Tag Archives: Weight Loss

Weight Loss, Exercise, and Mental Health. Winter Edition

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It’s been awhile since I last reported on my ongoing project of losing weight, maintaining mental equilibrium, and working on improving myself overall.  For awhile, from late October through most of November, I wasn’t losing nor gaining weight.  In early December, I had a flare up of the symptoms of schizophrenia and I had a second day of flare ups in mid January.  I met with my psych nurse, readjusted some of my meds, and found out that I had lost 10 pounds since late November.  I’m now down 65 pounds overall.  We had a fairly cold, but dry, December and first half of January.  I wasn’t exercising outdoors much, having moved my routines indoors.  I added small arm weights to my routine an average of twice a week.  I have found if I stretch before and after lifting, I don’t really feel sore the morning after lifting.  I had heard that some football coaches were doing this stretching after practices and games and they were seeing less pulled muscle problems in their players.  I gave it a try and it seems to work.  I still won’t work the same muscles two days in a row no matter how good they feel.

Another indoor exercise I do is just putting on dance music on my iPod, throw on the headphones, and dance to the tunes for about thirty minutes at a time.  I do this usually three days a week on average.  Since I live in a top floor apartment with squeaky floors, I do have to be care where and when I do this.  If I do this at night, I usually have to dance in my living room or kitchen.  No reason to wake up my downstairs neighbors if I do this at 9pm or later.

Even when I walked outdoors during the summer and fall, I did usually thirty minutes per day probably four to five days per week.  I made it a point to have at least one day a week off from exercise entirely, just for recuperating and breaking up the routine mentally.  I didn’t start out walking thirty minutes per day.  When I started this ‘life style overhaul’ I could walk only 1/4 of a mile in one shot without sitting down.  Pretty sad I had let myself slide so bad.  And yes, it was my fault.  I used the idea that my psych meds were promoting my weight gain and I couldn’t do anything about it.  Yes I could do something about it.  I had to reexamine everything I was doing.  I needed to know exactly what I was eating, what I was doing for exercise, how much water I was drinking, and how much I was sleeping.  After looking everything over, I saw what I was doing poorly (almost everything), and had to adjust accordingly.

On March 17, 2014, I began my exercise routine and keeping my day to day health journal. When most people in my hometown were doing the St. Patrick’s Day pub crawl (I live in a college town after all), I was doing a different type of crawl because I was sore from my first day of exercise.  I had been sedentary all winter, slept probably 11 to 12 hours most days, so I was out of practice and I was feeling it.  But within a couple of weeks, I stretched that 1/4 mile to 1/3 of a mile.  Within six weeks of beginning, I was doing at least 2/3 of a mile.  By the middle of June I was easily doing one mile without stopping. When Labor Day rolled around I could walk for one hour at a time but I was slightly sore for the next day, but it wasn’t the kind of pain crawl I was doing in March.  By the first of October I found out I was down 50 pounds overall.  The day after Halloween, I was down 55 pounds overall and, unknown to me at the time, I came to my first ‘plateau’.  I went through at least a six week period when I didn’t lose or gain.  I had heard about the possibility of having one of these periods.  I wasn’t terribly surprised that after 55 pounds lost, my body would go through a while of resetting itself.

The human body is quite amazing in that it regulates itself and is very adaptable.  I imagine my body might have thought it was experiencing a period of calorie shortages and was hording as much energy as it could.  Remember, that for most of human history, a person didn’t always have a consistent food supply.  There were the proverbial times of feasts and famines.  So the body adapted to become stingy with it’s on hand calories and to crave sources of easy calories like carbs, sugars, and proteins.  It is only within the last few generations we’ve had such strong food security with so little effort.  And, in western countries like USA, we’re doing this with probably only one percent of the work force actually working in farming and food production.

I’m dead convinced that one of the reasons for such tragic rates of obesity (and I needed to and still need to listen to this as much as anyone) in western nations was that we kept the eating habits our great grandparents had but did only a fraction of the physical labor.  In my own family, as far as I can tell, our entire family worked in farming, sharecropping, etc. as far back as we can trace.  My parents were the first generation of their families to either not grow up on a farm or not work on one.  I tell this aside simply to state many people have lost contact with how much time and work it really takes to grow crops, raise farm animals, hunt, fish, and gather wild food.  So we often eat food, and waste it, with little appreciation of how much work it took to get it from farm to dining room table.  And, as we’ve gone from a farming and manufacturing based economy to a knowledge based and service economy, we are seeing the foolishness of keeping the same eating habits without the corresponding physical activity.  Either the physical activity has to increase, the food consumption has to decline, or ideally both happens.  We saw the bad effects of smoking and excessing alcohol consumption and adjusted accordingly, starting about forty years ago.  I believe we’re now starting to make adjustments as a society to the problems of obesity and associated sicknesses.  Had I not taken steps to address my problems with obesity and physical health problems, then no amount of mental health successes were going to matter.

