We all need encouragement

Punching into an app to track what I eat and reach a calorie count that will help me lose weight is so encouraging. Like me, you may be out there overweight and not making progress. Reading and viewing possible strategies that may help. As we age, exercise may even become more challenging to assist our weight loss.
I take two medicines that are known to slow metabolism and increase weight. I don't even want to go into the many bad habits I have.
But I want to encourage anyone who may read this, despite many setbacks I haven't given up. I deliberately have not written on weight loss because I put it on the back burner while I worked on other things, like how to get moving when walking became more difficult. For me, my recumbent bike and other means like shadow boxing, modifying aerobic exercises to fit my balance problems and actually using indoor walking to improve ba

I know you almost feel sorry for the little guy

lance. When you have Cerebral Palsy believe there are adjustments you have to make as you age.
This stuff is really a work in progress. Maybe it is really a work in progress for all of us. What I have learned is to stay at it ready to try what will work for you.
It is tougher to put good things into practice. Life is often two steps forward and one step back. For those who are heavy, we can fall off the wagon a few times. We can be knocked to the canvas and struggle to make it to the eight count only to have our weight like boxer poised to knock us out again. Man is it easy to give up.
In the last year, I have looked at why it is so hard to lose weight. Our fat cells have a vote as they secretly make known their demands to be healthy and big. A lot of food can be eaten with no thought given to it at all. Some of our favorite foods have a lot of calories. Portions that are helpful are hard to learn. How we eat and how much we eat are learned way before we ever thought about it. Our habits may even be irrational and crazy.
It is easy to give up.
We do have good information and strategies that can be used and be a light at the end of a long tunnel. At My Portion. com I got an idea of what it looks like to have a calorie count for a guy my size to lose weight.
At mynetdiary.com I really uncovered a practical how to. I can actually track the food and brands I eat. By looking at nutritional labels I can type in foods that match what I am eating. I can factor in exercise and movement to see what calories I am burning. The feedback and information help me to make choices that at the end of the day show me I am on my way to losing weight and today is good.  All of the days so far I have been below the target rate of calories and many days like today I am hundreds of calories below. Today I am 800+ calories below my 2200-2400 hundred count. Whatever the progress I will report how effective it is. My goal is 30 lbs by August 10th.
I will be still the fat man but moving down. Keep walking 

Getting a grip

One of my biggest problems is keeping track of what to eat and how much. It is pretty much a given what I see to eat easily leads to over eating. At night I can become a eating monster consumming far more than I need.
There is a saying that my brother said of me often that is true. "Put the food in front of his and he will eat it. He eats everything. And I mean everything." So true Thomas Paul.
Everything I eat I eat fast. Some have measured my fast eating to the speed of sound or light. OK I may be exaggerating.
My son and his wife are losing weight for summer. They are using an app MyNet Diary with good results. Rather than tell me about it he loaded it on my phone. He is rather smart that way.
The first day we were up in Chicago eating out. He typed in what I was eating and set my goal for

vacation to give me a boundry number if I reach it I will lose weight. The first day I went 300 calories over target goal of 2400 calories. I visted several sites to calculate to maintain my weight now and where do I need to go if I want to lose weight, 1 or two pounds a week.
Even though I went over the first day, if I repeated that every day I would lose 1/2 to 1 pound a week. The app made me aware of my needs to make a late nite adjustment.
To reach my gaol by vacation I am at a 2,217 calorie budget. The four days since I have been under my calorie budget. The app also factors in your movement and adds to the budget. If I hit 2,400 or 2,500 I am still losing weight.
The second part of my plan is to restore movement, improve balance, strength and endurance without falling. My exercise classes vary each day from indoor walking, shadow boxing, biking, resistant training and flexibility. With hiking poles in hand I will walk some of our trails. A work in progress. There are things I have done that work for me so I have hope. Keep walking

https://www.mynetdiary.com

Time for another 12 week trial

Time to consider new strategies. I face limitations as to how long I can be on my feet before back and joint pain shuts me down. My right ankle can experience a pinch nerve at any time. On uneven ground it is too easy to fall. I will stop there because you might think I'm complaining. As Samwise Gamgee used to say, "I

don't mean to Mr. Frodo"
So maybe I can take many short walks each day to reach 60 minutes a day. I may add strength training into these minutes as well. Different symbols for 1, 2, 3, 4 minute walks for my stick notes. Keep track of a few walks at night on my phone and on my computer during the day. Include walking during TV time late at night. Never really sit too long.
Keep biking separate for aerobic work. Later separate strength fitness from walking. So in a few weeks it should look like 60 minutes of walking each day. 20 to 30 minutes of Biking 3-5 days a week. After 12 weeks access for changes. Walking can be a continuous program with Leslie Sansone. I don't fall with these and balance is challenged and different muscles used. Walking with fatman exercises such as lunges, dips and squats, pushups, sit ups.  Lots of water.
I am eating half my carbs and smaller portions. Two smaller meals with a fruit and veggies back in the middle of the day.

