My Dad's Surgery/Recovery

So I mentioned earlier that my dad is in the process of fatting himself to death.  I don't think that a lot of people, because of the obesity epidemic in the US, tend to realize how dangerous weight-related medical complications can be.  Most fat is actually stored between your organs, not in an external place where it's super noticeable.  This means that the organs are under more pressure than they would be in a non-obese body.


Everyone seems to realize that having that kind of pressure on your veins is awful; pretty much everyone in the US can tell you what their blood pressure is and where it falls on a health scale.  But it's been a real shock to me, since dad came out of surgery, how few people can apply that principle to their organs at large.

Basically with him, the pressure on his organs, combined with a virtually fiber free diet (like most Americans) to cause a series of ruptures through his digestive tract.  Because the tissue lining his tract was so overworked, it had been worn too thin to immediately correct.  If they had stitched the ruptures back together, there was an extremely high chance that the new intestines wouldn't be able to handle the hostile environment, and would just break open again.  Therefore the doctors elected to give him a colostomy bag, allowing his digestive process to completely avoid the ruptured areas.  He HATES that bag.

Also, because of all the infection, the doctors had to make a series of incisions to let that all drain out of him.  And he'll be in IV and oral antibiotics for at least six months, in an attempt to get that under control.  When he came out of surgery, my mom sent me a pic of him with NO CONTEXT WHATSOEVER with just the caption "show this to your brother".

So that was great of her.  Looks like some fucking horror movie shit, right?  Those incisions go all the way past that subcuanious layer down to the infection, which has to drain out of him before he'll be a candidate for surgery.  Now that he's home he pretty much just has to change the dressings, take his meds, and go back to Lexington once a week to check in with his surgeons.

Fun times.

Broke Ass Fat Bitch: The Beginning of a Frugal Food Journal

I've been watching this show Supersize vs Superskinny pretty much all night since I woke up at around 1am. I'm pretty nocturnal. But it got me thinking about weight and my own body, especially since I've put on quite a bit of weight recently, and I've had two family members hospitalize for weight related injuries.

My father is a classic overeater, and his poor diet eventually wore his body so thin that his digestive tract just up and gave out on him, with his colon bursting in two or three places. He underwent surgery and is doing really well in recovery, but he will have to wear a colostomy bag for at least six months, and whatwith the ruptures, he got a massive infection and has to have daily IV antibiotics and a stint that goes directly into his heart. He is home, but will have to go once a week to the hospital to get checked up and make sure that he's progressing nicely. This is a major pain in the ass because his surgeon is in the city, a 2 hour drive away from where he lives.

My grandma is on the other end of the scale. She's been suffering from anorexia nervosa since the late 1950s-early 1960s and has worn her body so thin that many of her organs are on their last leg. Her bones aren't getting proper nutrition either, and break really easily. She's been hospitalized twice recently, once for a hip replacement, and again because her body went into ketosis, which is a state where you aren't taking in enough food so your body starts eating itself. In order to keep her brain alive, her body decided to eat her muscle mass, and when it ran out of that, it started in on her organs. So her own body ate her heart and kidneys.

I have no idea where I fall on the scale of things. I'm currently heavier than I have been recently, but not as heavy as I've ever been. At my heaviest I weighed 210lbs, and at my lightest in my adult life I think I got down to 125 or something. That was after a year-long weightloss journey, which I began because my father had a heart attack due to his being overweight, and I realized that my own weight had the potential to cause major problems for me, medically.

According to http://www.calculator.net, I need no more than 1370 to maintain my weight, and no more than 800 to lose weight (per day). 800 seems like... nothing. Guess I'd be hard to starve. I'll gain a pound a week if I eat 1870. Also, my current measurements put me at 34.9% body fat, which falls into the obese category. It's supposed to be no more than 25%. My BMI is 30.86; which is obese, but barely. The obesity category starts at 30.

So. Yup. I'm fat. Which is weird, because I don't really look fat. Or I guess it would be more accurate to say that I don't think I look fat.  But that may be because I live in the US where obesity is really common, and therefore I don't have a good idea of what a body in the healthy weight range looks like. When I look at myself, I wouldn't classify me, based on the visual, as obese. Overweight, yes, but the idea that I would have 35% body fat wouldn't enter my mind. I am not in tune with my body. When I think of an overweight individual, in my culture, I think of someone like my father; and if you compare my body to his, it doesn't look like I'm in danger of any major health problems. But viewed in a vacuum by medical professionals, I have real reason to be concerned. So I've decided to track my eating habits, to see if I can pinpoint my problem.

Being unemployed, like I am, makes it very difficult to eat a healthy diet. That's why I've decided to chronicle my food journal here, on-line. To see if it's possible to eat a healthy, full diet while broke as shit. I live in the rural United States, which may or may not be relevant, because I don't know how we fare compared to other places, in terms of food prices, but I do know that we don't have specialty or bulk stores, meaning that my food choices here are MUCH more limited than when I lived in the city, which had far more competition and selection. Here we've got three grocery stores; Wal-mart, Save-a-Lot, and Food City. That's it.

So without further ado, let's start the food journal.

4/7/15

Measurements

Overbust: 41

Underbust: 33

Waist: 29

Hips: 49

1:00-5:00am: Coffee 582

5:00am: Cereal 280

Breakfast: 962 Already I'm over the weightloss cals. But I've already spotted my first problem. I drink ¼ a cup of sugar in every glass of coffee. I say glass because I don't drink my coffee out of a cup, like a normal person, but out of a metal travel thermos, which easily holds 2-3 cups of coffee and I consider one mug a serving. I'd love to switch to aspertaine or something, but it's so expensive.