Healthy fats, low sugar, watching cholesterol, and exorcise are all good things to do for weight loss and artery health--hopefully all these things will help you avoid more BP medicine, Carol. Ya know the high protein, high fat craze, is worrisome to me--prolly 'cause I remember all too well the bacon grease jar in the homes of the previous generation who lived in stroke alley--that thang sat on the stove for weeks (Ugh! Rancid, anyone?). Thankfully, folks seem more mindful of food quality and storage these days...and know what "healthy fats" mean.

For me, just a wee tiny little bit of fine-crumbled feta cheese on a salad is like catnip to a cat or truffles for a pig. Mmmmmmmm tasty....(Although that's a bad addition to salads that have oil-based dressings with sesame oil.) I could eat salad all day/all year--that pita would just ruin it for me! ;)

...to make this thread easier for me to read, I mentally add "...and sauerkraut..." to everything you guys are eating. Jus' kidding! I'm not really influenced...But please don't mention "dates".

lol re sauerkraut! I'm always trying to use it up, but after it's gone I miss it & buy another jar. For me, the saltiness works well as seasoning. I can't keep any sort of cheese around without scarfing it. I usually have a bite of a sample somewhere, that's about it.

My workplace is having a living healthy challenge around the holidays. Usually it's in summer. You can choose what to do, like give up sugar or just lessen the amount, exercise x times a week, lose x lbs, etc. It was a fun way to motivate myself. I'm joining with 4 co-workers so now it will "matter' more that I don't slip. Last time I gave up sugar & I'm planning to do it again.

Carol Sue, your DH reminds me so much of mine, lol! :lol: I love the pita salad idea! Great solution! Yum! :T

Mars, yay on another drop! You go! :high: I hear you on the clothes! I thought the EXACT thing yesterday. I went to a thrift store to buy some inexpensive things to take to Boston with me. (We'll be there tomorrow. Tonight we are staying in Niagara Falls.) There is NOTHING like a dressing room mirror to remind you that you have a ways to go! Of course I'll never look like I looked before I gained the weight. I'm older and have saggy skin now, but wow, dressing room mirrors are brutal! It reminds me of why I hate clothes shopping! :lol:

PrairieQueen, your menu looks good! :hungry:

SeeMyFeet, I'm torn on all the different studies that come out. I'm beginning to think that genetics hold the true key to how healthy you're going to be. I can't think of any no other explanation for the 100-year-olds who have eaten bacon all their life, or cooked with lard, or smoked cigars, or drank soda pop. Or the 50-year-olds who eat healthy and run and who drop dead of a heart attack! I'm reminded of that recent story of the 104-year-old lady who has outlived all the doctors who kept telling her to stop drinking Diet Dr. Pepper! :shrug:

Speaking of Diet Dr. Pepper, all my gosh, I have had TERRIBLE cravings for it today! I mean REALLY bad cravings! We stopped at this one rest stop and if it had been in the vending machine, I have NO doubt I would have bought one! All it had was regular Dr. Pepper though and I didn't want that. Regular tastes too syrupy sweet to me now. But I want a Diet Dr. Pepper so badly that I don't know if I am going to make it much longer! :eek:

I am down to 174 today! That was my goal for this month! :carrot: I am now only 10 lbs away from my overall goal! AND I was able to get my wedding rings back on today! :woohoo: I have been able to wear my anniversary ring for a couple of weeks now. It's a 5 1/2, but my engagement ring is a 4 3/4 and my wedding ring is a 5, so I couldn't get them on till today. :yay:

Week 23: High 179.5, Low (175)
10/4--179.5
10/5--(177)
10/6--(176.5)
10/7--(175.5)
10/8--(177)
10/9--(176)
10/10--(175) Carb Day

Week 24: High 177, Low 175
10/11--(177)
10/12--(176)
10/13--(175.5)
10/14--(175)
10/15--(174.5)
10/16--176
10/17--175 Carb Day

Week 25: (High 178, Low 175.5)
10/18--177.5
10/19--176.5
10/20--176.5
10/21--175.5
10/22--DNW
10/23--177 Carb Day
10/24--178

Week 26:
10/25--176
10/26--175
10/27--175.5
10/28--174
10/29--
10/30--
10/31--

Today's Meals:
Breakfast:
Protein bar
Fage Greek yogurt with Mio
Mio Water

Lunch: @ Bob Evans
"Build-your-own" omelet with bacon, cheese, tomatoes, onions, peppers, spinach, and mushrooms
2 link sausages
Hot black tea

Snack:
Walnuts

Dinner:

Today's Exercise:

Today's menu.....

Break - McD's sausage burrito w/hot sauce and ice tea w/stevia
Lunch - country rib meat, 1/2 hash brown
Dinner - Swedish meatballs and pasta, sweet corn

Wow Jacqui you already made it to niagara Falls??? It must be a gorgeous drive this time of year! Congratulations on getting your wedding rings on~what a sweet milestone to savor! :congrat: And 174 too--fantastic! :cp::cp::cp::On the brink of a lower decade!

