Fortuitous Discovery

I have completely disenfranchised social and mainstream media (SMSM) from my life for the past 10 days, as part of a SMSM fasting challenge. In so doing, I realized I had also inadvertently disenfranchised most toxicity from my life. SMSM, as it turns out, is currently one of the only places where toxicity impacts my life. It's good to know that almost 100% of all toxicity is contained to SMSM now. That makes it easy to compartmentalize and dismiss. The rest of my life is quite detoxified, by comparison to SMSM. That was a brilliant discovery.

I am boycotting all media until they clean up their act and detoxify.

I encourage you to try it.

The End.

Have I Achieved Lasting Healthy Lifestyle Change?

I have been tracking my diet and exercise daily for the past six months (using the free Lose It app for my Android phone) as part of a successful gambit to lose 50 pounds. An exception to this is when I go on vacations. I allow myself full freedom to eat whatever and whenever I want, and the only exercise I usually get is from walking around seeing cool things at the places I visit.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when I got back from a 6-day trip to the south rim of the Grand Canyon and found that I had not gained any weight at all. In fact, I had lost a pound.

That got me wondering, have I achieved lasting healthy lifestyle change?

I had heard about this concept of lasting healthy lifestyle change before, but I never thought it could happen to me. The idea is that when you do something consistently for long enough, it becomes second nature (or second order change, as we say in the vernacular of marriage and family therapy).

In addition to measuring my caloric intake each day, I guess I had also subconsciously started to make healthier choices about what kinds of food to eat. The logic was simply that by choosing to eat more fruits and vegetables, instead of junky caloric food, I could stay within my dietary guidelines set by my weight loss goal. I like to make and eat food. Fruits and veggies are lower in calories per unit weight, so I know that I can eat more of them on a given day without exceeding my calorie quota (set by the Lose It! Android app).

I don't know if I have achieved lasting healthy lifestyle change, but I may have.

A Fortnight of Fitness: Day 12

Deborah and I are in the home stretch of our fortnight of fitness, to follow a plant-based, whole food diet for two weeks and measure the health effects: objectively, weight and blood pressure; subjectively, mood and overall well-being.

I'll cut to the chase. My weight on the morning of Day 12 was 214 pounds. This was up a pound from Day 11, but it is important to note that my weight was 222 pounds when I began this fortnight-long challenge. My blood pressure on the evening of Day 12 was 118/70. My blood pressure has been variable during this challenge, but this is on the very low end of measured values. At its peak, my BP was around 130/80. I cannot say with certainty that the precision of the Walgreens brand home BP monitor that we are using allows me to call this change in BP statistically significant, but I am happy with the current numbers.

My mood has been generally good. I have some anxiety, but I believe this is due to starting my second challenging semester of graduate school tonight, and nothing to do with my lifestyle changes. Since returning from vacation a couple weeks ago, I have felt a little bit bored and unsatisfied with life, but this is because I have not had enough activities to focus my brain energy on and studying should remedy that. Additionally, January and February in Wisconsin are notoriously brutal months for getting outdoors, which enhances my mood. However, I will continue to track my mood and see. In February, I have February Album Writing Month to preoccupy my creativity through to March, when I hope my rock-n-roll band GUPPY EFFECT will start to play some shows again.

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