I risked my life today.

My ceilings are ridiculously high. Standing on the kitchen counter, I can just barely touch the ceiling. So when my last light bulb blew out the other day, I figured I’d have to borrow a ladder to change it. That’d take some arranging, though, and I’d have to haul it up the stairs; so tonight I said to heck with it, stood with one foot on the counter and one on the back of a chair, and wobbled as I changed the one bulb I could barely reach. I’ll have to have a ladder for the other two (unless I push the fridge over there and climb on top of it), but at least I don’t need a lamp in there anymore.

I finally did something else I’ve been threatening to do for a while: made up a meal plan for the next day, so I could go get the ingredients for the next few meals and not find myself getting hungry and not knowing what to make with what I happen to have on hand. I pulled out a couple recipe books and wrote down my meals for tonight and tomorrow, and made a grocery list while I was at it, then walked down to the store and got the stuff. Tonight was Hamburgers with Dill and Roasted Cauliflower, and both were pretty good. I’ve got tomorrow’s menus ready, but I’ll save them for tomorrow’s blog.

I found a great article about diabetes, low-carbing, and the ADA tonight. (If you think it doesn’t apply to you, just wait a few years. It’s now estimated that almost half of all middle-aged men are pre-diabetic or worse, and the next generation will be even worse off.) Here’s the beginning:

There’s no question that Dr. Vernon is trouble — but for whom? Not her patients, that’s for certain. They just won’t stay sick. People walk into her office afflicted with type-2 diabetes and, by every objective medical measurement, walk out cured. There’s $51 million [spent by the ADA] that says that isn’t supposed to happen, not in a clinic in Kansas, and definitely not as a result of cleaning out the refrigerator.

“My first line of treatment is to have patients remove carbohydrates from their diets,” explains Dr. Vernon, a petite, energetic mother of two who also serves as the president of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians. “This is often all it takes to reverse their symptoms, so that they no longer require medication.”

Seriously, click here and read the whole thing. It’s the best summary I’ve seen of the epidemic and the solution in a long time. None of this information is new; it’s been around for decades, even centuries; but (like many truths) it got buried under a lot of foolishness in the ’60s and ’70s, leaving us with a situation where people are eating sugar and starch by the bucketfuls and then shooting themselves up with the insulin they need to keep the sugar and starch from killing them. It’s insane, and it’s getting worse.

Here’s something to think about: when your blood sugar is at normal levels, the amount of glucose in your blood stream is the equivalent of one teaspoon (just under 5 grams) of table sugar. (By the way, your liver will happily produce that much if you don’t eat any, so you don’t need to consume any carbohydrates at all, as some Eskimo tribes have proven.) The blood sugar level which indicates likely diabetes is about 1-1/4 teaspoons.

Think about that: one little teaspoon of sugar floating around in your blood is what’s normal. That’s about the same amount that you get from one raw carrot. A piece of bread has 2-3 times as much. A Hershey bar has three times that much. A medium-sized baked potato or a can of soda: seven times. That’s a lot of sugar to dump into your blood stream all at once; a lot more than the human body was designed to handle. Eventually it can’t, leading down the path through through hyperinsulinemia to obesity and diabetes and heart disease.

But that’s enough ranting for now, considering this was just supposed to be a link. It just really burns me up to see the ADA fighting so hard to maintain their status quo, when it’s killing people.

I’ve got a bit of a headache tonight, so I don’t think I’ll write much, but I need to catch up the weekend. Stuck to the diet very well this weekend, and I’m feeling good overall. The headache is from my office chair; I’ve gotten in the habit of leaning it way back and putting the keyboard on my lap, which makes me hold my huge head up the whole time, and my neck gets sore. But if I lock the chair upright, I feel like I’m sliding out of it, because the leather (or whatever it is) is so slick. What to do, what to do.

Anyway, as I said, this feels like a long week in the making. I have a computer to work on, that I doubt I can fix, so I’m going to have to do some triage and hope I can at least salvage the data from it, and massage it into a useful format of some sort. I’m learning a new computer language and a couple graphics libraries and tools to go with it, for Crossfire and some other projects I’ve got in mind. Along with that I’ve got some bookwork and records I really need to organize, to get things ready to work with the online store. Friday’s coming fast.

Now I’m off to watch a little TV and make up my menus for tomorrow, while I try to relax my neck before bed. Gonna get an early start tomorrow….

I just remembered: the Chiefs are playing tomorrow! I don’t think I’ll get to see the game, so here’s hoping they win and play again next weekend. I was shocked when I heard they made the playoffs; I thought they were virtually out of the running a couple weeks ago. It seems like I’ve been paying less and less attention to football over the past several years. The Chiefs aren’t a great team this season, but it’s not always the best team that wins a short series, and they don’t get any shorter than the NFL playoffs. Good luck to them.

Wow, the change in diet is really kicking in now. One thing that often happens on a low-carb diet is appetite suppression. Without the excess glucose in your blood and the corresponding rise in insulin production, you don’t get the same cravings for food as before. You actually have to be careful not to forget to eat, as I did until after noon today. In fact, many people think that’s the “trick” to low-carb diets: they decrease your appetite so you eat fewer calories and lose weight.

