A gout flares notes

Personal experience has me thinking that my body finds something in the monster that helps kick the gout or at least maintain balance. It's when I don't drink them that I get flares. Perhaps the diuretic nature of loads of caffeine keeps my body pushing the uric acid out of my system so I avoid unhealthy build up, once I stop drinking them over the weekend, the actual effects of the bad in monster now sit and manifest? Maybe something else in it does it? Or maybe I've just not been hitting the red line - though I would think I have been at the levels I consume.

It's now Wednesday, the flare I woke to Monday,  by midday was manifesting in my hand. Since that morning, I have:

• maintained hydration: drank over 64oz water/day
• taken duexis (prescription ibuprofen) 3/day
• taken cholcrys 1/ day, 
• 32oz cherry juice/day, 
• 14oz steak Monday
• 16oz of pork chops Tuesday
• 10oz mixed raw almonds, pistachio, dried cherries/day
• 12 x 8oz servings of sugar free monster Monday, 
• 10x Tuesday, and 
• 4000mg vitamin C/day, 
• drank 1/4 gallon unsweetened almond milk/day

By Tuesday evening, the flare in the foot was a barely registering as bruise level pain, and the hand never manifested into a full flare (beyond bad bruise feeling) and right now neither locations are giving me pain. I'm a programmer and enjoy the effects of being highly caffeinated during 10+ hour days.  Now over the prior week my meat intake was mostly turkey, cooked in a crock pot, I took that broth and mixed into mashed sweet potatoes over the weekend which was my primary meal over the weekend. I dunno, I'm no expert here and still experimenting and finding the red lines for specific foods.
Bare in mind I weigh over 450lbs, my caffeine tolerance is likely higher than an average weight Joe. I assume caffeine works like alcohol, 10 shots would would put average Joe of 200lbs at 0.16 blood alcohol vs 600lb Joe would not be legally drunk yet, but close.


Side note: Given the whole biggest loser programs over, I'm thinking of retiring this blog and reincarnating it as something else more in tune with my plans for the future.

Baba Ganoush

I admit defeat, Hummus has kicked my ass. When I first started I was told hummus was great for the diet, and therefore was paleo. It never occurred to me check on that, at the time I was fresh to learning about paleo so I accepted without question. So for that last year, I've likely gone through 100+ containers of it. It so happened I saw a paleo article that said hummus was not paleo... what? So I finally researched it and found it wasn't - sad face.  I know about beans, and that it's made with garbanzo beans, I just thought it was a pseudo bean or some such like how peanuts are not a nut and are actually a legume.

Oh well live and learn, looks like I have to stop buying it and start going for baba ganoush.

Scales been acting weird, might be low batteries, doing three readings and I'm getting reports all over the board, 440's 470's and  540's - I think I'm still stable in the 460-480 range.  Been noticing how much my face has lost some of its jowels 8)

One year since the change!

Wow, I had not even realized it's been a year.
I feel like the last while has been somewhat of a wash. I lost the motivation for the gym. Kind of been depressed mentally and financially.
My mother and grandfather passed last month, my dog got his throat ripped open, maxed out my cc/ drained my savings to rent a car to  get to California to see my mom before she passed, got a speeding ticket for 9 over on my way to California, had to buy new tires, fridge is on it's last leg, car needs some maintenance (left wheel is making a grinding feel), had several weeks where I had inflamed cartilage between my ribs and still finishing the meds for that. I hate that it seems like an excuse list but it's a list of issues I've gone through or working on. Finding my way back to the gym regularly seems impossible right now.

Overall not where I wanted to be after a year, but given all that's gone on this last year, I'm happy that I've kept to the diet, lost over 125 lbs and at least have the framework to go further when I figure out how to straighten things up.

Still here

Okay so I admit it, over the last 6 months life has sucked health wise for me, as such I just have not been able to establish a routine back at the gym. Every other week it seemed I was having a gout flare that left me limping for days afterwards.  Through it all I figured I was slowly gaining the weight back and feeling rather discouraged from the state of affairs.  Over the last 4 weeks I think is longest flare free period I have had... sadly 2 of those weeks were travel when I was in California helping family with my mothers passing, then over the weekend my back has begun to spasm something fierce. so much so I couldn't sit and play games so I spent Sunday sitting on the couch watching Defiance and sorting magic cards (painful yes but I couldn't just sit and do nothing). Today at work has been something special too without any real improvement from yesterday, I can't even begin to describe how it is that the sharp inhale to sneeze is so painful that the need to finalize the sneeze with the choo part of ahhchoo never happens. But back on point, I felt I had been inching back up and didn't want to weigh in... but did so anyways... 469 and then a 470 double check. So I have held steady at the weight I was which makes me feel alot better with my diet and current lack of workouts. Which is to me is fantastic as I was expecting a 490 or a dreaded 500+ tally and tells me should I get back on schedule and figure out a way to avoid the back pain and gout flares, I'll be on the negative for weight gain again.

A typical day I am consuming about 1-2 lbs of nuts, 1-2lb of cherries/blackberries/blueberries, 1-3 lbs meat. 0-2 lbs vegetables. Vegetables are low and I know I should increase them, I just haven't, 0-2lbs yams.

So I have Gout

So I finally have blood tests back from my doc, positive for Gout.

