No More Mr. Fat Guy!

I got in two full hours of serious walking today. Went to the gym around 3 in the afternoon. I walked moderately for 20 minutes, then took a 5 minute break. Then I walked for 40, very briskly, and took another break. Then 45 more minutes at a brisk pace, another break, and then a final 15 minutes of leisurely walking. I feel great. I’m disappointed in the gym, though. When I joined several months ago, one of the main reasons I joined was because they didn’t play the radio very loudly. That policy has apparently changed in the interim. I’ve really got to turn the volume up high on my mp3 player to hear George Noory. Oh well. It’s unpleasant, but it’s too hot to walk outside, and there are worse things in the world to put up with.

The show I listened to today was with John Robbins. You may be familiar with his story. He was the heir to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream chain, but walked away from it all and began crusading for a healthier America. He’s written some books. I think his most famous is called Diet For A New America, but I could be wrong, and don’t feel like looking it up right now. He’s got a fairly new one out, which is what he was promoting on George Noory, called Healthy At 100. (My book will be called Unhealthy At 300.) Here’s his website.

Got a brisk 90 minutes of walking in today at the gym. That’s three days this week, for a total of 4.75 hours of walking. Not too shabby for a fat guy.

I have to work tomorrow, so I won’t be able to walk. But back at it Monday!

Things are going pretty well. I was afraid my new part time job delivering pizzas would cause me to put the weight back on, but that hasn’t been the case. One of the reasons I was worried is that we can have all the fountain drinks we want, for the entire shift. A while back, that would’ve been a real problem for me. I’d have been drinking them all shift long. But I’m not. I drink water. Every now and then I’ll get a Sprite or a Coke or a sweet tea, but most of the time it’s water.

And for some reason I have no desire to eat in the evening lately. On the days I work, before I head to the pizza shop, I’ll have a breakfast of 24 ounces of goat milk with chocolate flavored powder mixed in. It’s not Hershey, but one of those health drinks. It actually tastes pretty good. Sometimes I’ll drop a couple teaspoons of peanut butter into the blender, too. But that’s all I eat until mid-afternoon. Then, I’ll eat a small 7 inch pizza, or 10 wings, or a submarine sandwich (we get a big discount when we work, so it’s only a couple bucks). And, surprisingly, I then have no desire to eat in the evening. I’m not sure why that’s happening, but I’m sure glad it is. I’m also managing to get in an hour walk every other day or so, and my feet are holding up well.

And that’s a promise.

I can’t believe how long I’ve been gone. It wasn’t intentional. I’ve had a family situation to deal with, car problems one after another, I’ve been trying to drum up more freelance writing work, and so many goats have died this Spring that I’ve probably buried more bodies than John Wayne Gacy.

The good news is that even with all this stress, and no time to exercise, my weight is staying right around 275-280. I’m not gaining, and that’s what’s important. Cutting out the pop was a huge factor. I only drink it these days when I eat out, which is not that often. I hardly ever buy it at home. I did splurge on a 12 pack of Faygo Red Pop recently, but that’s the first in a long time, and it lasted several days. In the old days, it would’ve been gone in two days max, if it had lasted that long.

There’s another new development that I’ll be writing about in the days ahead. I don’t want to give up my writing, but it’s not paying a whole lot right now, so I need some extra income. I don’t want to get a factory or office job, because I don’t want to be cooped up 8 hours a day, and I don’t want a full time commitment. So, for the money and the flexibility, I took a job in the belly of the beast. I’ll be delivering pizzas part time.

Which should be interesting.

I’m still at my friend’s house, but I should be home sometime Tuesday. I’m on a terrible sleep schedule-going to be around 10am and getting up around 5pm. I’ve really got to figure out how to get back to the standard circadian rhythms and be a normal human being again.

