San Francisco

I made it as far as San Francisco. Need to pick up relatives at the airport. I have now been away from my home for about a month now because I had health problems. So, I went to Portland because my son is a trained nurse and house sat my two daughter's place while they were traveling. This worked out well because I have about 4 times the energy I did before I left home now. I'm used to first my mother taking care of me and then girlfriends or friends taking care of me or wives taking care of me. I'm usually taking care of my kids or my present wife. But, I've never been that interested in taking care of myself that much. I think this is true of many men for some reason. So, mostly I took care of myself only because I had to take care of someone else. Because if you don't take care of yourself you cannot take care of anyone else either.

So, I found myself having to take care of myself alone in Portland about 12 to 14 hours a day and then the rest of the time I usually hung out with my son when he had time and spent time with my grandson and daughter in law too. This seemed to work out quite well for me and even helped me lose some weight while I was up there.

If you are a man like me and want to lose weight I finally found a useful method for me. Get a digital battery operated scale that is portable, and jot down in your notes your weight naked or close to naked when you wake up every morning. The reason you want to do this in the morning is if you sleep enough and long enough this is a way to lose weight over 40 years of age. Everyone's metabolism changes after 40 and it is about 5 to 10 times or more harder to lose weight. I had no trouble at all before 40 staying trim and buff by just choosing to eat or not. But, because of blood sugar issues (mostly at first (hypoglycemia) I couldn't just stop eating to control my weight any more and fast on water or orange juice or apple juice. That totally stopped working at 40 for me.

Anyway, if you weigh yourself every morning when you wake up that should be the least you are going to weigh. I find for me since I am 6 feet 5 inches there is a 3 pound variation that is normal in any 3 day period. The longer I go from eating at night until the next time I eat in the morning the more weight I tend to lose.

But, the real trick is by watching your weight every morning like this you think, "That pizza just put an extra pound on me." or " That glass of milk or desert put an extra pound on me." or "That piece of bread or toast with butter or jam on it put an extra pound on me."

This makes it very easy (for me at least) because I can say, "Do I want that extra pound or extra three pounds or would I rather have less weight on me to carry?"

For me, in my personal psychology this works great. This might not work for some people but might work for others.

I found journaling my food didn't help me it just pissed me off. But this is logical and it helps me take responsibility for what I eat and what weight I choose to be.

What I find surprising is the longer time I don't eat from dinner to the next morning the more I will either maintain my weight or actually lose weight on going. This is the first thing that has really worked for me because it is so logical and rational to my very logical mind.

So, this is working for me. And that's really great to find something that actually works for a 70 year old! Having "Anything" work at age 70 is really great!

So, for me at least losing weight is not as much about exercise (that is important too for over all health and well being) but rather the longer I am sleeping or being without eating after dinner time is what causes me to maintain my weight or to lose weight. So, it's sort of like when i started visiting my stats page for this website and was incredibly surprised in 2011 what people actually wanted to read at my site. It wasn't at all what I thought they would want to read around the world at all.

Note: For Notes I used "Notes" in my iphone to jot down a journal of weights every day I thought to weigh myself. So, I started on 4/25 when my doctors almost had to put me in the hospital for Congestive heart failure and kept journaling until now.

The first 10 pounds likely were losing water weight through diuretics but so far I have kept off 15 pounds and am working on going down even further. It is easier when you think you are going to die of something to lose weight I found for myself. But, now I have started this discipline it agrees with me because it is logical and methodical and as a trained electrician, Computer programmer and Contractor since my teens and early 20s the logic and methodical nature of all this works for me.

It's sort of like checking your brakes, your tires or your oil on your car to make sure it is safe enough to run or to let your kids drive in that car or truck. It's like that. It's like maintenence necessary to stay alive in a vehicle. But this time the vehicle is your own body and not a car or truck.

2nd note: if one were to die of congestive heart failure that might look like drowning in fluids in your own lungs to the point where you couldn't breathe any more.

What it looked like to me was coughing 24 hours a day up mucus and fluids and never being able to sleep and not knowing what was wrong with me because I couldn't get an appointment with my heart specialist. And when I did they cancelled it because of an emergency. So, my family practitioner who is an amazing diagnostician (but not a heart specialist told me) "Hey! you are within a day or two of going into the hospital! This is serious! Your heart specialist needs to be told that YOU ARE AN emergency at this point!

So, with the fear of God in me I realized there was a lot I didn't know about what was happening to me.

Basically if you are taking spironolactone for edema you can't just go off it without switching to something like lasix or you might die like I almost did late in April.

The physician's assistant said several years ago now, "Spironolactone eventually goes sideways with side effects and you will have to stop taking it. It's just a matter of time."

I remember her saying this but it wasn't clear what that meant until I was in such pain that I read the side effects for spironolactone and one of them was paralysis so I just said, "The Hell with this!" and I stopped taking it. But, that is what eventually almost killed me too because I didn't understand I could die at this point by doing that.

So, if you are taking spironolactone or your father or mother or grandmother or grandfather is just remember what I said here.

Blessings and Good Luck!

3rd note: The solution turned out to be 60 mg. of Lasix. 40 in the morning and 20 around dinner time. This stopped the coughing up mucus and fluids and allowed me to finally sleep so I didn't die after the first month of not sleeping at all from coughing.

However, 40 mg likely would be good enough for 90% of people who are not 6 foot 5 inches tall like an American football player.