Flabby weight is a health boundary that bites.
I found it worrying when the news reported a study which says we must exercise
an hour a day, five days a week, to avoid cancer.
People who aren't well can't do that.
I've been exercising 3.5 minutes a day for a month now, and losing flab. I'll show
a series of pictures of me because if 3.5 minutes works for me, it WORKS!!! (I
hate the way I look in these pictures, by the way, not just because I am so heavy,
but because I don't look at all light-hearted. It's partially the stress and unending
worry, I'm afraid. And yes, I should rise above that!)
Besides the way I look, the problem is that I didn't take any pictures a month
earlier because I felt so sick and looked so completely not well. (I was sick from
the stress.)
I was having a lot of trouble with sleep apnea before I started my exercise. (When
I saw the doctor for the homeless in 2005, he said that sleep apnea is often caused
by loose flesh around the neck and that if I did a little walking every day it would
help. And, when I could, it did.)
Before my first month of 3.5 minutes a day on my Gazelle, I looked about the
same standing up as I do in the picture of me in bed, where the flab piles up. : (
3/2/07
With that much flab left, I'm surprised that I stopped having sleep apnea incidents.
But, the fact is that I haven't woken coughing and trying to get a breath for well
over a month prior to this picture. And that's with 3.5 minutes on my Gazelle
every day. That's all.
I had started the 3.5 minutes of exercise routine about six months earlier, but then
I was left outside in the cold and dark when I went to vote, November 2006, and
again a month later, and I got so sick I wasn't able to go outside -- I could barely
get out of bed. So I gained a lot of flab back.
I hate how I look, not just because of the flab, but because I see such severe
concern and so little happiness in my face. I think that's why looking at pictures of
women modeling clothes, and smiling, was so uplifting and reassuring to me: I
could imagine me looking like that, as long as I didn't look at myself in a mirror.
I ordered my Tony Little's Gazelle when I was living in my condo and the
hydrogen sulfide was causing my feet to go numb and I was falling a lot. I
saw a Podiatrist who did some tests and said I'd lost a lot of feeling. He
said that if I didn't use my feet and legs more, that I was going to get even
worse and hasten whatever was going wrong.
(I didn't know about the privy pit at that point, so I didn't know about the
hydrogen sulfide -- apparently hydrogen sulfide deadens nerves, and the
first nerve it deadens is the olfactory nerve... so then you can't smell it.)
I got my Gazelle because I could see it gave me something to hang on to
while I exercised.
The tapes that come with it sort of assume you're going to do more than 20
minutes a few times a week. But honestly, this is what I was doing:
1 minute a day on for a few days, then gradually adding time till I began
3.5 minutes a day, which I could barely do to start with. And that is all the
exercise that I've been doing to lose the flab... I hope it's clear from the
pictures that I'm losing flab.
If you decide to get one, notice that one is for people who are 350 lb. or
less, and another is for people who are 250 lb. or less. I got the 350 lb. one.
I'm not sure all of them come with the little computer thing that tells you
how many calories you've burned (I think calories are here nor there since
what I think does the trick is waking up ones metabolism with a tad of
exercise) how many miles you've gone, the number of minutes you've been
exercising and your pulse.
Mine came with these hydraulic things to increase the resistance. But I've
never used them, I've never really been well enough to need extra
resistance.
For me, it's been great. When I got it there was no way I could have
walked around the block because of how the hydrogen sulfide had affected
my balance.
Now, although I can walk much better (which I attribute to the B12
replacement therapy) during the winter it's been dynamite. : )
March 11, 2007 - I wrote: My looks changed so much in the month before I took
any pictures! Incidentally, it's important to remember that for the last two plus
years I've been in bed 24/7 as a result of tetanus. I'm less active than a couch
potato. (So, take hope couch potatoes.)
I can't do 30 minutes of exercise the way that Oprah insists because if I even
attempted that I'd be bent over and in pain from residual nerve damage.
Year after year (since I had tetanus) I slowly built up my strength till I could do a
bit of gardening and cleaning, but then some stress would implode my life causing
the nerve damage to be suddenly bad again.
What has changed, is that I began having a lot more protein. Last year I had it in
the form of chicken, but then I was too sick to cook and things seemed hopeless.
But as luck would have it, I heard about Whey Protein. I ordered some to see what
it was like, and what a difference that has made!
For one thing, I'm not uncomfortably hungry any more between meals so I'm not
thinking about food all the time, the way I used to.