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I’m still right around 275.  I’ll be heading back to my house in a day or two, and I hope to keep up the momentum I’ve built up in the past few days.  I’m going to try to ride my bike for at least half an hour a day, and possibly walk half an hour a day with my Exerstriders, and lay off the sweet tea, substituting water instead.  I’m feeling really good about my progress, although I’d hoped it would be faster.  But almost 30 pounds since December 22 is nothing to sneeze at.  My weight has fluctuated for the past several years between 285 and 303, and now that I’m down to 275 I feel like I’ve broken through an important psychological and physiological barrier.  My next milestone will be to look down and see a weight below 270, even if only 269.9 pounds.  Also, since I’m not quite as big as I was, and exercise isn’t quite as uncomfortable, I’m going to try to work some things besides cardio in.  I’m sure you’ve all seen the informercials with Chuck Norris for the Total Gym.  My friend John has something like that, and I may start using it a little each day.  I also want to work on pushups and situps.  Not sure how many I can do of either, but it won’t be very many.

Well, the big contest is over.  Alabama state health officials, alarmed that Alabama is ranked the second fattest state in America, after Mississippi, created the Scale Back Alabama program to encourage citizens to lose weight and get in shape.  Almost 20,000 people took up the official challenge, which just ended.  (I actually live in Tennessee, so I couldn’t take part, even though I spend a lot of time in Huntsville.)  Steve Doyle, the reporter for The Huntsville Times who wrote about me, wrote an article about some people in Huntsville who had some success.  And here’s an article from Scottsboro about the final weigh in.  The winner will be announced in early April.

Quit eating low fat dairy foods:

A diet rich in ice cream and other high-fat dairy foods may lower the risk of one type of infertility, a study suggests. It sounds too good to be true and probably is, some doctors say.But the findings are bound to get attention because they are from the well-known Nurses Health Study at the Harvard School of Public Health and were published Wednesday in the European journal Human Reproduction.

Researchers found that women who ate two or more low-fat dairy products a day were nearly twice as likely to have trouble conceiving because of lack of ovulation than women who ate less than one serving of such foods a week.

Conversely, women who ate at least one fatty dairy food a day were 27 percent less likely to have this problem.

So go ahead and have that pint of Rocky Road. One day your kid will thank you. Heck, make it a quart, and one day your triplets may thank you!

To see what condition my condition was in. Well, it’s still huge. But its hugeness is decreasing a little at a time. And I’m still fighting the good fight–I just got back from a two hour walk. I simply cannot believe the great weather we’re having. When it’s 68 degrees at two o’clock, with a clear blue sky, how can I not go out and walk for a couple hours? Maybe Mother Nature wants me to lose 100 pounds? Or, if you’re a New Age type, maybe this beautiful weather is Gaia the Earth Goddess’s way of saying “either lose some weight or get off me, ya great fat oaf!!!”

For the record, I don’t believe God is a female. I mean, c’mon–if God were a woman, we’d all be lookin’ up her dress! And ya can’t have that–I see England, I see France, I see Ishtar’s underpants! And if God really is a woman, may she strike me down with PMS. Besides, she started it when she called me a great fat oaf.

Anyway, two hours of walking (thanks to George Noory for the company), and I’m feeling great. Check back again tomorrow to see if I stick with it. Or if I’m in bed with PMS.

Got up today and the scale said 278. Around noon I went out and took care of the goats and birds and dogs, and then came back in and had lunch. Two “all natural” chicken sausages, and a salad. Around 2:30 I headed out for my walk, and took my George Noory mp3s with me. I took my usual route, which takes an hour and 20 minutes. But I added some trips down side roads for a total of two hours walking. And, boy do I feel good. Tired, but in a good way. I was actually gone for 2 hours and ten minutes, but I had to take a ten minute break. I’ve got these inserts for my shoes that someone gave me a year or so ago. I think they’ve got magnets in them or something, and they’re supposed to help your feet. One side has a bunch of raised dimples, and one side is flat. I’ve been using the flat side up, and I thought I’d try the dimpled side and see how that felt. I probably shouldn’t have picked a two hour walk to do that. After 90 minutes, it felt like my feet were on fire. I stopped at a bridge and reversed them, and sat there for ten minutes with my shoes and socks off to cool down my feet.

