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  • Sam7sf

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    View attachment 414485

    My net calories consumed for the last twelve days. Have some days that went above the goal, a couple really went above the goal but 8/12 days I'm well under the goal. Have not yet stepped on a scale, because only 12 days in the weight loss will be minimal, and I'm as much worried at this stage about losing inches, rather than pounds. My pants are fitting a *little* better than they were before I started tracking my calories again. Would love to drop a pant size again like I did back in February. One nice thing about the weight I lost earlier this year - when it crept back, it didn't creep back up top. For the first time in a long time, a 1X shirt fits me plenty comfortably, I went from 2X work shirts to 1X, and that includes wearing 3a body armor underneath. Without the armor I've got a good bit of room in a 1X shirt. For concealing a pistol I still prefer a 2X, but soon enough that'll be easy under the 1X, and maybe *gasp* I could even try a large long by next summer. At least until weight lifting causes chest gains again, or like @Sam7sf, I find a sugar daddy that buys me some shiny bolt on bewbs. :roflfunny: No one wants an ugly sugar baby though, so probably just gonna plan on making man muscles from picking up heavy stuff.

    get-rid-of-chest-fat.jpg
    Lynx Defense
     

    vmax

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    I maintain my weight so I'm good.
    each time you eat a sugar cookie you spike your glucose and insulin which effect more than just the weight on the scale sir.
    The reason you look forward to that daily treat is the sugar your brain is addicted to.
    If you could prevent diabetes it would be more important than just maintaining your weight on the scale.
    Diabetes will take years off of your life..it's a killer
     

    vmax

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    each time you eat a sugar cookie you spike your glucose and insulin which effect more than just the weight on the scale sir.
    The reason you look forward to that daily treat is the sugar your brain is addicted to.
    If you could prevent diabetes it would be more important than just maintaining your weight on the scale.
    Diabetes will take years off of your life..it's a killer
    @striker55
    I re-read this a few times and it's bothered me so I want to elaborate why I said what I did.
    I really care about anyone's health. Your health..for you and your family
    What I've learned about diet and sugar and how it contributes to so much disease sometimes makes me come across as over zealous
    I'm sorry if I came off as offensive
    I didn't mean to.
    I need to work on my delivery
     

    striker55

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    @striker55
    I re-read this a few times and it's bothered me so I want to elaborate why I said what I did.
    I really care about anyone's health. Your health..for you and your family
    What I've learned about diet and sugar and how it contributes to so much disease sometimes makes me come across as over zealous
    I'm sorry if I came off as offensive
    I didn't mean to.
    I need to work on my delivery
    No worries, I'm considering what you said. Although at 72 I'm really not worried about eating a few cookies.
     

    benenglish

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    you spike your glucose and insulin which effect more than just the weight
    What I've learned about diet and sugar and how it contributes to so much disease
    One of my goals is always blood sugar control. I'm diabetic so that's my life.

    In a past life, I spent a lot of time working on measuring things and improving business processes and I learned something I think we all know.

    You get what you measure.

    The key to doing anything better is picking the right thing to measure. For diabetics, the medical establishment basically lives and dies on the A1c hill. That number is everything.

    However, I've found that I can maintain the same A1c over time by two different methods.

    First, I can graze. I can put all the food I'm going to eat in a day in a box in the fridge under my desk and then, based on a timer on my desktop, every hour I can pull out the box and eat. Typically, I'd have 3 bites of greens, 2 bites of protein, and 1 small nibble of carbs. Testing my blood sugar (a lot!) showed that this method of eating would never spike my blood glucose. It just stayed steady all day.

    Second, I can do OMAD, one meal a day. That meal will be bigger and, even though the total composition of all the components is the same as my grazing style of eating, I'm consuming all the carbs at the same time. This produces a big blood sugar spike. Then it falls and for most of the day is lower than when I'm grazing.

    Both methods produce the same A1c. My endo is perfectly happy for me to do either because they produce the same A1c and that's what she measures.