What is gout? Gout is a painful and potentially disabling form of arthritis. The first symptoms usually are intense episodes of painful swelling in single joints, most often in the feet. The swollen site may be red and warm. http://www.rheumatology.org/practice/clinical/patients/diseases_and_conditions/gout.asp

Gout is caused by the build up of uric acid in the joints, uric acid is produced from the processing of purines, purines are found in lots of different foods.

I think the attacks started ramping up once I began the weight loss program as the diet change shifted me to a lot of foods rich in purines (chicken, mushrooms, venison, turkey, spinach). Purines break down in the body into uric acid, uric acid buildup is the cause of gout. So diet changes and some medications will hopefully remedy or at least decrease the attacks.

1 week of it in my foot followed up by 2 weeks of it in my wrist = whole of january shot for workouts...

So sick of not being able to get in for the workouts, feels like I've quit but I haven't. Maybe next week if my wrist stays on the mend, at least I can type without pain, now if I could bend my wrist without catching my breath.

First gym night of the new year...

Reached 40 speed for a minute on treadmill w/ rolling hills incline option set...
Not really sure how that relates to things... 23/24 speeds a casual walk, 28 is concentrated effort to maintain position on the machine, 35 is hold onto the support bars for dear life... 40 would have been impossible if I didn't put my weight on the bars so my legs could swing easier to match the pace.
Walked 1.1 mile in 24 minutes -- not bad considering in 7th grade my mile times were 25 minutes plus...
Ski machine for 12 minutes
Tried a new to me machine, was like a step machine, had downward step resists then no resist to step up... f-that machine... was on that for about 2 minutes and said screw you I'm going swimming and went and finished up with 20 minutes of water aerobics. Heart rate kept being read at 150's.

Went to doc this morning for a followup, decided I'd take her up on the offer to get me on qsymia (http://www.qsymia.com/weight-loss-medicine.aspx)
Don't like the idea of it but she thinks it will help - freaking side effect etc not sure if I really want to be on it... Seriously think a placebo would work just as good... and be healthier...

Walgreens has bogo raw almond cans, 9oz @ $4.00 so 18oz for $4 bucks, also their
nut & seed bag @ bogo $ 4 bucks/bag
 Turkey Jerky Jack Links @ 3oz, 2 for $6 w/manu coupon on the bag for $1 off, total $4 per 6oz.

Woot - bathroom scale said 473!!! This time last year it was saying #ERROR# because i was exceeding its 575 capacity!! Given the inaccuracy of the scale (+/- 5%) technically that means my weight is somewhere between 450 and 499 and so I think I can safely say I'm out of the 500-600 range!!

Birthday week recap

I think I did OK, with my birthday signalling the end of the holiday season I wanted to enjoy it a little and splurge slightly on my diet given I avoided every other holiday meal and drinking event.
We went to Dicks Last Resort, was a fun time, looking at others plates as we were seated, all I saw was fried this and that... I ordered the catfish, it came with fries.... all fried... oh well.

I tried to order my  signature floating jager, but they were out of Smirnoff ice 8( Settled for a single jager shot to toast with. After dinner decided to see if could get a small 3-4 shot bottle of moonshine from the vendors to actually toast with at midnight for my actual bday, but after going through their 8 mini shot tasting, they didn't have any small bottles of it, so axed the idea as a big bottle would find reasons to be drunk.

The day of the ride back home was my actual birthday, I did break the lines there, we went to Shonny's and had their breakfast buffet... I had a big meal, eggs. bacon, sausage, grits, onions and hash, 2 plates of it(Avoided the biscuits, gravy and cheese). While the sausage itself is what made me feel I outright violated the Geneva convention, the bacon didn't look like it belonged either. Over the day I could definitely feel a difference in my body chemistry, skin oilier than normal developed a few welt like zits so just confirmation that I don't need to be eating that stuff and need to stick on the straight and narrow.

Other than that, packed 1lb jerky 2lb almonds and 1lb pistachios 4 yams and a bag of pumpkin seeds that saw me through the trip.

Back on track with dinner being cabbage yams and turkey that evening and looking forward to getting out hopefully to actual classes this week.

A new year dawns

I cannot believe it, I refuse to believe it. While at kroger, I saw low fat Havarti cheese on manager special - I never find that on sale so I bought some and ate it over the weekend... it sucked.. looked forward to it and it sucked, truth be told I've never had low fat havarti before so I am really hoping that the low fat was what made it suck, because dill havartie is part of my dream/favorite sandwich.. But maybe just maybe that's my palate making it's shift to paleo, will be a long before I have another chance to test it out again. I was also getting sick so I wanted some feel good food... thinking back, should of bought a bottle of green goodness instead.
New years party... someone brought a great curry dish that seemed very uncurry to me...
Rice peas carrots shrimp some sauce, was really good, and aside the veggie platter about the only thing on the table that didn't wage total war on my diet ( also brought with me some rice cakes, a couple yams, and a bag of nuts and seeds. No drinking, not even any of the kids bubbly, though that likely would of been ok, just drank water. I do find it funny that people kept offering me things I can't have...cheese dip etc. I zing them about it when they do because I can, but I don't hold it against em.

Going forward, I think I'll have a shot of something on my birthday to toast it, thinking grand ma, but maybe something else.