Man, I hope this weather keeps up. I hate having to drive to Fayetteville to walk when the weather’s bad, and so I just end up not walking at all. And it’s so much nicer walking outside, taking a long loop, rather than going around a track in the gym that’s 1/18 of a mile over and over and over.

Yeah!

It was really nice today here in the Tennessee Valley. When I went out walking I wore shorts for the first time in weeks. I thought, hey, while I’m exercising, why not give the soccer moms and farm wives a thrill? I can’t help it–I’m a giver. It’s just the way I am.

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I’ve been thinking.  And not about food, for once!  No, I’ve been thinking that blogs and comments and emails are great, and they can certainly play a part in keeping us motivated, but there’s nothing like real community for encouraging and motivating each other.

So if you’re in the Huntsville Alabama/Fayetteville Tennessee area, I was wondering if there are any folks who would like to get together once a week for a walk or some other activity.  It would probably work best for me on Sunday afternoons.  (I’m in Huntsville anyway on Sundays-my Overeaters Unanimous group meets from 5-8 at Barnhills every week.)  Or possibly Friday evenings (I have no social life…).  But for right now, Saturdays don’t work for me.

Anyway, if you’re over 18 and you’re interested in something like this, let me know.  Email me, and put Get Together in the subject line.  Let me know what activities you’d be interested in and where, what days and times are good for you, etc.

That’s the name of a book I’m reading by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. He says almost all cancers and heart problems could be eliminated by cutting out animal products from our diets. He also recognizes that most people aren’t going to become vegetarians, so he stresses that that we should do what we can to move toward the ideal. I have a long way to go, and I’m sure most of you do, too. Dr. Fuhrman also says that no more than 10% of our food should be cooked, with the other 90% being raw fruits and vegetables, juices, and nuts. That’s another goal I’m unlikely to ever attain, but I certainly understand what he’s saying. And he’s not some crank-Joel Fuhrman is an MD with a thriving practice in New York City. He’s also a former Olympic speed skater, and he says he followed these principles even when he trained and competed.

Nice weather, and I made good use of it. Took my Exerstriders out on my back roads and listened to George Noory for an hour. It felt good.

279 is the official weight today.

It’s a salad dressing. Salad is very healthy, and we should all eat more of it. But if you’re like me, you tend to cover it in so much high calorie dressing that it kinda defeats the purpose. And I’ve tried a bunch of different “low fat” dressings, and I really haven’t found any that taste all that good. But I tried a new kind of dressing the other day, and I really like it. It’s from Kraft, and it’s their Good Seasons Sun Dried Tomato Vinaigrette With Roasted Red Peppers dressing. (That must be some kind of record for the longest salad dressing name…) It’s not marketed as low fat, but a serving of 2 tablespoons has 60 calories (45 from fat), compared to many dressings which have 120-160 calories per serving, with most of that being fat. I got mine at Wal-Mart. Everyone’s tastes are different, but I think it’s delicious. So if you’re looking for a lower calorie dressing, give it a try.

It doesn’t feel like it, and I can’t see a difference in my pics, but the scale says I’ve lost 24 pounds since my high of 303.  Seventeen since my first pic, down from 296.  I must say I’m surprised at how much I’ve lost, and a lot of it’s probably water.  But it’s 24 pounds I’m no longer carrying around anymore.  I’m not eating great, but I’m eating better most of the time.  And I’ve done some walking, and need to do it every day.  I think the biggest difference is cutting out pop (Coke for Southerners!).  I used to drink 5 or 6 Pepsi’s a day, and now I have one every couple days, if that.  I do drink some sweet tea, but not nearly as much as I used to drink pop.

That’s what the scale says.

I find it hard to believe. I certainly don’t feel like I’ve lost 24 pounds. And I haven’t even lost two inches off my stomach. I’m still straining to get to 53 inches.

So where did the 24 pounds come from?

It certainly wasn’t my chin(s)!