    I've chosen the one meal a day because I seem to lose weight better via that method...when I can actually stick to it. That's a big caveat because, damn, it's difficult. But that's not the point of this post.

    What bothers me is that one meal a day produces that spike. In terms that my working-age self would have understood, both grazing and OMAD produce the same A1c number but the standard deviation behind the OMAD A1c number is a lot higher.

    Now, I've asked the following questions of three different endocrinologists and they basically all waved me off and had no useful answer. I'm wondering if you have any insight.

    To wit -

    Somewhere, a long time ago, I got the idea that the spikes, by themselves, divorced from long term averages, are harmful and that best practices for avoiding damage from diabetes should include not just a good A1c but also avoiding short-term blood sugar spikes.

    Is that correct? Or did I imagine I read it somewhere once? And, relatively speaking, if spikes are harmful, just how harmful are they? Should I be willing to sacrifice my rate of fat loss (somewhat) in order to mitigate against those spikes?

    This isn't just a question asked out of idle curiosity; it's applicable to how I'm setting my 2024 goals. Guided by my endo, in January I'm making some changes and I would really like to include this information in the mix.
     

    vmax

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    One of my goals is always blood sugar control. I'm diabetic so that's my life.

    In a past life, I spent a lot of time working on measuring things and improving business processes and I learned something I think we all know.

    You get what you measure.

    The key to doing anything better is picking the right thing to measure. For diabetics, the medical establishment basically lives and dies on the A1c hill. That number is everything.

    However, I've found that I can maintain the same A1c over time by two different methods.

    First, I can graze. I can put all the food I'm going to eat in a day in a box in the fridge under my desk and then, based on a timer on my desktop, every hour I can pull out the box and eat. Typically, I'd have 3 bites of greens, 2 bites of protein, and 1 small nibble of carbs. Testing my blood sugar (a lot!) showed that this method of eating would never spike my blood glucose. It just stayed steady all day.

    Second, I can do OMAD, one meal a day. That meal will be bigger and, even though the total composition of all the components is the same as my grazing style of eating, I'm consuming all the carbs at the same time. This produces a big blood sugar spike. Then it falls and for most of the day is lower than when I'm grazing.

    Both methods produce the same A1c. My endo is perfectly happy for me to do either because they produce the same A1c and that's what she measures.

    I've chosen the one meal a day because I seem to lose weight better via that method...when I can actually stick to it. That's a big caveat because, damn, it's difficult. But that's not the point of this post.

    What bothers me is that one meal a day produces that spike. In terms that my working-age self would have understood, both grazing and OMAD produce the same A1c number but the standard deviation behind the OMAD A1c number is a lot higher.

    Now, I've asked the following questions of three different endocrinologists and they basically all waved me off and had no useful answer. I'm wondering if you have any insight.

    To wit -

    Somewhere, a long time ago, I got the idea that the spikes, by themselves, divorced from long term averages, are harmful and that best practices for avoiding damage from diabetes should include not just a good A1c but also avoiding short-term blood sugar spikes.

    Is that correct? Or did I imagine I read it somewhere once? And, relatively speaking, if spikes are harmful, just how harmful are they? Should I be willing to sacrifice my rate of fat loss (somewhat) in order to mitigate against those spikes?

    This isn't just a question asked out of idle curiosity; it's applicable to how I'm setting my 2024 goals. Guided by my endo, in January I'm making some changes and I would really like to include this information in the mix.
    Great question and insight Ben

    I'm heading out the door for a few hrs but will be back to answer this when I can do a proper response
     

    vmax

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    @benenglish

    Yes, being diabetic means controlling your blood glucose but I hear diabetics tell me that this is the main thing their Dietician teaches them with a little food guidance here and there

    Lets talk about metabolic health overall and I am talking about the condition known as Metabolic Syndrome.

    Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. - that definition comes from the Mayo Clinic

    These conditions are high blood pressure, belly fat, high fasting blood sugar and certain blood cholesterol levels

    anyone with 2 or more of these is at risk for developing some serious life altering diseases

    about 1 in 3 adults have metabolic syndrome

    I just want anyone reading this reply to understand how serious this is.


