Category: Sodium

New Discoveries

Things have been mighty… odd… lately.  Odd for me, anyway.  I’m normally a very steady person, and through everything that’s been going on collectively I’ve maintained my steadiness, but I’m still feeling overwhelmed.

Stress, it turns out, is a much more powerful thing than most people want to think or admit.  Who’da thunk it?  The older I get the more things become become obvious, things that you grow up denying and claiming you’re above them, but really have a much greater impact on you than you want them to have.  And if you stand back and just watch other people, you can see it in them, too.  Stress is one of those things.

Anyway, dropping my calculus class was a great decision.  I have a Toastmasters event coming up, and was asked to help in a specific role, but I had to turn it down.  Right now I feel like I have enough on my plate (no pun intended), and shouldn’t be adding more.  Plus, I’m not sure I could have given it the attention it deserves, so it’s best to let someone else do it.

Anyway, the weight loss is treading water right now.  I’ve been struggling with cheating.  I have a big thing with not making excuses, and when I say I eat irresponsibly due to stress that’s what I feel like I’m doing, making excuses.  They say you’re not supposed to do that, but that’s how my mind works.

My dip into the 220s was awesome.  As I write this I’m just a tad above 230, but really that’s not bad, so I’ll take it.  Last couple days I’ve done better, and feel like I’m getting back on track.  I’m getting to where I really like the shakes (as long as they’re made with either cold water or ice).  I haven’t made a muffin in probably two months now, but I’m feeling like I’d be ok with them now.  In other words, my tastes are fluid and adjusting as I go along, so the moral to this story is:  When doing a program of any kind, don’t get too hung up on only one or two things, lest you get burnt out on those and put your entire program in jeopardy.

I think I’ve figured out that sodium is going to be an issue for the rest of my life.  That’s a new realization.  If I eat a lot of sodium I feel it, achy joints, stiffness, etc.  What’s really interesting is that since I’ve been eating better when I do eat something high in sodium I really taste it and it is no longer as appealing to me as it used to be.

That’s it, just random stuff.  New realizations.  New Discoveries.  New knowledge.

The Plateau

Still struggling, though not as bad or as much as I was for awhile.  Which is frustrating because I seem to have reached “The Plateau”, that point where you’ve lost the ‘easy’ weight and now have to actually work at it.  <full body shudder>

I think I mentioned before that I normally hovered in the 242-ish range.  I got down to just over 230… on the edge of the 220s cliff that I wanted to hit for the first time in almost two decades… and I regressed.  Shot back up into the upper 230s, then worked my way back down to the low 230s, only to shoot back up to the upper 230s again, which is where I’m at right now.

In the interest of full honesty, I think this last jump is not so much from bad meals (though there were a couple), but rather from stopping watching my sodium and missing a few days of my water pills.  Apparently even with losing weight I still need to watch my sodium intake and take my pills and squeeze as much water out as I can.

There’s also been some family heath issues that have been weighing heavily, no pun intended.  I am not a stress eater, per se, but there were times where I’ve figuratively thrown up my hands and thought, “Screw it.  I’m eating.”

On the positive side, in the work category, I’ve started exercising again.  The treadmill a couple times in the last week, for about 40 minutes at a time.  Put on a good Alice Cooper concert DVD and off I go!

Another positive aspect is that, today whenever I looked in the mirror, I swear I looked visibly thinner than I have in years.  I got kinda giddy every time I saw myself.  This matches what a friend told me several days ago, she told me it was visible in my face, my face was thinner.  The numbers notwithstanding, I can feel it, I feel good.

It’s the end of the world as I know it… and I feel fine.

Ok, maybe not the actual end of the world, but these song lyrics make it sound a little more dramatic, a little more interesting, so we’ll run with that.  Life has taken a drastic change of course, however, and we’ll get to that later.  First, a sodium update.

I have successfully stymied my cardiologist.  My weight basically has not budged.  Even, as he put it, we have squeezed all the water out of me there is to squeeze.  Every time he checks I’m not bloating, so that’s good.  End result, he’s perplexed.  There is no higher dosage or stronger medication, so we’ve decided to maintain for the foreseeable future.  Which brings us to…

THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!  TA DA!!!

Missy and I both have embarked on a medically-supervised weight loss program.  We had our first meeting this past Thursday and started the actual plan today.  We’re doing the Health One (HNT) Meal Replacement Plan.  It’s medically-supervised (I already said that).  You’re held accountable.  You have accountability with both a coach and peers in weekly meetings.  There is no surgery.  (I have been told it’s based on a Mediterranean diet, but I cannot find anything to back that up.)  So… we’re taking the big leap.