Not long ago I mentioned that I’d gotten something in the mail that I’d ordered, that might help me burn even more calories as I walk. They’re called Exerstriders, and they’re a pair of adjustable length walking poles. When I first heard about them, I wasn’t too impressed. Number one, I thought I’d look weird or goofy walking with a pole in each hand. But as my friends Deb and John pointed out, I look weird and goofy anyway, so what harm could using the poles do? Second, frankly, I didn’t think they’d really add much to the walking workout. It just didn’t seem like two lightweight poles would help you burn many more calories. But the more I read about them, the more I thought they might be worth giving a try. And the creator of Exerstriders, Tom Rutlin, is a great guy; he answers emails right away and takes a real personal interest in helping people get in shape. So I went ahead and ordered them. I still wasn’t expecting to be all that impressed with them, but there’s a sixty day money back guarantee, so I figured what the heck.

But, boy was I wrong. I just got back from my first Exerstrider workout, and man, do they make a difference. A big difference.

Remember the old Nordic Track exercise machines? For a while, they were very popular, and very expensive. Most people didn’t use them, because operating them was extremely boring, and thousands of them are just gathering dust, or selling for a few bucks on eBay. But for those people who actually used their Nordic Track, they worked very well. They produced excellent results because they gave you the same workout you could get with cross country skiing, which burns more calories per hour than just about any other form of exercise.

Well, Exerstrider Nordic Walking Poles give you the same workout, but without the boredom. Exercise machines rarely work; because using them is drudgery. But if you’re walking, and you want to really ramp up the calories you burn, and tone your upper body, you should check out Exerstriders .

As I said, I was extremely surprised at the effect these two light weight poles had. As I type this, I definitely feel a big difference in my arms after using my poles today, compared to my normal walks. Walking is great, and I love it, but by itself does nothing for your upper body at all. But the Exerstriders involve your entire upper body, even your abs. Tom Rutlin, the inventor, is a former cross country skier who designed them to simulate the effects of cross country skiing.

I took my hour and a half walk around my rural back roads. And my concerns about feeling self conscious were entirely unnecessary. Several cars passed me, and I doubt if any of them even noticed the poles, and many people walk with hiking sticks, anyway. And the motions you use are entirely natural; it’s not much different than plain walking by itself. They do come with an instructional video, but I had no trouble picking it up. (There’s a short video on the website that shows a couple using Exerstriders.) Now, I didn’t use the Exerstriders for the whole 90 minutes. It’s going to take a while before I can do that. But I’d walk for 10 minutes with the Exerstriders, and then I’d carry them for 10 minutes. Believe me, Exerstriders don’t look like they’d do much, but I defy anyone who’s never tried them to go out and use them for a half hour straight without stopping.

They’re also adjustable for different heights. I’m six feet even, but I’m still experimenting with a couple different settings. They’re easy to adjust, and storage is no problem-stand them in the corner. And they’re collapsible for traveling.

According to the website, Exerstriders will enable you to burn anywhere from 30% to 70% more calories. And I believe it. I’ll be using them from now on whenever I walk outside. You can use them inside, too, but the track at my gym is so narrow I don’t know if it’s a good idea.

Anyway, if you’re walking, but frustrated with your slow weight loss, I’d recommend you check out Exerstriders. The website has tons of information, and they’re very reasonably priced, especially compared to an exercise machine that you’ll probably never use more than a week.

Before this became an all goats all the time blog?  I feel as if the past week I’ve been living in a TV drama, CSI: Goat Town.

Oh yeah, losing 100 pounds.  So let’s get back to that!  In a comment the other day, Cron mentioned an interesting site with lots of inspiring stories of people who’ve lost significant amounts of weight.  And it’s got a cool name-The Weigh We Were. 

And if you missed my interview with Deb from Natural Health Co-op about my plan to lose 100 pounds, you can check it out here.  There’s other interesting podcasts about health there, too, and they’re all free.  Check ‘em out!

