So one of the best parts of this is tracking my food intake. Not just calories, although I’ve found it to be the easiest way to monitor weight loss/gain. It’s also the other elements of a healthy and dare I say balanced, meal plan.

Here’s the deal … it’s like I’m 10 years old again and eating candy and everything sticky. My sugar intake is off-the-hook. Thank God I’m not a diabetic, but I do know that diabetes runs in my family. I am consistently over my recommended sugar intake by a whopping numbers.

And let’s not talk about sodium. If sodium intake was an Olympic sport, I would be a gold medalist for sure. These figures are glaring and I’ve noticed them over these past hundred days, but I’ve never actually noticed them. That’s just a nice way of saying I wanted to ignore the signs of a potential problem. All hail the “Guy Code!” Avoid, avoid, avoid!

Sugar. With my family history and my uber-numbers, it’s time to see what it’s doing to my body so it is time to enroll in Google U’s course on “What Does Too Much Sugar Do To My Body?” In sum, because of the blood sugar spike, my organs think I have enough energy (fuel) to keep my body going and instead of burning fat for fuel, stores fat. What? Two worst words ever … stored and fat. Here’s the full story

I notice this from a body perception … I burn a ton of calories weekly and yet my weight has been increasing and I noticed I’ve stopped shrinking around the waist. Metabolism got me again, but now I’m “hip” (pun intended) to its plan.

Sodium. Google U (“What Does Too Much Sodium Do To My Body?”) isn’t a pretty picture. Of course, I’m not one to get alarmed, but it’s simply not smart to ignore a potential problem. Based on what Professor G says, sodium (table salt) is essential to maintaining fluid blanace for hydration. Since I didn’t understand that, I dove a little further and in layman’s terms, too much sodium can cause the body to retain fluid which also increases blood volume. With an increased blood volume, my heart has to work harder to push blood to my major organs, ie High Blood Pressure. There’s more to it than that, but High Blood Pressure is a mic-drop moment because a chronic problem can result in heart complications and I’m sure I speak for all of us … no thanks! Here’s the full story

The plan. Do my best to monitor my sugar and sodium intake. As it is, I feel I eat better than most. I’m a vegetarian for goodness sake which makes me superior to most. (I’m hoping you watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World because if you didn’t, I sound like a big jerk). I jokingly say the vegetarian thing because I was also a 224 pound vegetarian at one time in my life — a diet of bread, rice, and pasta is dangerously vegetarian. People use to say I was the biggest vegetarian they’ve ever seen.

So in doing my best, I also know if I can increase my metabolism with supplements, I can also start to see the waist shrink. I noticed weeks ago when I was consistently drinking Herbalife Concentrate Tea I had a tightness in the mid-section that I was really digging. Why I stopped, don’t ask me, but it seems like a good time to start up again.

Life lesson #102 — Live and learn so you can continue to live. Don’t ignore blaring glimpses of the obvious.

Morning weight = 172

Today’s Meals:

Snacks:

• 3:30pm – Homemade Banana Split Cupcake (can you blame me?) Two of my favorite things … homemade and banana split.
• 4pm – Cereal break plus my favorite biscuit.
• 9:30pm – (not listed), but like clockwork, I take Herbalife24 Restore daily.

Today’s Activities:

• Rest and recovery.

Thursday, 09-19-2013