Tom's Diary

Today’s Activities

• Shower. DONE.
• Cat duty. DONE.
• Visit Mom at hospital.  DONE.
• Do all (3) loads of pending laundry.  DONE.  26 loads done in the new washer so far.

Log

08:45 AM: I’m up. Warm and windy this morning here, with temperatures in the upper 40s to low 50s.  Perhaps that groundhog was right after all, about spring being just around the corner.  If he is, then he just got lucky I suspect.  Yea, that’s it. 

09:45 AM: Left message with my lawyer, asking if I should just pay the water heater bill (including the disputed charges), or fight it, or perhaps just pay the undisputed portion.  I’ll probably hear from him tomorrow or Wednesday. 

11:05 AM: Leaving now to visit Mom at the hospital. 

11:40 AM: Arrived at hospital to find Mom sitting in her wheelchair, lodging a complaint with the head nurse about another nurse that was rather rude to her over the weekend. 

01:00 PM: I took Mom the fifteen get-well and Valentine’s Day cards she’s received at home over the past couple weeks, and I think she opened each and every one in front of me, and read many of them aloud.  That seemed to make her happy that so many folks thought to send a card. 

02:00 PM: Headed down to the Subway shop to get some lunch and to wait for my ride back home.

03:05 PM: My ride arrived.

03:45 PM: I’m home again.  No calls from the water heater vendor in regards to the message I left them over the weekend about the charges I disputed.  Looks like the money guy there is still ignoring me. 

04:00 PM: Started the laundry.

04:30 PM: Nap time.  Back later.

05:30 PM: I’m awake again.

07:10 PM: Watched today’s episode of   The Young and the Restless   on the DVR. 

08:00 PM: Talked with sister Christine to update her on Mom’s condition.  Mom is set to move to her new permanent long-term care facility  tomorrow.

09:00 PM: Made a batch of those Jiffy corn muffins again, but was a bit unnerved when, upon reading the box closely, I discovered that they contain small amounts of hydrogenated fats.  Man, I must be skeptical of any food that’s too easy and convenient to make.  Plus, they also carry some added sugar.  Hmmm.  That’s why they’re rather addictive.  I think I’ll look into buying some Indian Head corn meal next time and make a truly homemade batch of my own recipe of corn muffins or cornbread, to get away from all this other stuff that I wish not to appear in my foods.  I love corn but not all the additives they put in the various mixes.  Grrrrr. Perhaps I’ll get a stone and coarse-grind my own corn meal. 

10:00 PM: We’ve finished folding all the clothes washed earlier, and [Emmy] is almost completely packed for her return to her Pittsburgh home later this week. 

11:00 PM: Watched tonight’s episode of   Hawaii Five-0. 

11:30 PM: Gave [Emmy]   all the other Valentine’s Day gifts I bought for her.  She was exceptionally thrilled with the heart-shaped tin of Ghirardelli chocolate. But the red stuff animal with the heart-shaped nose and the puffy and soft heart in its paw that said ‘Kiss Me’ almost made her cry with joy.  It felt nice to brighten her February 14th. 

12:15 AM: Bed time.  More later.  Good night. 

Tom Hesley

Received Mail and Shipments

None today. 

Related Posts

• Today’s Diet: 2011-02-14

Boy, with all the hubbub lately about diet soda possibly being linked to heart disease, I’m glad I resolved to give it up in 2011. So far, I’ve not had it at all this year, and yesterday’s reports make staying away from it a whole lot easier. So thank goodness for bad news.  I thought decades ago that by replacing sugary regular soda pop with diet that I was definitely doing myself good.  But that may in fact not have been the case. 

I replaced diet soda with low-sodium V8 vegetable juice. Not sweet. But it works.   Then too, I have perhaps 20 different flavors of herbal tea that I sweeten with stevia; two or three big mugs of it per day. I had begun phasing out all consumption of that bad diet soda some years ago, and tea was one of my diet pop substitutes along with the V8. I occasionally drink organic skim milk as well.

