The cost of obesity

I started to write a post for last Friday...but due to a commute, a passenger in the car (I gave a ride to a coworker), exhaustion and just life, I was unable to complete it.   It WAS going to be about getting my life in line before I have to deal with the cost of medications due to illnesses that could be managed by weight.  This was sparked by a conversation I had with my good friend Donna, who appeared in a motivational post last year.   She has continued to do amazing with her weight loss and is actually at goal, but she continues to work to eliminate each of her medications (you’ve got this Donna!)!    But she made the comment to me, ‘get it under control soon before you have to deal with the astronomical costs of medications.  And THAT was what the post was going to be about but then I experienced Friday and while the rest of this post is going to be ‘similar’ the cost of obesity hit much harder in my life and well...I’m freaked out!

Years ago I was diagnosed with arthritis in my knees. When I was overweight they ached sooo horribly!  But as I lost weight the pain settled down to a random twinge here and there.  However, as I have gained the twinges began to increase.  I knew it and even talked to people about the fact that I had an idea of the breaking point weight that when I reach  my knees issues would really  kick into high gear.   I have even made the comment that I was getting close to that weight!  But I didn’t pay attention to it.  It hadn’t computed in my head.  Afterall, actions and words are two different things!

Last week was a normal week.   Everything was normal.   I wasn’t off the rails with my quest for health...but I wasn’t totally  on target with the actions needed for this quest.  The memorable thing about my week was climbing stairs.  We live on the third floor and I noticed in passing that my knee was strong as I went up or down the stairs....strong for the first flight.  By th second flight I was feeling the old familiar ache of arthritis. Luckily, it cleared up as soon as I got on flat terrain and was only a small blip on the radar of my daily life.   Until Friday.  Friday morning came and I went down the steps in the morning and managed to contain my groan of pain confident that it would subside within minutes.  However, it didn’t subside.  It aches throughout the day and by the time I got home Friday evening I was truly suffering!   

My knee had not ached that bad since before I lost all the weight years ago!  And Leta be honest.  I e gained about half of it back!  I had known that I was teetering on the edge of the number on the scale where my knees typically really start to hurt really badly.   I had been feeling more and more twinges and hearing my knees creak and crack a whole lot more, but I had paid it no mind!  But Friday night I could not ignore it any longer.   Ohhh no I couldn’t!  I would move my leg and the pain would become more dull and I would breathe a sigh of relief...but within moments the pain intensified and I just ached!   Lovely.....not!

On Saturday morning I knew we were going grocery shopping/errand running.  My knee already hurt so I went to the closet and pulled out my bin of ‘supplies’.  I opened it and selected a knee brace.  As I was making my selection my thought was that the bin was truly my personal current cost of obesity. 

I have ankle braces, knee braces, ace bandages, devices for planters fasciitis, kt tape and wrist braces.   With the exception of the wrist braces.....it is all due to the excess weight on my body damaging my joints!!!   That bin is my current high price of obesity!

The price is high....honestly, higher than the price to lose weight.   You see.  I can restrict and manage my weight and eliminate SOME of the issues that I have created (some of the damage is done, but in my experience it is more easily managed and more easy to live with at a lower weight).  I can then live!   The cost of I continue is most assuredly knee replacements, wheel chairs, walkers and living a life where there is no mobility...or at least greatly reduced mobility.   Which cost is higher???

So, knowing that I am teetering (and crossing) the line where my knees really bother me has made me realize that it’s not so or die time in terms of my health.  There is no more fiddling around!  It’s time!

There are two things I can do:

1.  Lose weight (the biggie)

2.  Exercise:  arthritis can be managed through exercise!  A personal trainer once told me that I need to build up the muscles around my knees in order to take up the slack for the lack of cartiledge.

I took it easy on Saturday and wore the brace a lot.  But on Sunday it was in the upper 40°’s and lower 50°’s.  So we headed to the mountains near us.  We headed for a trail to hike! I knew it wasn’t going to be a fabulously long hike.  Not was it a fabulously difficult hike.  My knee couldn’t handle it.  But I know that to fix the problem I have to be active.  

We weren’t counting on there being snow...a couple inches.   But it was fun!!

I was careful and we only went a few miles.  But I have started to take back my life!!!!