The thing is, though, that the first three months I drank the Whey Protein at least 4
times a day... so during that period I gained back weight that I had previously lost.
But then I began to notice that my back pain was not so fast to hit and that when
extremely stressful things happened it was taking me a month to recover rather
than three. I think that's because of the protein. I think the protein makes the
healing much more sturdy and lasting. (I found a scientific report that sort of
explains why this would be true; so, for anyone who cares to take a look, here's
the gist of it that I put on a web page.)
If you have been sick, or if you tend to feel starving even after you've eaten and
you're not much into eating a ton more meat and cheese, you might try Whey
Protein. I'll put links here to the kind I use because when I was looking at the
different kinds I found that some don't list all the amino acids, but rather list
vitamins. That may be good, but in my case it's the amino acids that have made all
the difference. (I think.)
I use a combination of the vanilla and chocolate in my coffee. To me, neither
flavor is as good alone as they are combined. I'm type A blood, so for me coffee is
beneficial. And, an added bonus is that by having a mug about two or three hours
before I want to go to sleep at night, I've been able to sleep more soundly. That's
because of the way our bodies handle protein.
I think it would be better if I had it more like an hour before I want to sleep, but I
think that the Serrapeptase I've been taking at night has also been helping, and you
aren't supposed to take that until it's been three hours after you've eaten.
October 28, 2007 -- You can see from my pictures that it took a pretty long time
to "slim" -- and you can see that looking in a mirror would not have been
encouraging. It's hard for me to see, even now, very much difference between
photo one and two.
So, when I went through the catalogs and went through dozens of dozens of
images on fashion sites looking for images that looked the way I want to look, the
great thing was that I could see it. I could see ME in the images. And that made it
7/9/07
10/28//07
10/28/07 -- I took four dozen pictures to get one that wasn't quite as grim. I was
able to walk around my garden today and yesterday. Yesterday I tried to do two
turns around it, and that was a mistake as it caused my nerves to tighten up my
muscles again, painfully. Not the good way that muscles feel after healthy exercise.
But, you can see that the flab is diminishing. My goal is to get easily into my dress
that I fit into tightly now, and do my hair and put on makeup and then post my
picture next to that of the model wearing the dress I'm aiming to see myself in. :)
I don't look very healthy because the City of Santa Fe turned off my water a few
weeks ago and I got so dehydrated that the infection in my jaw (where I was
supposed to have a bit of the bone taken out in surgery) came back and now I'm
losing a lot of hair again. It was only a day without water, but it affected me quite
a lot. I couldn't type right at all. I had thought I'd recover more quickly. But... not.
The experience did teach me how important water is, however.
so easy to stay with the program... I could always see what was ahead. I
found it easy to believe (after awhile) that I would look great in the clothes
that attracted me. And, it was fun, it was just so fun to see me, to imagine
me looking the way the models look.
When I looked at the picture of me in court with my pudgy wrists, my
lumbering shoulders, my chin slumping toward my chest and the lack of
bones clear in my facial features, I felt sure that the way I looked made it
easy for the court to decide against me. I looked bad, and the court made a
decision to match the way I looked.
I mean, you know that at job interviews the most attractive person tends
to win. That can be "looks" attractive, or it can be personality attractive.
So ... it makes sense that looking heavy, looking like a heavy, makes it
unlikely that I would win...
2/14/08 - I'm sorry this image is late. It was too cold to wash my hair, using the
candle heat I rely on, and then after it got warmer and I washed my hair I was so
stressed that I forgot to take the picture during the day, and at night the light was
so radically different I thought I'd better wait.
I had meant to put on some makeup for this picture. But there's just so much
stress with the looming foreclosure of my home, that I can't handle it. Sorry.
However, doesn't it look as if my hair is getting darker?
I lost a lot of hair when they turned off my water and I didn't have any water to
drink for a day. I lost hair for months because the infection in my jaw (old dental
implants) got worse without vitamin C, (you have to take vitamins with a lot of
water) and I could not get it back under control. The hair that fell out is really
white. I took pictures and saved it so that I can show what the deprivation of water
did to me when I sue. I sure hope I get well enough to sue.
Notice how many more wrinkles I have on my neck. I think that's because I have
such a hard time remembering to drink water since I was deprived of it. For some
reason I don't tend to feel thirsty the way I used to, and I forget to drink it.
It seems that when we drink less water our skin is less filled out looking. That
seems to be what I am seeing. (So you'd think that would make me remember to
drink water, wouldn't you?)
