Hot Diggity's Primal Journey

My second holiday season has passed since I started Primal and I am back to my normal weight range. I will admit that last year I don't recall varying from my standard 168-172. I enjoyed this holiday season much more. ;-)

Starting on Thanksgiving, I ate a little of EVERYTHING. Had the usual food pains and brief coma-like sleep, but recovered nicely from that. Christmas was wonderful, and I tried a piece of every dessert that was offered at every party . I slowly noticed the scale easing up to the high end of my normal range. I actually held at 174 for a few days while temperatures were in the teens here. I think most of that was from missing one week of beach sprints, but I was happy to see that I was back at 172 this morning.

Feel great, Got three suits tailored to fit my smaller frame, enjoyed the holidays, and have again proven to myself that I can enjoy eating great food and still stay lean and fit.

 

Isn't that the truth. Someone brought holiday cupcakes into the office. I immediately dived in and felt the lethargy. One of my co-workers eats primal so he was feeling the same. Next day I walked in a threw the box of cupcakes in the trash. I decided I would get the office to eat healthier this holiday season. I brought in a bag of clementines for snacking. I have found people are just happy with free food, doesn't matter if it is fruit or cake, they will always eat free.

@hot diggity wishing you a belated Merry Christmas.

 

It was a beautiful January day today and I got my sprints in at the beach as well as some incline and decline pushups on the steps down from the deck to the sand. On the way back I was hungry so I stopped at Food Lion for a snack. Rather than $1.49 for some pork rinds with preservative I can't pronounce, or $1.89 for some yummy white cheddar popcorn that I can't digest, I spent a whole twenty five cents for three nice big carrots!

Life is good!

 

I guess I need new challenges with this new body, so I found a new game. Get completely dressed for work, including shoes and socks, while standing. No leaning on things, and no sitting down. Actually, I've done this before, because it was necessary to stay out of snow and mud, but never just for fun.

Made me smile.

 

I prefer running barefoot on my beach, where I can select just the right firmness of sand, but once a year I participate in a local 5k race. Almost 400 runners were faster than I was. Most of them were youngsters, but quite a few women my age and older, and some men as old as 70 who do this kind of thing for fun. I do this once a year, and for the second year in a row I've been the fastest of the men in my age group.

I'm undecided if that makes me fast, or just that the other gentlemen in the group plod along just a little slower than I do.

I'll be back on the beach in the morning, undoubtedly still sore from running on pavement. Right now, all I can think about is sleep.

 

I had an interesting experience last night that I felt just had to be shared. I was on the back deck burning some junk mail in the fireplace and enjoying the roar of a Coleman 242 lantern that I'd lit in honor of the Marine Corps 242nd birthday.

I knew it would be a bit before the fire burned down so I did a set of pull ups and decided to do a set of planks. I spent nearly the entire two minutes of regular planks laughing, since my feet were slipping away on the wet boards of the deck. This is tightens the abdominal muscles very effectively, and I highly recommend it.

I had started the set with my elbows on one of those silver folding sun shade things that you put in the car windshield. When my feet started slipping again during the first set of side planks, I figured I'd put my feet on the end of the sun shade. That felt like it was working until I felt my forearm slipping along the sunshade. I finished the whole set, having laughed hysterically throughout most of it, and thinking that I would go back to doing planks on rough concrete or grass. Now I'm not so sure. It certainly made them more difficult, and was one of the few times when planks had actually been fun.

 

Time for an update. After two years of first place finishes in an annual 5k run in the spring, I slipped to third place. By June I had lost considerable flexibility in my right knee and in August I had knee surgery to clean up the ACL and PCL tears. They found a thorny looking foreign body on a tether inside the joint, and it has carved a wide swath through the cartilage and into the bone. Not good news.

I wish I hadn't gone to my last appointment. Nothing cheerful about it. They didn't say I couldn't run, but stressed that I shouldn't. The only good news is that he knee seems to have been ground away enough that my leg length discrepancy is more or less corrected without my built up sole on the left boot to correct for it.

After eight weeks of recovery, being displaced by a hurricane and eating everything in sight over the holidays I'm holding at 184 pounds while trying to eat right and avoid grains and sugars. I have been out to run on the beach, and it still feels great, but the following couple days are painful and the knee seems to be protesting.

No pain that I can't manage... yet, and still not wanting to go the knee replacement route, I will tough it out through the spring and if I have to have knee replacement surgery I'll try to have it before hurricane season so I can enjoy my time off.

 

FINALLY starting to get back to normal around here. Fully recovered from the knee surgery and ten months of Hurricane dislocation. The surgery actually seems to have corrected my leg length discrepancy as well. I won Fastest Male in a 5K "Beach Run" in September 2019 that turned out to not be on the beach at all, but on Beach Rd. in Emerald Isle. Nothing but hills and run on a paved trail, it was miserable, but I beat all the men. I got smoked by a bunch of women and a dog. I ate a huge lunch that day and felt terrible the whole run. I felt that this was the beginning of my Primal decline.