About stevia: They’ve managed to get rid of that aftertaste in Now Stevia Extract and Now Stevia Glycerite. I’ve used these products for over a decade now. You can get an eight-ounce bottle of the glycerite for under $15. Still a bit pricey to be sure. But good long-term health is worth it I think.  

Related Posts

• Today’s Business: 2011-02-11

Today’s Activities

• Shower.  DONE.
• Cat duty.  DONE.
• Do all pending laundry.  IN PROGRESS.

Log

10:00 AM: I’m up.  Another hot one today.  So again, we’ll probably stay indoors until this evening.

10:15 AM: Today’s [Tad's] 50th birthday.  I wished him well on Facebook through [Morra].

10:30 AM: Getting the laundry going again today.  There’s a lot, that I hope to finish by this evening.

12:30 PM: Watched   KDKA TV’s Local News at Noon.

01:15 PM: Facebooked a while.  I now have 247 friends and my Facebook page has 32 fans.

02:45 PM: Watched today’s episode of    The Young and the Restless   on the DVR.

03:15 PM: There’s news from Philadelphia that a barge ran into a duck boat on the Delaware river, capsizing the duck boat.  No reports of injuries or deaths so far.  But thirty people are reported to have been thrown into the water from the smaller vessel.

06:00 PM: iPodded on the south porch.  It’s not quite as hot today as yesterday, but still, the air out there was quite warm nonetheless.

08:00 PM: Watched   KDKA TV’s Local News at 6:00 PM   and   The CBS Evening News   at 7:00 PM:  Then, I walked over to Sheetz to grab a little supper.

08:05 PM: This headache I got on the 4th is finally subsiding.  It felt like another caffeine headache.  Perhaps all that chocolate candy I had triggered it.  Boy, it seems that I can’t screw up at all without paying dearly.  That little bit of flavorful enjoyment cost me three days of nauseating pains in the head.  Grrrrrr. Yet though less frequently these days, I keep going back for more.  So to a degree, I can relate to Mom’s struggle with avoiding the wrong foods.  She knows that they’re bad for her but keeps eating them.  Sometimes, I judge her for this; though I try hard not to.  Why?  Because after all, I’m as guilty of this destructive behavior as she; though I believe I have cut way back on habitual eating of bad foods as compared to how I used to eat in the eighties.  She on the other hand has made few if any healthful and permanent dietary adjustments to her regimen.  So I think I’m doing better at this than she, but not as well as I’d like.  I’ll keep at it however.

10:00 PM: [Emmy] and I hung out here in the office, talking about nothing and everything else too.    Now, we’re watching   CNN’s AC 360   to learn more about today’s earthquake in southern California.

11:00 PM: That earthquake apparently was minimally severe; as it received less than a minute of coverage.  Now, we’re watching   KDKA TV’s Local News at 11:00 PM.

11:35 PM: Okay, we’re turning in. Just one more day of this really hot weather; then, some relief over the weekend.  *loud applause*  So good night, and I’ll catch you back out here tomorrow.  Take care now.

Tom Hesley

Received Mail and Shipments

• Weekly coupon mailer.
• Bill for co-payment to Mom’s foot doctor.
• Netflix membership offer.  Not at this time, thanks.  I already have more movies and books to watch than I’ll probably ever complete in my life time. 

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• Audio Journal Information Page
• Today’s Diet: 2010-07-07
• Weight Loss: 2010

Today, I consumed the following items:

• Peppermint tea and diet caffeine-free Pepsi throughout the day.  0 calories.
• 01:00 PM: 1 pickled egg.  100 calories.
• 01:00 PM: Salad with assorted vegetables.  100 calories.
• 01:00 PM: Caesar dressing.  200 calories.
• 01:00 PM: 1 bowl of cheese soup.  400 calories
• 01:00 PM: Garlic bread.  400 calories.
• 01:00 PM: Soft serve ice cream with hot fudge.  400 calories.
• 05:15 PM: Multivitamin.  0 calories.
• 08:00 PM: 1.5 cups of skim milk.  120 calories.
• 08:00 PM: 1 dozen sugar-free vanilla wafers.  390 calories.
• 11:00 PM: 1 dozen sugar-free vanilla wafers.  390 calories.