I had an appointment with a doctor for my social security disability and for that I
was weighed. I've lost 60 pounds. I had hoped it would be more. The thing is that I
was almost out of rice and so I wasn't eating it the way that is needed to keep
burning off the flab. Also, when I hurt my back around the time they turned off
my water I was unable to move again for a long time, and so that was the end of
the three minutes a day of exercise. Those things kept me from losing more.
But over all, 60 pounds is 5 pounds a month. While that doesn't seem like much
and is scary if concentrated on because it seems too easy to gain back that amount,
the fact is that with brown rice and three minutes of exercise a day, the 5 pounds a
month comes off month after month and it's pain free and eventually begins to feel
like something I can count on, the way I used to count on gaining weight. It's an
amazing change of perspective. I LOVE it. (Good way to feel on Valentine's and
all year long.)
2/14/08
4/27/08
4/27/06 -- Well, I've got a bit of color in my face from working in my garden. I
sure hope I can keep my garden and home. Working in my garden is healthy in the
food it produces, but it is also so calming when I am most worried. It is very
worrying to have my home in danger of foreclosure after my condo was foreclosed
and auctioned without letting me know, and then the court wouldn't let me redeem
it. So this is a very scary time. But, my garden helps me stay calm.
I think I mentioned that I gained back three inches, but today the tape measure
shows that I've lost one of them. So I'm happy. Especially since I ate masses of
chocolate for Easter as well as the most scrumptious coffee cake you can possibly
imagine that my cousin sent. MMMMM WAY good!
Because I've been extremely stressed I walk in my garden rather than use my
Gazelle. That's because ever since I had tetanus and my stomach felt as if it were
turning to cement, stress tightens my stomach -- not in a good way. If there's a lot
of stress the tightening pulls me over and makes me look as if I have osteoporosis.
The thing that makes the tightening resolve is rest, so using my Gazelle is the
opposite of rest and makes the tightening worse. That said, I walk around my
garden five times, which leaves me breathing heavily but more rested than stressed,
and still upright.
I was terrified the other day when my leg gave out twice, causing me to nearly fall.
I was so lucky I was near a counter once, and the other time near enough to a wall
to not hit the floor. So I was somewhat reluctant to go outside and walk, but if I
stop walking then I'll gain the weight back and that will not be good. Maybe it
won't be as immediately painful as a fall that breaks something, but in the long run
gaining back the weight would be painful, slowly painful.
I've been making a point of eating brown rice every day. When the stress was
horridly intense I also ate a LOT of from Office Depot... they are
delivered free when the order is over $50, and my order was over $50 because I
was replacing an ink cartridge.
May 25, 2008 - It hasn't been three months, I know. What I want to keep track of
is how much difference it makes to exercise my face muscles. I've been doing
exercises for about two weeks. I didn't think to take a picture in the beginning.
Basically, what I do is push out my chin to tighten my neck (50 times), purse my
lips then tighten my cheek muscles in a smile that rolls the muscles up toward my
eyes, squint to tighten the skin under my eyes (each of these is 50 times) and then
raise my eyebrows and forehead. It goes quickly; then, I repeat one time.
5/25/08
July 4, 2008 - Okay, I am convinced my hair is
becoming less white and more brown. That's the main
reason I took the above picture today.
Compare my hair color to a little over a year ago on
March 4, 2007 in the picture at left. There is a lot more
white, isn't there? (That picture was taken at nearly the
same time as the top picture in this series, but in it I was
standing up so the flab didn't show quite as much.)
Today, July 4, 2008, the bags under my eyes are less
dark and don't have such a defined line to them
anymore.
3/4/07
7/4/08
To see the difference the face and neck exercises I've been doing are making look
at my neck in the 5/25/08 picture and then look at my neck today, there are fewer
vertical wrinkle lines under my chin.
I had hoped for a lot more difference but on June 9 a man tried to break into my
house. It was extremely stressful because apparently the lawyer for the bank had
told his company that my home was already foreclosed and I had vacated. Not
true, of course, but pretty typical for these particular lawyers and Wells Fargo.
After that I couldn't sleep and any little noise scared me, thinking he'd come back.
Then I started losing my balance a lot and having some blindingly sharp pain that
caused me to start to fall. It was so stressful that exercising my muscles didn't feel
good at all, it felt as if my muscles were going to cramp and go into spasms.
So it's only been the last couple of days that I started the exercises again. (I did
keep up my five minutes of walking in my garden, though, except for just a couple
days when I was really afraid I'd fall if I tried to do it.