    I think the grazing method would work as long as the foods you picked were low on the glycemic scale but there again this allows you to eat all day long and if you eat out of your box 3 or 4 times in a day you have the possibility of spiking your glucose and then insulin 3 or 4 times a day.

    This is the real problem... high insulin levels. Insulin is released into the blood stream to encourage the cells to take in the glucose. But the cells in a person with higher than normal body fat have become resistant to the insulin and the glucose stays high so the pancreas produces more insulin. It a vicious cycle until the cells in the pancreas get tired and can't produce enough to overcome the resistance and the person has constant high glucose and are now considered diabetic. In turn, western medicine says to prescribe MORE insulin!

    Insulin stores fat.. it has several functions but think of it as the storage hormone.
    Show me a fat person, and I will show you a person with high insulin levels.

    The best diets I have found to lower insulin and lower body fat are diets that have very little to no highly processed food.
    I am talking about a diet that consist of REAL FOOD

    Meat, eggs, dairy, fish, poultry, vegetables and legumes and a few grains but not highly processed
    and we eat this food in a window of 6 to 8 hrs a day. The shorter the window, the better the results.
    This limits how much of the day your body is dealing with a glucose and insulin spike.

    Its called Intermittent Fasting and most of my clients find its something they can live with and sustain.

    If this can be done 80% of the time, most people are very happy with the results.

    Over 80% of the time and the results can be astonishing

    I think this is probably how our ancestors ate most of the time.
    They didn't have a large store of high fat, processed chips and ice cream to eat on the daily.

    They ate when they could more often than when they wanted to.


    I also encourage my clients to skip breakfast , especially if that breakfast going to spike glucose and insulin.

    biscuits, burritos, tortillas, breakfast cereal, oats, .. its not ideal.. unless by chance you are about to go outside and split a load of firewood or otherwise engage in a few hours of hard work
    which many of us are not ..


    Your one meal a day is fine , if its something you can sustain. Make sure its heavy on protein.

    You can be more flexible with yourself though and just make it a goal to have all your food in that 6 to 8 hour window

    Eat protein at every meal. Cut out the sugar and sugar added food as much as possible, cut out the highly processed foods as much as possible. These are the foods in the shiny foil bags in the center of the grocery store snack isle ... they are your enemy.

    And lastly, if you at all can... do some resistance training...

    skeletal muscle is a sink (sponge) for glucose. The more muscle you have the more carbs you can eat and use.

    When we lose muscle and gain fat and still eat alot of carbs it just compounds the problem because there isn't enough muscle to use the glucose so insulin and your liver convert the unused energy into more body fat.

    Here is one of my clients that in 2.5 months using my methods dropped 30 lbs and an amazing amount of body fat.

    It just takes some discipline


    20231017_165231.jpg
     
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    Sasquatch

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    @vmax what's your take on oxalates? I've read conflicting articles on them and seen videos that either say they're horrible, or they're really a non-issue.

    Foods that "health experts" have been saying are some of the best for people to eat are high in oxalates.

    I'm leaning toward the 'oxalates bad' side of the equation as the presenters and authors against them lay out a much more compelling, evidence based argument.

    Green leafy veg and legumes - the ideal foods pushed by vegans, vegetarians etc - are high in oxalate. So are potatoes, cereal grains and certain nuts like almonds - the later surprising me because a lot of the keto gurus I've followed recommend almonds if you cannot afford or find macadamia nuts (my favorite nut)

    When looking at the average American diet, its not hard to see that its high in oxalate, most processed foods contain either potatoes, cereal grains, or nuts. And almost every real salad out there is based on green leafy veg. My favorite green leafy veg is one of the worst oxalate offenders, that being spinnach.

