Monday Moanin'

All we did all weekend is work around the yard, getting it cleaned up.  More to do still, but we got a lot done.  The problem for us both is we got to bed late each night and are getting too old for lights off at midnight and up by five to go for a ride.  Work was a struggle and I just wanted to find a quiet corner and take a nap.

Numbers after the weekend:

• Fasting blood glucose:  116 mg/dl.  Good, particularly after a very late supper of pinto beans, brown rice and corn bread.  Remember the old carboing up?  Well, that's what we did late last night. 
• Weight: 190 lbs.  Arrrgh. 
• Exercise:  45 minute ride, hard.  Got some carbs and pounds to burn. 
• Mood:  6.5.  Tired and up a pound.  

Menu for today:

• Breakfast:  Banana, Texas Ruby Red grapefruit, two blueberry muffins.  The Charming Mrs. SWMBO made blueberry muffins yesterday and I love blueberry muffins, so I had two.
• Lunch:  Hamburger and a baked potato. 
• Dinner:  A leftover of some variety.  It was going to be fish tacos, but that sounds like too much effort right and no dishes to clean. 
• Snacks:  An apple and a handful of Chex Mix at work.  Good for me, the apple, not so good, the Chex Mix. Both tasty. 

Dis 'n' Data

First, my data.

The Numbers for Today:

• Fasting Blood Glucose:  104 mg/dl.  Yea, me. 
• Weight 189.  Still.  Really like 188 1/2, but that could have been an optical illusion. 
• Exercise:  45 minutes and the humidity is back in Houston, which means I really sweated.
• Mood:  7.0  Business sucks.

Menu:

• Breakfast:  Banana, Texas Ruby Red Grapefruit, oatmeal with craisins and soy milk
• Lunch:  Tuna sandwich (I use mustard instead of mayo) and an apple.  The bread was a whole wheat pita.
• Dinner:  A veggie sandwich and a cup of black bean soup.
• Snacks:  Busy day.  None.

In case you were wondering:  Cholesterol 101 What Your Levels Mean  The body does make all of the cholesterol that it needs, and 75% of the stuff in our blood is made by our body.  The rest is from food.  Ingesting foods that contain cholesterol, however, doesn't significantly raise the levels in the blood; foods containing saturated fats and transfats do raise the levels in the blood.  Eggs are good, Twinkies are bad, expect when the center piece of the diet.

It's easy to get the wrong levels and sometimes hard to get the right levels.  Also a diet low in carbs helps lower blood cholesterol and a diet high in fiber, which comes from high carbohydrate sources, helps lower blood cholesterol. I guess this means stay away from the cakes and cookies and pastries, you know, the really good stuff, but eat beans and whole grains.  Ultimately, a carb is a carb.  Like a lot of dietary advice, sometimes it gets confusing and contradictory.

Best advice to follow:  get tested and find a diet that works, that you like and stick with it, if you need it.

Surviving Girl Scout Cookie Season.  See above on cholesterol.  I have many times opened a box and ate the whole thing before getting home from work.  They are overpriced and predictable, but they are darned good.

The Numbers First:

• Blood Glucose: 107 mg/dl  Sweet. 
• Weight:  189 lbs.
• Exercise:  45 minute ride on bike.  Nippy. 
• Mood:  7.00 Tax time approaches and I have dental appointment. 

The Menu:

• Breakfast:  Banana, Ruby Red grapefruit, Oatmeal with craisins.
• Lunch:  Red beans and rice.
• Dinner:  Leftovers again.  It's okay, I like leftovers and we have a fridge full of them. 
• Snacks:  These rice cake things with a bit of peanut butter.

How to Wreck Your Heart:  I was good at number 7.  Letting my pants out or just getting new ones was just easier.  I have to admit it is more fun to take them to the tailor to have them taken in or just get new ones in a smaller size. 

Why I try eat a grapefruit nearly everyday. The chemical that grapefruit it's sour taste can act like a diabetic drug by helping to control fat and glucose metabolism.  "Naringenin, an antioxidant derived from the sour flavor of grapefruits and other citrus fruits, may cause the liver to break down fat while increasing sensitivity to insulin – a process that naturally occurs during long periods of fasting."  To the body, it acts a lot like the Adkins Diet in one tasty fruit.  Good excuse to enjoy Texas's sweet and sour Ruby Red's, as if any excuse is actually needed beyond their delightful taste.