What a past couple of days. Nuthin’ but goats, goats, goats. Sorry for being gone so long, but it’s been one barnyard crisis after another. I’ll have to write about it in more detail later. But the short story is that Nan had two, Mildred had three, Tipper had one, all in the past two days. One of Nan’s died, two of Mildred’s died, and then we discovered three dead kids out in the middle of the pasture that Lucille had delivered and we had no idea, because they usually give birth in the barn. And now Mildred, one of the two goats we milk, is very, very sick. And the one kid of hers that lived was on death’s door, but we’re nursing it back to health. The good news is that all the pregnant females have kidded. The bad news is that a bunch of them didn’t make it, and we’re not sure Mildred’s going to make it. The score right now on the kids is The Grim Reaper 8, Me 7. I hope that’s the way the score stays.

In the past couple days I’ve buried six kids, we’ve got Mildred staying in the milk barn to keep her warm and we’re praying she turns around, and we’ve got the miracle survivor kid in the house in a box, and we’re bottle feeding it. We may have to take Mildred to the vet in the morning.

I did weigh in. I’m at 285. I’m not sure what Deb did, but there are now some pics of baby goats, and my weigh in, in the post below. I’ll try to edit things tomorrow, and get all the pics up in this post.

Well, I got up at 5:30 this morning, so I was off to a great start from the very beginning. I headed into town right away. I did eat breakfast at a restaurant, but it wasn’t fast food, and I ate pretty responsibly. Around 7:30 I got to the gym. I would’ve loved to walk outside, but it was like 28 degrees, and that’s a bit too cold. So I got an hour in, and then went outside to see if it had warmed up enough to walk outside. It had, and so I went down to the local park and did another hour. Time flies when you’re listening to Art Bell at just above freezing!

Guess what I found in my glove compartment today? A pedometer. I’d bought it several months ago for like 2 bucks at a dollar store after resolving for about the 200th time to get serious about losing weight. And then I promptly forgot about it, along with my weight loss goals. But there it was, and waddya know it works great. Not for miles walked or calories burned; for that it’s worthless, as you can’t program it, and it bases caloric expenditure on a 120 pound person. Fat lot of good that does me! I guess in China they must think the average American weighs 120 pounds. They really need to get out more!

And the miles walked function was based on an unrealistic stride estimation, too. But I don’t care; that’s not why I spent the two bucks on it. I wanted the step counter. And it works great-I tested it in the house. And I couldn’t believe how many steps I took in two hours. Almost 14,000! That’s about 100,000 extra steps a week if I walk faithfully. I’m pretty proud of myself, actually.

Then I stopped by a local store to meet one of my readers, Heath. He’d read about me in the paper and after checking out my blog he emailed me. He invited me to stop by the store he manages in Fayetteville and say hi. I told him I would if he’d buy me a sackful of Krystals, and he agreed. Nah, I’m just kidding about that part. We had a great time talking about food, weight, Mountain Dew, flavored water, and Ollie Joe Prater. We may get together and walk in the future. Thanks for the invite, Heath!

Heath also told me about a great neighborhood in town to go walking. So I headed into town to check it out, and it really is-little traffic, long streets, and lots of sidewalks. But on the way home I saw something that scared the living daylights out of me. It really shook me up. Several hours later, it’s still hard for me to talk about it…but here goes. As I drove by Shoney’s, I read their new sign out front. It said Come in and try our new Milky Way Cake! It’s out of this world!

Pray for me.

Many of us have made a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight, or we’ve got some other important goal that we’d like to accomplish.  But for too many of us, it’s difficult to stick with it.  There are too many distractions, we’re too busy, we can’t stay motivated, it seems too hard, and so we give up.  That’s been a problem for me in the past, and I’m sure it’s a problem for a lot of people reading this.  From what I’ve read, if you’re still sticking with your New Year’s Resolution, you’re way ahead of most people, who tend to give up in the first couple weeks.  If you have trouble achieving any goals, you should check out a free online tool that my friend Deb told me about.  I’ve been using it, and it really does help keep you focused and moving ahead.  It’s called Simpleology.  There’s no cost, and you can check it out here.

