Weight - The Carrying Thereof

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2006

I started a blog with a Singaporean buddy, PC (Paul), back in 2006 which was intended, well let me quote...


"This is intended to be a chronicle of gut-busting proportions.

Two generously proportioned Singapore based guys share their fun and frustration, ha ha, as they attempt to deny themselves one more helping of Chili Crab and enter the previously forbidden realms of puchasing off-the-shelf clothes,
ha fucking ha..."


I had already dropped a lot of Kgs to get to my best weight in many many years, in order to not look quite so morbidly obese for my high-school's 20th anniversary back in Geelong. For some unfortunate reason, my belly seems to be annoyingly non-participatory when it comes to getting it off. If and when I do lose weight, it preferentially comes of my legs and my arse. I have a dreadful fear of turning into a toffee apple - a fat bellied, shiny old perv with skinny legs and a skanky arse.

At the reunion, one of the guys, now taller and moderately trim, whom we considered in school to be a nerd and a chubby non-sportsman (but in retrospect was probably normal) said to me:

"E@L you've got so... fat!"

"Yes, thanks," I replied. "I have lost a lot recently. Thanks for noticing." Cunt.


9 February 2006


4 April 2006


9 May 2006
Well that didn't work out too well, did it?

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2007

Start again?


4 April 2007

8 April 2007

11 April 2007
And...

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2008

This year mysteriously left blank.
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2009

Hmmmm. Tut tut, E@L.


14 December 2009 -

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2010


10 April 2010
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2011


2 January 2011
Holy mother of shit! 10 days post Christmas and look at this! (I was above 130Kgs when I returned form Geelong, so 2kgs came off in just a few days/ No doubt that last shit helped a lot.)


5 February 2011


13 February 2011
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2012

I had a horrible time skiing in Nagano, where the powder was waist deep in late January of this year (2012 I mean). Certainly I couldn't walk up in ski-gear to the lift and had to take the shuttle-bus for just one stop. I was exhausted after two runs and my muscles kept locking up in the most dangerous of situations... After day three when the weather set-in, that was it for the rest of the week, even when the sun came out. I was in the coffee-shop all day. I could only just make the slight walk up the hill to the onsen in the evening.

I decided that skiing next year (maybe Austria in 2013) was going to be different. 2012 was going to be the year of turning it around.


12 March 2012


21 April 2012
Was working hard at it: gym, swimming, smaller meals, greatly reduced alcohol* (let's not get silly), just chipping away. But not entirely comfortable in the chest department. GORD? Or the atrocious genes (terrible, don't ask about my family's cardiac history) making their sub-endothelial presence felt??


22 Jun 2012 -Woohoo! Broke the 115 barrier!
Not just walking, I was now doing 2min bursts of jogging on the treadmill interspersed with my incline and pace modulated walking, and I could easily jog for the bus now, or dash across the flashing-green-turns-red pedestrian crossing without getting short of breath, but there was that occasional and transient pinpoint of retrosternal annoyance...

So, I was a bit worried becasue I had a trip to Europe with Izzy et al coming up, and sought out a cardiologist (had to go third choice, everyone else was on leave) he sent me for a PET scan and stress test. Result? ... ALL CLEAR!

10 days later? I climb that high San Gimignano tower in the heat, feel that pinpoint grow, become like an enlarging spring winding up tighter and tighter. Heart attack, oops, I mean Angina Episode.


11 September 2012
Yep my strict regimen isn't all that strict and isn't all that effective. In fact I am concerned that too quick or too drastic a change in lifestyle will not be sustainable and will set me yo-yoing again, as the numbers above reveal.

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2013


13 Mar 2013
Slowly. Essentially I have been on a moderately strict low-carb (in particular very low sugar and fruit juice - i.e. minimal fructose), low alcohol, protein rich, fibre-rich, normal/high fat Atkins-style Diet: low GI essentially. Note the minimal recidivism over the last 12 months. On this variation (recommended by another cardiologist, one of our clients), and on Lipitor and BP medication, last time I saw said cardiologist, he was concerned that my cholesterol was TOO low and that my blood pressure was TOO low. I just need to lose more weight, he said.