    I've read that you can offset the negative effects, at least in part, by ensuring a high calcium intake, as calcium binds with oxalate and its supposed to prevent it from causing damage, but I'm not sure on that. I take calcium supplements daily along with vitamin C supplements (since you need calcium to properly utilize vit C) because of being partially lactose intolerant - I can eat certain processed forms of lactose, but cannot drink milk, for example. Butter, cheese, and ice cream I'm fine with. Liquid milk and yogurt cause almost instant projectile vomitting and horrendous gas. Its weird, I thought it was just me, but I learned last year my paternal grandmother is the same way.
     

    vmax

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    @vmax what's your take on oxalates? I've read conflicting articles on them and seen videos that either say they're horrible, or they're really a non-issue.

    Foods that "health experts" have been saying are some of the best for people to eat are high in oxalates.

    I'm leaning toward the 'oxalates bad' side of the equation as the presenters and authors against them lay out a much more compelling, evidence based argument.

    Green leafy veg and legumes - the ideal foods pushed by vegans, vegetarians etc - are high in oxalate. So are potatoes, cereal grains and certain nuts like almonds - the later surprising me because a lot of the keto gurus I've followed recommend almonds if you cannot afford or find macadamia nuts (my favorite nut)

    When looking at the average American diet, its not hard to see that its high in oxalate, most processed foods contain either potatoes, cereal grains, or nuts. And almost every real salad out there is based on green leafy veg. My favorite green leafy veg is one of the worst oxalate offenders, that being spinnach.

    I've read that you can offset the negative effects, at least in part, by ensuring a high calcium intake, as calcium binds with oxalate and its supposed to prevent it from causing damage, but I'm not sure on that. I take calcium supplements daily along with vitamin C supplements (since you need calcium to properly utilize vit C) because of being partially lactose intolerant - I can eat certain processed forms of lactose, but cannot drink milk, for example. Butter, cheese, and ice cream I'm fine with. Liquid milk and yogurt cause almost instant projectile vomitting and horrendous gas. Its weird, I thought it was just me, but I learned last year my paternal grandmother is the same way.
    In my opinion...Oxalates are way, way down the list of things to worry about when selecting food for your diet.
    If you are eating whole..real food instead of processed food with emphasis on protein then you are 80% winning already with some minor fine tuning to consider

    This reminds me of sitting beside a woman at my dad's funeral dinner at a church fellowship hall

    She was easily 100.lbs overweight and was quizzing me about nutrition and weight and she was telling me that a guru told her to avoid tomatoes because of a chemical in the sack around the seed inhibits weight loss..

    While she was explaining this , she was on her 3rd helping of cake and dessert.

    I also think that higher up on the list should be your Omega 6 to Omega 3 fatty acids.

    High Omega 6 over Omega 3 leads to inflammation and a whole list of health conditions

    That is something that I think has more serious consequences than oxalates.
     
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    TipBledsoe

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    BLUF: Ozempic is enabling me to loose the fat and learn to eat healthier. I’m curious what @vmax thinks about this and my thoughts below.

    I’m a big believer in the OMAD strategy @benenglish spoke of. Of all the weight loss methods I’ve tried OMAD is the only one that I can say works for me. Not to say that other methods may not work better for other people.

    But even still, one must also have a real determination to loose the fat and get healthier. Junk processed foods and sweets have always been my greatest obstacle, along with overeating, and I’ve had to swear them off completely as an alcoholic would have to do with alcohol.

    Earlier in the year I had a discussion with my general practitioner who had lost a lot of weight using OMAD. He explained it to me and gave me reading material to include a healthy foods list and a list of foods to avoid. I did very well with it for a while but fell off the wagon, but I’ve returned to it with the help of an Ozempic (semaglutide) generic and am again having very good success.

    Another hurdle I have is my desk job and inactive lifestyle. I’m gradually increasing anerobic exercise with calisthenics and know that I need to start adding some miles of walking.

    The semaglutide curbs my appetite to the degree that I can eat OMAD and do so without overeating, and without feeling like I’m starving myself. The semaglutide is also greatly helping with my willpower against the junk food.

    My hope is that using semaglutide will enable me to reach my weight loss goal AND the junk food abstinence during this time will help remove my junk food addiction and tendency to overeat AND get my body used to OMAD of healthy foods over a longer period - that the combination of these things will enable me to maintain a healthy weight after the semaglutide use.
     
