By GENEVIEVE A. SUZUKI |\u00a0La Mesa Courier<\/p>\n
It should come as no surprise to any reader who has stayed with me for the past several years that I, as with many of my fellow Americans, have struggled mightily with my weight.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve written about working out and trying to eat healthy. I\u2019ve waxed poetic about how this year would be el<\/em> year and how I had finally discovered the secret to success.<\/p>\n And then, as with many of those fellow Americans, I fell back into bad habits, whether it was coming up with random excuses on why I couldn\u2019t work out, comforting myself after a bad day with Starbucks or rewarding myself for a good day with a trip to the donut shop.<\/p>\n When I found out I was still prediabetic, almost four years after I had gestational diabetes while pregnant with my son, I was crushed. My grandmother died with diabetes, suffering from complications associated with the disease. She lost a leg and was on regular dialysis. I also recently found out last summer that my father was also a Type-2 diabetic.<\/p>\n After reading an article in Women\u2019s Health, which said weight loss is 80% diet and 20% exercise, I decided to make a serious dietary difference by calling Kaiser to sign up for its medically-supervised fasting program.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve ever wanted to know what makes you tick, go on a fast.<\/p>\n Plato and Aristotle were allegedly fast devotees; Benjamin Franklin believed fasting to be among the best medicines; and Mark Twain said, \u201cA little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors.\u201d<\/p>\n Siddhartha fasted before becoming the Buddha and Jesus Christ fasted for 40 days and nights before beating temptation by Satan and beginning his ministry.<\/p>\n A fast will clear your mind better than a year\u2019s worth of meditation.<\/p>\n The Kaiser fast is pretty simple: You drink a shake five times a day and consume a lot of water in between. There are two soups you can throw into the mix, but you can only have two soups max. There are no breaks and there is almost nothing to chew.<\/p>\n The first week I did it I was running on adrenaline. \u201cI\u2019m on a fast!\u201d I confided to anyone who would listen. Of the seemingly thousands I told, 99% were reluctant listeners, trapped by circumstance, whether it was because they were at work, standing in a line at the grocery store, or stranded in an elevator with me.<\/p>\n The second week of the fast I felt borderline homicidal when I smelled cooking meat. I had to step away from the dinner table with my non-fasting family to take myself to Grossmont Center to walk around and get my mind off dinner.<\/p>\n But, as they say, it takes 21 days to build or break a habit. I\u2019ve broken through the hardest part and am now taking each lesson as they come. Figuring out food had become a crutch for dealing with life was likely the most valuable awareness.<\/p>\n Another discovery is how kind restaurant folk are when you\u2019re the only one fasting at the table. A server at Banbu Sushi Bar & Grill on Fletcher Parkway brought me a bowl of hot water for my soup and a refreshing sparkling water on Father\u2019s Day with the family. Another server, this time at Claim Jumper, reassured me, \u201cI got you!\u201d and gave me a fancy glass for another sparkling water toast.<\/p>\n The most ironic thing about this \u201cfast\u201d is how un-fast this process has been. Eight weeks into the 20-week fast, I am at least committed too much to turn back.<\/p>\n What I\u2019d like to do is use this column to learn more about how we in La Mesa can be healthy. As the Chinese proverb says, \u201cA journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,\u201d so step up, kind reader, so we may journey together to a life free of insulin injections and regular A1C tests.<\/p>\n \u2014 Genevieve A. Suzuki es una abogada local que vive y trabaja en La Mesa.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By GENEVIEVE A. SUZUKI |\u00a0La Mesa Courier It should come as no surprise to any reader who has stayed with me for the past several years that I, as with many of my fellow Americans, have struggled mightily with my weight. I\u2019ve written about working out and trying to eat healthy. I\u2019ve waxed poetic about […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":729,"featured_media":226455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11548","_seopress_titles_title":"Gen X in La Mesa","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11548],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-la-mesa-courier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/729"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}