this is what happens when you cut sugar out of your diet
At the beginning of this year, I was eating like crap. And yes, I had put on some weight.
Last month, I cleaned up my diet big time.
At the beginning of this month, I was almost at my target BMI.
And now I am at my target BMI of 22.0. Goal achieved, and my weight is back where I want it. Part of reaching the goal that I didn't mention before was completely cutting sugar out of my diet.
Okay, not completely. Mostly. In modern times, it's basically impossible to cut out sugar from everything you eat. For example, the flavored yogurt I eat has a very small per-serving sugar amount of 3g natural, 0g added.
What I'm specifically referring to here added sugars; that is what I cut out completely.
The celebration meal
When I reached my weight goal, I celebrated with a pizza, which is something that's loaded with added sugar (it's in the sauce), salt and cheese. Months earlier, I made the decision that when I reach my goal, that's what I'm eating, and so I did.
The pizza tasted great, I ate to the point of feeling stuffed (which was stupid), but hey, I earned it, right?
After eating that pizza, I felt slightly sick for the rest of the day. To be clear, it was made correctly and cooked properly, so no problems there. But after eating, my body said, "Dude, what are you doing?"
Two days to clear it out
When you take out sugar and stay off it for a while, then consume a pile of it later, yeah, the body doesn't like that at all. I felt sick, sluggish, and also had difficulty concentrating. Not fun.
Not only did I feel sick for the rest of the day after eating the pizza, it took two days before I felt like myself again.
To be fair, I can't put 100% of the blame on the sugar, since that pizza also contained a ridiculous amount of salt. But still, a pile of added sugar was in there.
A high I don't chase anymore
What I'm about to describe is something salt does not do to me at all, but added sugar does.
Let's take a candy such as, say, a Ghirardelli square in a flavor I like (such as milk chocolate caramel). That square is under 100 Calories, pretty much tiny, and nowhere near the size of a full sized chocolate bar.
What happens when I eat that is as soon at it hits the tongue, my eyes close, and the mmmmmm... moment happens.
Some would call that savoring the moment.
I don't.
That's a high. And not the good kind.
What's happening there is that my body has to stop, "enjoy" the pleasure moment, have some momentary recovery, then I can get on with whatever after the moment has passed.
Only sugar does this to me and nothing else.
I don't literally close my eyes and pause after eating mustard, chicken, greens, yogurt or anything like that. My eyes stay open, I don't pause, get my fill and get on with things.
If added sugar is in anything I eat, I get a similar high from it.
An example of this is BBQ sauce. Just two tablespoons of most BBQ sauces piles in 13g of sugar. And who uses just two tablespoons?! If someone were to put this over their chicken, they'd use at least four tablespoon's worth and take in 26g of sugar. That's the equivalent of 12 teaspoons of sugar.
This is incidentally why I'll season chicken and not use sauce on it. The blend that McCormick Himalayan Pink Salt has is actually quite good, and a pinch or two of that is all that's needed. A good seasoning goes a long way.
Does weight loss happen faster when sugar is cut out?
Yes.
When I was getting my BMI back to 22, weight loss was slow but steady. When I cut the sugar out, oh yeah, that sped things up noticeably.
I won't say it was a night-and-day difference in weight loss speed, but still, noticeable. Progress was made, and I reached my target weight goal. Job done.
how to get a sense of direction from a navigation system
The main reason nobody ever learns the lay of the land from a navigation system is because the map is facing "the wrong way".
I should note up front that setting the map the correct way on a Garmin GPS navigator is stupidly easy from a quick visit to Settings > Map Display > Driving Map View > North Up. On a phone navigation app however, yeah, good luck with that. It might be easy, difficult or outright not possible.
Many people say they do not have any sense of direction whatsoever, and that's the reason they use a navigation system. All well and good.
After driving with GPS navigation for years, especially to the same places over and over again, you would think one without a sense of direction would eventually learn where they're going. They don't, and I know exactly why. It's because the map always shows your position as up. Not north, south, east nor west. Up.
When your position is always displayed as up, you never learn the map since the direction displayed is always the same. Yes, you will be instructed when to turn and whether that turn is on the left or right side, but when moving forward, again, always up.
If you want to get a sense of direction, set the map to a North Up view
An example of this is in the screenshot above from a Garmin navigator. Notice that the arrow on the map is not facing up, but instead facing the current direction of travel, southeast. I'm still told the direction of the next turn (the top left green field with right-facing arrow), but more importantly, I know I'm heading in a southbound direction.