Sure I still have flare ups of mental illness problems even with as much weight I’ve lost.  I’ll probably be fighting mental illness issues for a long time, barring some major medical breakthroughs in the treatment of brain issues.  I do have hope that major breakthroughs will be happening, especially when I think that there are teams of scientists, researchers, engineers, etc. all over the world just thinking about how to improve what we have and just dreaming up entirely new ways to do things.  Theses are quite exciting times we live in, especially for those of us who pay attention to technology breakthroughs.  A good site I stumbled on that details breakthroughs we as a species have done since 2000 and projected new breakthroughs for many decades to come is futuretimeline.net.  There have to be literally dozens of sites such as this detailing tech breakthroughs.  I often lose sight of the big picture during days of struggle.  We do live in exciting times though challenging times.  But with challenges come opportunities.  Who knows what advances in the treatment of all illness, let alone mental illness, the next few decades and years will bring?

Reflection upon 2014 and Looking Ahead to 2015

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The year 2014 will be drawing to a close in a few short days.  I always enjoyed the rebirth of New Year’s as a holiday as much as I enjoyed the joys of Christmas and the pride of July 4th.  It is, for me, a time of reflection on the year that was and looking ahead to the year that will be.  It is all appropriate to reflect on the past year.

In 2014, I managed to lose almost 60 pounds and get some other issues in my life in order.  Yes, the weight loss has slowed since late October.  But many people gain weight during Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas seasons.  I’m fortunate that I was able to hold weight wise and mentally even during these stressful and unorganized times.

I had a real good Christmas season.  I didn’t experience as much stress, anxiety, and irritation between Thanksgiving and Christmas as in past years.  Yes I did have one bad episode but that was resolved within one day.  But I got to see an old friend I hadn’t seen in over 15 years, I got some cool stuff for Christmas, and was able to spend several days with friends and family.  How can I ask for more?  It was an ideal holiday season for someone with a mental illness.  We can all use less anxiety and stress in our lives.  We who deal with mental illness are no exception.

I’m glad I lost those 60 pounds in 2014.  My goal, one of them anyway, is to lose another 60 pounds at minimum.  I still have a long way to go before I am at the weight I was in high school.  For far too long I accepted the nonsense that gaining weight while taking anti psychotic drugs was inevitable.  Yes, that can be one of the more prominent side effects of being treated for mental illness problems.  At the same time, many of the newer anti psychotic drugs don’t promote weight gain as much as many of the older generation of medications.  Yes, they are expensive.  Without being on Medicaid and Medicare, my anti psych drugs would cost $1,300 per month.  Just because I’m on government assistance doesn’t mean I’m not aware of what these meds would cost.  While I curse the fact I can’t support myself through my own labor (at least not yet), I am still grateful that such programs as well as private services exist to aid those of us who are, as of this writing in late 2014, still struggling to support ourselves.

We as people have made strides in 2014.  We landed a space probe on a comet among other numerous achievements.  Who knows what the next few decades, let alone the next few years, will bring us as far as achievements and breakthroughs that will make living easier and more productive.  For myself, I never imagined in mid 2012 when I registered a blog through wordpress.com, I would be doing this blog semi regular.  As of today, I’ve had 4,200 plus visits to my blog from at least 60 different nations on every inhabited continent in the world.  Yes, there are blogs that have that many visits on even bad days.  But, thewritngoflife.wordpress.com has evidently struck some people as something worth reading and leaving positive comments on.  Fortunately I haven’t had problems with internet trolls yet.  I’m sure I’ll get a few before long.  But a wise blogger doesn’t feed trolls or anyone else looking to irritate others and start problems.  While it is irritating for me to see people act dumb and look for arguments, even with a mental illness I am aware that such people do not deserve to have their comments responded to.

I have enjoyed 2014.  I got more healthy, lost quite a bit of weight, saw a few old friend I hadn’t seen in years, visited the Black Hills of South Dakota, found out I’m going to be a groomsman in a college friends wedding in summer of 2015, got to visit my out of state niece and three nephews a few times, stayed out of a mental health hospital (I can’t claim that for 2013), and got to see this little ol’ blog of mine reach some people.  How can I call a year like this a waste?  I can’t.  Yes I said good bye to an old friend, found out a second friend of mine in my apartment complex died on Christmas day itself, and saw my parents experience some of the ravages of old age.  Fortunately I had only two major psych breakdowns (I’m usually due for one in either August or September every year because I have a seasonal aspect to my schizophrenia).  As far as living years with a mental illness goes, this year may actually go down as one of my best yet.

