Promise

I promised myself that I would add one of these stories here every time I told one. I tell them at one point or another throughout the summer. There will be no chronology - not yet anyway - nor will there be much of a schedule. You never know; I might add a story every day and I might not. This is my life. Every day is an adventure.

Anna

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Weight Loss

For years and years - pretty much ever since I had kids - I have battle my weight, constantly gaining a little each year over the year before. Back in July of 2011 I tried a diet that worked wonders for my best friend from high school. It worked wonders for me too, for the first go-around. I'd bought 2 go-arounds and the second one didn't take off a single ounce. I lost 50 pounds with the first round, so I was happy with that. However, I couldn't keep the pounds off. I tried many strategies - eating less, not eating this or that, avoiding that or this if possible. Keeping an eye pealed for something I could get that might work. Living out here, I am handicapped by what I can eat. I can't run to the store for fresh veggies or salad fixings and I can't keep such things here for very long - I don't have a refrigerator, but even if I did, I still can't keep fresh things here. If it isn't frozen, canned or dry, I can't keep it around.

This last winter, the lymph nodes in my face flared up for some unknown reason and it got a little scary so I went to town to see a Dr. However, by the time I got there it was all done and over, so I turned the trip into a shopping trip. I wasn't about to shell out $200 to chat with a Dr. about what might have cause them and I had no other reason to visit one. Anyway, my son juices so he was juicing things for me. Tasted good, but it didn't have the desired affect on my weight - quite the contrary.

During my shopping, one thing I needed was vitamins so I was looking for the Centrum ones I'd always had (at least for the last few years). When someone else does your shopping for you, you kinda take what they send you and these seemed pretty good so what the heck. They were one-a-day's, but I took one in the afternoon too (if I remembered to take one with me) at work. During the winter I mostly didn't take them at all. They were (hopefully) my energy source to get me through the day. Taking one also helped me remember to drink enough water throughout the day - something I'm not so good at, but I'm getting better.

Long story short, my son scoffed at the manufactured vitamins I was after and had me get instead these all natural ones. The brand name is CODE. You should seriously check them out.

The OCD in me wouldn't let me just throw out the old ones, so I religiously took them twice a day like always starting shortly before going back to work. I'd reached 200 pounds again and I was looking forward to working off a few pounds at work. My sedentary life here during the winter does me no good. I know this, but my little 1/4 mile walk to the boats and back doesn't really accomplish anything but to get me out of the house for a little while.

I know I'm strong. I believe I am stronger than most women my size and age, but carrying around 50-60 extra pounds every waking and sleeping moment of my life kinda wears on me after a while. Never call a fat person weak; depending on how much weight they're carrying around, believe me, you wouldn't want to do the same be it extra weight or a rucksack.

Work starts out with me trying to figure out what goes where and where it all is, that and catching up on all the laundry fast enough so incoming staff can have clean bedding. I swear everyone just packed up and left at the end of last year - I don't know - maybe they did. After I got the laundry-room caught up I started getting the flowerbeds tilled. I have a garden claw for this, but it's still work and my back and feet would ache after not very long. Then, to interrupt my work, the girl hired to clean the lodge wasn't doing her job. Her definition of cleaning was to clean what you can see, which might be fine most of the time, but to start of it needs to be move everything and scrub everything - there's a whole winter's worth of dust and bugs and whatever to clean up before you can get away with taking shortcuts. Anyway, she got fired and they really needed help in there so that's what I did until they got a new girl in. It set me back about a week, so baby plants weren't getting planted and weeds were having a field day, not to mention getting into cabins.

Cleaning in the lodge meant crawling around and checking under things, and cleaning under things. Going over every piece of furniture and cleaning them from one end to the other. Wiping down walls (I didn't get to all of them). You get the picture. I was mostly done with what I could do around coming and going day fishermen when the new girl arrived and then I had a week to get the gardens all done and move on to the cabins. Millions of thanks to the guys for helping me with the rocks around most of the more up front gardens. After that in was into the cabins where I wiped down the walls, crawling around, on top of, and under the bunks in search of cobwebs and dust. I even found some left over flood silt here and there (after 4 years I was surprised and disappointed by that, I can tell you). It wasn't bad though - not where it really counted. After that it was making beds. That entailed up and down a ladder for each layer if it was an upper bunk and there were 2 in most of the cabins. Thank goodness I only had five cabins to worry about at the time.

On top of all of this exercise, our 4-wheeler decided it didn't want to go anymore. That left me hauling things back and forth with a 2-wheeled cart. I had to carry barrels down to the boats in order to take some to work to be filled (they didn't have barrels to be filled with gas; their gas was pumped directly into big tanks). I also had to haul down propane tanks (thank goodness we aren't using the big tanks) and to add insult to injury, we ran out of gas here so I was hauling five gallons at a time back up to the house as needed. I was starting to feel like a mule (and wishing I had one). Groceries were supposed to come last week and I was seriously dreading the ordeal of figuring out how I was going to get it all to the house. But now the 4-wheeler works again so I'm spared most of that worry. No idea what the issue was with the darn thing, but it works - no more cart.

Long story - longer than I intended - but the gist of it all was that through it all, I didn't lose more than maybe a pound or two. Never try to tell me that exercise and eating right will melt the pounds away. Don't try to tell me that muscle weighs more than fat and I must have been building muscle as I was losing the fat. That may be true - a little - but it certainly didn't make my feet hurt less.

Finally, about 5 weeks after I started work, I ran out of my old vitamins and start those new ones my son wanted me to get. Also during that time, I was getting a little desperate so I asked my best friend if she had any of that hcg stuff that worked so well. She did so I bought it. I guess it's hard to come by these days, having gone out of style or something. Maybe it worked too well and the FDA put the pressure on them. I also ordered some diet stuff from a neighbor out here. And some tea my daughter-in-law had given me a while back but I'd used up. The tea and some of the stuff from my neighbor is cleansing and the pills do whatever they do. I just got it, but I haven't opened any of it yet.

Back to those CODE vitamins: Ever since I started taking them (I went with the one pill twice a day at first), I started losing weight SLOWLY. That was fine with me. Slow is good as long as it goes. I also recently learned that I might be suffering from a vitamin D deficiency at least during the winter. I get scaly spots on my face during the winter and I ran across an article that indicated that might be a D deficiency. Well, guess what - If I take these vitamins as recommended, I get 100% of that too. Hmmm Something to see about anyway. So I decided to take the 2 pills in the morning and 2 in the evening (when I remembered - most of the time) and see how things develop.

Yes, the weight is coming off and I have energy. My feet still hurt if I'm on them all day, but that's getting better. I have my finger crossed. Wouldn't it be a hoot if my weight problem was some kind of enzyme or probiotic shortage? Just like with hcg, my hunger and cravings have decreased, my energy level has increased, and the pounds are coming off. I don't lead a toxic life. I don't eat manufactured foods more than maybe once a year, so cleansing isn't necessary. I SO wish this keeps working. Needless to say, I've asked my son to get me more of those vitamins. I mean, seriously, if they're actually a benefit, I'm all for it. Wish me luck.

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