[Wannabehealthy]

I just got home from my appointment with my PCP. All is well. My lipid profile is still good, even though I don't take all the meds I am prescribed. Awhile back I decided to cut my dose and see what happens. Cholesterol was still good, 145. LDL is good. HDL is low, but it's always low. My cardiologist told me there are not meds to reaise HDL. Only exercise will raise it, and I haven't been exercising. I'm going to change that.

One other thing on my blood work was low. SGOT. I looked it up and it said that if it's high it indicates a problem with the liver, but if it's low it means you are low in Vit B6. I will google and see where I get my B6 and go from there.

p.a. I don't use a lot of table salt, no salty snacks, etc, but when I enter my food in Fit Day it says my sodium intake is high. But on my bloodwork my level is at the low end of normal. I think I mentioned it before, that my brother-in-law ended up in the hospital from seizures from his sodium being too low, so it's good that your doctor is going to check it. One time in the hospital after surgery they said my potassium was low and put me on an IV. That' might have been a result of the surgery, because it's fine now.

[Wannabehealthy]

I don't understand this. DH always eats hot cereal before he goes to bed, either Cream of Wheat or Oatmeal. Last night he made too much Oatmeal and I ate what was left, a small portion. Before that when I was watching TV I ate 2 full size Hershey bars. He had bought them and I had been doing a good job of avoiding them, but last night I caved. I expected real trouble this AM, but my fasting BG was 162. I know that's too high, but other mornings I have been having them over 200. That doesn't mean I'm going to start doing that all the time, but I just don't get it. Yesterday was the first time in a while that I walked on my treadmill. Maybe that made a difference.

[pattygirl63]

My FBS has been high lately. Of course, I'm not taking the Metformin because of the side effects. I just can't go any where when taking it. I end up taking it only on days I don't go any where.

I checked my FBS about every hour from 6 am to just before I ate breakfast at 10 am. It was over 200 until about 9 when it was 192. After 9 it started going back up. Didn't go back up to 200 but was 196 before I ate anything. I really don't understand that. I have been staying up late and getting up later. I once heard a doctor say that the sleep we get before 2 am is the most import sleep for healing your body. I used to go to bed by midnight so I would sleep at least 2 hrs before 2 am. Although I sleep good, I notice I am having a difficult getting up in the morning. I thought it was because it has been cold, but maybe not.

Carol Sue The more I learn about diabetes the less I know.

We watch the Doctor in the House on Fox. DH records it. They were talking about what insulin does to the body and how sugar works in our cells and how it feeds cancer. They say we need to be eating more of a Meditarranean (sp) diet... eat fruits, vegetables and grains and eat a small amount of protein. Grains he recommends are quinoa, beans, etc.

I ate oatmeal this morning. I just like the benefits of oat meal. I exercised after breakfast while talking to my Dad. I don't think the oat carb meal gives me the energy to exercise that the low carb meal does. I did the vigorous bike ride, but it seemed to be a struggle. However, that could also be caused by the fact that this is my 3rd day of faithfully exercising 3 miles in 25 minutes. I will low carb the rest of the day using MFP to keep things in check.

I have to believe that if I continue doing what I'm doing somewhere this will start getting better. If it doesn't start changing soon, I may have to rethink Atkins type of LC.

[pattygirl63]

http://www.dietdoctor.com/best-of-20...urning-machine

Interesting video with Dr. Eric C Westman on becoming a fat burning machine. He talks about being either a fat burning or a carbohydrate burning machine and how they work.

[Wannabehealthy]

Trish, I think a lot of people say they can't eat cereal for breakfast, but it doesn't have to be a cereal only meal. When I was first diagnosed in the hospital I had oatmeal every morning but also had an egg (egg beaters), slice of toast, milk and fruit. It sounds like a lot, but the portions were so small and I didn't feel stuffed afterwards. The home nurses that I had when I came home all told me to have some protein with every meal. Sometimes I think I should go back to the food plan they had me on. I had that breakfast every day. For lunch and dinner I had some protein, a salad, fruit and milk. Dinner was bigger than lunch, but I know you eat your bigger meal earlier in the day and your smaller meal later. The only snack I had they brought to me at bedtime. It was either a graham cracker with peanut butter or saltine crackers with a slice of cheese. After I came home and continued to follow that plan I started having sugar free popsicles as a snack in the afternoon. I lost weight on that plan, but eventually went back to eating more like DH does.

