(no subject)
Aug. 23rd, 2002 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasIn the past 48 hours or so, my life may have turned around. Nothing dramatic, nothing external even. But I'm feeling a lot better about myself and my life than I have in a long time.
I had a physical and my doctor told me to stop fooling myself; my eating habits were damaging to me. How I eat is . . . was largely responsible for how foggy my brain got -- which was a big factor in why I can't . . . couldn't accomplish anything. Things that convert to sugar real fast spike my blood sugar which is why I ate them -- when my brain got foggy, I needed that glucose spike. But, the things which act fastest -- pasta, rice, bread, chocolate -- also leave fastest, crashing me down where I was or worse. Now I know. And if I eat things that metabolize slower, I can avoid feeling foggy in the first place. I've now had the concept of "the glycemic index" explained to me. A food's "glycemic index" is how fast it gets turned to sugar. High Glycemic Index Foods Are Not My Friends.
My brain's been working a lot more consistently in the past couple days than it has in . . . well. . . years.
A working brain is a real big help in feeling like I can actually do things.
So, I'm on a diet. A side effect of this may well be losing weight -- not needing chocolate or pasta every 20 minutes to function may change things -- but that's not why I'm doing this. I'm planning meals, writing down stuff, and paying attention to what it does to me so that I can learn how to use food to make my brain (and, for that matter, the rest of my body) do what I want it to do. And that means that I can do what I want to do.
Mind you, I wouldn't mind losing weight, because I'm lazy. The smaller I am, the less work it is to do stuff.
A friend gave me the Zone diet book to look at, and I think I can use a lot of the ideas in it. I'm also using the Richard Simmons's Deal-A-Meal plan, and keeping a food diary -- I'm not using any of the three exactly as written, but I'm trying to use these things to build something that works for me.
The friend I saw yesterday has a lot . . . a hell of a lot to do with how much better I feel, too. See, she wouldn't accept the idea that I was helpless and couldn't think and was unable to do anything.
And, y'know, she was right not to accept that. Had she seen me falling over, not being able to stand up or formulate coherent thoughts, maybe she would have accepted that I was in bad shape -- but I'm not in that condition anymore. And I hadn't noticed that fact until she pointed it out.
There are a lot of things that she said to both Lis and me yesterday that really, really helped us both.
I had a physical and my doctor told me to stop fooling myself; my eating habits were damaging to me. How I eat is . . . was largely responsible for how foggy my brain got -- which was a big factor in why I can't . . . couldn't accomplish anything. Things that convert to sugar real fast spike my blood sugar which is why I ate them -- when my brain got foggy, I needed that glucose spike. But, the things which act fastest -- pasta, rice, bread, chocolate -- also leave fastest, crashing me down where I was or worse. Now I know. And if I eat things that metabolize slower, I can avoid feeling foggy in the first place. I've now had the concept of "the glycemic index" explained to me. A food's "glycemic index" is how fast it gets turned to sugar. High Glycemic Index Foods Are Not My Friends.
My brain's been working a lot more consistently in the past couple days than it has in . . . well. . . years.
A working brain is a real big help in feeling like I can actually do things.
So, I'm on a diet. A side effect of this may well be losing weight -- not needing chocolate or pasta every 20 minutes to function may change things -- but that's not why I'm doing this. I'm planning meals, writing down stuff, and paying attention to what it does to me so that I can learn how to use food to make my brain (and, for that matter, the rest of my body) do what I want it to do. And that means that I can do what I want to do.
Mind you, I wouldn't mind losing weight, because I'm lazy. The smaller I am, the less work it is to do stuff.
A friend gave me the Zone diet book to look at, and I think I can use a lot of the ideas in it. I'm also using the Richard Simmons's Deal-A-Meal plan, and keeping a food diary -- I'm not using any of the three exactly as written, but I'm trying to use these things to build something that works for me.
The friend I saw yesterday has a lot . . . a hell of a lot to do with how much better I feel, too. See, she wouldn't accept the idea that I was helpless and couldn't think and was unable to do anything.
And, y'know, she was right not to accept that. Had she seen me falling over, not being able to stand up or formulate coherent thoughts, maybe she would have accepted that I was in bad shape -- but I'm not in that condition anymore. And I hadn't noticed that fact until she pointed it out.
There are a lot of things that she said to both Lis and me yesterday that really, really helped us both.
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(no subject)
Date: 2002-08-22 08:08 pm (UTC)I started trying to make substantial changes to my health last April, when I came down with my eighth successive cold of the winter. I used a plan outlined in the Washington Post, which directed me to make one change in my diet and one increase in my amount of daily exercise per week. I charted the weekly goals at
I highly recommend the website http://www.fitday.com for your food diary. It will automatically compute calories, carbs, protein, fat, vitamins, and so forth for your food intake, and you can set it to chart your progress on individualized goals (mine are calories, fiber, sodium, and calcium) as well as keeping track of your average diet and exercise levels over time. It was a real shock to me, for example, to discover that I wasn't getting anywhere near my daily requirements for vitamins and calcium, even after I'd started working on increasing my fruits and vegetables intake. You might find it helpful to be able to track your carbs over time, and so forth.
Good luck with your efforts. It's hard to make changes like this stick, but I'm finding them worth it.
Good luck with the food!
- Shane (Lis' old co-worker)