OK, there is now no doubt in my mind that what’s happening to my toe is gout. Last night, the pain was bad enough to wake me up, so I took more advil and went back to sleep. Today I took some alleve, which really did work for about 12 hours, and is now starting to wear off so I took another.

I’m going in to the doctor tomorrow morning at 9:45 (yes, saturday) so we’ll see what he has to say. He will probably say to keep taking the alleve and change my diet. Apparently, burning fat on the low-carb diet also contributes to uric acid in the blood, so that compounds the effect of eating more meats. I have been making sure to drink lots of water.

Damn it, I don’t want my body to fail me. That’s enough. At least wait until I’m 40 to start betraying me.

Also: ow.

Update, Saturday: Doctor says he agrees, it is probably gout. I have a script for Colchicine and another for Incomethacin (an NSAID like advil or alleve). Doctor also said it’s OK to stop taking Thiazide and to double up on the Lotensin to see if my BP comes back down. I also went for a blood test to confirm the uric acid level, and if uric acid is not high, we may have to look at other causes.

Slightly good news, the pain is a lot better today, back to Thursday level. I think Friday was the worst of it. I hope.

Good news… I have lost about 8 or 9 pounds, after being on the low-carb diet for a little over 3 weeks.

Bad news… I developed some excruciating pain in my big toe. I can’t think what I might have done to bruise or strain it. What does a painful toe have to do with my diet? Hopefully nothing, but it could be gout. According to wikipedia: Gout is a form of arthritis caused by the accumulation of uric acid crystals in joints. It is an immensely painful disease, which in most cases affects only one joint, most commonly the big toe.

I really hope I don’t have that I hope it’s just a sprained toe… but even if I do, changing to a more normal diet would probably correct it. i.e. it’s a blood chemistry thing, not an infection or cancer-type thing.

I don’t think I will stay on the low-carb plan much longer. I’m probably going to start looking into weight watchers. However, in other good news, I still don’t feel I have taxed my willpower much. I just need to decide what an appropriate diet is, for my goals, and I think executing it should be totally within my power.

The times that have been difficult in sticking to the diet have been going out to lunch with friends, or going to party-like functions where food is served. I think in those situations it would be a good idea to find one thing that I can eat, eat a small amount, and then eat something more appropriate when I get done.

Tonight we had esmerel, merlinofchaos, and da_zhuang around for dinner. Everything turned out well, I think. And, I think just about everything was low-carb, which was good for my diet. I probably had more food than I planned to, but I think I’ve done reasonably well the last week or so, so I’m not going to feel guilty.

Salad with arugulla, butter lettuce, radicchio, cucumbers, tomato, avocado, green onion.
Two salad dressings (soy-mayo and honey mustard) made with the homemade mayo. Merlin made the honey mustard… turned out good
Artichokes, a little tiny bit overdone but I don’t think anyone noticed.
Dipping sauce, about 3 parts mayo to 1 part vietnamese “chili garlic sauce” – this was a hit I think.
Meat, which I thought was filet mignon, but was probably some other loin cut. Salt, garlic, pepper. Broiled 5 min each side. (Supermarkets don’t seem to sell filet much anymore.)
Broccoli, steamed, which was probably overkill but I wanted something else in case the ‘chokes didn’t work.

We have cool friends. (p.s. dear klae: Love ya! Mean it!)

I believe I have lost roughly 3 pounds over the last 2 weeks. According to the medical-style scale downstairs, I currently weigh 255 with shoes on, 252 with shoes off. The same scale put me at 258 two weeks ago, and still at 258 one week ago. So, three pounds lighter or so.

On advice from a friend, I decided to “make the food boring and get it over with”. So, for the next couple weeks I will be on the “lunchmeat and salad” diet.