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    striker55

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    @striker55
    I re-read this a few times and it's bothered me so I want to elaborate why I said what I did.
    I really care about anyone's health. Your health..for you and your family
    What I've learned about diet and sugar and how it contributes to so much disease sometimes makes me come across as over zealous
    I'm sorry if I came off as offensive
    I didn't mean to.
    I need to work on my delivery
    I've thought about what you said and I'm starting to cut out sugars (after the snacks my wife bought for me are gone). Next week no more sugary snacks.
     

    benenglish

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    My hope is that using semaglutide will enable me to reach my weight loss goal AND the junk food abstinence during this time will help remove my junk food addiction and tendency to overeat AND get my body used to OMAD of healthy foods over a longer period - that the combination of these things will enable me to maintain a healthy weight after the semaglutide use.
    That worked for me for a long time and it's still helping me maintain weight. However, I do have an observation.

    The availability of Ozempic is a real problem. I found that it worked very well for me only after I had been taking it for a couple of months and continued to take it steadily, right on schedule. Things were great, appetite was under control, and I was losing weight.

    Then Ozempic hit the news and everyone wanted it. (Just another reason to hate the Kardashians, I suppose.) Supplies became spotty. I found that I couldn't get it with perfect regularity. I tried a substitute for a month, I went back to previous meds, I had one or two week gaps between prescriptions where I took nothing. I paid exorbitant prices for a substitute from a compounding pharmacy. It was a mess.

    This lack of regular dosing caused Ozempic to be much less effective for me. I haven't gained weight back but I haven't had good appetite control for the last (almost a?) year, either. OMAD is much more difficult for me these days. I'm clawing my way back to control but it's been very difficult. My endocrinologist has discussed moving me to the newer, more potent drug because, looking at the numbers, Ozempic seems to be failing for me. We'll talk it out next month but I think Ozempic would still be fine if I could just count on getting it as regularly as necessary.

    Talk to your pharmacy about availability. Rock-solid-regular doses seem, IME, to be incredibly important. "We've got it on back-order" seems, IME, to be a recipe for frustration and failure.
     

    striker55

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    Honestly I'm having very satisfying results with simply eating a percentage less crap, cutting out soft drinks almost entirely, and beating the shit out of a punching dummy for 10-15 minutes most mornings. I'm down a dozen pounds since late September.
    I always tell my wife portion control. When I'm full I push the plate away. I don't ever eat at a restaurant with all you can eat on the menu, I wouldn't get my money's worth.
    Oh yeah riding the fat tire bicycle helps.
     

    vmax

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    I always tell my wife portion control. When I'm full I push the plate away. I don't ever eat at a restaurant with all you can eat on the menu, I wouldn't get my money's worth.
    Oh yeah riding the fat tire bicycle helps.
    A good practice is to eat until you are feeling 80% full and then wait 15 minutes before finishing
    Many times the hormone responsible for the feelings of satiation , Leptin , will kick in you can pass on the rest of the food.
     

    msharley

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    Am up to 8 miles, most days on stationary bike...most days...5 or 6 days/week.

    At 20mph (whilst doing arm exercise with 5lb ankle weights on wrists) can sustain a 130 to 140 bpm heart rate...(can hold a higher heart rate with bike than with walking...easier on knees)

    Have cut back on feed bag (say about 40% of what I was eating?)

    Try to not eat sweets. (period) nor white bread or other starches...(potato chip? SIX of them will send my glucose level over the top)...

    Have lost over 40lbs....

    However...have developed a LOATHING of all things "salad".....will make a salad...and toss it out...

    Can eat but two maybe three ?? salads/week...??

    Will be adding some "dumb bell" work along with "PT" after the first of the year (several injuries to be mindful of...do not want to do the belly button hernia thang again...etc)...

    My A1C was good...

    If? Anyone has an idea on how to make "salad" to be "palatable"...?? Am all ears. (used to really enjoy that slop....until I had to eat it ) LOL
     
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