Encouraging results

This blog has been sadly neglected this past month.  We have strayed far from our healthy eating goals recently, and I decided to just take a break from the blog and kept hoping that I'd snap back, and once again focus on healthy eating. Never happened.

But this week, we found out that my husband, Chuck, has improved his health and I think it's at least in part due to the plant-based diet. Chuck hasn't been exercising, he hasn't changed anything other than his diet and yes, he does occasionally eat foods not on our plant-based plan. So we were not sure if the changes were helping us or not.

His employer this past week provided a health check right at the office.  They had the same program one year ago, and at that time, we saw a lot of room for improvement in Chuck's health. This year, there actually has been improvement! We are extremely encouraged about the effectiveness of the plant-based diet, which we based on the Forks Over Knives program.

Chuck weighed 235 pounds this time last year and, according to the results of this week's testing, he's down to 194 pounds.  And that's about all he needs to lose, really, now he just wants to firm up and to do that, he needs to exercise.  But he's not planning on giving up on the plant-based diet, either.

His body mass index decreased 2.6 points, from 29 to 26.5. The health care worker  doing the check up told him the ideal is 25 or lower, so he hopes to change that.  His cholesterol reading went from 160 down to 150, and his waist went from 43 inches down to 40 inches.  His glucose (blood sugar) reading showed significant change, down to 73 this year from 142 last year. But Chuck said that immediately before testing last year, he had downed a big piece of sugary birthday cake, so he doesn't get too excited by this change.

The only area that showed no change was his blood pressure.  However, his doctor has recently halved the amount of blood pressure medication that Chuck is taking, so I'm taking it as a win -- with half the meds, he's still keeping a healthy blood pressure!

Okay, so that's all well and good and I'm proud of Chuck for sticking with the plant-based diet and seeing real results. But, like I said, this past month, we have pretty much given into our old patterns of fast food and just eating whatever we find in front of us, without thinking about our health.

These great results have encouraged us both to get back on track.  We are putting together a grocery list today and we're going to get back to eating healthy. I had actually gained back five pounds (I have lost 25 pounds since changing my diet) but I've lost two of those little devils, so overall, I've gained three pounds.  I want to lose those back, of course, and keep my eye on the 50-pound loss I had set as a goal previously. Chuck, as I said, really doesn't need to lose more weight, but he needs to decrease his BMI and he needs to keep everything else under control.

We're trying to set small goals for now, because honestly, baby steps work best for us, but in addition to getting our diet back in shape, we both want to start exercising more (in my case, that would be exercising AT ALL). So I'm gonna hop back on my treadmill, which I just realized last night has been sitting idle for nearly a year!!!  When I was walking everyday, I felt better, I was happier, and I could walk with far less back pain.  All of that has reversed to the same levels I was at before I started walking. Not good.  And Chuck has a very sedentary job in computers, so he doesn't get much exercise either.  I'm not sure what he's going to do, but he's also planning to change that, so he can tone up and firm up and regain some strength.

And I'm recommitted to keeping this blog updated.  I have some new foods to try, even a new cookbook I'm planning to check out, and I am going to try to develop a better grocery-shopping plan, too. I'll let you know how we're doing on all fronts as the weeks go by.  Wish us luck!

Plan to Succeed

No good news this week, which nearly meant no blog post this week.  But I think I should be honest here, and honestly, I ate a bunch of crappy food this week.

I don't feel horrible about it, but I don't feel good either.  Some of the food was delicious, like dinner at Cheddar's Restaurant.  I had "Spasagna", which is a baked spaghetti-lasagna dish that is the ultimate comfort food for me.  It's a huge serving and I only ate half.  And I chose marina sauce instead of meat sauce.  Still, there is a lot of cheese in this dish and cheese is dairy and dairy is not part of my new diet plan.  Plus I ate a nice and buttery piece of garlic bread.

I ate the leftovers the next day for lunch.   And that night we had a pizza for dinner.  A nice, thick pizza with hamburger and mushrooms. Still not good.  Last night, we had dinner from our favorite vegetarian restaurant and today I ate such a small amount of food, with no protein whatsoever, that I was absolutely starving at dinner time. All I could imagine eating was a big Italian sandwich from the deli.  With lots of meat and cheese. And it's greasy.  And utterly delicious. Another bad choice.

Not a scrap of fruit has passed my lips today.  Nor a vegetable, unless you count the splash of tomatoes on my sandwich.  No smoothies, no whole-foods or plant-based foods, for the most part.  So nothing from the Forks and Knives plan.

