Eating to live

Been another bad day here. Haven't felt well. Racing heart, shakey legs. Checked my heart rate. It's high, but not dangerously high. Just higher than it should be. Same for my blood pressure. Feeling quite achey. I think I've caught some sort of cold or infection. We'll see how I feel over the next couple of days.

I didn't walk at the gym yesterday or today. I hope I can tomorrow. I was doing good at my walking. Can't slack off.

Diet is still going okay, I think. I'm eating low-fat, low carb, low calorie: salads, veggies, soups. It's not too bad. I suspect one of the reasons I feel so bad is my blood sugar is still adjusting to this change. I'm hoping to lose a lot of weight: 50 pounds is my goal.

Of course, I'm still eating too much cheese and too much meat. Slowly trying to wean myself off both of those. Cheese because it has too much fat and meat for the same reasons. I hear some amazing reports of the health of vegans and vegetarians, particularly concerning diabetes and heart disease. We have amazing bodies that will heal a lot of damage if we make good choices.

Diabetes and being overweight have done a lot of damage to me. I'm trying to help it recover by eating only to live, not living to eat. I do like food. That's a fact, but it's a destructive love, like all obsessions eventually turn out to be.

Moderation in all things. Moderation in all things. Moderation in all things. Let's repeat that a thousand or so more times. The irony of that doesn't escape me.

Not that being thin and controlling my diabetes will fix all my medical problems. Fitness doesn't keep cancer or disease from touching someone's life completely, but it does help. And fitness does give us more resources to use to combat such things.

By the way, I used to hate that phrase: Eat to live; don’t live to eat. It seemed to me that really thin people would toss it around too easily. I’ve learned that it has wisdom, but it’s a simple phrase for a complex problem involving genetics, environment, support, and desire. And unlike alcoholics – who can go cold turkey – you can’t go cold turkey with food. You have to eat to live. So it’s a problem of control.

What controls you? Your appetite? And is it worth the cost of controlling it? I know a woman who last over 200 pounds and kept it off for nearly five years, but in the end, she chose food. She regained the weight and has decided to live with it. Food was easier than the exercise and diets, she says, always with sadness and regret. She did low carb, low calorie, low fat, vegan, and a dozen other diets. In the end, food was stronger. It made her happier than the diets did.

So this is not to say that being heavy is wrong or unattractive, mind you. I’m simply looking at the health benefits for being thinner, and let’s be honest, losing 50 pounds will not make me thin. But it might make me healthier. And that’s what I’m aiming for.