History of my Weight Loss, February 2020
Let's review a bit:
I am a Type 2 Diabetic (T2D). For a host of reasons, both rational and irrational, I want that to be no longer true, or at worst, less true. My strategy is to lose as much body fat as I can manage, with the presumption that the loss will achieve my goal. Goal achievement is measured, for example, in the table above. Tactics are progress tracking, diet, exercise, and drugs / supplements. With that, let's begin.
My experience has been that, while gaining weight, no one asked me about it, but while losing weight, the conversations with my family and friends went from "good luck with that", to "hey, you've lost weight", to "you're looking way better", to "are you dying?". I hit my lowest weight (1/17/2020, 160.8 pounds) about when the dying stuff started, so, I chose to stop losing weight. I raised my kCalorie target from 1700 daily to 2000 daily.
The table above shows monthly measures of weight, fat free body weight, body fat, changes month to month, and body fat %. You will note that when I lose body fat, I also lose fat free body weight. Another reason I wanted to stop losing weight is to avoid self-induced sarcopenia. I intend to keep all the muscle mass I can, for as long as possible. Getting to bulk and cut is difficult for me. To show that ...
I want this pounds of fat measure to be 5 to 10 pounds lower. Hey, it's a goal.
Besides weight, I pay attention to my blood lab work. Of most interest are HbA1c, c-peptide measure, and liver enzymes ALT and AST. If you need, Mr. Google will help you with those, or, just ask me. Some history ...
Moving along to diet. Macro's are grams of major nutrient, that make up your daily diet. Here's mine
At 2000 kCal daily, I more or less don't lose weight. When I lose discipline, and it is So Easy, I do indeed gain weight. My aspirational targets are on the chart.
Note that I've never been at that targeted carb level. And, never is a long time. To say I have issues here vastly understates the case.
Exercise is straight forward. I water row 3 x 2500m, lift weight, Tabata water row, and ride my road bike as weather allows. I've yet to incorporate walking into my routines. All these contribute greatly to my well-being, and if I could do more of them, without self damage or insanity, I would. You can see what I do in this blog.
Drugs and supplements should get their own blog post, but I've avoided that so far, and will continue to do so. Some factoids, though: I take a lot of minerals and electrolytes, and arguably, at my upper limit. I take acetyl L-Carnitine and alpha lipoic acid, for both the cardiovascular benefit, and an attempt to get fat out of my liver. See here and here. I occasionally cycle vitamin E. When my ALA supply runs out, I'll switch to a more bio-available form (see here). About 2 months ago, I started to take berberine, and I liked the impact on my BG measures. Sadly, it's about 10x more cost than metformin, thanks to insurance coverage. So, back on metformin (2 x 1 gram), and off berberine. I take 2 x 5000 iu Vitamin D during the winter time, 1 x 5000 otherwise.
Lantus is time release insulin, injected pre-bedtime. Back in the day, I took 80 units daily. Now, more like 30. My shot sizing model is failing when the dose size gets low enough. Too small a shot, and my overnight numbers do odd things. I suspect I'm near the basal / food clearance bound. No easy way for me to know that. It's on my list to discuss with my Endo.
So, given all that, what to do? Believe me, I've wondered what "giving up" means, and continue to believe it'd be worse than what I'm doing. So, continue to repress carbs, watch my kCal intake, exercise as I can, start walking more, continue TRF, keep hopeful for Spring and warm weather.
The combination of hopeful and stubborn is what keeps me doing what I do. Let Breaking Benjamin explain my plight.
There's no way out
I cannot hold on
I will not let go
Peace out ...
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