De-hoarding

I spent some time today going through my file cabinets.  Yes, I had stuff in there from ages ago.  Seriously, I had financial aid forms from 1991 in there.  Will I ever really need those forms ever again?  (don't you dare tell me yes, because I am NOT going out into the garbage bins tonight to pull them out from under the kitchen trash bags, and as of about 7AM, they will probably be in the garbage truck and heading toward the landfill...so TOO late.)  I saw receipts for products that I don't even own anymore.....cell phones from 10 years ago, lawn mowers, dryers, you name it.  I had it. I weeded out the old unneeded stuff and was feeling great.  Until I remembered a file cabinet in the back corner of my closet.  I wormed my way into the closet, around luggage and boxes of shoes.  I opened the drawer and I almost laughed out loud.  This cabinet was the 'memory' file cabinet.  I had hard copies of  report cards, old writings (writings that I probably don't even have digital copies of due to the age of these pieces).  I had old lesson plans from competitions that I was in during my high school years.  I found student teaching observation papers and my journal from those fun months.  I found the history book from the Franikan Islands. (never heard of it??? It was what we called our end of the hall while I was in college...yeah, I think we had a bit too much time on our hands).  I found old reports that I had written in high school and college. I laughed and laughed and laughed.   And I found a folder chronicling that horrible year of teaching in PG County, MD (oh yes, the year that made me walk away from teaching.)   I cried, I won't lie.  I sat in the closet and cried from the lost dreams and lost innocence.

But that's not what this blog is about.  This blog is about weight loss.......and what struck me most in terms of weight loss today was finding a report that I wrote for a Healthy Lifestyles class that was mandatory at the college I attended.     The assignment was "If you were given 1000 dollars, how would you use that money to live a healthy lifestyle...what would you buy."   I made a mockery of the project.  I got an "A"  but looking back it is very clear how I managed to let my weight get up to 300 plus pounds.  The paper is an amusing read (at least to me)...but as a 40 year old (hey, I'm still 40 for another month) I wish the 20 year old MaryFran would have taken the lessons that the class was trying to teach to heart.  Oh well...better late than never!

The assignment...retyped for posterity sake......(the prices in this article were gleaned from stores and catalogs and were actually valid prices at that time..., I even included pictures of the pages that showed pictures of my selections!!!)

My very first purchase with my one thousand dollars was  new roller blades which were $175.  I was safety conscious and bought the helmet for $30 and the accessory package , which included knee and elbow guards for $49. I made a a detour at the clothes store on the way home to purchase a new outfit for my rollerblading excursion...the new outfit cost me $78.50. 

The roller blading started off well enough. I left my house and started skating down the road.  Unfortunately, I didn't see the 'harmless' pebble.  Somehow, those little wheels got jammed (that's what will happen when you get a stone stuck in the bearings).  I flew head over heels, landing on my face in a mud puddle.  The pain was incredible!  I had broken my nose!

I decided, while my nose was recovering that I wasn't overly fond of rollerblading.  So I moved on to a new activity.

Don't you think kayaking sounds fun?   That's what I thought as I walked out of the kayak store with my new purchases in tow.  A $349 kayak with a $35 paddle. (Now, was all know that you can't buy a kayak without buying a paddle.)  The tee shirt and shorts, bought for the express purpose of kayaking cost the low budgeted price of $35. (Kmart blue light special!)   I also bought this nifty waterproof seal pack for $26.  I thought it would be nice to carry things in...things like my first aid kit.

I was way cool as I calmly enjoyed the feel and sounds of the river.  When suddenly my kayak flipped over.  Seeing as how my head was underwater, I couldn't read my beginners guide to kayaking, so of course I didn't know how to flip myself back up above the water.  Tragedy!  I started to pick up speed as I traveled down the river, upside down.     I never even saw the under water tree trunk that I smashed my face into.  You can probably guess my injury.  Yup, I broke my nose....AGAIN!!!

More hospital bills, pain and emotional torment.  I decided that kayaking might sound exotic, but not to me.  (If the doctor that treated my injury had been cute, I may have decided to give kayaking another shot but....)

