2002-09-23 - 11:53 p.m.

Skippy is All Buff!

Well, today starts the third week of my low carbohydrate diet. As I was before, I am cautiously optimistic. It seems to be working as advertised, in fact better than I might have hoped, but there are still problems.

To my astonishment, my blood sugars seem to be staying down near the normal level, and this is without taking my diabetes medication. At the same time, I seem to be losing weight as a decent clip, but not to such an extent that I might be worried. I've lost six pounds in the last two weeks, which is perhaps a little faster than the usual maximum of 2� pounds a week, but I wouldn't say it is terribly out of line.

However, on the down side, I'm still having these days of terrible stupidity and/or low energy. I've heard that once your on this diet for a couple of weeks and you purge all the impurities out of your system you feel like Superman, but so far I've been feeling pretty much like Pa Kent. Again, I'm not 100% sure this is the diet's fault, I may be doing it wrong. However the whole point of this thing was to clear up my head, not make it fuzzier. I suppose the only way to tell if my thinking has gotten sharper would be to go to a chess tournament, but I'm not planning on doing that any time soon.

Still, the fact that the weight is coming off and my blood sugars are in the near-normal range without drugs is definitely an encouraging sign.

However, it's not enough to just diet, you have to exercise too. If I'm recalling what my doctor said correctly, he called exercise "the cheapest and most effective treatment there is."

The trouble is that by exercise he (and almost everyone else) means "aerobic exercise." However, according to Protein Power riding a stationary bike or running on a treadmill is not that effective a way to burn fat. In fact, they say that anaerobic exercise is the best way to lower your blood sugar and burn the pounds off. After all, it's muscles that burn fat, and the bigger your muscles are, the more fat you'll burn. Also, according to Lily, while aerobic exercise raises the level of your metabolism for a few hours, lifting weights can raise it for a whole day.

I've been riding my stationary bike for 45 minutes every other day, and sometimes it totally tuckers me out. In fact after I rode the bike today, I had to lay down and take a nap. Apparently my stamina is for shit.

With that in mind, I've been considering joining a gym. What made me think of all this was a conversation I had yesterday with my employee, Skippy. He used to cover the comic store two days a week, but these days he's only on Sundays, so I don't see him that often. I was watching him working in the back of the store, and it occurred to me that there was something different about him.

Holy crap! Skippy is getting all buff!

I hadn't really noticed before that, but he had lost a lot of weight, and seemed to be more firm and tanned. He also seemed more cheerful, and more energetic.

Prior to that, he had been packing on the pounds, and was looking pale, flabby and unhappy. Quite a turnaround.

Since I'm trying to do the same thing myself, I asked him what he was doing. He told me about a gym he had joined across town, and the program he was following there. It was a complete package - he had a trainer helping him with his exercising, and also with his diet. He wanted to reach a certain weight before he goes on vacation to Hawaii in November, and it looks like he's going to do it. Good for him!

Actually, I'm already a member of a gym, Holiday Health and Fitness. Unfortunately, they closed their Frown Town branch a few years ago, and the nearest one is almost a half hour away by car. The annual fee is cheap, but what good is it if I never go? Also the hour round trip car ride costs time and money, too. And as I remember, Holiday Health was kind of dumpy and had a ridiculous policy of being male-only on even numbered days and female-only on odd numbered days. I don't know if they do that any more.

I'm not quite to the point in Protein Power where they talk about exercise. When I get there I'll have a better idea what I'm looking for in a gym. In the meantime, I probably should make sure my membership in Holiday Health is up to date.