Yesterday was a mix-some good, some bad. I did learn a valuable lesson, though. Never take a 2 hour walk on a virtually empty stomach. Let’s go to the instant replay, and then we’ll discuss it.

As I posted yesterday, I’d only had a can of chili beans, two apples, and about four ounces of juice when I headed into town to go walking at 7:15 last night. It’s too dark to walk out here on my country roads, and I had other things to do earlier, which prevented me from getting my walk in. Last night, it was about 38 degrees when I left the house, and not raining. Perfect weather for an outside walk! Instead of a hot, loud, crowded gym where I’m walking around a room 18 times to make a mile, I can go down to the park with the half mile loop, be out in the fresh air, and have the place all to myself. It’s a no brainer. So I grabbed my parka, my mp3 player, and headed there.

The good news is that I got an hour and 45 minutes in. And man, did it feel good to be out in the brisk air, working up a vigorous sweat. (Of course, in my parka, I look like the Abominable Snowman and the Unabomber had a baby.) Art Bell was sitting in for George Noory, and I listened to the second half of an interview with some UFO weirdos. It was OK, but I don’t put a whole lot of stock in the UFO stuff. But on the next show, Art had a guest who says that sometime around 2011 or 2012, the cycle of solar flares is going to be at an all time high and cause all kinds of catastrophes, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, frying of electrical grids and satellites in space, famine, pestilence, etc. He mentioned a scientist named Hathaway here at a space center in Huntsville who’s predicting that it will be the worst solar flare activity in 400 years (although Hathaway isn’t predicting all that really bad stuff). I’m going to listen to the second half of the show next time I walk. But it’s pretty interesting.

Well, as I mentioned, I hadn’t eaten much all day, although I wasn’t hungry at all when I began my walk. But the longer I walked, the more aware I became of my hunger. I was shooting for two solid hours with the great weather and the interesting show, but after an hour had gone by I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it that long. After an hour and 45 minutes of brisk walking, I was famished. And I wanted something hot and filling. A salad wasn’t going to do it, nor was a baked potato. So I stopped at a pizza place and got a couple sandwiches. Yes, with meat and cheese. So I’ll have to watch my meat intake for the rest of the week. But I don’t feel too guilty about it. I should’ve eaten more before I left the house. When you’re almost three hundred pounds, a two hour walk at 3.5 mph is quite a workout, and I’m sure I burned off even more calories with the parka. In the future, I’ll make it a point next time I have to go to town to walk, to make sure I’ve eaten fairly recently.

Well, yesterday I made it til 4:30pm or so before eating. Around 2, I’d gone to the fitness center and taken a 90 minute walk while listening to George Noory. That felt good! And I still wasn’t hungry, so I headed home. But as I got closer to home, I started to realize just how hungry I actually was, since it had been about 40 hours since I’d eaten. I knew there was no way I was going to make it two full days, and that if I went home and tried to keep it up, that around 7 or 8 I’d probably get in my truck and do something crazy. So I kept driving, and wound up back in Huntsville at Barnhill’s. I chose Barnhill’s because at least there I can load up on vegetables. Which I did-I had lots of mashed potatoes, green beans, and carrots. I also had about 6 ounces of roast beef, and a chicken breast. I had planned on eating a lot more, as I was starving, but I didn’t pig out. I had two plates, mostly vegetables, two small glasses of sweet tea, and one small dessert.

And this morning the scale still says 285. So far today I’ve had two apples, about 4 ounces of orange juice, and a can of chili beans. I’m really trying to lay off the meat and dairy. Along with sweets, they’re the main reasons so many of us are fat. I’m not planning on becoming a full fledged vegetarian, but I have vastly reduced the amount of animal products I consume. And I plan to keep it up. I used to eat meat, and lots of it, at every meal. Cutting way back on that, and cutting out almost all pop, and walking are why I’ve dropped 11 pounds since January 1, even with the occasional binges. If I’d been walking faithfully every day, I would have lost even more.