Total calories: 2500.

Tom

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• Today’s Business: 2010-02-10
• Weight Loss: 2010

When I’ve observed the following symptoms in myself, careful inspection of my recent diet habits reveals that I’ve consumed lots of added sugar and other refined carbohydrates over a period of several days to a couple weeks:

• I feel hungry more often and more intensely besides.
• I crave sugary foods.  The more I’m eating, the more I want.
• So as a result, I often overeat when I’ve been consuming lots of sugar.
• Then, I gain weight.
• Blood triglyceride values rise sharply.
• So does my LDL cholesterol.
• Mosquitoes bite me more.
• More canker sores and cavities can appear.
• Irritants bother me a whole lot more.
• I complain and gripe  more.
• I feel at least a little tired throughout most days.
• Periods of full awareness become quite short and infrequent.
• Ability to concentrate and focus weakens.
• I take more naps.
• I experience more broken sleep at night.
• I acquire nervous habits like picking my fingers.
• I feel more depressed than usual.
• I remember more of my dreams, which tend to be stranger and more unsettling than is typical.
• I get more colds.

You may have experienced some of these, or perhaps you’ve seen other symptoms not listed here, develop in you.  But if you’re King Sugarholic like me, and have struggled to control your weight as I have, I think you’ll find that if you give up the added sugar, these problems will either disappear or become way less pronounced.  Hey, it’s worth a shot isn’t it?  Rather than spending all the time and money to treat each of these problems separately, wouldn’t it be wonderful to make just one fundamental change to the diet, and correct them all?  I believe that omitting added sugar can achieve this though admittedly, I’ve not been able to consistently stay away from it, because I like it way too much.     But one of these new years, the New Years resolution I make every year to swear off of all refined carbs just may take hold, like when I gave up snuff in 1986 and when I totally eliminated all alcohol consumption in 2004.  We’ll see.

Take care.

Tom Hesley

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• My Last Time Rubbing Snuff

Dear [Mentat],

Yes, I heard about Meckler’passing (details   here), and yes, I knew him pretty well back in the 80s.  I used to visit him and Deb when they lived at Moorhead, and we’d watch Hawaii-Five-0 on Sunday nights. 

Yep, Deb was on the heavy, as well as the unhealthy side – she had many medical issues, even in her younger years.

So, you want to make significant changes to your diet in the new year?  Feeling a little heavy, ‘eh?  Well, Changing life patterns involving food is, yes, much harder than with things that you can completely abolish without negative nutritional consequence, such as snuff or alcohol.  While complete cessation works best with the pure vices, it’s only marginally effective with ubiquitous foods; particularly when custom and people too, constantly campaign to get you to eat what you’d rather not.  Also the challenge grows in light of the idea that sugary and fatty items were often given to us as very young and impressionable children, as reward for good behavior, not to mention the notion that we’re somewhat pre-programmed to desire sweet and salty foods.  Those lacking this longing often didn’t survive in the wild in past generations.  So, not only did evolution program us to desire these foods, but we were taught to want them as well.  Double whammy! 

Besides, your situation is further complicated by your girlfriend’s relationship with food; she may make it difficult for you to eat well when she offers you junk.  Being that someone with whom we are fond can have great influence over our desires, you’ll probably find it difficult to stay on the straight and narrow if she’s baking you cakes, buying you candy, and so on.  If you’re going to maintain your resolve to eat better in the new year, then she and you will probably have to extensively negotiate, so that she does not inadvertently (or intentionally) sabotage your efforts. 

Yes, I’ve begun several successful weight-loss efforts in January, in years past.