And today, I was accidentally dragged out to what turned out to be pre-St Patrick's Day drinks and, under protest, knocked back, as I said against every good intention, two delicious pints of creamy, chilled Guinness. I had started with soda water, but at $8 a pop (ha! Singapore!) my back-hairs bristled. I was not happy with my lack of resistance, though I fought off the puerile goading of my health-harmful friends ("Have another drink, ya big giiiiiiiirrrrl!" Because girls don't drink, do they, Evil K?) and, for a variety of other reasons as well, decided to head home.

I will wait until next week to weigh myself again and I see the cardiologist in a fortnight. Two Guinness, how pathetic am I? (You can read that two ways I think?)

~~~~~~~~~~~

Weight?

You've got to carry it a long time, trust me.


2:45 - 3:17
E@L

* Don't suppose any cares but my lower gastro-intestinal system seem to have developed something of an intolerance for alcohol as it passes through, red wine in particular.

Carry That Weight

The Singaporean Chinese owner/manager (which? both?) of a certain riverside bar in Singapore was sitting with The BiTP* at one of the aluminium (or are they wood?) outdoor tables, sporting a blue baseball cap that he kept adjusting on his head, and wearing a pale tee-shirt with a small Manchester City FC logo just above the left breast. The BiTP (Bruce and E@L in this instance) were closing the place, as they say, at just after 3am.

E@L didn't take in all the initial conversation, not completely (it was 3am after all), but he believes insert name, (also forgotten) splits his time between here and, was it Toronto? [Jesus, did E@L get anything?] The manager, let's call him Terry, didn't seemed fazed by the time, so Bruce and E@L were able to cadge yet another last G&T before the bar-staff pulled the shutters completely down and all left. (Bruce was on the verge of getting one bar girl's phone number, but another had him well pinned for the cad he can be [is].) The bar manager, a narrow thing who always wears a bikini top under her dark singlet, was languidly perched on the back of a chair she had reversed on the fourth side of the table. She was listening in and laughing at Bruce's lines and rejoinders to Terry's, and, with that bright grin and attentive nod and conspiratorial eyebrow raise, E@L was in no doubt she was wishing that we would all just shut the fuck and go home. But as Terry was with us, she had no option but to join and wait it out.

They kept chatting about things E@L has no knowledge of, nor opinion on, such as English football (soccer!) and, with Bruce being a mad Manchester United fanatic, and with ManU and City fighting it out over top spot in EFL... When he says 'they were chatting', E@L really means Bruce and Terry were good-heartedly (but teeth-clenchedly) jousting with each other about the season's up and down, highlighting the other's Downs and promoting their own Ups.

Maybe, at one point, the topic had turned to the FnB business, because something roused E@L enough for him to interject a line on how he is poised to become a squidillionare, if his private shares in Wooloomooloo (opening soon in Singapore, folks) keep capitalizing up. This turned Terry's attention to him for the first time. Terry paused.

(Fat chance of E@L becoming disgustingly rich. Some may consider him halfway there already - he's got the disgusting part down nicely.)

"Look at that belly, man!" says Terry, reaching from where he was perched - fit, alert (maybe a little bit pissed) and erect - on his aluminium (or are they wood?) chair to where E@L could barely maintain any plane approaching the vertical on his, and he patted the protuberant magnificence of the legendary E@L paunch, thrice. "You gotta do something about that belly.

"You gotta lose some weight. You are carrying too much weight. It's bad for you. Man! You gotta lose a lot!"

E@L knows what you are all thinking, that this is going to be a blog post about the difficulties of disposing of the bucket of crunchy pulp that was all that remained of Terry after E@L responded to his comments, but rest assured. E@L is used to this stuff. It's water of a fat duck's back now.**

(T'was not always thus. E@L is not going to rehash the arguments and elaborations and the multiple diversions in that post. OK maybe a bit...)

So E@L just nodded and smiled and said, "Yes, don't I know it!"

Yeah, of course E@L knows. As if E@L wasn't told a hundred fucking times a fucking day in a fucking hundred different fucking ways. Get over it, E@L thinks. I'm fat, I know, I know I'm fat and I know you know I'm fat. Just shut the fuck up about it. You have terrible teeth. You have a tic whereby you can't stop touching your baseball cap. Shut the fuck up.

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Do you know why E@L mentioned this incident, and the one linked to above, among the many others like them in his eight (8, count 'em) years here? Before he be accused of being specifically anti-Singaporean let it be known that the only place no-one comments on his weight and/or shape in is America, and not because Americans are inherently more polite. But because they are FUCKING FAT SLOBS, like E@L.

Why mention it? Because it contrasts quite well with the comments he has been hearing from his friends in the last few weeks.

"You're looking good E@L, You lost weight, yeah?"

"Girlfriend says you are looking well, and wants to know if you have lost weight."

Three or four times, with slight variations, on that theme. Yes, E@L has lost weight. Quite a substantial amount. Well, 'substantial' is a relative term.

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Jan 2 2011. That's kgs folks, not lbs.

Always a peak period, post Xmas, etc... but scarey enough to set E@L on a something of a mission. He has spoken to you guys about negative incentives before. Not disincentives, which necessarily demotivate you, but incentives which are stimulated by a tangible, painful, negative outcome.

"Lose weight or you'll die", might be considered to be one? Right? No.