up to 12 miles an hr

Right off the bat walking 20, 30, 45 60 minutes each day is a good day. 60 minutes is 6,000 steps. On days I bike those steps will rise. Each time I try these things, something works and something does not. a twelve week program is easy enough to commit to. Joint challenges will occur.
My mobility works like a charm. Easy to load and unload. Easy to set up. I can lift machine by self easy enough, but it is a snap with the two of us, Barb taking the light and I the end with battery and seat. I tooled around home depot. Speed can be controlled for unexpected stops and shopping leisure. In the grocery store and mall outstanding. Indoors I haven't put it into faster gear. Full throttle at level 1 goes faster than walkers. It is a feel thing but most of the time i go at half throttle. Outdoors on trail I can move at about 12 miles an hour in fast mode. It is a little fun.

resolutions, diets and stupid

New year resolutions

Since most new year resolutions are abandoned after about a week; I feel hesitant whether to make one or not. Resolutions give us a moment of hope as the new year begins, so that may have some value. 

It seems the number one resolution for most people is to lose weight. By now losing weight we may not feel very confident. As the years move along our weight tends to increase. The fitness industry and health industry both booming don't seem able to help. So what do we do? We turn to the craziness ideas where we might lose a few pounds but in time we only put the weight back on again. bugger!

If you don't mind here are a few suggestions or guidelines:

1. if it seems to be to good to be true, it probably isn’t true.
2. If a celebrity endorses it, avoid it like you would've avoided Ebola. If a celebrity endorses it, look for the snake oil. It may help you lose weight but you can guarantee it won't help your health.
3. If it cost you money to find out the secrets, a red flag should go up that this is a scam.

I hope to encourage you with the little bit of skepticism when it comes to diet and claims. My personal physician tells me that losing weight is going to take about 80% of work in diet. Whatever it takes we have to work at it and it will become part of our lifestyle.

Let's take a look at the crazy world of diets.

The McDonald's diet. No matter the clever ads, jingles, beautiful people eating a burger, like cigarettes we know this is a bad road. Here I refer to fast food in general.

Listen to the doctors. Many doctors come up with plans about diets. If their plans come up with a price tag, think twice. Hippocrates, us the father of medicine gave this advice to lose weight. Eight once a day, take no baths, sleep on a hard surface, eat more meat and protein; and my favorite, walk around naked as much as possible especially in winter. Now I think you would lose weight but then you might get pneumonia.

HCG diet & celebs. Recently I came across a brief reference to Kim Cardassian planning to eat the placenta when her baby was born. I readily admit to you I really don't know where these crazy ideas come from but in researching crazy diets I came across the HCG diet. People who practices this diet eat 500 cal a day and inject themselves with a hormone produced by the placenta of a pregnant woman. Nothing sounds right about this. 

Loopy idealists diets, The Freegan Diet. They combine a vegan diet of discarded food and food they can find for free. Basically eat what people throw away and forage in nature. So head to the dumpster and hope the food is fresh.

The models and writers diet. Lord Byron and Heidi Klum have a diet with a different twist. Drink vinegar or soak your food with it so that you lose your appetite. Lord Byron went from 194 lbs to 126 lbs. He got the look that he wanted in being pale and thin, he also died at 36 with many health problems. Heidi’s diet may not be as extreme could erode her stomach and esophagus.

Enlist help of a tapeworm. Tapeworms can grow 30 feet and they are capable of reproducing inside our bodies. People tried to this in the early 1900s and In 1950s. So we are about ready for another round of somebody trying this. When you lose the weight you want you can go through the treatment of destroying the tapeworms in your body. Just be aware of they do come out of your body one way or another. There is a long list I'm dangerous side effects including meningitis, epilepsy, and dementia. Plus a 30 foot pet.

Yes cigarettes can help you lose weight. That was the plan back in 1925 with Lucky Strikes. The ads included a beautiful thin girl smoking a cigarette and a fat girl eating. Cigarettes in the movies were a powerful advertisement. I believe people can still be duped with this stupidity.

Let's go to a Fletcher's party. In 1903 Horace Fletcher introduced a diet which help him lose 40 pounds. You chew your food hundred times a minute and what is left you spit out. Wouldn't that make a great dinner party. Writers Henry James, in Franz Kafka, and millionaire John D Rockefeller followed this diet. Besides gross it leads to constipation.

I think you get the idea, weird ideas may work; but they often cause us serious health problems. Just because a doctor, a celebrity, or new product comes along think about my guidelines and can I had another one:

(4) if it's stupid, it is

Keep walking