My Summer Vacation: Slowly Losing Weight

I walked this morning. I really need to get back in to the walking; I gained 6 pounds in 6 weeks! And I think my butt is a little wider as well. On the last day of class, I weighed 119.6. This morning I was only 118.8, I lost 0.8 pounds since I started walking again. Hulō!

My weight on July 24th, 3 days before class started.

My weight last Friday on the last day of class. Auē!

My weight this morning.

On my drive up this morning I saw Lynnette and June headed up Sierra as I turned off to go up Lurline. During my walk I saw Wolf at the very start, we walked together for a short while; heʻs much faster than I am. As I passed Lurline, I saw Noe headed down the hill back home; later I saw Lorraine down by the park. As I was nearing the end of my walk I saw Stef near the top of Sierra, she was huffing and puffing so I walked with her around the circle again. Her heart rate has been very slow due to a change in medication and she has been breathing heavily; I suggested she get a pulse oximeter to see how well oxygenated her blood is. Kathy has also been concerned about Stef's labored breathing; her husband is a retired ER doctor & dropped by earlier in the week to check her out. While doing my second lap on the circle with Stef we saw Ona & Rio. We also saw Lorraine with Yan & Lucky and stopped to talk with them; Yan put in her application for the contact tracer training. Since Wolf was walking in the opposite direction, and he only walks around the circle, we passed him 3 times! We also saw Alex with Satin and Ken with Toto & Chico. Stef likes to walk down Mana Way, which I have never been down before; there are a lot of nice houses there with great views! It's also flatter so she can get in more walking on flatter terrain. We split up after we finished Mana Place and went our separate ways.

Eighteen minutes before sunrise on Waiʻalae.

Seven minutes before sunrise on Maunalani.

My route today with Stef, Mana Way is the spur on the right. Wolf is in the upper right corner with his trekking poles.

When I got home Luna was sleeping in my room on my suitcase. She tried to look cuddly but had that wild-eyed-I'm-going-to-rip-off-your-hand-if-you-touch-me look in her eyes so I just took a photo. She left when it became clear to her I was not leaving my room. I found her later sleeping in the family room, looking more normal.

Let's see you try and touch me!

Zonked out.

For lunch I made avocado toast with one of the avocados from Dr. Ric. According to more reading I have been doing on the ketogenic diet I have discovered that the standard ketogenic diet is not recommended for people over 40. This is due to the change in the efficiency of producing hormones as humans age; in order for your body to be more effective at producing the necessary hormones you need more carbs than the standard ketogenic diet allows. Instead, for those of us over 40, a keto carb-cycling diet is better. So I am starting a keto carb-cycling diet with intermittent fasting (8-hour feeding window). So what does that really mean?

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday are called Keto Accelerator days where the body is revved up to burn ketones. On these days I eat almost the same as I did before, however, I can go up to 50g carbs per day if I want to; I was at 25g before. I am allowed no starchy food or fruit except for 1 serving of berries or cherries if I exercise. Wednesday & Saturday are Keto Carb Cycling days when I can have up to 75g of carbs, including starchy food & fruit at dinner time while keeping my fat level down below 20g. Sunday is a cheat day! I can have up to 100g carbs & I can eat starchy food or fruit at any meal of the day. Today is a Keto Accelerator day, I had the avocado toast with a lot of avocado for lunch; it had 6g protein, 22g fat, and 14g carbs. I found out later on Keto Accelerator days I should not be using the Ezekial bread; that is reserved for the Carb Cycling days and the cheat day. I should have no high carb foods on the Keto Accelerator days; I should have just eaten the avocado by itself (which I am perfectly fine with). Oh well, I'm still learning about this diet.

Later in the afternoon I went to the dentist, I was there to see Lori the hygienist for a cleaning, not Dr. Azuma. Besides the antiseptic mouth rinse for 1 minute before they start, now they also have antiseptic that is in the water used for the ultrasonic scaler and a high volume suction tube that is supposed to minimize the amount of aerosol escaping from your mouth as they use the ultrasonic scaler.

On my way back, I stopped at Kokua Market; I had forgotten to pick up sauerkraut when I was shopping a couple days ago. While I was there I also picked up some items at the deli; I got some Laotian larb and pohole salad. I think pohole is the Spanish name, it's better known here as hoi'o.

My email started blowing up after dinner; one of my classmates asked the innocent question, "I am checking with the class to see who all received a contact tracer position starting September 16th." In a little over 3 hours there were 23 responses before I saw it! This morning there were 12 more responses. To be clear, he sent it to both Cohort 1v2 and our Cohort 2; a total of almost 80 people. Various people received an email on either August 16th or September 10th asking them to send in a resume if they were interested in a position; very few had their resumes acknowledged. There were only 4 offered full-time positions & 1 offered a part-time position (which is what she applied for). Three got confirmation their resume was received & a couple even got an interview, then nothing. And 7 got rejection emails. But they have apparently been hiring other people judging by their website. Word is that the other people hired have had less training, most only doing the Johns Hopkins 6-hour on-line class. I wonder why DOH even bothered working with the UH to set up the training that I took? And why are they training 4 more cohorts of 30 to 35 people each if DOH prefers to hire the people who have only had the 6-hour Johns Hopkins class?

This inaccurate & misleading graphic was on the DOH website until the one below was posted.

This was last week's numbers; that's about 26 active cases per contact tracer.

This is this week's numbers; that's almost 27 active cases per contact tracer.

The bottleneck seems to me to be the number of case investigators who make the initial contact with the active COVID-19 case. According to the whistleblower complaint, there were only about 10 investigators on O'ahu and less than 20 statewide. On August 14th when the complaint was made, the best case scenario is that each investigator was working on about 149 active cases! (Although the whistleblower called them contact tracers, in the model given to us of the work we would be doing, the whistleblower and the people she is talking about are called case investigators. The investigators collect a list of the close contacts of the COVID positive case and forward that list to the contact tracer; realistically there are a lot more people than the active number of cases that need to be called by the contact tracers.)

Other places are hiring contact tracers; here's a search I did on LinkedIn; there were 185 jobs listed. Locally Queen's Hospital has hired its own contact tracers and the department of education has been talking about doing the same. Some private businesses have said they want to also hire their own contact tracers. I hope whatever happens it is coordinated.

During the 5 o'clock news they said a person on the LG's staff had tested positive for COVID-19 and LG Green was a close contact. The LG and the 14 other members of his staff all received tests after the office was informed this morning; he had tested negative a few days earlier when he was doing a weekend shift at the Kohala Hopsital. By the 10 pm news it was confirmed that the LG is COVID-19 positive. He is isolating at home.

There were 131 new COVID-19 cases reported today, bringing the total up to 10,588. There was 1 more death, bringing that total up to 96. There are 7029 active cases, or about 27 per case investigator, and an unknown number of close contacts for the contact tracers.