A North Up view to many will seem weird at first, but that's only because you're completely used to your position on the map as up.
Over time, you'll notice something by keeping the map as North Up, and that's consistency. Since the map isn't constantly spinning around to face you up, you begin to actually learn where you are, what direction you're facing, and where you're going.
Given that most people travel to the same places over and over (going home, a commute, and so on), North Up view means you're going to see the same places on the map in the same orientation every time you use your navigation system. Repeated exposure to that is the best way to learn your surroundings. After a while, it will suddenly click in your brain, "Hey! I know where I am!"...
...with emphasis on after a while. Getting that sense of direction is not instant and will take some time.
The lack of a sense of direction for most is simply because of an electronic map set to always show you as facing up, where you get directions but learn nothing. Purposely set the map to read like a paper map to always face north, and then you will start actually learning the lay of the land.
You always had a sense of direction. What you needed is a map in the proper orientation to learn from. Now you know how to get it.
generation x is the fattest of them all
Curiosity got the best of me, and I wanted to know which age group has the biggest problem putting down the fork. To no surprise, it's the age group I'm in...
...although you wouldn't know that by looking at me, as my BMI is currently 22.3. On my desk is usually a tall water bottle with a capacity of 700ml (about 24 fl oz) that gets refilled several times a day. Oh yes, I drink water and a lot of it. How much? I don't track it, but I'd guess 2 to 3 liters daily.
What water do I drink? Tap. All I add to it is ice. I drink this for three reasons. Fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to get water.
If I were buying water from the grocery store, I'd have to leave the house, go to the grocery store, get the water, wait in line, pay for the water, cart that out to the car, bring back to the house, drink all the water over a week or whatever, recycle the empty jugs, repeat once weekly...
...or just skip all that, go to the sink, fill my water bottle, add ice and drink. So that's what I do.
And since most bottled or jugged water comes from a local municipal water supply anyway, if I were concerned about the quality of the tap water, I would just get a home distiller to distill the water myself. I mean, sure, there are water filter pitchers and have been for a long time, but to truly get that "bottled water quality" or better, might as well get the distiller to really do it right.
Moving on..
How do I know Generation X is the fattest? I asked AI about it. It said the 40-59 age group is the fattest in America. Supporting articles AI provided were legitimate, so yes, the information was accurate as far as I could tell. Generation X at the time I write this is age 45 to 60. Technically, a little bit of the tail end of Generation Y is in there, but X still has the lion's share for being the fattest.
"Not possible"
There are those who sincerely believe it is extraordinarily difficult to not be fat after 40, and absolutely impossible to not be fat if you're over 50.
I'm over 50, and again, my BMI is 22.3. To put that in perspective, BMI 25 to 30 is fat and BMI over 30 is obese.
At one point in my life, I briefly tripped over into obesity and had a BMI of almost 31. Diet and exercise fixed that. But I didn't drink anywhere near as much water as I do now. My diet has also changed. I eat more greens, more yogurt, keep away from the sweets, and so on.
This doesn't mean I've not had stumbles. At the tail end of last year, I was piling away way too much chocolate, eating terribly, and had put on over 15 pounds. Not good. But now I'm just about back to where I want to be.
Before continuing, BMI 22.0 is as low as I go and no lower. That's a hard limit I set for myself, and it's a good one.
Skinny man problems
The two main problems I have as a skinny man these days are restaurants and "fat guy thinking".
The stomach isn't a muscle, but somewhat acts like one. Eat too much and get fat, and the stomach gets bigger. Eat less and get skinny, and the stomach shrinks.
This is a problem where restaurants are concerned, because all of them serve giant-sized portions for any meal. These meals are designed for big people. I'm not big. I literally cannot fit all that food in my stomach unless I want to eat myself sick, which I obviously don't want to do...
...and this leads to the second problem, fat guy thinking. I spent the majority of my adult life eating way too much, then lost weight and now eat much less food. My stomach is naturally smaller as a result. But to this day, my brain thinks I can still put away a giant plate of food. I see a towering pile of food on a plate and think, yeah, I can totally eat all that. Easy! Nope. Wrong. I can't eat all that, because if I do, I will get sick from overstuffing myself.
Speaking of which, "stuffed" is a feeling I don't like anymore. Being stuffed makes me feel lethargic, tired and slightly sick. In my fat years, I didn't know the difference between stuffed and full. All I knew for the longest time was stuffed. I know what full feels like now, and I can assure you there is a significant difference between stuffed and full.