Looking at my budget.  I discovered that I still had $219.50 remaining to spend on my health.  (Luckily my insurance covered all of my hospital visits, so these bills did not go onto this budget.  Otherwise I would have been way over budget.)  Fearing for my life, I decided to find an 'easy sport'.  Sunbathing was the "sport" that came to mind.  I figured that the sun is  good source of Vitamin D.  I bought a chaise lounge for $78 and a new bathing suit for $48.  I decided that it would be wise to protect my delicate skin from the harmful sun's rays with a $16.50 bottle of suntan lotion (with a high SPF of course).  Now you wouldn't want me to protect my skin and not protect my hair, so I bought a $16 hat.  I could just imagine myself juggling all of my paraphernalia as I made my way out to the beach, so I just had to buy a large, $31 bag....it was a must.

  Theglare from the sun gan get pretty bad, so I bought a pair of sunglasses to help my eyes adjust to the brightness (and to protect them from teh UV rays).  As I scoped out the men on the beach.  And let me tell you.  I was safe.....as I jumped out of my lounge chair and chased those men down the beach.  I didn't fall!   But.....I did trip one of the men, who unfortunately broke his nose.

The kayak and roller blades all sit lonely and dusty in my garage....maybe someday I'll be brave enough to try it all again. 

Itemized List

Roller Blades             148
Accessory package       49
Helmet                         38
anorak                          54
shorts                           24.50
kayak                          349
kayak paddle               35
shorts                          20
 tee-shirt                     15
seal pack                     26
chaise                         78
bathing suit                 48
sunglasses                   29.75
hat                              16
suntan lotion              16.75
large tote bag              31

total                         1000

I would like to thank LLBEAN for their help and for their willingness to provide pictures for the consumers.

 So as you can see, I made a mockery of spending money for health.   My spiral into obesity (although lets be honest....I wasn't exactly thin in college) shouldn't have been a shock!!!



     

excising the badness

I had a conversation with my brother today. We were talking about people that say they are trying to lose weight and things that we see and have witnessed.  Is it any wonder that our society has a problem with obesity???  Is it any wonder that the city/town nearest to the small burg that I live in is listed as one of the top 5 cities in terms of obesity?

So what are we seeing?

1.  People that exercise for a half hour or so that feel entitled to eat like a starving pig.   I've completed a few 5k races and I have seen people double fisting bagels and food after the run.  Seriously?  It was 30-45 minutes of exercise.  Your body is NOT depleted that badly.  If you are fueling your body with the proper foods you do NOT need to snack after a half hour or hour of exercise.

2.  People that eat salads and other healthy foods simply because it's "healthy".  I did this for years.  I would pack carrots in my lunch box to eat at work.  This in itself is not a bad thing, until you realize that I HATE raw carrots.  Cooked carrots I love...raw taste like dirt to me!   But I was eating them because they were 'healthy' for me.  Seriously?    I'm ashamed to say that it wasn't the only food that I ate simply because it was 'healthy'.  I was eating yogurt.  Yogurt to me is only a step above snot!   (just my opinion, if you love yogurt and carrots, I don't mean to step on toes...I"m sure there are things in my food repertoire that will make you gag!).   Yes, I was fueling my body with healthy nutritious foods...but I'm a food addict and I was NOT satisfying that aspect.  I"m not saying that I need to feed my addiction, but I need to at least satisfy it...and carrots and yogurt are NOT gonna do that.  There are other foods that have the same benefits....and that WILL make me satisfied.

3.  Salads.  Yes, salads can be incredibly healthy and they can be low in calories.   BUT.....who eats a bowl of lettuce.  Oh no, the average person adds croutons, nuts, berries, scads of salad dressing and who knows what else.  Each of those things add on calories...and I know or a fact that a lot of salads tend to be more calories than having the slice of pizza that we are all dying for!   So why not have the pizza and feel satisfied. (OK, making sure to get enough fruits and veggies in your daily food intake).

A picture from my morning run!

4.  People feel that Fat free and 'health' foods gives them the license to eat double the amount.  I buy them.  I admit it. However, being fat free or low fat or low sugar foods are NOT a license to eat extra.  If a serving is one cookie....then eat one cookie...don't eat two because two low calorie cookies are the same as one regular.  Do yourself a favor....EAT ONE!

5.  Over valuing our exercise is another way that we cheat ourselves and derail our efforts.  So in the sake of fairness.  I told everyone on facebook this morning that I ran 3.5 miles.  I have to confess....it was really 3.41 miles!  But that is exactly the point.  How often to we over emphasize how hard we work.  How much we sweated and how far we went.   It's only short changing ourselves!


There are so many more.  It's time to get rid of these bad habits from my life.....and to look deeper to find more and get rid of them too!

