Last Tuesday I awoke with a sore big toe on my right foot. It felt like I’d sprained it in my sleep. Weird. I hobbled to work and told the people around me that I had somehow injured myself without realizing it. I limped through the day and wondered how long it would take before the pain subsided.

That night was pretty bad. Even lying in bed, my toe hurt like a mo-fo. Wednesday I went to work but I was miserable. “I’m taking you to urgent care,” my boss told me. I was not going to argue. Whatever I’d done to myself, I’d done a thorough job of it.

James Gillray, 1799

While I filled out the various forms and signed stuff, my boss and a coworker went to fetch food. I thought a Carne Asada Burrito and a Coke would be delicious and easy to handle in the waiting area. “Diet or regular?” Boss-lady asked, and I responded with my usual quip: “I prefer the known health consequences of sugar.”

They came back with the food, and I was just getting the last of the burrito down my gullet when my name was called. After a quick stop at the blood pressure machine (in the normal range, to my relief), I was parked in a room to wait for the doctor. While I waited I gently peeled off my sandal and sock (discomfort trumps fashion), and flipped through an issue of Entertainment Weekly looking for signs of intelligent life.

It was only a few minutes before the doctor came in and took a seat. “Hurt your foot?” he asked, glancing at the unhappy extremity.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You remember how you did it?”

Funny he should ask that. “No, in fact I don’t. I woke up in the morning and it hurt.”

He was nodding. “Gout,” he said.

“Gout!?” I knew pretty much nothing about the gout, except that it’s connected with gluttony.

He took hold of my foot and ran his fingers over the angry, swollen area. “Does it hurt down here?” he asked, prodding the tip of my big toe.

“Not really.”

“More up here?” He gently pressed at the heart of my discomfort.

“Yep, that’s the spot.”

He nodded again. “I’m pretty sure it’s gout,” he said. “We’ll do some tests to make sure it’s not something else. There’s also a test we can do to confirm it absolutely, but…” he hesitated. “We take a sample from inside the joint. It can be pretty painful.” He gently released my foot. “You have pepperoni, lately, or sausage? Liver? Have you started taking any new medications?”

The previous evening I’d feasted on spicy hot links. Man, are those things tasty. It turns out I was speaking with a fellow sufferer. “I found out after taking water pills,” he said.

So, gout: what happens is this. Protein is broken down and one of the byproducts is uric acid. The kidneys are responsible for collecting the stuff and shipping it out to the bladder. It’s what make your pee yellow. If, for some reason, your kidneys fall behind, the uric acid can form crystals, commonly at the top of the big toe. (See diagram above.) These crystals make a fine abrasive, but the pain and inflammation (a form of arthritis) comes from the immune system attacking the inorganic matter and failing epically. When the first white blood cells explode against the unfeeling enemy, word goes out through the body: Send more white blood cells. You can guess the rest.

Ironically, I was sitting there looking at a known health consequence of sugar. (Fructose, specifically.) Mainly I was looking at a consequence of having a big belly. Other bad things: alcohol (especially beer), the aforementioned giblets, possibly seafood, and on and on. I’ve been working on making some lifestyle changes, and now I have a condition that rewards slipping off the diet with a pretty nasty dose of pain. It’s possible that this disease will actually make me healthier.

My sweetie loves to feed me, and I love to eat her food. Her cooking is healthy, but it’s tasty and I’m always happy to pile my plate high. That’s going to be the most difficult adjustment, I think. There’s nothing like sitting back with a belly full of good chow, but I’m going to have to settle for “enough”, now, rather than “plenty”.

Honestly, I don’t think this episode is very interesting. That happens sometimes. Still, if you want to learn the magic secrets of my fitness success, read on! Lose weight! Get in shape! No dieting! Extra hyperbole!

When I first made the leap over the pond from Prague to San Jose, I knew things would be different. First there are the obvious benefits of sharing an abode with one’s sweetie, but there are other changes as well. Notable changes included diet and exercise. I paused today to contemplate their effects. Good habits are the best health insurance anyone can have.