So, why this big deviation from my usually healthy choices?  I'm not sure.  I haven't been keeping up my food log.  Uh-oh!  And I have been pretty disorganized this week.  Oops!  And I just haven't given a damn.  Rats!  A three-step plan for disaster when you're trying to eat healthy food.

I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to get back on the Forks Over Knives plan.  I've had a taste of my old lifestyle and it was delicious!  But boy oh boy, I do not want to gain that weight back.  Those lovely 25 pounds are gone and I want them to stay gone. And I am getting closer to getting off of some of my medications.  That's my biggest goal, after all.

So I will do my best to get back on track as soon as possible.  Tomorrow, I'm going for a bunch of fruit,  at least a couple servings of veggies and no meat! no dairy! no eggs! no oil! no junk food!  And maybe in a couple weeks, I can report another five pounds lost. I can tell you all that I feel better, I have more energy.  That would be awesome.

And I need to re-commit to getting back on the treadmill.  I am spending far too much time on Facebook, as fun as it is, and I need to get more active.

So I have a plan, right?  Yeah, but I had a plan this week too and wow did it go haywire!  All I can do is try.  Set myself up to succeed.  Get organized, make a menu, chop some veggies, have fruit available,  and, most important of all, keep the food log up-to-date.  I am convinced this is the secret to my success with this plan.  It keeps me aware of what I'm eating.  When I let it slide, I find my good habits sliding too.

So back to the food log, back to the original plan and hopefully, back to healthy eating.  Wish me luck.

Self-esteem

Following a diet or food plan should be a matter of figuring out your nutritional requirements, considering your personal tastes and preferences and then just following that plan.  As mentioned in an earlier blog, I keep a food journal.  We try to do weekly menus.  It should be simple.

But it's not.  Oh, if my life is on an even keel and no surprises crop up, it works pretty well.  It's when I get distracted that I stray off the plan, I eat some meat or I just can't resist french fries.  It's not amusing, though it sounds funny "I slipped last night, I just couldn't resist the fried calamari!  So delish!"

Almost every time this happens to me, I could resist.  There is that moment when I could say "no, I don't want that in my body. Hand me some celery" or whatever.  I've found, by keeping the log and reviewing it, that if I'm having a rough day emotionally, I have a hard time sticking to the plan.

My biggest stumbling block is self-esteem.  Last year, I went to a "mystical fair", where various psychics, mediums, tarot readers, etc, were offering their services.  First, I found a psychic and got a reading.  Her first words were "It's really weird, but I'm getting that you're too hard on yourself.  That you need to stop putting yourself down."

Dead on.  If she had said "you have brown eyes" she couldn't have been more accurate.  I moved on to have my tarot read.  This psychic studied the cards and looked up with a puzzled look on her face. "For some reason, I'm getting that you are too hard on yourself. You're really into putting yourself down."

Blink. I nodded and my husband, who was standing nearby, let out a loud laugh. I was slightly chagrined. Two psychics, both of whom had never met me before, and they're telling me I'm too hard on myself, that I have poor self esteem.  Without even knowing me!

This past week, I had a little problem in my life (since resolved) and was whining about it on Facebook.  At least four, maybe more, friends said "You have such poor self-esteem!"

Wow.  I really have to work on this!  And no surprise, my diet this week has been pretty messed up.  I've had meat, cheese, fries, all the things I've eliminated from my diet.  And I still haven't got myself up on that treadmill.  My goals are not being reached!

So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy -- I don't feel good about myself, so I eat poorly, then I feel queasy, I feel "fat", I feel bad about "cheating".  Then my self-esteem drops a little more, and it spirals out of control.  The only way for me to stop it is to face it and fix it.

It doesn't matter if I slip once in a while.  It doesn't make me a "bad" person, it just means that this one time here, I chose to not follow my plans, which will lead me to meeting my goals.  It's not the end of the world. It's not even the end of my diet.  It's a stumble.  So I have to say to myself "You ate meat for dinner.  You are committed to not eating meat. Tomorrow, don't eat meat!"  Without adding any self-bashing.  That is hard for me, but those words I put in my head and sometimes let slip out of my mouth are not good for me, and are just as important as the food I put in my mouth.

So, it's back to making a plan and sticking to it.  To not let drooping self-esteem keep me from getting healthy.  To realizing that I am worth the hard work, that I can do it, even if it's tough, even if I'm feeling low, I can choose to eat healthy foods.

Healthy weight loss

The new lifestyle is still paying off!  I have lost five more pounds!  That's 25 pounds total, folks!  YES!

Ok, let's face it, that's just a start, I have a long ways to go and, anyway, weight loss is not my primary goal.  Being healthy is my goal.