As far as goals for 2015, I desire to lose at least another 60 pounds.  While I did fail at one of my goals for 2014 in that I didn’t find a part time job, I feel the year was a success overall.

Not Holding ‘Traditional’ Employment, Losing Weight, and Changes

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It’s been at least two and half years since I last held a traditional job of any kind.  No doubt some would argue that since I have a good amount of intelligence, I have no reason not to be doing some kind of job.  I’m sure that some look upon me with disdain because I’m on Disability Insurance for a condition that they don’t understand, let alone acknowledge it’s existence.  At this point in my life and development I don’t hold this against anyone.  I’ve come to accept, without any degree of resentment, that some aren’t going to grasp why I decided to opt out of traditional employment.

I absolutely intend to go back into the workforce at some point in the future.  But, at this point and time in my life, I believe it far more important for myself to lose weight and get back into good health before I rejoin the workforce. As of this writing, I have lost at least 60 pounds since the middle of March 2014.  I still have a long way to go before I hit my final health and weight goal.  With my body build being what it is (short legs, short arms, large body, very thick bones, and more muscled than average) I doubt I’ll be able to finish a marathon even when I make final goal.  But I can certainly be healthy even with the natural framework I have.  I think that anyone can if they make the efforts to be more conscious about what they eat, what they do for exercise, and know themselves well enough to plan around their strengths and weaknesses.

doctor-2

Sadly, when I worked I wasn’t able to lose weight.  This was even with doing jobs like janitorial and factory work where I had to keep moving at all times.  Whatever I burned off from these jobs I consumed back from the course of not tracking what I ate.  I wasn’t conscious about what I ate.  Since I usually came hold tired and worn out, as a result of carrying so much weight and working physical jobs, I made no efforts to exercise when I wasn’t at my place of employment.  And thus a vicious cycle of unhealthiness, fatigue from work, and depression plus anxiety from being out of shape enough I couldn’t do what I wanted in my hours away from the job was going on during the years I held even part time employment.  Serious changes were needed to break this cycle.

After I left my last paying job, I set out to attempt to get healthier.  I read many books on dieting, exercise, nutrition, motivation, and mental health.  I also decided to take a very long and completely honest assessment of my strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies.  I liked much of what I was able to uncover (my intelligence, my ability for keeping accurate records, attention to details, ability to adapt quickly, ability to learn quickly, etc.).  I also didn’t like much of what I found about my drawbacks (tend to be discouraged in the day to day work, often not keeping attention on the larger picture, tendencies to distraction, tendencies to attempt too many projects at once, tendency to get discouraged when not able to see progress, etc.).  I decided rather than trying to improve my deficits, I would instead develop my natural strengths enough to negate my weaknesses.

I decided I wanted to lose weight in the summer of 2013.  I didn’t seriously start losing weight and getting healthier until April 2014.  That is when I started tracking everything I ate.  Just as vital, I tracked all exercises I did.  I wanted to not only know what was going in my body,  I was also interested in what I was doing too.  Over a period of a few weeks, I noticed my activity was increasing while my consumption was decreasing.  Stretch that over several months, my consumption is still decreasing and my activity is not only increasing, but is getting easier to do.  I’m embarrassed to admit this, but on the day I decided without a doubt I was going to get to a set goal weight, in my case 225 pounds, on or before a set date in time, this date was March 17, 2019.  I picked March 17, 2019 only because it was exactly five years from the date when I decided I was ready to set out on the long journey to good health.

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By March 2014, I had done an inventory of my strengths, weaknesses, and motivations.  I also had a working knowledge of several different types of diet programs (such as Weight Watchers, South Beach, Paleo-Diets, Glycemic Index Diets, etc.).  I had stated, and written down, my intentions of losing weight and getting healthy by stating an exact weight I wanted to be at and gave myself a set time period to do this work.  I knew I enjoyed walking, whether it’s in a park or in the old downtown of my hometown.  So walking became a major element in my exercise program.  I also decided I would track what I ate and what exercises I did every day.  If this sounds like a lot of work, it is a lot of work.  It took almost fifteen years to get as unhealthy as I was.  I wasn’t going to get back to good health rushing into a program without doing some planning.  No one builds anything that lasts, it doesn’t matter if it’s a dog house or the new World Trade Center building in New York, without sitting down and making some plans.  Taking the time to evaluate what you have to work with and making plans accordingly is the key to any undertaking, not just getting into good health.

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Losing Weight While On Anti-Psych Meds 2

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One of the most common side effects of taking antidepressants  and anti-psych medications is weight gain.  I myself was no exception to this.  But now that trend has been  reversed.  I’ve been working on becoming more active and tracking what I eat since the middle of March 2014.  As of early November 2014, I have lost over 55 pounds in this time.

I suppose I ought to go into some of the background of this.  In August 2013, it became obvious to me I could not keep going as I was.  So I hastily started out trying to lose weight.  But I didn’t actually keep track of what I ate, was inconsistent about exercise, and tried to follow a plan that I didn’t specifically tailor to my personal likes and tendencies.  That first attempt at losing weight failed.  I had to take some time, figure out why it didn’t work, and adjust accordingly.  That’s how I spent much of December 2013 and January 2014.

I also talked to my psych nurse about my intentions of losing weight.  He and I agreed to switch to two newer medications that didn’t have as much of a tendency to promote weight gain as my previous two medications.  It was tough to change medications that had worked well on the mental side of my health.  Yet, both my psych nurse and I thought that a wrecked physical health would only ruin my mental health eventually.  The change over was a rather slow process that took most of January 2014, all of February and March 2014.  It was, as time would show, a change over that was worth it.

Once the weather started to warm up in late March, I made it a point to walk outside for at least 10 minutes per day.  That doesn’t sound like much but it was a start to developing good habits.  From those beginnings I am now able to do 35 to 40 minutes of physical activity five days per week.  I make it a point to take at least one day per week off from exercise merely to allow my body to recover and break up the routine some.

I also track everything that I eat.  I do this through a free tracking profile I have on webmd.com.  All I had to have to sign up for this was a valid email address.  The profile I have tracks calories eaten as well as calories burned through exercises.  Another site I used to get some good ideas was trimdownclub.com.  It does cost some money through a one time fee.  I have looked around online and there are numerous apps that track calories used, calories eaten, etc., and many of these are free apps.  I just track everything through my laptop computer as I don’t own a smartphone.

Once I decided I wanted to lose weight, learned my tendencies and how to work accordingly, changed my anti-psych meds to some with less side effects, began building my psychical stamina slowly, tracking everything I eat as well as my exercise, stopped making excuses as to why I couldn’t get healthier, and even quit punishing myself for those inevitable days where I backslide, it became just a matter of running my tailor made program and doing the work.  I also do not weigh myself daily.  I usually only weigh every four weeks.  I do this so as to not get discouraged if the numbers aren’t changing on a day to day basis.  I also do not go only by what the numbers on the scale are, I also go off how I personally feel.

I also do not follow any one program completely.  I’ve taken advice from many sources, such as Weight Watchers, Trim Down Club, Glycemic Index diets, Paleo diets, as well as my personal preferences.  It took several months of research and looking at my own tendencies before I started losing weight to figure out something I thought would work for my personal circumstances.  I certainly couldn’t afford some diets or much organic foods as I’m living off Social Security Disability Insurance at the moment.  But the facts are I am losing weight while on anti-psych medications and working in the constraints of a very limited budget.  It can be done but it does take facing the truth about yourself and knowing your tendencies.  Something like this, for the results to last, has to be a complete lifestyle change.

Losing Weight while on Anti-Psychcotic Medication

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doctor-2 mental-health

In addition to my problems with mental illness, I’ve been fighting problems with having an unhealthy weight since at least age seventeen.  I spent the first several years of my schizophrenia diagnosis trying to figure out the many aspects of my personal mental health problems.  I was able to figure out that there were seasonal elements, certain situations and stressors that made the illness worse, people and places I needed to avoid as much as possible, and I learned coping skills that made the mental part of my health much more tolerable.

While I was covering the mental aspects of my health, I completely ignored my physical health.  I gained a lot of weight during the first ten years of my diagnosis.  One reason I neglected my physical health was I often lacked motivation to stay with an exercise program.  I would do fine the first few days.  When the inevitable aches and discomfort set in, I’d take a day or two off.  I felt terrible for taking days off and would in time drop the program.

A second reason I gained weight was I fell into the trap of believing I couldn’t lose weight while on anti-psych medication.  Many anti-psych medications have weight gain as one of their most prominent side effects.  Noticing I was at a very unhealthy weight even as far back as early 2007, I went off my medications in an attempt to lose weight.  Real bad idea. I had a relapse after being off medications for three months.  Whatever weight I lost in that time off the medications was gained back and more.