"Yeah, sure Doc, fatty liver, yada yada, heard that one before." But it is too vague and generalised a threat. The empirical cause-effect link, while undeniably there, is just not specific enough.

Lose weight or you will die, but of what? Of old age? Of necrotising fasciitis? Of your car getting stuck in the middle of a level crossing as a train approaches and a flaming plane plummets from the sky right at you carrying Al Queda terrorists, one of whom unbeknownst to his terrorist allies, not to mention the crew and passengers, accidentally contracted Ebola virus while training the Congolese Rebel Army only last week... Yeah, OK, I'll watch out for that, says E@L. Thinks: and so those people all had to die because E@L didn't lose weight? Oh the humanity!

Stay the same weight, get heavier, lose weight, watch Final Destination III, and guess what? You're still going to die. Everyone dies in the long jog, no news there.

However, "Lose 15kgs by the end of April or I'll kill you with this formidably large weapon", that is more what E@L is talking about. It sets a specific goal and ties it to a specific, um, reward - brains splattered everywhere.

In his present case, the less violent negative incentive is some cash, currently held by Bruce, and if E@L fails to loose those 15kgs, that cash, S$5,000, will go to a Traditional Chinese Medicine hospital or university of Bruce's choice.

AAaaaarrrgggghhhhhh!

The prospect of such a heinous anti-Enlightenment forfeit has sent E@L running moving quickly to his cupboards and fridge in order to discard everything vaguely carbohydrate-based into the recyclable waste disposal bins, conveniently located for E@L to increase his activity quotient in the car-park down two flights of steps - good exercise. No rice, no spuds, no white bread (he never eats white bread anyway, soft and mushy - yuck!) and, shudder, no alcohol.

No white rice, and E@L lives in Asia? Tough, yes, it is tough. Some places do serve brown rice as an alternative to, well, to none.

No alcohol, and E@L is an Expat? Tough in-fucking-deed!

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The date for this 15kg loss has pushed back to his birthday, late June, on the not unreasonable grounds that too rapid a weight-loss might reflect an unsustainable period of deprivation and starvation that would quickly end and the weight would yo-yo back up, and even higher.

Whereas a six-month plan could promote a more moderate and sustainable change of life-style.

E@L spend most of February on a zero-alcohol binge. March, a few wines here and there, April, not so much on the wagon and running behind it, but hand on the rail, ready to jump back on at any time. It was in this period that E@L realised a strong association with alcohol and some gastrointestinal problems which, unlike his normal oversharing attitude, he is unwilling to explain - not time for the gory details. He was pleasantly surprised to find these chronic issues disappear for the period in question. Okay, E@L is allergic to alcohol. His intestines don't like it. Lesson there. Can E@L learn it?

The knowledge that he will suffer more than just a hangover has had a considerable impact on his ability to keep the frequency of boozing with the BiTP down. It has helped immensely that many of the other BiTP were on a quiet February as well. E@L generally doesn't drink spirits, beyond the "I'm too distended for more beer, I'll have a G&T" stage (such as 3am. Hey, we've all been there) so even though he has a duty-free store full of spirits in his Antique(tm) Chinese (tm) shelves, these offered no great temptation. Wine? Well, he's just come back from a Barossa wine splurge, so this was tough, wine fridge full to bursting with amazing old vine Shiraz's and GSMs, and you name it. Let them age a bit more, let's pick one every now and then, for a special occasion.

And he has stood his ground. Running behind the wagon while standing his ground, note, and not running to the loo.

So was E@L taking commercial so-called diet-drinks for his social fluids instead? When his former flatmate Izzy send him a link about the counter-intuitive dangers of his favorite low-calorie, non-alcoholic imbibement, Coke Zero (and its ilk), he has gone off that sort of stuff as well. More tea, (green, ginger, English Breakfast), coffee no change, and at the pub it was lemon, lime and bitters with soda water. To drink at night, lime and bitters in soda water.

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And Mademoiselle, the envelope please...

April 21 2011

Yeah, the other scales died in the interim (did not break apart, smart-arse!) so one can't be too exact about the delta here, but the irrefutable fact is that E@L is down close enough to 12kgs. That's 26lbs for the two readers E@L has in the States. Another way of looking at it is that he is down by 10% on his previous weight. This is lowest he has been since a drastic reduction (to 114.5kgs) for his 30 year school reunion in 2005. He was still told he was fucking fat though, by someone who was a fatty at school, now thin - rudeness is not exclusively Singapore thing after all.)

Probably that loss is bit faster than the revised plan, but he has plateaued for a while, so it remains encouraging that, come "all the fives", E@L might be able to purchase some clothes off the rack.

E@L won't bore you with any more details of what he is eating more of and less of, but one of the big surprises for E@L in all of this, is that he does have the will-power after all to do something... something at all.

He just has to make the decision, finally, then believe that he made the decision. So often it is a pretend decision, one he knows he will break (write that novel) like a traditional New Years Resolution.

But anything he wants to do, he can, if he does, as they say, set his mind to it. And now he knows he can follow through on it. This is not Tony Robbins bullshit here, this is E@L learning the hard (and cheaper) way of what great achievements he is capable if he could just shut the fuck up and do them.

Two months to go.

