Carol’s coming home tomorrow, finally, after two and a half weeks in Chicago helping her mom. This was nothing sudden, and I had had a crazy idea in reserve, at which I hinted in my 2009 plan file, which I posted on New Year’s Eve. Some of you mailed me, puzzled, about this item:<\/p>\n
One woman, whom I’ve known for a number of years, scolded me: “You’re crazy! You don’t need to lose any weight!”<\/p>\n
That’s true. I do not need to lose any weight. However, when I do<\/em> lose weight, I damned well want to know why<\/em>.<\/p>\n Ok. There is some backstory that I haven’t given you yet. This may take me a couple of days to get through, but I think it’s important. So let’s get underway.<\/p>\n For a number of years now, I’ve weighed 155, and I consider that my ideal weight. I’m 5’9″ tall and lightly built. My blood chemistry is good and I have no major health problems. I walk regularly, and do weight training once a week. This has been my regimen (such that it is) since we moved to Colorado in 2003.<\/p>\n My customary breakfast all this time has been a bowl of Cheerios in 2% milk, and half of a 6 oz cup of fat-free, low-sugar “light” yogurt, mixed with organic blueberries. (The organic is incidental. I don’t care how they were grown; they just taste better.) I’m used to a certain period of muzziness that follows breakfast, and assumed it was just my blood rushing to my stomach. Morning is my productive time for writing, and my post-breakfast fuzzies slowed me down. I resent that, but I considered it inevitable until I read something online about the phenomenon. Eating carbs for breakfast will do that to you. Hmmm. So some months back, I just stopped eating Cheerios in the morning, hoping that I would be mentally sharper until lunch. And wham! It worked. I got a little hungry at 10:30 AM, but I did not lose my edge after breakfast. I was writing more, and better, from 7 AM all the way until noon. So I bought dry-roasted almonds to snack on mid-morning, and kept to the regimen.<\/p>\n Well, something else happened: In about three weeks, I lost five pounds.<\/p>\n I did not think that had five pounds to lose, but I shed another inch of waistline, and had to punch another hole in a couple of my belts. Carol told me she wanted me back at 155. However, I am unwilling to lose my morning edge. It was a bit of a conundrum, but I knew that, come January, I would be batching it again for almost three weeks, eating alone. So a totally outrageous experiment suggested itself…<\/p>\n More tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Carol’s coming home tomorrow, finally, after two and a half weeks in Chicago helping her mom. This was nothing sudden, and I had had a crazy idea in reserve, at which I hinted in my 2009 plan file, which I posted on New Year’s Eve. Some of you mailed me, puzzled, about this item: Eat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,23],"tags":[37,39],"class_list":["post-552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daybook","category-ideasandanalysis","tag-food","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":553,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions\/553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}