What I have learned that's stuck with me is to think ahead, as in really consider what will happen after eating certain things.
For example, a doughnut. And not just any grocery store prepackaged crusty crap. A good doughnut that was made that day in a doughnut shop.
Forget the fact the doughnut is at least 300 Calories and completely wrecks staying within a certain Calorie limit for the day. (Depending on what limit you follow, 1 doughnut could be anywhere from 15% to 25% of your daily intake.)
That doughnut, at the mouth, is great. Tastes lovely, and the texture is nice.
After that, it goes down the throat and starts to digest.
It's knowing what happens then that keeps me away from doughnuts.
Eating a doughnut means consuming a baked pile of dough that is effectively a small cake. That dough is going to hit the stomach and stay there for a while. In that dough is a bunch of dough conditioners, sugar, and who knows what else. I know it will not digest well.
The sugar high hits the brain before digestion even begins. Initially, the hit feels good, but not long after that will be a crash. The all too familiar lazy do-nothing feeling sets in and all I want to do is sit somewhere and recover.
All this from one doughnut. But it's not like I'm having just the doughnut. Gotta have the coffee with it because that matches up perfectly with doughnuts. Yeah, let's just eat a cake full of conditioners and sugar and chase that with caffeine. What could possibly go wrong?
I know what goes wrong. A gut full of junk, a momentary sugar high followed by a crash, chased with caffeine so I feel both alert and tired at the same time.
That is a feeling of sick. Being I don't want to feel sick, I don't eat doughnuts.
And that's just one of several "foods" I outright avoid. Don't even get me started on milkshakes.
But this does get me thinking about a question..
Is this natural body rejection or just awareness?
Natural rejection means you could eat certain things when younger, but when older, the body says "don't eat that".
Awareness is what I just talked about a moment ago. Thinking ahead to what will happen after eating things you shouldn't eat.
I think the answer is awareness due to life experience.
In my younger years, sure, I'd pile away all the sodas, pizzas, fast food, cakes, pies, whatever. But when I really think about it, I always felt discomfort after eating any of that. Being I was young, I didn't know any better. If I got indigestion, trapped air or anything like that after eating trash, my thought was I guess this is normal and just left it at that.
No, not normal, and never was.
Later on as I got older, I learned to stop and think first. If I think about eating trash now, my thought is different. If I eat X, Y will happen. If Y is something I know will make me sick, nope, I don't eat it.
What I battle more than anything else is fat guy thinking as I said earlier, even as a skinny man. I know to stay away from the trash foods, but if presented with something not trash that I really like, it's sometimes difficult to back off.
For example, I have a thing for macaroni salad. Loved it ever since I was a kid and still do. If I don't watch myself, I can pile through an entire 16oz container of that in one sitting. Yes, a pound of macaroni salad. And I know that chowing down on that much pasta in one go is a bad idea. A small amount is fine, but a whole pound of it? Yeah, that will make me sick for a few hours.
Or lets take something else, a 6oz box of raspberries. Just like the macaroni salad, if I get a box of those, I'll eat the whole thing quick if I don't watch myself. Will that make me sick? Yes it will. Eating a few raspberries is fine, but downing half-a-pound of them will make my stomach acids go crazy trying to digest all that.
This also counts for other fruits. Seedless red grapes? I'll eat fistfuls of those if I don't watch myself. Oranges? I'll eat one and just one or my gut reacts the same way as if I downed a box of raspberries.
And again, I had these same issues when I was young and they were there the whole time. The difference now is that I've gained knowledge, recognize what will happen when I pile in too much food and know to back off...
...most of the time. I don't always succeed, especially with the fruits.
The 6oz box of raspberries is a really good example of that. Looks so small, but it is literally half a pound of food.
To put that in perspective, normal sized people at their absolute limit can fit 2 to 3 pounds of food in them. I'm on the lower end, so 6oz of food is almost 19% of my stomach capacity.
Remember how I said the stomach isn't a muscle, but acts like one? For an obese person, their stomach has been stretched out so much from piling in so much food for so long that they could probably consume up to 8 pounds in a single sitting.
As gross as this sounds, yes that does mean a 30+ BMI person could literally drop anywhere from 4 to 7 pounds just by "doing a number two" in the bathroom.
Oh, and I still have another problem from fat guy thinking. Chugging.
To this day, I chug drinks, even when it's water. The proper way to drink anything is to sip. Chugging slams a bunch of liquid into the gut, and the gut doesn't like that.
