Well, for those of you who are interested, I’ve started another prong on my “Be Alive at 45” plan. I’ve been kicking a lot of saturated fats and calories out of my diet recently. While my cholesterol and blood pressure aren’t officially scary, it’s probably about time that I took my health seriously and work to maintain it while it’s in pretty good shape.
I have no love affair with food, and in general, could care less about cutting a lot of things out. I’ve gone from what used to be 3 sodas a day to about 6-8 ounces of pepsi in the morning, and that’s slowly getting removed as I get away from caffeine. Loosing the sugar is also nice for keeping myself from blood sugar crashes.
I’m eating more fresh foods, salads and fruits. And man is that a pain in the ass. Not from an eating it perspective, but from an “eating it before it spoils” perspective. I need to get used to the idea of buying less and shopping more often. Which I’m not a huge fan of.
Picked up a digital scale to keep an eye on my weight, which for the record has not changed significantly from 165 in about 2 years. I’m thinking it might be interesting to drop down to 150 and loose some fat from around my waist. Changes in my diet should not make this a hard thing to do. At about 5′ 11″ I’m already pretty skinny though. I’d like to start putting on some more muscle, but getting into the gym to lift is a little impractical with my schedule.
My metabolism is pretty high, and changes to my diet seem to make very minor differences in how I actually feel. That’s what makes it hardest to implement these changes. I have almost no positive reinforcement from my body. Dropping caffeine has probably had the largest effect, helping me sleep a bit better, and be a little less tired during the day. But the effect has been mild.
I have noticed that I have been less stressed out in general, but I’ve been getting a lot of things in place that reduce the stress in my life (i.e. getting my shit together) that could also account for that effect.
Check out Jeremy Zawodny’s blog entry on how he lost 50 pounds. Gotta love the hacker’s diet.