EDIT-I just read on the other thread that you did not eat just oatmeal, but had yogurt with it, so that would have been some protein. So disregard my comment above. LOL

[pattygirl63]

Carol Sue I'm wondering if the way you ate in the hospital might be the right way to eat. Might be worth trying. Thanks for sharing it with me.

Edit to say: I'm thinking that if you keep some carbs even good ones like grains in the food plan that you won't have the problems I have with low carb when I do get off. I don't like the idea that if I want to do strict Atkins type of low carb and then I have a carby food at one meal that it will mess everything up and I will gain etc. Not sure that makes sense, but I'm tired of bouncing around with the same lbs because of it.

[Wannabehealthy]

Trish, I think eating those small portions helped me because I had a variety of food at every meal and didn't feel deprived. Of course, I didn't have any sweets. I could order SF jello if I wanted. There was also some pasta on the menu occasionally but I would choose something else on that day. You could order baked fish every day if you didn't like the entrees they were offering. You could also order a hamburger, but they were the size of a slider. I did that one day when they didn't offer something I liked. The doctor thought it was funny that they were offering a hamburger to a heart patient, but it was so small, and it was probably very low fat meat. When they had potatoes on the menu, it was about 3 cubes of potato. That program made me realize what a portion is really supposed to look like. We got used to much larger portions eating the SAD diet.

I don't think a CAD RM has to contain starchy carbs. People automatically think of white carbs as "carbs." Things like veggies, beans and milk are carbs.

I am going to try to cut my calories back to 1200 per day. I don't know if I can do that. I will need to track to figure out what to cut. I will have to keep "small portions" in mind.

I think the reason my FBG has come down is because I started taking 2 Metformin at bedtime. I previously cut back to 2 per day because I thought the third pill was making me throw up during the night. Now I take 1 in the AM and the other 2 at bedtime. I've done that for 3 days and didn't get sick. I will continue this and if I start to get sick I will stop.

[pattygirl63]

I didn't stick to plan last night. Instead of eating the meal I had planned I decided to have a snack with hummus and Townhouse Pita. My FBG was 154 this morning. It has been really high lately.

I've decided to keep my percentages as they are on MFP, but make some of those carbs grains. Yesterday I sprinkled edamame in my salad and went back to using EVOO and ACV for dressing. I also know from things we have read that legumes, greens and EVOO/ACV lower bs, so it shouldn't be any surprise that my FBG came way down this morning. Plus it doesn't hurt to have the fiber that goes along with it. Since I'm a routine person and DH is too, I'm going to get myself into a routine of meals and just run with it.

I had eggs, bacon and whole grain toast for breakfast this morning. I think I will alternate that with the oatmeal for breakfast. I am working at keeping my calories around 1300 calories or less each day.

[Watercolor]

sigh
If only we could have someone prepare and bring us the right food in the correct portions, then strap us onto our exercise equipment and entertain us the whole time we're exercising.

Not gonna happen? Rats. Must move forward.

You girls are doing some great work on food portions and types.
You both ROCK!

[Wannabehealthy]

Cindy, I always said I wanted to be locked in a room and only given the food I should be eating. That was similar to what they did when I was in the hospital. I was free to eat other foods if someone brought them in for me, but I stayed true and only ate my meals. Well, one time DH brought me a little cup of ice cream from the waiting room. It was about 2 mouthfuls. LOL

Trish, the power of suggestion. After reading your post I went to the freezer and got out some frozen edameme I forgot I had. I buy the shelled emameme, frozen. For lunch I had chopped lettuce with some tuna salad in it.

[p.a.]

You ladies sound like your back on track,,,, good going!
Today I started exercises called essentrics. They are low impact which I love. I watch them on YouTube. There was lots of popping and cracking going on in my body,yikes! Reminds me of when I did tai chi...some moves were similar.

[Wannabehealthy]

Wow! I watched an essentrics exercise on Utube, might have been the same one as you, and I can understand the popping and cracking. The only part that looked like I might not be able to do it is the knee bending. I have a hard time doing any bending with my right knee. I don't know if I ever tried it wearing my knee brace. Good job, p.a.

[pattygirl63]

Boy, I don't know how much exercise I ended up getting yesterday, but I learned something good about myself.

