I’ve not been doing well with it. The last few weeks have been full of birthdays and mothersdays, neither is particularly conducive to dieting.

I’ve been keeping track still, but not making very good choices. I haven’t been walking as much either. Add that all up and it equals a standstill. I’ve not lost nor gained any weight.

In other depressing news, we have been passed by every good storm over the last few weeks. I want some thunder and lightning, high winds and hail! Bring it baby, I’m ready!

See if you can figure that one out without using google!

Wednesday I am going to be getting some significant dental work done. I have put it off for too long. When it is all done, I will be toothless for awhile. I am sorry but I just can’t justify paying for temporary dentures, insanity! It’s alright though, the teeth I have now are not serving me very well.

Once I get this done, my gastro wants to start a new treatment plan. She was afraid to start it with so much wrong with my mouth. She claims it can cause complications, whatever. Alright, I will grant that it is an immunosuppressant, but what are the chances really?

This will be affecting my diet, not in a way I appreciate. Soft foods for awhile, at least until my benefit year is up and can use the insurance again. If someone had told me how expensive all this stuff is, I might have been a little more careful. No, probably not, but I would like to think so.

At any rate, if I post anything on Wednesday, take it with a grain of salt as I will be under the influence!

UPDATE: Appointment had to be canceled, dentist didn’t bother to pre authorize the visit so now I am in wait mode again, this is so frustrating!

Well, the new week is starting and I am already looking at a very busy week. Between open houses at the school I want to send the girls to and a couple photo shoots, it is going to be a real scramble to stay on track.

I have been dieting lately, well sort of. I have been following the weight watchers plan that my lovely wife Becky turned me on to. I wasn’t real keen on the whole points thing at first, but I am getting used to it. I have found that I am able to live on substantially less than I have been eating of late. The hardest part was giving up my sweet sweet Mountain Dew, but there is a savior in that. I discovered that diet Mountain Dew isn’t too bad, as a matter of fact, it’s pretty darn good.

Well that’s all for now. I will probably write up some boring stuff here in a few days about the photo shoots and how they go. Oh and maybe a quick one on my homemade photo umbrella stand that saved me a small fortune over buying one made for that purpose.

I have another test tomorrow. It sounds pleasant enough, not really. I am getting an Enteroclysis Thursday. I guess in some small way, I am looking forward to it as it is the last invasive test they have for me! Maybe I will take my camera and see if one of the nurses will take a shot of me with a tube in my nose, maybe not.

I start an clear fluid diet at noon today, about an hour and ten minutes from when I started writing this(time stamp on the blog is off a bit). I have my green jello all ready and plenty of green tea, so at least I am set there. Oh and I have my bottle of Magnesium Citrate too, woohoo, I guess we all know what I am going to be doing later!

Well, I am off to go eat something solid while I am still allowed to!

p.s. Enjoy the links, I sure did!

I am on a clear liquid diet today plus I get to take a bunch of yummy laxatives on top of that! Tomorrow I go in for testing, colonoscopy and an EGD. Yeah I am a lucky boy! Getting it from both ends in one day. Did I mention that I have been hacking up a lung since Saturday? Yeah it just keeps getting better.

Since I am miserable at the moment I am going to cut this short!

Let’s get this straight. I don’t believe in karma per se but if there was such a thing! See I was a miserable grump the other day to pretty much anyone who came in contact with me. Today, when I woke up I felt like crud, really nasty crud for that matter. I have what appears to be a cold though sometimes these turn into bronchitis for me. I am praying that will not be the case this time.

I have been reading a lot lately. More than I usually do, way more. I usually read one book at a time but I have been juggling two books plus my Bible. So far I have been doing well at it. No getting mixed up or losing what I had gleaned from either book. I also need to update my now reading over on the side bar. I actually finished the Dean Koontz book the other day and am in the process of reading something else.

I think the diet is going well although I cheated a bit over my birthday weekend. Some cake a few sodas and a trip to Joe’s Crab Shack because I love Joe’s! Becky and I shared the double dip appetizer and then I plunged into the fisherman’s platter. I could barely walk by the time we left but I was full! Anyway, back to the diet, I seem to be holding steady at the moment weight wise, this weekend didn’t seem to do too much damage.

Alright, so I was wrong, I didn’t post anything of use. Well nothing all that interesting has happened anyway. I wake up, I eat, I go to work, I come home, I go to sleep. Whew stop this crazy rollercoaster, I want off.

Life has been pretty boring lately, that or I haven’t been very attentive. I guess it could be either one. I did try a couple of new food items which I plan on reviewing soon. I figure I might as well write about all the fun I am having with my new diet. I have found things that I had no idea they would ever make organic. For instance, did you know they make organic beer? I had no idea, thats for sure. If I ever find some of it, I am going to try it! For purely scientific reasons mind you.

I have got to get to bed. I need my daily dose of tossing and turning.

Then again, blogging un-medicated isn’t that much better!

Well the dentist visit went alright, you know, for getting a tooth ripped out and all. It wasn’t fun but not entirely too unpleasant either.

According to my junk scale, I have lost 9 pounds since starting my diet. I am off mountain dew and coca cola. While it has so far been impossible to stick to a completely organic diet, I have done pretty well. I have been eating healthier and following as many of the recommendations of The Makers Diet as I can. Honestly, a lot of the foods he recommends are quite good actually. There are some recipe’s in the book also that I want to try. Getting some of the ingredients has proven problematic as the local health food store is quite pricey.

The local chain stores carry some of the stuff, but wandering around them with all the garbage I am not allowed to have makes it quite an adventure. I want junk food, really really want it. But realizing that it is taking years off my already short time on this planet makes them somewhat less appealing.

I am just blathering again with no apparent goal in mind so I will sign off for now.

God bless,
Jeff A

I am off work Friday, I get to go see the dentist and have them rip out a tooth. I have been putting this off for awhile but it needs done and now is as good a time as any, plus it gets me out of work for a day!

The diet is going well. I have had a few people ask me if I am losing weight, so either it is noticeable, or they are trying to be nice. Considering the people who have commented, it must be noticeable.

About the title, for those who don’t get it. He played a dentist in “Little Shop of Horrors”, I do not need that kind of dentistry!

If you look over to the right in the now reading section you will note that I am currently reading The Maker’s Diet. Yeah thats right, it’s a diet book, but unlike any I have ever tried before. It is biblically based and quite interesting.

I picked this up because the Author, Jordan S. Rubin, has Chrones disease also. His was much worse than mine, he was pretty much on deaths door as he wasn’t responding to conventional treatment. He had begun trying everything that was recommended to him in the hopes of getting better.

The Maker’s diet is the result of his journey through illness. That is far from the whole story but if you really want to hear it all you should buy the book. The diet part itself is going to be hard as I will be required to give up a few things that I really love, the main one being pork. On the plus side I have already found alternatives to most of the pork products that I consume.

Hopefully following this diet will bring my digestive system back into some semblance of normality. Feeling this way all the time is very tiring and really doesn’t help with the depression all that much either.

I will try to keep you abreast of my progress through this blog when I start. I have to read through the whole book and prepare myself for this as it will be hard for me when everyone else in the house is eating something that I can no longer have. I have been dropping a few things here and there from my diet already so that I don’t have to drop everything all at once and go into some strange frenzy the first time I see someone eating bacon. I have added a category for this, hopefully I will stick to this and make some progress before I wimp out!