Today, I'm still struggling with a shoulder dislocation from falling out of a car during Hurricane Isiasis, but it's getting better. Gym may be open, I haven't checked, but the beach is my preferred place to run anyway. Fighting back from all this COVID lock-down, eat-it-while-you-can-still-get-it mentality and the shoulder injury that made any movement painful. I feel good. I've been eating right, peddling this miserable arm bike, and I'm dropping pounds every day. Looking back at my last post I'm pleased to see that I'm back to only an additional ten pounds from where I was after surgery. Running is key, and being unable to do my sprints is what keeps the pounds from dropping.

This will sure help. My Lucky Seven. Seven times 70 yard sprints... like a lion is trying to eat me.


I will have to look into the track situation at the gym. The beach is great, down to about 50. Running barefoot on wet sand in weather colder than that becomes painful. Being almost 60 years old I have to think just a little about what would happen if I had an injury on the beach in the middle of January when I'm often the only one out there for hours. Makes the nice warm track in the gym seem a little more inviting.

 

Glad to hear you're doing well ,,, as can be expected,,I broke an ankle from a fall from a tree right at a year ago ,,, still not healed well . Damned sure can't run ,, need to get those knee surgeries as well ,, both of them ,, I think I've put them off about as long as i can ,, right at about 60 myself ,, got a VA appointment next week ,, guess I'll start trying to get them done ,, much as I hate to ,, it's just getting to be to much pain to deal with to get thru a full day of work anymore . I gotta lot of stuff to do before I check out from this dirtpile ,, hopefully these surgeries will make it easier to do .
Semper Fi Sir ,,,,

 

I've found a new twist to maintaining something resembling a fitness program during this Covid madness. I started two weeks ago, having to "earn" each light beer with a minute of front planks, or 45 seconds each of side planks. When that got boring I would switch to squats, push-ups or overhead ammo can lift. If I really wanted a pint of Guiness that would be two minutes of planks. Run up four flights of stairs (64 steps) is good for a light beer. I'm still carrying more weight than I'd like since hip issues are making running difficult, but I feel much better since starting this program. Since I'm doing something every day, it has become a fun game to try to come up with a new challenge.

I'm sleeping better, and feeling more energized at work, and my core is more solid, even if it's still wearing winter padding. Something to do with the Covid loss of taste I'm sure. I have to try these desserts to be sure I can still taste them.

 

New fast food trick I've developed to eat okay food if I'm on the road and can't make a meal. In an effort to save money and not have buns to throw away I found a couple new fast food meals. (Three frustrated seagulls watched me eat at lunch today.)

McDonald's breakfast = folded egg and side of sausage. Keep napkins handy and you can eat with your fingers.

Sonic Drive Thru (any time) = Two 2 ounce burger patties with lettuce. With a little salt this is really quite tasty and bread free.

 

mcdonalds will do anyhting you want without the bun just tell them low carb style or no bun... nearly every restraunt will do this fast food or not... my favorite is the bunless chicken sandwich

great post!

 

I think it's time to resurrect this old thread. After a hip and knee replacement in the last two years I've felt like I was clawing my way back to my happy place. I'm also Sixty-two and a half, so stuff doesn't happen as fast as it used to apparently. But stuff does change if you work at it.



First change was swearing off food that comes out of a window. Being incredibly thrifty, this was fairly easy. Within a week I found that my often severe hypoglycemia was all but gone. I could not eat at all for 16 hours and feel completely normal. This was a stark contrast to the confusion, nausea, and generally awful feeling I'd get if I didn't eat almost constantly only a week earlier.



In two weeks I found that I no longer qualified for the Club. I dropped out of the 200 lb club this morning and can't say I've really done anything more than alter my diet to drop ten pounds. No reduction in my beer consumption, not even drinking light beer. Mostly Miller and Black & Tan. Coffee in the morning with heavy whipping cream, diet soda or Gatorade Zero at work. Eggs for breakfast, banana and Prairie Belt sausages for lunch, and a huge salad for dinner. Grandma's Manhattan recipe before bed, and really trying to go to bed earlier.



I found that I can do very little else than change my diet and start the weight loss process. As it moves along... and gets a bit cooler on the beach, I'll add more sprints and free weights. More squats and planks. I'm encouraged by the extra notch that I had to take up in my belt to keep my trousers on. Things are moving in the right direction.

My weekends on the range seem to help. Nine hours in the heat, my steps up to the tower, and plenty of bending and reaching to pick up brass can really be felt on Monday morning.



I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.

 

Hip and knee replacements in just 2 years are major life changes. I'm looking forward to following your journey. I am also on a journey to better health that started around the time I joined this forum in February and the accountability has helped me to stay on track better than anything else I have tried.

 

My poor scale looks beat, but my buyers have confirmed its' accuracy with much more expensive scales.

Slow and steady. Waiting for cooler weather to be more active outside. I've also had my hands full with three wobbly kittens with Cerebellar Hypoplasia. Nearly all the rescue cats here are missing parts, or nearing 20 years of age, so the older residents don't know what to make of these three new arrivals.
What has made all the difference for me is getting my hypoglycemia under control. With no sugar highs and lows I eat only when hungry. Not because it's a certain time or because I'm bored. I've also found greater resistance to tempting treats.
They have consequences that I choose to avoid.