Finally delurking

**Boris Losdindawoods** · 04-05-2010, 21:26

Hey, hammockforums! Hello from South Carlina. I've been reading HF occasionally since the fall of '08 and fairly religiously for the last couple of months so it's time to delurk and say hi.

This crazy hammock addiction was started after a conversation with a buddy in the fall of '08 when he mentioned that he was going to spend two weeks on the AT in the summer of '09. It sounded like a blast to me so of course I said I'd join him but all of my previous camping experience was car camping. If I were being frugal, I probably could have cut my gear's weight down to 60# before food. No problem, that's why Al Gore invented the internet. I just needed a replacement for my 22# tent and my 6# cot and my 9# sleeping bag and my 8# camp stove and and and... Easy, right? That's when I first spotted Hammock Forums and fell in love with the idea of NOT sleeping on rocks and NOT crawling into a tiny tent on the ground and NOT rolling around in the dirt.

Ok, reality check: I didn't really have much chance of actually surviving a full day on the AT much less two weeks. I wasn't sedentary, but my exercise was 100% biking and my weight was hovering right around 384#. More to the point, that also put me solidly outside the weight range of any commercial hammock so I gave up on the beautiful thought of sleeping well while camping and resigned myself to finding a lightweight tent.

Then in November of '08 my wife announced that she was going to do the Atkins diet for a month or so because she wanted to lose 10 pounds before Christmas. Atkins? That's the Flintstone's meat, meat, and meat diet, right? SIGN ME UP! Anyway, it's lucky that I hadn't bought a tent yet becuase on January 11th I was legal for a Hennessy Safari. I placed my order on the same day that the scale finally read 350#. By the time June rolled around, I was at 292#. With my full pack, I stepped onto the AT outside Front Royal with a total weight that was over 50# lighter than my nekkid weight 7 months before, but the BEST PART was that I wasn't sleeping on the ground!

My hammock was one of the best parts of those painful, miserable, ridiculous, evil, amazing, unforgetable, wonderful 10 days.

I can't say that 100% of my hammock knowledge has come from hammockforums, but I can't think of a single idea or method that didn't either come from here or come from somebody who is a regular here. So thanks for the info, folks.

Boris

p.s. on the off chance that you were on the AT in mid June of '09 between Front Royal and Duncannon and met a big, bald guy called being called Camper, that was me. Why Boris? That's another long story.

**mbiraman** · 04-05-2010, 22:12

Welcome Boris. Glad you where able to get a hammock for yourself and also congrates on losing some weight for a more healthy life. Not an easy thing but your doing it.

**Hawk-eye** · 04-05-2010, 22:22

Welcome to the forums ... from your neighbors just north of you. Hope to see you up our way sometime. Lot's of hammocking going on in NC.

Got some pretty good barbeque up our way for that meat diet!

Congrats on the weight loss ... it's not easy I know!

**ikemouser** · 05-14-2010, 06:15

Good recovery story, im always amazed how people get so big. Seems to me that if you want to get in shape you have to work hard, but if you want to get outta shape you have just as hard too. But guess its more mental getting big, you have to suffer through all those food addictions and forceing yourself to shovel down ridiculous amounts of calories daily, then sit and sit and sit while your mentally run down from all the self-abuse, its like a slow suicide. I've never been big, but thats what i imagine its like, a vicious cycle of knowing your harming yourself, then doing it some more. To come back from that is a great accomplishment, cant think of too many things harder than that.

Hiking for me is the best way to lose weight, no matter how ripped i am i always lose at least 5 lbs when im out for more than a week. You are forced to eat less and be active all day.

Its funny really, when i was in the philipines hiking and even in urban areas i saw NOT ONE fat person. I don't mean obese-because there were none-i mean even people say 30-40lbs overweight were hard to find. Thats why i don't buy the its genetic argument. In some rare cases it may be, but most of the time it comes down to the obese persons habits. Its especially striking because of where im from (kentucky), obeseity ground zero. Whats the difference between here and there? They have kfc, mcondalds too, but its so expensive the average citizen cannot afford it. Its actually cheaper than here, a value meal would be around 2-3 dollars. Anyway, the CHEAP and abundant availibility of seriously unhealthy food in America couple with laziness and peoples capacity to willfully and shamelessly gorge themselves daily is the problem in this country.\

Congrats on the weight loss, your not the norm. Watch out for the relapse, it begins with little rewards(oh i worked hard today, i can have some cake). Don't listen to that voice.

**NCPatrick** · 05-14-2010, 06:58

Didn't see this until today. Welcome to the posting side of HF! Hope to meet you sometime at one of the hangouts.

**MML** · 05-14-2010, 07:03

Great story--I am also new to hammocks and I know that this Hammock style of getting out to see God's great wilderness is the plan for me.
I appreciate your story and honesty !!