At a restaurant, I thankfully don't chug just out of politeness. But in my living space, yes I sometimes still do it. This is especially annoying with water because I'll get waterlogged, my gut complains, and all I can do is wait it out until my gut stops complaining. Thankfully, this doesn't take all that long, but still, if I just didn't chug, there would be no problem. This is something I'm still learning.
I can only wonder how many other Gen X'ers out there have the same problems
I was heavy but am now thin, but due to fat guy thinking I'm still retraining my brain how to eat and drink.
Diligence and vigilance are the keys to know, I suppose. Stay the course, stay alert. Keep the calories down, listen to what your gut tells you, don't eat giant piles of food, don't chug.
i finally gave up the box fan for a sleep machine
This was something I needed to do and am glad I did it.
While I do champion the twin window fan where one fan brings air in and the other out, that's not the fan I'm talking about here. Rather, it's the bog standard 20 inch box fan. Not the pedestal type. Box type. As in the kind you just put on the floor and let it run.
Up until very recently, I always ran a box fan in the room 24 hours a day. At first I did it because I liked the breeze, but then I got very accustomed to the noise the fan makes. A "brown noise", if you will. I was so used to it that if I was in the room with the fan off, that bothered me and I had to turn it back on.
I finally stopped using that fan and replaced it with a sleep machine because I have to have that brown noise in the room. But I had to do it in a very specific way. More on that in a moment.
The two problems with running a box fan in the room 24 hours a day is dust and dry air.
There's always dust in a room and there's no way around that. It can come from the central air system, a standalone air conditioner, your shoes, your clothes, the window when it's open, and so on. Dust happens. That box fan, even on its lowest setting, will never let dust settle even on its lowest setting. And that means two things. Dust gets everywhere, more of it happens, and during sleep it lands on your face where you breathe it in right up your nose.
Dryness of the air happens because it's moving, even if only a little bit. I don't have a dry mouth problem, but whenever I'd wake from sleep, I'd immediately have to get something to drink because my mouth was so dry.
In addition to the sleep machine (sometimes known as a noise machine), I've also added a smaller humidifier to the room that I keep on my nightstand running at the lowest setting.
With the sleep machine making the noise I like, I can go to sleep easily, and running the humidifier puts just enough moisture in the air so I don't wake up with a dry mouth.
Problem solved? It almost wasn't.
I could not get comfortable with the sound of the sleep machine when on the nightstand, so then I had a thought. What if I put the sleep machine where the box fan is? That worked.
As stupid as this is, I have the sleep machine on the floor near the foot of my bed. In that location, having the noise coming from there is something I can agree with. But if it's on the nightstand, no way.
It would appear that not only does the noise matter to me, but it also matter where it comes from spatially. I always had the fan in a specific spot in the room, and since my brain likes that fan sound a.k.a. brown noise coming from that spot, the sleep machine has to go there.
Yes, weird. But it works.
there may be a classical guitar in my future
I was at a guitar store recently to buy a pack of strings. While there, I did something I ordinarily never do. I headed into the acoustic room.
One of the first guitars I picked up (I played a few) was a very low priced classical guitar, as in the nylon string type. Seriously, one of these things is so cheap to buy.
You know how even on the most basic electric, there's a bunch of setup involved? Truss rod, string saddle height adjustment, bridge adjustment, and so on?
Want to know how much setup is required on a classical? ZERO. Okay, almost zero. You do have to install the strings. But that's it. There's nothing else to it.
Nylon guitar string is very easy (if not the easiest?) on the fingers and requires only the lightest grip to hold down notes and chords.
I got some genuine joy fingering some notes and chords on the classical. It just felt good.
It is rare, and I mean oh so rare, when I can just pick up a guitar in a store, start playing and it feels right at home. I got that out of the classical.
There are two reasons I've never seriously considered a classical guitar. The first is that over the years I've started to play a lot more with fingers on the picking hand. The second is that steel string acoustics really soured me on them. It's the latter I have to explain more in detail.
It's not that I can't play steel string acoustic. I just don't like to. I can make things feel somewhat better with silk and steel acoustic strings. For some players, switching to that acoustic string type fixes everything. But it's not enough for me. So much to the point where I was just turned off by acoustics entirely.
After all this time, I finally just picked up a classical and went for it. My thought was okay, this will probably suck, but I've never really sat down with one of these and really played it, so let's do this. I did, and I liked it.
No, I haven't bought a classical yet, but it's definitely on my to-do list now. I need one in my life.