My best friend called the other night and talked DH and me into going to the Trump campaign rally. Now I'm that person who does not like going to those things because I do not like standing in line etc and I would rather watch football games etc on television rather tha go through all that. Once we decided to go I had to go to the beauty shop Friday instead of Saturday. The Winthrop Coliseum sits on a steep hill and I had a difficult time walking up that hill and going up and down the steps inside when DGS graduated from high school. So I told DH I was going to take the Hugo walker and use it going in. However, I've been struggling to get my legs stronger because I know I have to do that place in May when he graduates from college. But I wasn't sure I could do it this soon.

I began to think maybe I could use my cane instead of the walker. We were in line for so long before we could park that there were no handicap parking places any more. So we had to walk and not on top of that we had to walk across grass to get to the sidewalk. I can't do that much here at home. Well because we were walking on grass, I decided to take the cane instead of the walker. I did it with no major problems. I did get short winded walking so fast to get in line, but I was able to do it. The hill was difficult at first, but DH let me hang on to him and the line moved up the hill so slow, I had no problem doing it. I was so shocked at how well I did it. I admit I have room to get better, but I am so thrilled that I could do so well. They had places for handicap sitting, but I wanted to sit with DH and friend. I think I could have gone further down to sit if I didn't have a fear of falling.

I have 5 months to get ready for DGS graduation. I hope I will be able to do even better by then. Oh besides doing that, I had done 2 miles in 15 minutes on the recumbent bike and walked a store that morning. After the rally we couldn't find our car and walked even more for about 10 minutes longer than we should have had to. And I was so surprised at how good I felt.

I am looking at the DASH diet. It has been named the Best diet for the past 6 yrs according to Newsweek. It is fairly simple. I went to the website and read about it. I saw something on there titled DASH low carb, but didn't look at it. I will be checking it out again. It seems to be similar to the Low carb diet for dummies book I have. I read where some of the people who do it say it is so easy. I will be checking it out a little further.

[Wannabehealthy]

Trish, the recumbent bike is very good for strengthening your legs. It strengthens the thigh muscles. If you place your hand on the muscle right above your knee while you are cycling, you will feel the muscle contracting. Any exercise that exercises this muscle is recommended for older people (like us). A lot of us (like me) have to have support getting out of a chair, like pushing up on the chair arms. Strengthening that thigh muscle prevents that. Sometimes when I'm sitting watching TV I will raises and lower my legs and can feel it in that muscle. Good job, Trish!

I got a free Kindle book about the Dash Diet but never actually read it. I will look at it and let you know what I think. There's a whole program about it on Public Television.

I think I'm going to make a pot of veggie soup today. A woman on another forum talked about it and made me hungry for it. It's a good day for it since it's raining, and going to change over to snow.

[pattygirl63]

Carol Sue That is interesting about that muscle. My sister has one of those chairs that lifts her out of the chair. I hope I don't ever have to use it. I exercise my arms with dumb bells while riding the bike because I did that with WATP tapes years ago. I told DH that I did learn one thing through walking up that hill and over those grounds and that is that I could use my cane and walk to get walking exercise if he would go to the mall and walk with me some. DH walks fast and my DBF got worried about me when we were walking back to the car because I was hanging on to him and keeping up with him. She was afraid I would fall.

I will use the DASH plan because I can regulate my carbs better. Today will be more of a carb day, but I am able to use it to keep within the amount of carbs and calories I want to stay with in. In fact, even though I'm eating more carbs today my calories are less than 1300 and I am within the percentages that I have set up for myself and the sodium is less than 2300 mg.

I am eating fruit once a day with my oatmeal at breakfast time. I am using the Sarah Lee 45 cal multigrain bread when I have bread. Actually I have a couple of foods that I really want and using MFP I can now have them within the calories, carbs, fat, protein and sodium allowed. I am even looking at the sugar count too. I heard somewhere to start looking at the amount of sugar on the labels. May have read it on DASH. This will work for me because I can work this better with DH.

BTW thank to you for sharing about the kale and hip pain. My hip has started hurting again and I couldn't figure out why. I haven't been eating the kale the last few weeks. I got some more yesterday and bagged some to put in the freezer and some in the fridge.

You soup sounds good. It is going to start getting colder again starting tonight and a good soup or even stew will be good tomorrow.

Edited to add: One site I found on DASH does it in 2 Phases like South Beach. Phase 1 is 2 weeks without fruit and grains to jump start the diet. Phase 2 adds fruits and grains although I didn't read to see exactly how they add it back. Interesting. I read on another site that all these lowfat diets are basically the same. I like the fact that DASH is set up more like the old WW and ADA exchange plans. Since I like to play around with recipes sometime, I can take a grain exchange and mix with veggies etc and keep up with it better.