So guess what? I'm feeling healthier too!  How about that?  My blood sugar readings have gone down, thank you very much. I'm moving around more easily, which is very important to me.

You know that tired old saying "Nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels?"  Pfft.  Because chocolate tastes pretty good.  Focusing on weight loss is not going to motivate me to eat right, it just isn't.  But the idea of not dying young, not incurring some life-threatening disease, yeah, THAT is motivation to skip the chocolate and sugar and meat.

I want to suggest again that everyone view the documentary called "Forks Over Knives".  I watched in on Hulu, for free.  It's available lots of places, just google it.  It's got a lot of facts and figures but lots of WOW moments, too.  Like seeing a man adopting the Forks Over Knives plan and being able to ditch all but one of the multiple medications he had been on.  Like the woman who had breast cancer and her doctor sent her home to die.  Then she found the doctors who advocate Forks Over Knives.  Years later, she is healthy and hale and cancer free. (I'm not saying FOK cured cancer. No.  It made her healthier, though)

And, the one that hit me closest to home was a young single mom who had been diagnosed with diabetes.  So, she was going to be on insulin. She had kids to raise. She was overweight.  A couple months on the FOK plan, her diabetes was under control, she had lost weight and she had energy and verve.  Yeah, that's what I want -- verve!!

Last year, my blood sugar reading was a smidge over the top number.  A smidge, like .1, that's all.  My doctor prescribed Metformin, which helps control blood sugar, and sent me to a diabetes educator.  She spent an hour and a half showing me all the dangers of diabetes and, over my objections, fitted me out with a blood sugar monitor, to be used twice a day.  WHY?  I'm .1 over the limit.  How about I try changing my diet first?  Welllll, it seems that when someone is obese (which I am) you're so much more likely to get diabetes, that's it's a good idea to just scare the hell out of you, slap you on meds and punish you with twice-daily bleedings.

I went with it for a few weeks.  My readings were uniformly regular, and right in the healthy range.  Imagine that.  Soon I was freaking out.  I would dread that stab in the finger, I don't really like seeing my own blood and if my  "numbers' were the least bit elevated I was panicking.

I was convinced they'd have me on insulin injections if I didn't toe the line.

In total frustration I went back to my doctor and told him I was stressing out.  He looked puzzled and said "You don't need to check your blood sugar daily.  I just wanted them to give you some information so you would be aware.  Stop taking your blood sugar readings if it's upsetting."

Oh boy.  Torn between anger and relief, I stopped doing the readings.  And I was pretty darned miffed at having went through that for weeks, for NOTHING.  Talk about the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing!

Since I started the FOK plan, I do occasionally pull out the blood sugar meter and check my levels.  They are lower than they were last year, of course, so that means they are very good.  My goal is that I can quit taking Metformin and just control this with diet and exercise.

I know some people really do need the daily blood tests, they do need insulin, they are in grave danger  if they do not control their diabetes.  But do we have to scare every overweight person with the specter of a lifetime of diabetes, even when they are not showing signs of diabetes -- other than being overweight?

When I visit my doctor, and I've done this for years, I explain to him that I realize I'm overweight, hell, I'm obese.  It's not a surprise to me.  I have had heart tests, my ticker is just fine.  I have high cholesterol, yes.  I have high blood pressure.  I am not dying, nor am I close to dying.  Both the cholesterol and the blood pressure are likely to be controlled through diet and exercise.  I'll take the meds for those problems, but if FOK can help me control those issues, I want off those drugs!

I had a hysterectomy a few years ago and my doctor warned me that my weight might impact my recovery from surgery.  What? How's that again?  The surgery was vaginal, so there would be no cutting through my layers of flab.  I don't have asthma or anything like that.  How would weight impact my  recovery.  He really didn't give me a good answer but he asserted:  That weight is gonna kill you!

He was sitting a foot away from me, in a rolling desk chair.  By the time I got done explaining to him just how offended I was by his weight-blaming, he was backed into a corner and saying "well, that's a good point" and casting desperate looks at my husband.  After the surgery, as soon as the doctor came to see me, I told him "And my weight didn't cause any problems, did it?"  He laughed and said no, it didn't.  HA! And I loved my doctor, he was gentle and my surgery was amazingly easy. He just follows the health community's "FAT IS A KILLER" line.

Don't assume all your problems can be measured in pounds.  If you want to lose weight, bully for you.  It's probably a wonderful idea.  But if you lose weight by eating unhealthy, processed foods, are you getting healthy or just putting bad food into a smaller body?  When you have tried those fad diets, have you kept the weight off?

Watch the documentary, think about what you REALLY want for your body, then make a decision to become a healthy person, who just so happens to lose weight and feel better all over!