Healthy Living- healthy eating, exercise, weight loss, veggie gardening, etc.
OFF TOPIC discussions
Great seeing folks sharing their health related efforts and successes !
17 months ago I weighed 267 lbs. My BMI was 40 (obese). My a1c was 6.6 (pre-diabetes) and inching up every three months. My doctor wanted to talk about insulin. So I told him to give me 3 months. Next visit it started going down.
What I did was got online and did my research and educated myself about the glycemic index of foods as well as the glycemic load. I bought a blood glucose meter and started checking my blood sugar before and after eating individual foods. Any that spiked my blood glucose over 125 or so, I eliminated them from my diet.
I started walking and doing light strength training as well.
This past March my a1c was 5.2. Doc laughed and said it was lower than his. He is 44 and runs mini marathons. I'm 64 with a history of smoking.
I finally reached my ultimate goal today. 165.75 lbs which puts my BMI at 24.8. I've gone from obese to the healthy weight range, albeit the higher end of the chart.
Anyhow, when I started I wore a size 46 or 48 waist pants and 3X shirts.
Today I'm sitting here in a size 30 waist jeans, size small briefs, and a medium size tee shirt.
In March doc told me I didn't have to worry about losing more weight but I pointed to my gut and said "what about this visceral fat that's left ?"
He told me that I need to up my strength training and work all my muscle groups especially my legs because short of that any additional weight loss was going to be muscle mass.
So I bought a nice bike, a Specialized Roll 2.0, and the visceral fat is melting away. I also increases my strength training a bit. Supposedly that raises your metabolism.
I feel pretty good. When I started I felt miserable, and had four comorbidities. Hypertension and taking four meds for that, obesity, pre-diabetic, and COPD.
I can't beat the COPD but I can avoid doing things to make it progress further like smoking. It's not bad enough for me to have to reach for my rescue inhaler. It's a rare occasion I ever do especially since I've lost weight and quit smoking. The other three comorbidities I have beat. I'm down to just one hypertension med and in March doc told me I could stop taking metformin.
So yes, in my case all I needed to do was educate myself as to what I could do to lose fat and simply be diligent about it. I eat all I want but I eat foods that don't create fat. No bread, no milk, no red meat, nothing with fructose, etc. Whole foods make up around 85% of my diet. Plenty of water and replaced soft drinks with Kool-Aid sweetened with erythritol in place of sugar. I also avoid foods that promote inflammation. Good video here ...
And according to my doc I did it in a safe manner. Iirc in March he said I lost an average of 1.6 lbs a week or so since I started.
I focus on glycemic load and net carbs instead of calories. I don't do the keto thing though.