Fact, Fiction and myth

Even in the midst of this crisis that has me reeling in my personal life, I'm walking with my head up.  I'm walking with more 'swagger'.  I have lost 4.4 pounds since the new year.  That is fabulous!  But those four pounds have not changed me.  What has changed me is that for the first time in a while, I actually have taken control of myself.  I am not letting my addiction beat me down and take over all decisions in my life. I am taking control of myself.  And it feels GREAT!   My confidence in myself is blossoming!  It's amazing how being in control makes me feel better about myself.   The fact of the matter? The more I can manage this, the more the confidence blossoms.  It's like a  snowballs, it keeps growing!

Todd and I have been saddened.   A long time client at our business has passed away.  He died from obese related illnesses.  The diseases and illnesses started out simply and kept compounding one upon another.  He actually tried to get gastric bypass at one point but his obesity had taken it's toll on his body and he needed to lose a significant amount of weight to try to erase enough of those effects to make him a candidate.  About two years ago, our client was told by his doctors that he HAD to lose weight.  His weight was killing him.  There was nothing they could do to prolong his life.  It was HIS responsibility...no one else could save him.  His close friends held an intervention.  But sadly, he had given up and nothing could change his mind.  He passed late last week  from obesity driven diseases and illnesses that ravished his body. He was close to my age, in his early 40's.      It's sad.  It's also a reminder to me that my excess weight and my bad habits really CAN kill me.  It is not a myth....weight DOES kill!

Yesterday my food was spot on and my hour of zumba was a killer!   I noticed a change in myself during zumba.  I've been going to my class religiously for years.  Last night I was halfway through and I realized that in the last year or so I've only been going through the motions at my classes.  Last night, automatically my body kicked into overdrive and I put my all into it.  I don't want to hex myself, but I think I really have turned the corner and I'm ready to DO IT!

Emotionally, I'm holding it together.   Health wise, I'm rockin' it!  Eating is spot on (even my macaroni on Monday night was not a disaster. It was unplanned and definitely not necessary but in the grand scheme of things it only threw me 100 calories over my low daily goal...1411 calories for the day is still fabulous!).  Exercise is rolling.  I'm focused.  I'm motivated.  Like I said, I'm rockin' it!

Special Investigative Report on CNN

I've been on top of everything the last few days. It's really neat to see how much better I feel. I've decided to go to a meeting tonight rather than tomorrow. I do know that the scales will probably show me up for a few various reasons. But I'm ok with that. Especially since I know that those reasons will right themselves and all will be ok.

This weekend we stumbled upon a show on CNN...a special investigation report by Sanjay Gupta. It was called Fed Up: America's Killer diet. VERY good show. Some of the points, facts and statistics were quite interesting of note.... (I will put my thoughts and additions in italics.)

1. There are a few doctors/scientists out there that feel that depression can be linked to the foods we eat. Namely the fats that we are eating. They are saying that we need the different kinds of fats in our diet...but in a healthy proportion. In the last so many years (20 or so) the numbers are no longer porportionate...one type of fat has just skyrocketed. The doctors/scientists are saying that this imbalance could be causing the upsurgance of depression. Now, my thoughts on the depression thing. I think that that could seriously be a huge factor. But I also think that the eating habits of America is so out of whack that peoples bodies are screaming. They are not getting enough nutrients, which I think is causing some of these problems. I know that Todd used to hardly ever eat veggies and fruits. He was depressed a good bit of the time. I started not really forcing him to eat fruits and veggies but having them for dinner and simply serving them to him...leaving it up to him if he was goign to eat them. The first thing...it seemed to help eliminate some of the 'down' days. AND two, if I don't have them with a meal he asks where they are, because he misses them.

2. Speaking of fruits and veggies. We all know that the daily recommended amount of fruits and veggies for a person a day is 5 servings. Sadly enough, if every American were to eat their recommended allotment, we wouldn't have enough fruits and veggies in America to meet the demand! Doesn't this just make you want to scream. What is even worse than the fact that we dont' have enough.....in current America we are throwing unused fruits and veggies away at an alarming rate! I'd love to know a statistic on how many Americans are actually eating a healthy amount of fruits and veggies!
Along with this, they also talked about how corn and soybeans are the biggest agriculture item out there, with millions in govement funding going to these farms. Yet this year was the first that they are expanding funding and subsidies to go to farmers of other things such as apples, and other veggies. Yet, the funding is still totally disproportionate! Why are corn and soybeans such a big deal......the oils that they can get from them!

