Thanksgiving is over, but it was just another day here. I was on-call for my work which meant doing a whole lot of nothing. If I were to put a positive spin on it, I got paid for watching football. Now that's not a bad gig!
I went to the doctor on Tuesday for a check up. Most of my maladies are self-induced and can be self-corrected to a degree. My blood pressure medication was increased (again). Exactly as my doc says, "you could probably get off one of these medications if you lost 20-25 pounds. Maybe that could be the carrot on the end of the stick."
He's right. Not that being on two BP medications is making me go broke, but they are also not free. Also that fact that one med wasn't cutting it so another was added. Then a year later, the dose of that med was doubled is rather concerning. But this just in: I can do something about it if I want to.
Losing weight is something that's been in the back of my mind for a while. In 2012 I lost 50 pounds between April and September. I didn't go on a crash diet, I just started counting calories with a handy app called My Fitness Pal. I realized in short order just how much I was actually eating. I didn't exclude anything, but I made sure I measured every portion. A "serving" of ice cream and a "bowl" of ice cream (in my world) were two very different things. My lord, no wonder I was overweight!
After losing all that weight I didn't think I looked or felt any different, but in retrospect I certainly did. Only a handful of pictures survive of me at my thinnest in 2012 and wow... yes, I definitely looked different (better). I certainly felt better too, but I did a great job of lying to myself. I have slowly put almost every pound back on by falling back into old habits. Live and learn.
Taking off that much weight seems like a daunting task now. But it really isn't. Again I do a great job lying to myself; that's why jotting down these meandering thoughts can be helpful. I found losing weight easy. Keeping it off is a bitch, but I also did not have a plan for keeping it off. I did it all wrong last time. I am at the age where I need to change my lifestyle, not just my diet. That's the key. Now I know.
Certainly some of my weight is related to my beer/alcohol intake and that has certainly been curbed over the last few weeks. I know I make myself sound like a incapacitated drunk, and that's not the case. But yes, I probably drink more than the average person (at least I think I do... but maybe there are a lot of closet drinkers out there who don't admit how much they drink? I am pretty open about it). Anyway, I've had just a couple of pints of beer since the beginning of the month and my head space is better, I think.
Of course, this is a bad time to start thinking about losing weight. Over the holidays? Ha! But you have to start some time and I can keep lying to myself and say "I'll wait another five weeks until the new year." Yep, just keep procrastinating.
Well, this has been an stimulating entry. But it has also been on my mind lately. Then again, nobody is reading this, so it's okay.
I have finished Scattershot by Bernie Taupin. A well-written memoir; again, my only complaint is he didn't talk about why or how he started writing at all... and I wished he would have talked more about the inspirations behind his lyrics. He did on occasion, but not nearly enough for me.
I've now started reading Living the Beatles Legend, the first biography of the Beatles road manager/personal assistant, Mal Evans. Written by Kenneth Womack, the biography is based on Evans' memoir which he started to write 50 years ago and it is one of the huge missing pieces to Beatles history finally seeing the light of day. Years ago, I remember reading about a Mal Evans memoir which was never published. And now here it is.
A quick backstory, Evans was shot by Los Angeles police in 1976 at the age of 40 and his story was never told. He was estranged from his family and suffered from drug addiction and probably mental illness. A very sad ending to what everyone described as a very kind man.
He spent almost every waking hour with the Beatles from 1963 to 1970 and he managed to write this memoir before he died, but after his death, it was subsequently put in storage in a warehouse, along with his diaries, journals and photographs of his Beatles years, in New York City where it sat forgotten for years.
Long story short, the entire manuscript was almost thrown away when a warehouse worker recognized the value of what she was looking at and saved it. She somehow got in contact with Yoko Ono, who, much to her credit, got in touch with the right people and eventually all of Mal Evans' personal effects made it back to his family in England. More years past, and the idea for this book germinated.
And so far it is better than I anticipated. Credit to Womack, it is easy to read and easy to follow. I managed to plow through 100 pages yesterday, which is traveling at warp speed for me. I can't put it down.
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