**Boris Losdindawoods** · 05-14-2010, 09:10

Actually, in many cases exercise is completely irrelevant to weight loss unless you first get insulin production under control. What I learned after testing, testing, testing, and more testing is that my pancreas pretty much leaks insulin if I'm just in the same room with a carbohydrate. It's kinda like the opposite of what you think of as diabetes. As long as there's insulin in the blood, the body's ability to burn fat is disabled no matter what. No amount of exercise will make any difference until that insulin has been metabolized because even if my body wants/needs to burn stored fat, the insulin is still there preventing me from burning my fat reserves. The second insulin whammy is glycogen. Glycogen is your body's short term energy storage and it's what keeps you going between meals, overnight, etc. If your body has extra insulin laying around, the only thing it's good for is making glycogen. With practice (40 years worth), my liver and muscles have gotten really good at storing glycogen and even if I manage to shut down insulin production for a few hours or a few days, my body is going to burn that stored glycogen first because that's more efficient. Urine testing can very easily monitor the transition from burning glycogen to burning fat and I've found that my body stores about 3 days worth of glycogen which means I have to stop my body from producing glycogen, then burn through all of the stored glycogen, and only then will I start burning fat.

5% of the US population is diagnosed with diabetes and another 2% to 10% are undiagnosed with a lesser degree of diabetes. That diagnosis usually comes because they have hypoinsulinemia in which the body doesn't produce enough (or any) insulin and the options are to either fall over dead or start managing it. If somebody is sweaty, trembling, fainting, etc, it's pretty obvious that they need medical help and they end up with a diagnosis and a treatment. On the other end of the homo sapiens bell curve, hyperinsulemia doesn't cause those easy symptoms. Instead its symptoms are weight gain, sugar cravings, intense hunger, fatigue, memory loss, emotional instability, and lack of motivation. In other words fat, lazy, and cranky but NOT passing out or dying so nobody calls an ambulance, there's no diagnosis other than being shunned by society, and there's no treatment.

So, for me, the only way to control my weight is to control the insulin. No amount of exercise will ever make me lose weight if the insulin is out of control and I've proven that my body is quite capable of maintaining 380+ pounds on a 1500 calorie diet of fruits and other "healthy" stuff. Now that I understand what's going on, it's easy to handle. I can still have that piece of red velvet cake, I just need to be smart about what other raw materials I give my body to play with while the insulin flood is being metabolized.

I'll get down off my soapbox now.

It's hard to shut up when something completely changes (saves?) your life.

**ikemouser** · 05-14-2010, 09:43

Originally Posted by Boris Losdindawoods

Actually, in many cases exercise is completely irrelevant to weight loss unless you first get insulin production under control. What I learned after testing, testing, testing, and more testing is that my pancreas pretty much leaks insulin if I'm just in the same room with a carbohydrate. It's kinda like the opposite of what you think of as diabetes. As long as there's insulin in the blood, the body's ability to burn fat is disabled no matter what. No amount of exercise will make any difference until that insulin has been metabolized because even if my body wants/needs to burn stored fat, the insulin is still there preventing me from burning my fat reserves. The second insulin whammy is glycogen. Glycogen is your body's short term energy storage and it's what keeps you going between meals, overnight, etc. If your body has extra insulin laying around, the only thing it's good for is making glycogen. With practice (40 years worth), my liver and muscles have gotten really good at storing glycogen and even if I manage to shut down insulin production for a few hours or a few days, my body is going to burn that stored glycogen first because that's more efficient. Urine testing can very easily monitor the transition from burning glycogen to burning fat and I've found that my body stores about 3 days worth of glycogen which means I have to stop my body from producing glycogen, then burn through all of the stored glycogen, and only then will I start burning fat.

5% of the US population is diagnosed with diabetes and another 2% to 10% are undiagnosed with a lesser degree of diabetes. That diagnosis usually comes because they have hypoinsulinemia in which the body doesn't produce enough (or any) insulin and the options are to either fall over dead or start managing it. If somebody is sweaty, trembling, fainting, etc, it's pretty obvious that they need medical help and they end up with a diagnosis and a treatment. On the other end of the homo sapiens bell curve, hyperinsulemia doesn't cause those easy symptoms. Instead its symptoms are weight gain, sugar cravings, intense hunger, fatigue, memory loss, emotional instability, and lack of motivation. In other words fat, lazy, and cranky but NOT passing out or dying so nobody calls an ambulance, there's no diagnosis other than being shunned by society, and there's no treatment.

So, for me, the only way to control my weight is to control the insulin. No amount of exercise will ever make me lose weight if the insulin is out of control and I've proven that my body is quite capable of maintaining 380+ pounds on a 1500 calorie diet of fruits and other "healthy" stuff. Now that I understand what's going on, it's easy to handle. I can still have that piece of red velvet cake, I just need to be smart about what other raw materials I give my body to play with while the insulin flood is being metabolized.

I'll get down off my soapbox now.

It's hard to shut up when something completely changes (saves?) your life.

You should be proud, That is one hell of an uphill battle, especially when you really need extreme mental toughness to continue. It's easy to start, but to keep going when it gets tough, thats the challenge. Great job, hopefully you will be an example to many more people that it can be done from the worst possible scenario. Great pics, its like a different person!!! Its great for you because you like hiking, so you can marry two of your passions in life, you can keep cutting while having the time of your life! The only way from here is up, keep going!

**Cranky Bear** · 05-14-2010, 10:43

Sorry I missed this post but, Welcome to HF!!! Also congratulation's on the ever so life changing event of loosing sooooo much weight!!! Hope to meet you at a hang some day!!!!!!