If you had asked me a month ago, I would have said that such a diet would drive me crazy. Strangely, I am not going crazy with craving stuff I can’t have. I don’t think I have really strained my willpower yet. It’s more of a logistical problem: most, if not all, of the foods I normally eat are now verboten, so I’m left with the puzzle of “what the hell do I eat?”
More diet stuff

I wrote down my foods but I won’t copy them all here. The short version is that I have been sticking to the low-carb diet (as described in Atkins “Induction phase”). It’s been a lot easier than I thought. I haven’t really been missing my bread, pasta or sugar. The real difficulty for me is finding interesting things to eat, but that is an intellectual and logistical problem for me, and not one that causes me much distress.

I haven’t lost any weight. If anything I added a pound, but it’s hard to tell, my weight fluctuates pretty widely. I have been between 252 and 257 all week.

I didn’t do much of any exercise since starting this diet 8 days ago, but I did the exercise bike yesterday and went up 25 flights of stairs today. Hopefully week 2 will show some progress, but I’m not overly concerned. I’m doing this more to get in tune with my body and adjust to a lower, but still moderate/normal carb intake, and losing weight this month is secondary.

Food entry

I have decided to try eating very few carbs for the next week or three, to see what happens.

In the past I have been skeptical of the low-carb (or no-carb) diets, mostly because I feel it should be possible to eat a “balanced” diet, in moderation, and be well, live happy. I have a feeling that the low-carb craze is a direct result of the “low fat” craze that has been omnipresent in this country & culture for some decades. We have become so used to “low fat” items and have traded carbs for fats. Now, the pendulum swings the other way and “low carb” is the craze, but neither of these appeals to my inner sense of symmetry.

However, the following factors have made me decide to try it, at least for a while.

• I have decided that there is probably no harm in trying it for a while, and much possibly to gain.
• I know I should probably eat less (of everything, but mostly less carbs).
• I have for some time thought that I probably eat about the right amount of food. This was not well-supported by the evidence: I can’t deny that I eat a lot, more than can reasonably be described as “normal”.
• What I have read about carbohydrates and insulin leads me to conclude that an excess of carbs makes a person crave more carbs. Therefore, the process is not self-correcting — it is possible for the system to get out of whack, and it’s very likely that my own carb/sweets craving is out of proportion with my actual needs — way out.
• Similarly, I entertained the thought that that all I would need to do is exercise and everything would be OK. Exercise is important to me, but so far I have not been willing or able to do the proper amount. I hope to be able to reach and maintain a “normal” amount of exercise, but it seems very unlikely that I will do the extra exercise needed to offset carelessness in the eating department. Besides, adding exercise to my life requires a time commitment, and eating less food does not.
• I used to somewhat enjoy being carefree (a.k.a. careless) with my eating. I am in the habit of just eating whatever is in front of me, or whatever sounds good, and to eat until I feel full. I have decided that I’m getting too old to be careless in this way. I already have some minor health consequences from eating too much. I would like to avoid major ones.
• I have decided that the best first step toward making eating a more conscious, informed decision is to try limiting my food intake as much as possible. This is probably the only way I will discover exactly what my body needs. I would like to be more aware of how my body reacts to food and the lack of it.
• Finally, I pride myself on being disciplined and careful in other aspects of my life. My eating habits are out of step with this vision of my enlightened self. After all, if my decisions about what to eat are not up to me, they are certainly not up to anyone else :) I believe I have the willpower reserves. There is no time like the present to put it to the test.

So, the current plan is to go low-carb for a while (temporary) but also in general to get in tune with what my body needs, and eat less. This will be hard, but not impossible. I love great food, especially sweets and rich foods, but I think in time I can learn to love them in smaller amounts.

Installed air conditioner (temporary installation, involves cardboard and packing tape. Made dinner. Did the rest of the dishes.
Updated to-do list.
Failed to do curtains, mainly because it’s phucking hot and the AC got bumped up in priority.

Oh and M and I got this new diet/exercise plan, called something like the Six Week Total Body Makeover. It allows you to customize exercise and diet to your particular body style. For me it’s a minor variation on “Eat a reasonable balance, watch portion sizes, and do something aerobic to burn fat” since I didn’t really want to shape my body or bulk up, though there are some shaping exercises I might do. For M there are more exercises and a diet that’s about the same with slightly smaller portions. Anyway, it should be interesting.