That’s horse-hockey — calories have little to do with weight gain or loss, and nothing to do with why low-carb eating improves health and weight. (I’ll write a long treatise on how it all works someday; I’ve probably written enough about it in newsgroups to fill a book.) It’s important to keep getting plenty of fat and protein, so your body can stay healthy and rebuild and you don’t find yourself hungry at times when there aren’t any good low-carb choices handy.

Anyway, it’s a little weird right now, because I’m getting this huge energy boost, and it feels like my body is ready to go into overdrive, but my mind hasn’t quite caught up to it yet. It’s a sort of a direction-free restlessness. Now if I can just get a handle on it and put it to use.

I’ve finally got a main page up for my personal web site, at http://aaron.baugher.biz/. There isn’t much there yet, but I wanted something for people to see if they stumbled over it before I announced it, and I’m playing with some design themes and getting started on an outline for it. Feedback is welcome, as always!

Well, my venison/pork burgers are done, and Pepper’s eyeballing me, anxious to go for a walk, so ’til next time….

Pretty quiet day today. I did a lot of programming and documentation work online, enough that I’m sore from sitting in this chair. I’ve gone from sleeping 10+ hours a day early this week to only needing 5-6 hours the last couple days, so it’s a little weird. Tomorrow’s going to be a busy one, with several places I have to go. I’d better make a list tonight or I’ll forget something.

Quiet diet day too. Eggs, burgers, nuts, nothing too exciting. Definitely have to get to the store tomorrow for some variety.

Well, the site is starting to take shape a bit. I don’t have much real content yet, but I’m getting the framework in place. Now for the hard part — coming up with actual fresh and interesting stuff to add. More on that tomorrow. I’ve got my blog setup now so I can email posts to it. That’s going to be very handy, since I can write a lot faster and edit better in Emacs than through any web form. I can blather out hundreds of words this way without even realizing it.

I thought I’d explain the links that are next to my blog. I’ll be adding more as I think of them, but I wanted to start with a few at least. Joey Calvey is the friend who owns this web server and is providing the space for this site. John Derbyshire is a naturalized American from Britain who writes mostly on political issues from a common-sense conservative perspective. Tin Robots is a collection of artwork by Eric Joyner, some of which I hope to have on my walls someday. Crossfire is an open-source, free, MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game, I think) that I’m playing and helping to develop. A portion of this site will be dedicated to my work on Crossfire eventually.

Also, I’ll be trying out some different themes. The theme is the design of the page, including the fonts, any images, and how it’s all laid out. The one I’m using right now (with the pencils at top right) is called Clean Cut, and I like it pretty well. I’ve got some others I’ll be trying out from time to time, so any feedback pro or con is welcomed.

I helped one of my neighbors move an entertainment center down the stairs today. There sure is a lot of turnover in these apartments. I’m not sure why; I think it’s a nice place to live, and the price is right and the landlord is easy to get along with. Maybe I just have low standards?

Another simple diet day: eggs for breakfast, nuts and cabbage for lunch, and venison burger for supper. I’m starting to get a little bored, but I’m feeling far better. No more heartburn or headaches; I’m napping less and waking up with more energy; and I don’t feel as scatterbrained (although there’s a ways to go there). So far so good.

Going to be another short one tonight, I’m afraid, although it’s still early, so I might add more later. I’ve got a list of things in my notepad to blog about once I get this the way I want it, but I’ve got a few more things to do before I get started. There are a ton of features at this site, so in addition to this blog, I’ve also been setting up an online store, a wiki (probably for documenting my programming code, although it could have other uses), and some other things. I’ll link to them once there’s something there to see.

Had another good day diet-wise, with eggs for breakfast, nuts and cheese for lunch, and eggs and a burger again for supper. Kinda boring, but right now I’m keeping it simple and keeping the carbs very low, to keep the cravings of this first couple weeks as weak as possible. I just went to the store, and the clearance-priced Christmas candy was pretty tempting, but I managed to abstain.

This is my first blog post here, and I’m still figuring out how everything works, so it’s going to be a short one. More to come tomorrow.

One thing I did want to mention: I didn’t talk much about my diet last year, because I didn’t stick to it very well. I maintained my weight, but not by keeping my carbs at a reasonably low level. Instead I’d binge on carbs for a couple days until I was half-dead, and then I’d be good for a week until I felt better, then start the cycle over again. Didn’t gain any weight, but it was hard on my health.

So it’s time to stop being stupid and do it right, or I’m going to have full-blown diabetes or worse within a few years. I got off to a good start today, with leftover pork roast for breakfast, more roast plus leftover chicken and mashed sweet potatoes for dinner, and I’m snacking on some nuts and cheese for supper. I hereby swear that I’m going to post about my diet everyday this year, or if I unavoidably miss a day, I’ll post that day’s info the next day. I know writing about it every day will help me stick to it and stop thinking I can afford to blow a day here and there.

More tomorrow!