The Shape of Thing to Come.

Why thin is always in

Fat matters, but not to your shape. 

For a long time, I have read that belly fat is worse than fat that collects somewhere else, usually around the waist thighs and buttocks.  The people with fat bellies were labeled as apple shaped. The people who got it around the thighs and buttocks were labeled as pear shaped. Being apple shaped was worse than being pear shaped, the idea being that the fat crammed in and around the vital organs was more likely to cause insulin resistance, which would lead to type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

I was apple shaped.

Now, from an article in Science Daily on two related studies by the University of Washington Medical School in St. Louis and Nutrition Support Service at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, shape, or where the body puts the fat, is a poor predictor of heart disease. 

The real predictor is too much fat stored in the liver, called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. The fat in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease comes from ingesting, and being, fat.  Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease affects metabolism by putting to much fatty acid into the blood stream, which leads to poor glucose and fat metabolism by muscles and organs, which leads to type 2 diabetes, low levels of HDL and high levels of triglycerides and that leads to heart disease.

We are getting fatter.  We eat too much fat.  The numbers simply mean we are more likely to get nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

People can be fat, in the belly or elsewhere, but if free from fatty liver disease, they will metabolize more or less normally and not get heart disease.  I infer from the article that the odds for a fat person is to not be free of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.  The key is a fat free liver, and that is the good news.  Lose some weight, consume less fat, even by just a bit, and the problem begins to decline. This seem to go back to support for a low fat diet approach.

Lose the fat and lose the problem as I have always said.

The numbers shape up for me today as:

• Fasting blood glucose:  101mg/dl*.  Very, very good. 
• Weight:  189 lbs.  Well, I am consistent. 
• Exercise:  45 minute bike ride in very humid weather.  Loved the sweat. 
• Mood:  7.5.  Good glucose level offset by crappy mood at work. 

 Menu for today:

•  Breakfast:  Banana, Texas Ruby Red grapefruit, oatmeal with craisins.
• Lunch:  Red beans and rice
• Dinner:  Stuff and stuff, what we call eating leftovers that are taking over the fridge. 
• Snacks:  Too much of some stuff  called Pub Mix from Utz pretzels.  Probably too high in fat and empty carbs.

* I hit that number this morning and the jingle from the Chesterfield's 101 Cigarettes popped into my head and pretty much stayed there all day long.  It was a catchy tune.  Now I feel old.

Monday...and I'm draggin'

Spent most of yesterday, my wedding anniversary, thank you very much, working in the yard, mostly on oxalis eradication patrol.  Oxalis is a weed, once referred to as a weed nightmare by some frustrated gardener, that grows in 98% of the earth's temperate zones, I think I read once.  It does grow very well in a Houston spring, that is for sure.

Our flower beds are covered in it and the only way I have found to really get rid of it is to get on my hands and knees and dig it up.  At the base is a bulb and if I don't get the blub, it comes back the following year bigger and badder than ever. It looks like a shamrock and for all I know it is called a shamrock in some areas.  It is edible and has been used from everything as a desert to an aphrodisiac.

I just want it gone. 

Getting on my hands and knees is what I did yesterday and I am as sore as can be.  I have lots more to pick. And I thought I was in decent shape.  Wrong.

The numbers for today:

• Fasting blood glucose:  121 mg/dl.  Good, considering the sheer volume of cracker's I ate last night as part of the evenings hors d'oeuvres with champagne, plus dinner and desert.   
• Weight:  189. Same old same old. 
• Exercise:  45 minutes on the bike.  It was rough, trust me. 
• Mood:  7.  Damn it, I am sore. 

Menu:

• Breakfast:  Banana, grapefruit, one mini blueberry/mango scone left over from Sunday
• Lunch:  Leftovers, little bits of BBQ tempeh, brown rice, green beans and sweet potato. 
• Dinner:  Taco soup. 
• Snacks: