Marriage often debuts with a weight challenge.  I gained about ten pounds just prior to getting married, due to a depressive episode that lasted several months.  The depression lifted shortly before I got married, but I gained an additional five pounds just after.  After briefly investigating options for my daily inspiration, including books and Facebook weight loss groups, I decided my best option could very well be to write an inspirational book of my own and chronicle my journey of losing the pounds I gained and of increasing and maintaining my energy to the level needed to care for my disabled husband and myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I immediately meditated on the guided meditation and visualization, Finding Your Purpose by Stuart Kaplan, available in Insight Timer on mobile phones.  Afterwards, I sang and danced to, You Are My Sunshine, as I served my husband his wine.  Then I exuberantly made a batch of gingered lemonade.

 

 The recipe is as follows:

Juice of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon white stevia

2-550 mg capsules ground ginger

Cold filtered water to desired strength

 

Press or juice the lemon.  Add stevia and ground ginger to a mortar.  Add a little water to mortar and grind with the pestle.  Add ginger mixture and additional water to lemon juice.  Enjoy!

 

This lemonade lifts my mood like nothing else!  Lemons have 32 different antioxidants, and ginger has amazing healing properties, most notably the ability to treat nausea, which I sometimes have in the morning, though I am sure it is not caused by pregnancy!

 

Today is September fifth: Day One.  I bought pears as they are in season.  Some people discourage fruit for diets, but I have always eaten fruit as part of my diet.  Why?  Fruit contains so many vitamins, minerals, and fiber.  Though it should not be consumed in excess, it is an important part of the diet, and the only really good way for me to satisfy my sweet tooth.  I believe fruit in season is the reason we evolved a taste for sweetness.  It not only satisfies our need for sweetness, it gives us a survival advantage, if used properly.

 

My diet diary of choice is Cronometer.com.  I think a diet diary of some kind is essential for effective weight loss.  I used LifeForm by Fitnesoft for 20 years effectively, but the Windows 3.1 program is now obsolete, though I still run it in Virtual Box on Windows XP.  Cronometer keeps track of so many more nutrients.  This is its strength, yet it can also require more time to use.  There is the temptation to focus so much on getting all your nutrients that you eat too many calories.  Balancing goals is important.  Joel Fuhrman teaches the importance of becoming a nutritarian, maximizing nutrition per calorie.  Greens have the most nutrition per calorie, so I need to be sure I get greens in my diet.  I do the best I can with my food to cover all my nutritional needs within my calorie budget, but I am open to using key supplements, where my diet does not quite cover me nutritionally.

 

One book I just finished reading is Playing the Matrix by Mike Dooley.  Borrowing from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, Dooley said to “begin with the end in mind” and state what you want your life to be like in general terms.  This will allow the Universe to surprise you with an outcome that is even better than your initial goals.  In my journal, I recorded Four A’s, ends I want to see:

 

1) Abundance:  be able to afford my lifestyle.

2) Accomplishment:  produce a significant number of creative works and share with many.

3) Act as a health coach in all I do.

4) Appearance: remain the gorgeous woman my husband married when I was 56.

 

This project has the potential to fulfill all four of these.  My goal is to creatively evolve this into whatever the Universe has to reward me, in and for my work.

 

For lunch, I found a head of cabbage that was languishing in the refrigerator.  I stripped away the outer layers and found a good core.  I cut the remainder of the head with my Kitchen Kutter.  I bought the Kutter from Kitchen Craft Cookware at Christmas time at the Dickens Festival in Sandy, Utah, which is near where I lived before coming to Colorado for my wedding.  It is one of the items I brought with me, shipping it UPS.  I used the Julienne blade to finely cut the cabbage.  Then I added olive oil, rice vinegar, and sea salt.  Here is the recipe:

 

500 grams green cabbage

37 grams high-quality olive oil

25 grams rice vinegar

3 grams sea salt

 

Cut the cabbage with the Julienne or waffle cut blades, then stir in olive oil, rice vinegar, and sea salt.  Enjoy!

 

Cabbage sports 77 cancer-fighting phytochemicals.  They can be listed using Duke’s Phytochemical Data Base (https://phytochem.nal.usda.gov/phytochem/search) on the Web.  I have not memorized all 77, but my doctor interested me especially in indole-3-carbinol, which fights breast and prostate cancers.  Indoles, interestingly, are chemically related to l-tryptophan.  Indoles can improve your mood.  You can take a supplement with indole-3-carbinol, and I have done so in the past.  However, I think it is much more effective when combined with the other 76 cancer-fighting components in cabbage.  Nutrients are wonderful, but they do not work alone.  They have to have their friends.  The same goes for vitamin C in lemons.  Vitamin C is great, but it has been found not to be very effective alone.  It works better with the other phytonutrients in lemons.  Cabbage has vitamin C, calcium, potassium, and fiber too.  In complete diets that exclude all but a minimum number of foods, cabbage is included because of its well-rounded nutrition that fills nutritional gaps.

 

Another way to include cabbage in the diet, and get a healthy dose of probiotics as well, is to eat raw sauerkraut.  I have not eaten any since I came to Colorado.  I think I am going to order some soon.  I believe that cultured vegetables are a more effective way to populate the gut with healthy bacteria than taking probiotic pills alone.

 

I am relaxing after supper.  My husband and I ordered dinners from the Flyin’ B restaurant, which is part of our retirement community.  This time I ordered without cookies.  Cookies have been my nemesis the past two months.  When we receive an order with four cookies, two for each dinner, my sugar addiction takes over and I gobble down my portion and my husband’s!  This habit has to end!  So tonight for almost the first time, we ordered without dessert of any kind.  After the food arrived, I weighed the fish and vegetable sides.  My husband ate part of my portion, and I ate part of his, messing up my calculations a bit, but I estimated as close as I could.  I am off to a great start!

 

To give myself an edge, twice today I took garcinia cambogia.  This supplement seems to raise my metabolism, so I am planning to use it until I reach my goal weight.

 

I also took what I call my Energy Cocktail.  I will talk more about it in the coming days.  I also took three grams of fish oil with vitamin E to protect it from oxidation.  Will all of this work?  I think I am going to need my own inspiration, which I am providing for myself here.  If you are following along with me, get out your journal and record inspiration tailored to you.  It is important to discard limiting beliefs.  My most important belief is that I am going to succeed at 1) losing the weight I want to lose, and 2) garnering sufficient energy to care for myself and my disabled husband.

 

Let me write myself a poem of inspiration.  I might add also that I plan to do this without losing my good mood.  Dieting can be accompanied by crankiness at times as blood sugar levels fluctuate.  I am determined not to let that happen.  So 3) accomplish one and two with a positive mood.

 

This important journey you have begun.

Record your successes and share.

Show all the world that you really care,

Rolling your knowledge into one.

 

This poem will do for tonight.

 

Now, back to reality.

 

It is just past 6:00 PM.  I have completed my food journal for the day.  I will mark it completed with “Mark Day Complete” on the menu near the top.  Following the advice of Dr. Joseph Mercola, I will now fast at least three hours before bedtime.  This step is the most difficult one to do.  I plan to drink water.  I have nephrogenic diabetes insipidus, caused by lithium, my medication for bipolar.  Lithium makes my kidneys insensitive to ADH (anti-diuretic hormone).  Consequently, I require approximately six liters of water a day, sometimes more, and I have to go to the bathroom a lot.  This condition carries with it the risk of dehydration.  You may not have this condition, but you too probably need to drink a lot of water to achieve a weight loss goal and flush out toxins.  Dig out your water bottles, preferably the stainless steel kind.  If you do not have a water filter, consider getting one, as handling and discarding 12 plastic bottles a day can get onerous.  I talked my husband into a countertop Travel Berkey.  It is not quite as convenient as my reverse osmosis filter in Utah, but it has the advantage of letting through useful minerals.  A reverse osmosis filter can leave you mineral-depleted.  Get your water bottle handy and take it with you tomorrow, if you do not do that already.

 

I just showered.  Tomorrow I have a counseling appointment in Littleton.  With bipolar, I do not take my mental health for granted.  I have committed myself to getting regular counseling for as long as it is beneficial, perhaps until I die.   My counselor is new, young, and female.  She may not understand the challenges of getting older, but she has her LCSW.  That says she is qualified.  I seem to have established good rapport with her already.  My former counselor said it is easier to counsel someone who is proactive about their mental health as I am.

 

My husband is relaxing to serenity music in the bedroom.  He seems to be eating more today which may help build his strength.  He is eighteen years my senior.  I have known him for almost thirteen years, so we did not leap into marriage.  Both of us avoided it for a long time.  Finally, he desperately wanted me to live with him, and I would not do so without a marriage certificate, so the marriage happened.  I was about to marry another friend of mine, and when he called back and exclaimed that he wanted to get married, we started making plans.  It is kind of a miracle.  We have had some challenges already, but I look forward to becoming who I am, regardless of whom I marry.  My health coach training is doing some good, but I cannot force my husband to be healthy.  I can only encourage him, one step at a time.  The beauty of it is that he wants what I have to offer him.  I plan to do what I can for him while I am undergoing my own transformation.

 

I left family and contacts in Utah.  I did not know anyone here except my husband.  So I have a life to build here.  I want to build new friendships and maintain key friendships from back home.  My best girlfriend from Utah called me today while she was on her way to the lake with her husband, and I told her about this new book I am writing.  Joshua Rosenthal, our chief educator at IIN (Institute for Integrative Nutrition), taught us the importance of primary food.  Primary food is spirituality, relationships, career, and physical activity.  These four things are key to transforming yourself.  Nutrition is secondary food.  I will be mentioning these areas of activity throughout this journey.

 

Three weeks ago, I made a huge relationship commitment.  Not long ago, I did not think I was attractive to anyone because of my bipolar.  Now I realize that I am attractive, even for marriage.  I told my counselor once that I did not think there was anyone out there who was right for me.  He said, “That is a limiting belief.”  It took me a long time to let go of that limiting belief.  Tapping or EFT training is one way to let go of limiting beliefs.  I will talk more about tapping later.  For me, it required a lot more than just tapping.