As I implied earlier, completely giving up “the bad foods” all at once is probably not a good goal.  In my experience, I had to work into it over years because, especially when it comes to rituals surrounding the consumption of food, humans are indeed, quite the creatures of habit.  We want what we want, and this cannot easily be changed.  But I don’t buy the idea that a little sugar is as addictive as a lot of it.   While it is the case that the more of it you eat, the more you want, the reverse is also true.  That is: The less you eat, the less you want.  Now in an ideal world, yes, the absolute best approach would be to ban refined carbs like added sugar from your lips altogether.  But you’ll be hard pressed to maintain this stand if you run in social circles where people consume it. In my humble opinion, sugar addiction cannot be beaten by going cold-turkey.  As an intermediate step to quitting it, try using less of it, for sure.  But also check out the unbleached, organic sugars.  These are as sweet as traditional sugar, but are not quite as addictive because they give you fewer empty calories.  Also, that sweetener, Splenda, tastes almost exactly like sugar.  But it has zero calories.  Try this, or stevia, in your tea and on your cereal. 

Good luck in your efforts.

Are you at home now?

Tom Hesley

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• Richard Meckler Passed Away
• Today’s Business: 2009-11-20

Seven complete days in without refined carbs. My goal is to forever exclude refined sugar from passing through my lips. Flour is still okay. This is going to be a radical step forward to enhance my longevity; realizing that I’ll probably have to live a while longer in order to learn what I’ve apparently not learned so far, that will bring beautiful women into my life consistently. I haven’t learned it yet. And I want to be around long enough to learn it and then to enjoy the fruits for at least a couple years.

So let’s keep going on the sugar thing. I haven’t reduced my calorie intake again, yet. I need to start doing that though. I think we’ll start keeping the diary on the diet again today, and hold the calorie intake count at around 1000 or so, and then we’ll start peeling the pounds off once again. Hopefully this time, I’ll keep them off now that I’m avoiding the sugar.

Tom Hesley

I have gond 3 days in this year so far without refined carbs. Sugar cravings have not returned since the day before New Years when I ate those Good ‘n Plenties and Reese’s Peanut butter Cups as a parting treat. I did that with snuff too. The day before I quit that, I chewed a whole bunch of it. Now that I’ve enjoyed the treat, the treat has become the poison to avoid under fear of death.

Tom Hesley

I have one good day in without refined carbs. No sugar whatsoever, and I felt no sugar cravings yesterday. Interesting how a new year imparts to me a momentum to make the changes I’ve aspired to make the previous year. Let me restate the resolution once again: I want to completely give up added sugar. Unless the sugar is naturally occurring within the food I’m eating, I shall not eat the food that contains it. This means avoiding restaurants where most foods have added sugar. Or, if I can’t avoid going, just eat before going. That way, I’ll eat less of the bad stuff at the eatery. If I can’t eat before going, then I just won’t go.

Giving up sugar has proven more difficult than was snuff. Sugar after all is harder to avoid because it’s so much more ubiquitous than tobacco. It’s everywhere, whereas tobacco is not. I have in fact, broken the sugar addiction at times. Then there were other situations in which I ate sugar even though I didn’t feel a craving for it. Without the craving, I felt safe eating the sugar, erroneously believing that I’d finally beaten it.

I’ve often rewarded myself for breaking the sugar addiction, by eating more sugar. Bad! I can’t do that anymore. How far would I have gotten in my resolve to quit chewing snuff if I’d rewarded myself for going for a month without it by taking another chew? Not very far. So, I refuse to reward myself for going for a long period without sugar by eating sugar! I know how addictive it is, and that if I ever eat it again, I’ll reinstate my addiction to it.

I feel good about the changes I’ve made this year so far, young though the year is. I know I’m in for some rough times because avoiding sugar will be most difficult where people constantly consume so much of it. But I really want to make some headway in 2005. Not even just _headway_. I want to get all the way there this year to support my longevity. Period. Giving up sugar will help ensure that down the road when I do get sick, that my body will be better able to heal itself.

Tom Hesley

Dear [Tad],

Well, it finally happened. The Sheetz store across the street from here started carrying them yesterday. Needless to say, I had 4 of them. I’m such a gluten. This will be a real test, to see if I can keep from gaining weight now that the doughnuts are easily accessible.

Tom