In a few hours, I’ll be heading to town to walk for 90-120 minutes. I want to walk at least that long every day, rain or shine.

I can’t believe I’ve stuck with my goal this long. I’ve made this same resolution many times before, but never stuck with it. Three weeks may not seem like a long time, but it is for me, and 11 pounds off is one ninth of the way toward my goal. And I couldn’t have made it this far without the support and encouragement from you folks. Thanks; it means a lot to me.

It’s five minutes past nine on Sunday morning, and I haven’t eaten a thing since 11:30pm Friday night. I’ve had nothing but water for 34 hours. And you wanna know the really weird part?

It’s the end of the world as I’ve known it, and I feel fine!

Hadn’t planned on fasting. It wasn’t intentional at all. On Friday afternoon, I’d been up all night, and I went to bed around 4pm. Got up around 11pm, and I headed into town to get a pack of cigarettes (I know…). While I was there, I swung into Krystal’s drive thru and got two BA burgers and a large coke with no ice. I was up all night writing and reading, and I felt terrible all night-bloated, lethargic, upset stomach, etc. I was really wishing I hadn’t eaten that stuff, even though that’s not bad by my usual standards. Lately, I’m starting to notice how bad I feel after I eat poorly, and how good I feel after I eat a healthy meal.

Well, around 9am Saturday I headed into town for my usual bookstore and restaurant visits. Spent a few hours at Barnes and Noble reading books on health and diet. I decided to buy one of them-Eat To Live, by Dr. Joel Furhman. By around 1:00 I was getting really hungry as I hadn’t eaten in twelve hours, so I decided it was time for lunch. As I sat in my truck, trying to decide which restaurant to go to, it started to dawn on me how much better I was feeling, compared to how bad I was feeling after Krystal’s, and I decided I was in no rush to feel that bad again. I thought about skipping the restaurant, and heading home to make a salad and a baked potato. But I like to make a day of it in Huntsville, so I finally decided that I’d just skip lunch, and hit a restaurant later, before heading home.

So I went to Books A Million for a couple hours, and skimmed some more books on diet and health. I made a mental note to purchase one of them later-The China Study. Then I bought a copy of the Saturday paper to have something to read while I ate. Before heading off to eat, I stopped at Fresh Market, where I picked up my weekly gallon of unpasteurized orange juice. By this time I was really hungry, and I spent about 45 minutes in Fresh Market window shopping. Some of their sandwiches looked really good right about then. But I left with just the orange juice.

By this time it was about 4pm. Which I figured was a good time to eat. It could be my lunch and supper. And 4 is early enough that restaurants shouldn’t be very busy yet. So I made my pilgrimage to Barnhill’s. But the place was packed out, judging by the parking lot. Maybe Barnhill’s is always packed out? I don’t know, but I don’t like crowded restaurants. So I passed on that.

I thought about going somewhere else, but I realized that in about 4 hours I’d be in bed anyway, and I really wasn’t ravenous, so I thought what the heck? Why not give my digestive system a break for 24 hours? Lord knows it could use a vacation. So I headed home. I even stopped at Star Market and bought some bananas, lettuce, and tomatoes, for the coming week. And I wasn’t even tempted at the deli where they’re serving hot ribs, wings, and Terry’s pizza. Well, actually, I was a little tempted, but I didn’t buy anything. Just got my fruit and salad stuff and went home.

And it was all downhill from there. Got home, had some water to drink, surfed the net for a few hours, and then went to bed. And here I am, having fasted for 34 hours, without even planning to. Now I’m wondering if I should try to make it two days in a row. I’m not trying to prove anything, so I may eat, or I may not. We’ll just see how it goes. (By the way, the scale says 285 this morning, but I know that will come back up after I eat again.)

I just can’t believe I went without food for this long. I’ve read about the health benefits of fasting before. And I’ve tried it before, but never had any success going without food for extended periods. Until yesterday, I think the longest I’ve ever fasted was 15 minutes!