Behaviors:

Diet: I eat just as much as I did in Prague, in fact, I think I eat more. But while volume has increased, so has quality. Home-cooked meals are just plain healthier. (Did you know that there are special heavy versions of mayonnaise sold only to restaurants? No one would buy them in the stores, they’re too obviously unhealthy. But at your local diner your taste buds will rejoice, and you will say, “man, they have good salads here,” never knowing just how much saturated fat you dumped into your gut while thinking you were eating healthy food. But I digress.) My sweetie loves to cook and I love to eat her cookin’. Despite that I’m sure my fat intake is much lower, and my salad intake is through the roof.

Diet part 2: Alcohol and caffeine. Going from being a bachelor who wrote in bars in Prague to being a significant other who works at home has curtailed alcohol consumption considerably. Reduced calories from beer may completely offset the extra calories from all the food I’m eating. Not that we are teetotallers, mind; I still enjoy the joys of grape and barley, just not as much. Caffeine intake is down as well, as I won’t have five cups of tea to hold off the beertender.

Exercise: My sweetie already had a workout schedule for three days a week, and naturally I joined in. We join her family and because her brother is autistic the schedule is very rigid. This means no weaseling and no putting off until later. When it is time to work out, we do it, and I’ve been taking my gym time very seriously. (Although ‘gym’ is a bit of an exaggeration – the development where my sweetie’s folks live has an exercise room with a few machines in varying states of decay.) My sweetie and I have tried to extend out exercise habit to some of the off days as well, but that’s not been as successful. Just today I geeked around all afternoon and plain forgot to get up and go pursue Jim. Still, I’m getting a good workout on a regular basis.

Results:

Weight: I had really hoped to lose some weight. For one thing, my knees won’t last forever, but they’ll last a lot longer if I can take some of the stress off them. It’s too early to tell if it’s a trend, but if anything I’m gaining weight. Weight can be a deceptive measure, however…

Shape: Now here we have some good news. Although my weight may not be trending the right direction, its distribution certainly is. More muscle, less fat. I haven’t measured, but I expect I’ve added an inch around my chest. Some of my shirts are noticeably tighter up there. That’s good. From her vantage point, the light of my life tells me that my waist is getting trimmer, at least on the sides. So far my pants don’t feel any looser, but hopefully the belly fat will start to go eventually as well. There’s no hurry as long as the trend is in the right direction, and there’s still plenty of fat left on me to burn. (The very top lump in the classic ‘six-pack abs’ is visible if you know where to look and catch it in the right light.)

My arms and legs, never places to gather fat, look pretty good, if I say so myself. Not muscular by any stretch, but good definition. It’s gratifying. I flex my legs sometimes just to watch the muscles pop out.

Joints: My weakest points are my elbows and knees. Unfortunately almost every exercise ever invented applies force through those joints. (Maybe I need the Thigh Master!) So far they’re holding up all right. My old separated shoulder bothers me sometimes. Good candidate for arthritis, the doctors told me back when I was doing physical therapy. No point worrying about it, though.

Other: When I was younger I had very low blood pressure, low enough I wasn’t allowed to give blood. My resting heart rate often dipped below 50 (funny story about that… for another day). That was a long time ago; last time I had my blood pressure taken the nurse said it was on the high side – high enough to warrant watching. I haven’t watched. I don’t have any real measure of how I’m doing except that after working out I’ve been getting head rushes, like I did in the old days. It’s hard to believe only a few months of exercise could make such a dramatic difference, though, especially since I still have at least twenty pounds of extra fat on my frame. The head rushes may actually be a warning sign of something else. (I poked around online but didn’t find much helpful.) I just took my pulse and it’s 57 bpm, which I think is on the low side, which I choose to believe is a sign of cardio health.

Conclusion:

Overall, I have to say that there’s something to the whole “eat right and exercise” fad. It’s working for me, and I’m not depriving myself in any way. It’s actually… fun! As a bonus I get to watch my sweetie work out at the same time. Yow!