Finally about the summer of 2013, I’m guessing, my general practitioner  told me that I would have major health problems, including diabetes, heart issues, and probably even early death if I didn’t do a complete change of my eating habits and physical activity.  That gave me an incentive to at least attempt to lose weight while on anti-psych medications.  My options at that point were to either keep blaming the weight gain on my psych meds and wait for an inevitable disaster perhaps only a few years in the future, or I could get more active and accept responsibility for my physical health with the same dedication I took to getting my mental health managed.  I guess my decision to lose weight came down to the persistent thought that my well managed mental health conditions would not matter if my physical health deteriorated.

My first efforts to lose weight were not entirely successful.  Beginning to exercise wasn’t much of a problem as I had the idea of dealing with diabetes, heart disease, and a mental illness all at the same time to keep me walking at least four to five days per week.  It was the adjusting my eating habits that was the major issue.  I would lose weight some weeks.  Other weeks I would not lose and often actually gain.  This went on until about April 2014.

After several months of exercise and learning all I could find about good nutrition on a small budget, I reexamined everything I was doing.  Every thing checked out just fine.  I even changed some of my psych medications at my psych doctor’s recommendation.  I finally decided to track everything I was eating for at least a few days.  It took only one day to figure out exactly how much I was eating on an average day.  That was an attention grabber.  I figured out how much I was eating and how much I was burning off through physical activity.  I could see that on even average days I was taking in more calories than I was burning off.  I found out why I wasn’t losing weight as easily as I wanted.  It wasn’t the psych medications causing it all alone.  It was that I had no idea how much I was actually eating.

Once I figured this out, I committed to tracking everything I ate every day.  I was able to do this though tools and trackers with a free account at wedmd.com.  I just type in what I eat, how much of a food I eat, and how much exercise I do.  I had to do this everyday for at least the first two to three months every day.  Once I knew how much I was eating everyday as well as how much I was exercising everyday and was recording it, that is when the weight starting coming off.  Since I started tracking everything I ate and all exercise I did I’ve lost over 45 pounds.  I’ve been doing this tracking since the middle of April 2014, so I’ve been doing this for right at five months.  I’m sure that for those who wish to have a diet and exercise tracking app for a SmartPhone or an iPod there are several good apps available that don’t cost anything.

Weight loss while on anti-psychcotic medications is possible.  It can be done.  Like anyone else trying to lose weight, it takes a lot of work, a lot of discipline, and it takes time.  I suppose I have the thoughts of where I once was, where I’m at now, how much better I feel now than even six months ago, and where I can and want to be as motivators.

Coming Back, Losing Weight, Mind-Body, How and Why

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It’s been a long, long time since I last posted anything to this blog. For the record, I never gave up writing. I just took about a three month long vacation. It has been the longest time, in fact the only real time, I took a break from just about anything I do. An update on how things have gone lately is in order.

For approximately the last four months I’ve been seriously concentrating on getting back into good physical health. As a result of changes in eating habits and exercise routines I have dropped at least 35 pounds. Yes, I still have a long way to go before I get to my final goal weight. I notice a positive difference already, not only in physical health but also mental health. I’m not doing anything really out of the ordinary. I’m not on any fad diet. I’m not exercising several hours a day. I’m not eating organic food as I’m on limited budget as is. And I certainly am not taking any diet pills, powders, etc. I suppose if I was to describe my approach, I’d simply call it cherry picking what works for myself from several different types of diets and discarding what doesn’t work for me. Some may find it odd that I pick and choose rather than follow only one set plan with an almost religious fervor as many people do. My grandparents had a phrase for this tailor making a plan from only the best of everything that works for one person and may not work for someone else. It was ‘using your head.’

As my physical health gradually improved so did my mental health. I really do believe there is a mind-body, body-mind connection. Chinese medicine has innately known this for centuries. Western medicine for the longest time, having no real way to measure this, denied such a connection. This connection was denied even though it completely ignored any real world practical experience. That in itself is not ‘using your head.’

It is completely possible to know something is or is not so even if you can’t completely explain the why. For thousands of years, ancient peoples knew that the constellations in the night sky not only changed over the course of the year but changed at the same times each year. It wasn’t until a relatively recent time in human history that we figured out the why. I can’t offer a functional explanation why I feel better mentally after losing 35 pounds in four months, let alone a scientific one. I know simply that I do. That alone is enough reason to keep me working at losing weight.