12,000-step recovery plan

[Silvan]

I was waiting for another post on the wife's surgery thread to show up, so I could find it. The thread seems to have petered out just in the nick of time.

She's home, folks! Doing OK. Not great. It's interesting her having those bags on her and stuff, but we'll get through it. Lots of outpatient stuff to follow, which might or might not trip another $1,000 deductible, and she's on disability for six weeks. Wheeeeeee.

We'll get through it. She's alive. That's the main thing. This whole deal was pretty damn ugly.

I got a pedometer for Christmas. I've been wearing it all day. You're supposed to work at doing 10,000 steps a day for better health and stuff. Well, I logged 12,000. My butt hurts because I've started tightening up muscles I forgot how to use.

I'm thinking, now that I'm back in good spirits, that maybe the solutions to all these woes is a nice Russian mail order bride. She could take care of SWMBO, and take care of some of the things that SWMBO isn't going to be taking care of for a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time with those bags hanging out of her, and about 300 metric feet of healing incisions. A nice pretty Russian mail order bride who knows how to cook and clean and, um, perform other duties.

Just have to get gay marriage approved and constitutionalized. Polygamy has to follow. Then I get my second wife. :)

(Yeah, right. I can barely afford ONE of these critters.)

I'm glad she's home. I'm way too familiar with the hospital staff. Hell of it is I never did use the elevator. Took the stairs, like that commercial. My love handles are still here, and I gained 15 pounds. That sucks. I should sue the people who made that commercial for false advertising. :)

[Paul in MN]

commercial.

With six weeks off she will just likely start to feel human again. Plenty of time for the mail order to come in and take care of things. :-) Don't forget about the penalty for bigamy though Michael......... That's right; two mother-in-laws....

Take care, and all the best to you in '05

Paul

[Mark & Juanita]

Glad to hear she's home and on the mend.

Keep up the positive attitude.

What's that old saw? "Polygamy is the act of having one too many wives. Some would argue that monogamy is the same thing." :-)

Yeah, PSA's aren't always all they are cracked up to be.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Now we'll just use some glue to hold things in place until the brads dry +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Dave Balderstone]

Good news! Happy New Year to the both of you.

[jo4hn]

[snip]

That is great news. I assume that she has retaken the laundry job from you. Has she also started to buy new versions of the stuff you trashed? mahalo, jo4hn

[Phisherman]

Glad to hear she is doing fine. I also got a pedometer for Christmas. It looks like I'm doing 6-7 miles on a typical day (have gone as far up as 12 miles when I go hiking), although it feels like more since there's a lot of up-and-down hills. Funny how my shoes are worn out and torn (they embarrass my S.O.), but sooo comfortable. Walking is good!

[Tim Douglass]

Good to hear. You'll get through this, but the healing up at home time seems to be the worst part in some ways. Most people tend to get very irritable after a week or so of not being able to do what they want to do. Just hang in there, smile, and let the ill temper go by you. Meanwhile just be thankful that she is home and doing better.

Ohhh... bad plan. One wife is more than any normal man can deal with. Two will mean that you will have to go to driving long haul and only being home 3 days a month. Sheesh. I hide in the shop regularly to get away from one, two is just unimaginable.

And there is always that point!

Exercise won't take weight off if you are under stress. Stress inhibits the burning of fat for some reason, but if you keep at the exercise they say it will eventually do the job. I'm trying the same type of thing, so hang in there.

Tim Douglass

[Silvan]

Not yet on either score. So far, she stays on the couch all day, and then at bedtime she lays down on the couch, on a huge pile of pillows to keep her head up. Going on two nights now.

It's kinda like she's still in the hospital, only it's a shorter walk to visit her now.

[Glenna Rose]

I'll vouch for stress keeping on the weight. For months after my youngest son's death, I averaged less than 500 calories a day (some days eating nothing for 2-3 days at a time) and didn't lose an ounce. Based on food intake, I should have been skin and bones within six months.

Those who tell you exercise and reduction in food intake *will* result in weight loss can only be referring to something that might approach normal in the rest of your life. Stress initiates all sorts of things in our bodies, many of which researchers admit they don't fully understand.

It seems logical that one's weight will maintain, rather than go back to what it was before the stress gain, until the stress is behind you.

Glenna

[Silvan]

Well, the first one is a comfortable 80 miles away, and the other one would be, what, 6,000 miles away? I could swing that.

[Nate Perkins]

Silvan wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Hey, congrats. It's good to get out of the hospital as soon as they let you go. First, it gets you away from the *^% drug-resistant bacterial infections that are becoming more common at hospitals. Second, everyone's morale starts improving immensely (priceless).

You better not let her see that or she'll be up outta that bed whipping up on you, bags/bulbs/foleys and all. :-)

We are glad she's doing well. You will know when success is achieved because she'll be back to yelling at you for making noise and tracking sawdust in the house.

[Silvan]

She's used to me. I probably told her that already. :)

Yup, pretty much. :)

[George E. Cawthon]

Yeah, Right! Notice all those fat Jews in Nazi prison camps. Stress kept them from losing weight, huh? Stress may do a lot of things like cause depression, reduced physical activity, forgetfulness, delusions, etc. but it doesn't change the laws of physics and chemistry. One may bloat, like you see with kids that are starving, but one does not maintain fat or muscle when one is starving. If you truly ate very little and didn't lose weight, then you severely reduce physical activity and/or you became bloated with water.

Mother's that cook the meals and never eat at the table often can't understand why they get fatter and fatter. But and independent observer may note the intake of 2500 calories per day in tiny sample, but that isn't a real meal, is it?

Researcher may not understand somethings, but they know lack of oxygen causes death (quickly), lack of water causes death (in days) and lack of food causes death (in weeks to months). And the time before death in all of the above is progressively shortened with increased exercise.

[Tim Douglass]

No one is talking about starvation, which is something quite different. Stress inhibits the thingys in your fat cells that allow them to release fat into the bloodstream when it is needed by the muscles. That is one of the reasons why stress makes you tired - your body is storing energy rather than using it. Obviously if you cut your calorie intake down for an extended period of time you will lose weight eventually, but the biochemists tell us that you can cut *way* back on calories and still gain weight if you aren't burning fat. Exercise helps reduce stress and also increases the body's ability to burn fat, so it is a two way win, but it takes a lot of it over a long period of time before the benefits start to show up. We are talking an hour of steady walking several days a week for a month or more before the benefits really begin.

As to starvation, any sudden drop in your body's calorie intake will trigger a retention reaction. Fasting for 2 days a week will almost always cause you to gain weight, even if your total weekly calorie intake is reduced. I don't think that gradual reductions in quantity (or even just a reduction from way too much to an ok amount) will cause that reaction.

So your point is?

Tim Douglass