~~~~~~~~~



E@L


* BiTP = Boys in The Pub. One of Indy's. Remember Indy?

** His favorite incident was back in 1998. E@L was probably the largest man in Vietnam at the time. As he got out of the taxi at the gate of his designated hospital, he saw that an old man, who had been sitting down doing nothing (maybe playing checkers with bottle tops) like the twenty thousand other people along the streets they had driven, was looking back at him in the car window. The man arose from his stunted, square, blue-plastic stool (you know the ones, right?) and, still in a slight arthritic stoop, opened E@L's door for him. He was smiling toothlessly. E@L thanked thanked the man as best he could: "Cah-mon, cah-mon, thank you." But that is not the incident...

A woman and her children were negotiating the path of chairs and old men and irregular paving as E@L alighted, when one of the children stopped. In awe, his face a picture of wonder and disbelief, he instinctively moved towards E@L as if in a trance, with his right hand forward... he rubbed E@L's belly in a circle two times before his mother dragged him away by his other arm. He must have thought E@L was the Buddha made incarnate. 5555!

Fuck

Exactly what 54yo E@L didn't need to read after 5 weeks of dieting (down 6 kgs) and massively increased exercise regime. From nothing to 1:30hr in the gym four times a week and 1hr+ walking in the off days and 30mins swimming when the sun is shining and he is working from home. Long term benefits, according to this article - fuck all.

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Cardiac Risk: Late repentance is useless

Whoever cuts their cardiac risk factors often believes that they are then on the safe side. Yet this sense of safety is a deception for the middle-aged: according to U.S. authors, five-or ten-year cardiac risk may then be reduced, but over a lifetime period it isn't.

Excess body weight, lack of exercise, stress, smoking and more – in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, each risk factor that can be eliminated counts. As long as physical changes and damage are not as yet detectable, nothing has as yet happened – a process of rethinking and behavioral changes made towards a healthy lifestyle are the best guarantee of longevity.