Missy’s and my motivations are very similar.  It’s not just losing weight and being healthy, though there is that, too.  But there’s more to it.  Ever since I was about 7 yrs old I’ve wanted to go skydiving.  I even had Missy and Matt convinced to treat me for my birthday the last two years with a skydiving trip.  It never happened because I weigh too much (for tandem skydiving).  I want to be able to go to a concert or a ball game and fit in the damn seats, reasonably.  From what I see even skinny ‘normal’ people have trouble fitting in them, they make them so narrow now trying to shoehorn everyone in to maximize profit.  We’d like to lose our CPAP machines.  I’d like to get back into routine walking and hiking like I used to.  Basically daily life things that make life a quality life.

Oh, and I’d like to stop taking these industrial strength water pills, too.  I’m sick of running to the loo every 30 minutes.  One day I went 18 times between 7am and noon.  I am not kidding.

Anyway, about 25+ years ago I started Weight Watchers .  I did very well, lost 11 lbs the first week, and that was with eating an entire medium pizza by myself the last day of the week.  But after a few weeks I slowly fell off the boat, and never did another weight loss program… other than occasional instances of just trying to choose healthier options in general… until now.

So what’s kept me from doing anything about my weight all these years.  Well, I’ll tell ya…

First, most ‘diets’ I do not find credible.  Most people gain the weight back afterward, and I don’t want to hear that even if I know it’s true.  And I know that people will either tell me that to my face or say it to others behind my back.  But if you think about it, if you go back to bacon cheeseburgers every other day afterward, of course you’re going to gain it back, even with this program.  Duh!  Granted seaweed and garlic smoothies are not sustainable long-term, but the idea is to change your eating habits.  There’s no getting around that.

Second, and I won’t front, fear of failure.  I like to eat.  I like to eat good food… a lot!  I never had the confidence that I could succeed.  And to be honest, I still have concerns.  But with recent events and other concerns, and the fact that I believe I have more self-discipline at this stage of my life, something inside me is telling me I can do it.  The program is 24 weeks, almost six months.  This will take us through both Missy’s and my birthdays, Thanksgiving, and right up to somewhere around Christmas.  Oh, and we will have to forego our weekly Thursday routine of eating out with friends after Toastmasters while the program is going along.  Holiday eating will be in moderation this year.

The first 10 weeks is relatively draconian.  The next 8 weeks we add in more fruits and vegetables.  The final 6 weeks we add in more meats and everything else that resembles a more practical diet.

Having expressed those two concerns, I believe that this program is different.  It’s not a guarantee.  It’s not a panacea.  But it’s reasonable and safe, and worth a shot.

I will make one promise.  I won’t run to Facebook and regale you all with how tasty and wonderful the recipes are.  (I wrote about people who do that in my other blog.)  I will, however, give random updates from time to time.

So that’s it.  That’s our big announcement.  Interesting where life leads you.

My View on Ken’s Sodium Struggle

It has been hard to watch Ken with this latest frustration. He is the heaviest he has ever been and it is water. He knows this, but it doesn’t make it feel any better when you don’t fit in your clothes. He cuts out a lot of sodium foods. Still nothing budges. I see how frustrated he is and can do nothing but encourage and pray.

This is something I have not had too much experience with. I have high blood pressure so I don’t add salt myself. I just have never had the water weight like this. I continue to support and do my best. I just know we will get past it. One more trial that we will win!

Quickie update

As I have said before, the farther I go out the less I’ll post, and there’s been nothing earth shattering to report, I feel like giving a quickie update, so here goes…

Sodium and Weight

The last week of May my Cardiologist put me on a much more serious dose of a new water pill, Torsemide, and off I went.  I was supposed to check in a few weeks later, but haven’t yet.  I will do so early this next week.

I still have the extra weight.  In fact, other than a couple short forays up to 268, I basically haven’t budged.  What HAS changed, and not for the better, is that now I am more achy, I am getting winded and getting tired easier.  Those aren’t good things.  Those are effects of the extra water weight.

We will get this worked out.

Scars & Body Image

A strange topic, but one that most people don’t talk about, so here I am.

My chest is looking very good, almost natural skin color.  You can still notice it if it peeks above my shirt collar, but it’s not bad.  There is no pain to this or any of the scars, which is good.  My arm scar is still not progressing as fast as the chest scar, but is itself moving along nicely and I have no issues with it.

Part of my left wrist is still constantly numb, and always will be.  Expected, warned, but just sayin’.  I hardly even notice, anymore, and I’ve always retained full functionality.

The only new development that I do not like is that I now have the beginnings of varicose veins.  On my inner left knee, next to where an incision was made to remove a vein for the surgery.  They’re small, but they’re still there.  I am NOT happy about this.  I have never had a varicose vein, until now.

Upcoming

I will have a major announcement in about three weeks, but don’t want to say anything just yet.  Not even hints.