Blog 3178 – 07.14.2024

I Mean It This Time

Yesterday, I wrote about sugar, how sweet it is, but that it is only meant to be an occasional treat not something we constantly eat to fuel our bodies. I signed off the blog in the usual way, “Your friend and fellow traveler, but added “Reformed sugar junkie.” My dearest friend and most loyal fan questioned if I had really reformed and postulated that if I saw a piece of butterscotch pie that I might quickly lose my resolve. We shall see.

Three years ago my primary care physician told me that my blood work showed that my triglycerides were much higher than normal. He recommended a no sugar, low calorie low fat, low salt diet. Much as I loved sugar I think I loved salt almost as much. Anyway I gave it my best shot. I started watching carefully what I ate and began riding my bike again everyday. By my son’s wedding (the above picture of me in a rented tux was taken just before the wedding) I was down from 196 pounds to 173 pounds on my way to 163 pounds.

A week after my son’s wedding May 21, 2021, I began my last six month away from home contract work assignment in Wayne, Nebraska. Nearby Norfolk, Nebraska, home town of Johnny Carson, had the nearest RV Trailer Park I could find. I quickly fell back into my old habit of eating mostly burgers fries and fast food. By the time that assignment ended, just before Christmas, I had gained back all the weight that I had lost.

In case you do not know, as I did not, triglycerides is just a fancy word for fats and the sugar we take in that we do not burn right away is easily turned into fat and stored for emergency use later when we need it. With food so readily an available for most of us we never do need to burn that fat and so we keep eating sweet treats , storing fat, and buying bigger and bigger clothes.

To my point, and in answer to my friend, “I Mean It This Time.” As I under-grow instead of out-grow my clothes I am boxing them up to give to Goodwill. Ole ego, that devil, whispers, “ You have done that before, Big Boy.” My reply to him and to my well-meaning friend is, “Watch me, you under estimate just how stubborn I am.” I am patient, I am persistent, but most of all I am kind. And I intend to be kind to my self and not only make it to 155 pounds, the weight I was when I I graduated high school and entered the Army in 1968 at the age of eighteen, but to stay that weight.

I think I have discovered the secret to getting the weight of fast and making a change that will make it last and that is the daily twelve to sixteen hour fast. Those who do change their metabolism back from sugar burning to fat burning, it’s intended setting. That is what our hunter/gatherer ancestors metabolism were set at and they stayed lean and mean (and by that last part I mean had lots of endurance to meet the challenges of their day.)

Eighteen more pounds to go and I will have met my weight goal of 155 pounds. Too skinny? Not according to weight recommendations for my age and height. It is right in the middle of the range, 136 – 172. By all the I hold holy, including me, I intend to spend the rest of my life right there in the middle, hoping it will help me in my personal quest to live long and prosper.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

P.S. And in answer to ole ego, you can just call me Bond, James Bond, or Batman not Fat man or Big Boy.