This is wrong: such is the opinion of cardiologists working under Jarret Barry of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, because the current approach in the prevention of heart problems is to identify only the short-term cardiac risk. Only a few studies, such as one investigation done in 2006 with participants in the Framingham study, shed some light on the long term risk. Early life decisions might have a major impact on the rest of one's life and this rule would not apply any differently to the heart. Risk factors for the young and middle aged have an impact on one's total lifetime, says one analysis of studies from the scientists published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Each risk factor counts

Data based on the analysis of the lifetime risks for the heart has been collected from 18 cohort studies making up the Cardiovascular Lifetime Risk Pooling Project. The data is part of a 50-year-long investigation. Risk factors such as blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes and smoking were recorded for more than 250,000 people – men and women – at 45, 55, 65 and 75 years of age as well as cardiovascular disease status. For each age category, the risk of cardiovascular events was determined.

An optimal risk profile was defined as having cholesterol at <180 mg/dl, blood pressure lower than120/80 mmHg, non-smoking status, and no diabetes. For this optimal risk profile at the age of 55 years, the lifetime risk (up to age 80 years) of dying due to cardiovascular disease, with figures being 4.7 percent for men and 6.4 percent for women, is low. With two or more risk factors present, the risk of death due to vascular disease increases to 29.6 percent in men and 20.5 percent for women. Coronary heart disease or nonfatal heart attack is suffered by 3.6 percent of men and less than one percent of women, when they have no risk factors. For those with two or more risk factors, those figures are 37.5 percent for men and 18.3 percent for women.

Who has no risk factor?

Even more dramatic is the comparison of the risks for 45-year-olds. A man of that age not having risk factors only carries a risk of 1.4 percent of dying up to the age of 80 years from cardiovascular disease. With two or more risk factors, the risk increased to 50 percent. For women, the difference is 4.1 versus 31 percent.

Taking into consideration – as is done in most studies – only the five-or ten-year risks, where the risks for 50-year-old risk factor-carriers then become rather small, is something the study's authors have criticised. In addition, only a slight increase in risk factors – such as slightly elevated cholesterol levels or blood pressure – can increase the risk significantly. Most study participants presented at least one risk factor.

With regard to the prevention of cardiovascular events, the results show that only the avoidance of risk factors in young and middle age was able to considerably reduce cardiovascular disease. When discovered and treated only in middle age, risks can only be slightly reduced and disease only slowed down in progression. [My emphasis]

Dr. Julia Hofmann
Medical Journalist

Fuck.

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Start slim and healthy, stay slim and healthy, and one day you'll be a slim and healthy person with Altzeimers is the lesson here.

This why you don't see a really old fat people. They've had a brilliant life, spared themselves nothing, and got out before the rot set in. Maybe not so much good sex, unless they flash the Charisma card and stock up on the Viagra (headache!) and Cialis, and hence they are a valid target demographic for up-country Thai girls.

E@L

[Precis of the original article available on-line at NEJM.

Everything Is Shite, #453,211 - The UnMighty Mouse

I thought I was going crazy, I thought I was having a stroke, I'd thought that, just typical for me, I'd got me a LEMON... Then a buddy bought me a wireless replacement which worked fine, for a while, but soon enough, it went too. In EXACTLY the SAME WAY. Is it just everything or is me shite?

Fucking trying to scroll DOWN on my Apple mouse, nothing happens... but it goes up, the cocksocker! Fucking piece of McSHITE!

I thought maybe it was a software bug, so I did a search for a patch... Nope, it's hardware and I'm not alone.

Fuck, I threw out my old MS wireless mouse just the other day because the expired battery had corroded the pins. I'll have to buy a new one tomorrow.

Sigh.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An in unrelated news, a rash of rashes have broken out in the recently de-Izzied* E@L-GHQ because Singapore has run out of current fave, Dettol, talcum powder. Seems like it's not just Vegemite that has ebbs and surges in supply in Singapore. At least, my nearest Guardian has run out. "No stock," shrugged the pharmacist (I had to bother her as the clerk {OMG her teeth! - side issue} couldn't speak ANY English. What is she, a Malaysian scientist?)

Getting the right amount of zinc in your talc is crucial to a happy life in the tropics.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Americans are fat and getting fatter, and they are exporting their success!


E@L (I have had absolutely NO ice-cream today [It was OFF!]! The sherry flavored Wild Turkey though, I can't answer for that.)


* Iz is on an extended holiday in Europe.