesterol levels (as well as just the basics of cholesterol in your body).  While at times I got a little lost in the technical terms of different compounds, proteins, etc, overall I found this all fairly easy to follow.  I do wish there had been a glossary of these terms and other acronyms though!

As to the diet itself, I am a little torn.  While I've tried to incorporate some of these steps already (I've upped my oat intake, and have tried to eat almonds, soy protein, and an apple every day), other steps, particularly regarding the amount of supplements, really turned me off.  12 capsules of Metamucil seems like a lot to have every day (and will definitely add up in terms of price).  And both eating a clove of fresh garlic AND taking a garlic supplement just wasn't appealing (though I admit I've never really eaten fresh garlic cloves, so I really should try it to see if I will like them - this step just didn't appeal to me because fresh garlic is apparently much more fragrant on both your breath and exiting your pores).

I'm also not really sure how you would fit all of this into your day?  Like when are you having the beans vs the soy protein, plus fitting in some garlic and nuts, especially when one meal is already taken up with oatmeal?  In my mind, alternating through some of these steps every few days seems more practical (but I understand you would lose some of the cholesterol-fighting power by not fitting everything in every day if you did that).  I'm also not sure if this diet is supposed to be a long-term thing, or if you were just supposed to incorporate all ten steps for four weeks (which is what the subtitle of the book implies)?  Again, that makes sense to me as a way to lower your cholesterol then maintain the lowered level?  

While I am glad to have read Cholesterol Down (and I'm going to check out the recipes before sending this book back to the library!) I'm not ready to commit to the full ten step plan, particularly as an every day diet.  But I will definitely be incorporating many of these foods into my diet as much as possible.  I'm also going to look into other foods that lower cholesterol (like pears, which weren't mentioned at all in Cholesterol Down) and try to incorporate some of those instead of all the supplements.

The plan also included exercising 30 minutes a day.  Dr. Brill recommends walking, but other aerobic exercises are also effective at lowering LDL, as well as giving you a host of other health benefits like lowering your risk of certain cancers and dementia. This was a good reminder to be more active in general! :)

Weight Analysis

I've never done this before, but I went back over all the weight updates on this blog yesterday, shoving them into an Excel chart so I could see how things have changed over time.  I made a scatter graph with the data, which very clearly showed that something happened, and suddenly my weight has been much higher than it was before:

From what I can tell from the data (I'm not good at making charts on Excel - I don't know how to change the X-axis labels), the first big jump was in November 2019.  At that time, my weight jumped up to 217.6lbs, from 212lbs earlier that month.  Looking back on this blog, I found a note that something stressful was happening around then, but I'm not entirely sure what that was.  Since that time, while my weight has dipped down again here and there, it has not gone under 209lbs (where before that I had seen 205's).  

The timing of this is interesting, as it predates the Covid-19 pandemic by a few months (that's what I usually think of as the time my health took a turn for the worse because I wasn't as active when everything shut down).  

About a week ago, I mapped out my cholesterol levels from all the bloodwork I have access to (that's actually what made me decide to do this with my weight).  My cholesterol had also been trending downward until mid-2019, when it started trending quite strongly upward.  I'm not sure if that's a coincidence, or if something changed with my health that year - I'll have to investigate further!

Feb 12 Weight Update

 Continuing with weighing myself every three days (😅), here's my weight update for today:

weight: 216.0 lbs
fat percentage: 48.1%
hydration: 35.6%
muscle: 25.5%
bone: 10.9%
cal: 2355

While my weight has stayed the same since Feb 9th, the fat percentage is lower and the muscle percentage is higher, so that's great news!

I'm anticipating that my period will be starting by the end of the week, so this is my last weight update before that.  I also wanted to do the update today to get a weekend weight update, since that's when I'm hoping to do them on a regular basis.  :)

Weight Updates for Early February

 I keep weighing myself kind of whenever I think of it, and have ended up weighing myself every few days. I really need to pick a time once per week and stick to that!

Feb 3:

weight: 215.4 lbs
fat percentage: 48.0%
hydration: 35.7%
muscle: 25.5%
bone: 11.0%
cal: 2351

Feb 6:

weight: 216.0 lbs
fat percentage: 47.8%
hydration: 35.8%
muscle: 25.6%
bone: 10.9%
cal: 2355

Feb 9:

weight: 216.0 lbs
fat percentage: 50.2%
hydration: 34.2%
muscle: 24.5%
bone: 10.9%
cal: 2355

Other than that random dip on Feb 3, my weight has held steady for the last month at about 216.0 lbs.  But that's okay.  After getting sick in early January, I started fighting some really brutal lows, so it's no wonder I haven't been able to lose any weight since I had to eat a ton of extra during that.  But thankfully the lows are under control now. 

I've also had a lot of stuff on the go lately that meant I had to be up earlier a lot over the last week or so.  That's messed with my eating patterns as well (I caught myself repeatedly eating extra because I was so tired) :(  But life should be getting back to normal for the next little bit, so I shouldn't be so tired any more (and therefore snacking more!)

Oh, and over the weekend, I pulled out The G.I. Diet by Rick Gallop, and made a muffin recipe from that!  Unfortunately I didn't have all the ingredients that I thought I had, so I had to make a few substitutions (who knew that mashed banana works as a substitute for apple sauce???) But now I have some healthy snacks for the week.  I'm going to try to get back into my routine of making healthy cookies or muffins on the weekend for the coming work week so I'm less tempted to grab junk food in the break room.

First Snowshoe of 2022!

 I was so excited to go for my first snowshoe today!  I went out to a friend's place, and we were out for just under an hour (50 minutes almost exactly). It was a beautiful day, and finally a little warmer (almost the entire month of January was super cold - I only went out skiing once so far!)

In terms of insulin, I wasn't really sure what to try as I've never updated the My Insulin Strategies page with anything I've tried before. But I did find a post from early January 2021 when I went snowshoeing and wrote down what I did.  But that time I was dealing with hills, and I knew today the trails were going to be a lot flatter, so I tried using a 60% basal rather than cutting down as I suggested in that post.  I was originally going to cut back my food and correction bolus at lunch to about 50%, but at the last second decided to a 75% bolus instead (again, I realized it was less hilly so I wouldn't need to be as strict).  When we started snowshoeing, my glucose looked like it was coming down slightly, but then it went back up a bit, so I think next time I go there, I'll have to try a 65% or 75% basal instead.

I'm going to update the My Insulin Strategies page so I've got these noted there as well for next time. :)