Kirk, I am rapidly beginning to believe you are only interested in giving the many reasons why you are the way you are and the many excuses as to why you can't do any better. You are surrounded by successful people on this site (who push through pain on a daily basis to get things done every day) who can give you great strategies as well as facts to back up what they are telling you.
If you are here to preach (ie talking without listening), then you are wasting our time as well as your own. If you are unwilling to learn from those who have succeeded where you are clearly failing, then maybe you deserve the scorn due a person who is foolishly proud and willfully ignorant.
With that in mind, I'm going to try to engage you one last time.
...promise that another one is forthcoming about why I owe Dr. McDougall such a great debt of gratitude for freely making available his plant- and starch-based eating plan. I really don't see how I'd even be alive today without making major changes to my food choices. I understand that many people think it's the worst of all possible options, but that simply isn't true.
I don't post about these things for pity. I do it because I want to show others out there who may be stuck in the boat I was that there is a way out if you eat the right foods.
Kirk, John McDougall is a partisan ideologue who has sold you a very destructive vegan diet. His diet, based on some bullshit "paleo-diet" myth that our ancestors ate a majority of grains is a load of crap. Consuming between 700 and 1100 calories a day will certainly make you lose weight, no doubt, but it's in a way that POWs lost weight when they were in the Hanoi Hilton. You have deliberately put yourself on a starvation diet that consists of "starches" (ie carbohydrates - ie
sugar) and next to no protein that will serve to do nothing but run your blood sugar through the roof and cause your body to break down your muscle.
Wake up, Kirk, you are following a charlatan whose advice
will kill you. Are you so blind as to not see the damage you are continuing to do to yourself? Have you given any thought to the lack of consuming easily absorbed calcium (ie milk) that McDougall preaches has done to your bones?
Your diet should include easily absorbed minerals and fats that our bodies process, ie animal products. These fats, Omega 3 and 6, are necessary for you to live healthy. Eat more of the 3s than the 6s with a well balanced diet that includes
less "starches" and your life will improve dramatically. You, as an adult, need a minimum of 1500 calories per day to prevent your body from consuming itself. A minimum of 1500 calories, with exercise, will also prevent your immune system from weakening which will keep you healthier.
Here are just a few links that you might consider reading:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/500906-dangers-of-the-mcdougall-diet/http://www.diabetesdaily.com/forum/food-diet/37807-mcdougall-diet-low-fat-high-carb-plant-basedhttp://enlita.com/blog/mcdougall-program-diet-review-criticismThat diet has caused you to loose a lot of weight, Kirk, but the only long term benefit will be to those who have to carry your box to your final resting place.
Once a knee or other joint has no cartilage left, trying to use it further won't help. My knee joint is shot.
And while I'd love nothing more than to get a diagnosis and some help with this, it won't be forthcoming while I'm on only Medicare Part A
Those two lines (regular and bolded), juxtaposed against one another, do not add up. If you have no diagnosis, you do not have a clear picture and you have no idea if there is "no cartilage left" or not. If there wasn't, I can promise you that the "issues" you have would pale in comparison. It sounds good, and it certainly feeds the no hope victimhood you have created for yourself, but until you have a diagnosis you don't know diddly.
I didn't create our current system.
Nor are you doing anything to extract yourself from it.
You were handed an opportunity, a way to
earn something that would help your life instead of waiting for a less than adequate something that is going to magically
give you better care because a politician said so.
Did you take advantage of it? Or are you still stuck in the same hole?
There is no other explanation.
Oh, but there is. You're not going to like it, but there is another explanation. Stick with me, Kirk, I'm going to show you something I learned the hard way.
I do get up on my feet at least a dozen times every day, and I spend at least a few more minutes than is absolutely necessary for what it is I'm aiming to do -- i.e. going to the bathroom, fetching a drink or some food from the fridge, or whatever.
It's not enough, Kirk, not even close. You should be getting 30 minutes of exercise a day. With your current diet, you will be able to achieve little more than what you are doing now. Either way, it's not enough.
I found out my knee was getting severely bad when Jeanette was in the hospital for nearly two days, getting tests done and confirming her diagnosis of the valley fever. I was coming back from getting myself a drink from the kitchen when, halfway back to the bedroom, I had an almost blinding flash of pain from the bones in my right knee. Had it not been for the fact that the sink counter was to one side and the bedroom doorknob to the other, I'd have gone down flat on my face. I dropped the drink container, steadied myself against the sink counter, and waited for some of the pain to subside. I literally hobbled into the bedroom with the retrieved drink bottle under one arm, and both hands bracing against walls, tables and anything else I could use to minimize the weight on that knee.
This has continued to happen, although learning to keep that right knee rigidly locked has helped with the buckling, but the pain is at times excruciating. No exaggeration. Excruciating. I can sit here, and without really thinking about it, slide my right foot a couple of inches to try and make myself more comfortable, and sometimes the volume of the pop from that knee is almost as loud as a pencil snapping in half or a soda can opening.