3. They did a study. They told people that they would give them free wings to eat if they filled out a survey. They had two groups at two different tables/areas. One group had the wait staff taking away the bones from the wings as soon as they participants were done. The other group simply piled the picked bones in front of them...and the wait staff didn't remove them. The study was to see if a person ate more if they could actually see the results of how much they ate...versus the person that ate and had the results/bones removed so that they couldn't see how much they had eaten, they only had to rely on their memory and their stomachs. After it was over they counted the bones and weighed them. They found that the people that had the bones removed so that they could not SEE how much they had already eaten ate up to 50% more than the people that had their bones in front of them as a physical reminder of what they had already eaten. They also referred to a test with popcorn at the movies.....testing portion sizes.....and the kicker of that one...the people ate the popcorn like mad......and it was STALE! This doesn't really surprise me....but it was neat to see the results of actual studies.

4. The average kid is eating up to three pounds of sugar a week! Three pounds!

5. They had a near perfect study case of what America's diet is doing to people. They had a kid that grew up in Jamaica. He was thin, fit and a healthy boy when he moved to America with his family. Within 6 months of living in America, he had put on 30 pounds. A trip to the doctors office showed that he had developed high cholesterol, high blood pressure and was borderline type II diabetes. He was roughly 10 or 11 years old. His mother did what needed to be done. She learned about healthy nutrition and how to eat properly and immediately changed the eating habits for her family. The boy has lost 15 pounds and his numbers and health has dropped back out of the danger zone. They asked what was the difference, whey this happened. The kid and his mother talked about how there are so many tempting choices, tempting in taste and packaging. And the tempting choices were so 'easy'. They were the convenience foods. The sweets and everything else. They fell into the average American diet quickly and easily! And the results were swift and fast. 6 months??? And this kids life was turned around and could have been disastrous if left to go. Wow amazing because that is what we are doing to our children day in and day out. Let alone what we are doing to the adults and teens and elderly! 

6. They had a cook on...who also happened to be the editor (or some such title) with Cooks Illustrated Magazine (mom's fav!). He talked about how Americans have forgotten what it is to actually cook from scratch. In in forgetting about cooking from scratch, our taste buds have gone catawumpus and we have learned to prefer the taste of prepackaged, unnatural foods. He stated that the foods solely from scratch have a more subtle taste...which is not what the average person prefers now. How sad is that? I'm proud to announce that Todd and i actually prefer the meals from scratch! But it is correct, the taste is phenomenally different. 

7. Twinkies. They used twinkies as an example. They talked about how years and years ago, twinkies were made with the good old stand by ingredients, eggs, flour, sugar, milk. Then they read the ingredients of the current twinkie. Very few things that were recognizable. Some items were changed for cost (high fructose corn syrup) but many were changed for preservative factors! I admit to being guilty of still buying some prepackaged items. I know it and I'm slowly trying to change my lifestyle to eradicate them from my life. But this is something that I've lived with for a while. I started noticing that the homemade things last for only days..while the prepackaged (full of preservatives) foods last for weeks! Bread! If you make your own, it lasts only 2-3 days before it starts tasting stale yet I can buy bread in the store and it will last a week or two at my house (and who knows when it was actually baked even before I got it!) Jellies. Homemade jelly goes bad in the fridge within a month or so. Yet good old smuckers (and don't get me wrong...I grew up on smuckers and LOVED it) will last for at least 6 months before there is any problem! I can go on and on. This is my own personal soapbox!

8. Changing the contents of food and selling healthier options. Sounds great! They have reported that the public clamors for it....yet refuses to buy it when the companies do it. I do probably have to agree. However I do know that these 100 cal packs and such items are seemingly flying off the shelves. Could there be a turn, a shift in America's thinking????

So.....all this was quite interesting. We tivo'd it and I may watch it again...the information was just phenomenal! Once again, while I was watching, I felt it again. I have had a calling. I've felt it a few times here and there. Last night was another strong tugging. I really do feel as if my next calling in life is to somehow help others with their obesity problems...or nutrition problems if I want to be nice about how I put it. I know I've been saying things like, "Oh I want to get to my goal weight before I do something" and things like that. However, I need to be looking into options NOW!