The bottom line is that as much as I'm trying to fight it, the pain is not improving. In fact it is steadily worsening.
Muscular atrophy has more to do with your pain and buckling than anything else. You lost weight, lots of it, but your diet and sedentary lifestyle are doing more to contribute to that pain than anything else. Not using muscles, especially your leg muscles, will cause them to loosen and put the muscle and the ligaments/tendons they hold in non natural positions. This, I assure you, equals pain - lots of it. The addition of massive amounts of unfiltered plant toxins you have built up in your joints and muscles is going to act as a pain force multiplier.
Kirk, when you hurt, you sit down - that's a natural response to pain. The problem is that once you sit down and don't get back up, you slow your metabolism and that causes you to gain weight (this I'm sure you already know). Gaining weight from being sedentary will also cause your body to produce less testosterone and more estrogen which will continue the weight gain. Less testosterone in men means less fat burning capability and less muscle hardening/keeping "tone". Since you eat no easily absorbed animal protein and don't really exercise, you muscle is going to atrophy just that much faster; what muscle hasn't already been broken down and reabsorbed by your body.
That is why you have knee pain and "buckling", Kirk. Again, PM me and I will gladly tell you how I know all of this.
You have got to get off of that diet, do more than putter from place to place in the house, and get
moving. It's going to hurt like a mother****er at first and you're going to want to quit. You might need a knee brace for a while, but you have to push past that to get your body back to some type of normal health. You have to, or you are going to be dead before you are 50.
Kirk, if you need a knee brace, PM me and I'll send you one. No cost, free shipping, no strings attached, no shit.
I wake up in bed several times a night, having to try and adjust my position, with so much pain in this knee that I'm struggling not to yell out loud. It's at its worst when I try to sleep on my side, which is my favorite way to sleep. So, I'm forced to try and keep on my back, which is my least favorite way to sleep, but at least then the pain is not as bad.
Your muscular atrophy, combined with a worn out mattress, is the biggest contributor to this. Try putting a doubled pillow between your knees when you sleep on your side; see if that helps.
One final thought: When a star athlete (pick any highly physical, major sport), who has the finest doctors at his or her beck and call as a part of their contract, ends up on the disabled list due to a worn or injured joint, they're on that list because continuing to try to play would only ultimately serve to destroy their career and their quality of life.
This tells me that you have never played sports and you have never had to "play hurt". A "star athlete" plays hurt all of the time. They are taped, iced, braced, etc for most of a season and will not allow an "injured joint" to keep them off of the field. They do that because they are part of something greater than themselves and they are motivated to reach an objective (ie win) - something they don't let "pain" get in the way of. I can assure you that their "quality of life" is not a concern when they are on that field. If it were as such, nobody would play.
That is what makes them "star athletes", Kirk. That motivation and drive to push through and achieve is why they are stars and play at the levels they do. One does not have to be a "star athlete" to have motivation and drive, just the will to achieve no matter the cost.
Framing me as this lazy liberal fat dude who doesn't want to work is patently unfair.
Unfair? Who gives a damn about "fair". Life isn't "fair", Kirk, nor should it be. One does not achieve unless one has to struggle, and one does not truly appreciate things unless one
earns them; the harder the struggle, the more precious those things are. Anyone who tells you anything different is lying to you.
The sooner you disabuse yourself of this childish notion of "fair/unfair", the sooner you will set yourself free of your pain and dependance, Kirk. On all that is Holy, I promise you that. Handing someone something in the name of "fairness" only serves to make them put their hand out again and not expend effort. Helping someone up and helping them on their way is the more humane choice and the only one that will keep any type of social "safety net" from disappearing entirely.
You have a lot of "star athletes" here that "play hurt" every day, that push through every day, that grind themselves down every day to be what they are. A lot of hard work and success amongst the membership here at the Cave and a very low tolerance for anyone that says they "just can't do it". We'll help you onto the right path, but you are the one that has to walk it. Sitting down and saying "I can't, give me my thousandth cut of a penny" makes you look like a "lazy fat dude" who isn't worth the time, effort, nor tax money it takes to try and get you to put water back into the bucket.
Whatever your thoughts about what others think of you may not be "fair" to you, but your own words and actions have made them to be accurate; "fairness" of it be damned.
If I didn't care, I'd not be down 229 pounds from a crippling weight which less than 1% of people make it back from without gastric surgery. If I didn't care, my life would not be as much an open book as it is.
"Care" is not what it is, I'm certain you "care". What I see is a lack of discipline, humility, motivation, and drive. I see someone who sat down and doesn't believe they can still achieve on their own. I see someone who has, of their own free will, made themselves a terrified slave.