Re the Diet Dr P., If it's obsessing you, maybe it would be ok to have it, just so you can move on? Or are you concerned about it making you want more? Well, I hope it subsides one way or another. Maybe you could promise yourself to have it on Carb Day if you're still craving it?

I'm not so tripped up cravings as by impulse eating-things that just I come across, like samples. But right now I'm riding the wave of the mirror reality check and eating fairly well. :) I view the saggy skin as battle scars!

Today's food:
B turkey sausage, mushrooms, whey shake, no sauerkraut ;)
S pear
L salad, chicken evoo,
S Whole Foods hot bar had some new dishes they were calling Paleo. Spicy ground beef with tomato, but it tasted like there was sugar, even tho ingredient list had none; Almond chicken
D turkey chili, broc, cauli, butternut squash.
From the takeout food and the Alleve I'm about to take, wt will likely be up tomorrow.

there have been two lonely cookies on the table all evening. I keep imagining sourkraut on them. Naaah, I'm not really tempted...I want this weight to come off more than I want cookies.

Mars, maybe their tomato sauce had sugar.

Genetics and LUCK, Jaq....you don't get to be a 104yo-Dr-Pepper-drinker if you get hit by a meteor...My grandma lived to almost 100, with her horrific RA....makes me wonder if I should leave mine untreated. Life's a crap shoot, ain't it?....Did you find any clothes in your shopping trip?

Dang, you people are skinny...sigh...so much work to do...

I'll bet you're right re tomato sauce, SMF. Well that's one more reason not to expect too much from the scale tomorrow. Sauerkraut & cookies---you crack me up!!! And yay you for not being tempted. Seriously! I would have to throw them out and douse them with detergent. Trust me I'm not skinny, but I kinda know how you feel...We're similar height so maybe this applies--I remember when I got below 220 I felt better & had more energy. It was a benchmark for feeling better.
EDIT Thurs WI 165.2 :)

Mars, since I'm retired, I tend to do a lot of reading online about health issues I have. I have to keep in the back of my mind that anybody can put anything online, true or not. I consider WebMD to be a reliable site and see a lot of information on there. I remember my previous cardiologist told me that uncontrolled blood pressure can lead to congestive heart failure, and there's nothing to be done about that. My cardiologist is great and he's very easy to talk to, but he has never mentioned the ISH and I have never brought it up. Maybe I'll print something out from the internet and show it to him and see what he says. Also, my BP meds lower my heart rate. My resting heart rate is in the high 50s low 60s. My visiting nurse used to tell me that I had a great heart rate, but it was caused by the meds, not a healthy weight or lifestyle. Is an increase in meds going to make it even lower? I am definitely not a patient who just does what the doctor says. I have to know why, and all the details.

The Pitas I bought are Josephs. I bought them in Walmart in the bread department but not all Walmart's have them. I had to go to one 20 miles away to get them. Each one is 5 net carbs for a whole one, and for a sandwich, I cut them and use a half, opening up the pocket and stuffing it. So that's only 2.5 carbs. They are oat bran and stone ground whole wheat and some have flax. Tasty. If you look them up on Walmart.com it will tell you the store locations where they can be found. They can also be ordered online on Amazon, but I don't do that. If I can't find something in my stores I don't buy it.

SeeMyFeet, it's not that I don't like salads, but I have to be in the mood for them and they are not my first choice. I think the reason is I like hot food. If we go to a restaurant I will order soup in place of my salad most times. I do like sandwiches, though, so if I can stuff it into a Pita it feels like a sandwich and is satisfying to me.

Also, I have done a lot of reading about sat fat. From what I've read, they are discovering that bacon and lard is not the culprit, but carbs are. Drop the carbs and your cholesterol and triglycerides will drop, too. My heart disease came from my mother and her entire family. All had heart disease. But I have come to the conclusion that it was not the result of the bacon grease and lard, but the carbs. Being German and poor, my grandmother cooked so much starchy carbs because it was cheap. They really couldn't afford to buy much meat, where most of the sat fat comes from. When my mother died there was no heart surgery like what saved me, but just dietary control. I believe if she had eaten a low carb diet she would have lived a lot longer. Instead they had her eating a low fat diet, and she died anyway. Also, there was a woman in cardiac rehab with me who had had 5 heart attacks. She ate the Dean Ornish diet, very low fat. With every heart attack she cut her fat back even lower and couldn't understand why she continued to have heart attacks. I always wonder if maybe she should have switched to low carb and added some fat, but it wasn't my place to suggest that. I am not really one to be giving advice as I am not able to control my weight and other things like BP and BG. But I have very good cholesterol readings since switching to lower carb and my doctor is very pleased.

Carol Thank-you for the pita info--it sounds like something that would work really well for me.

I've also found WebMD to be helpful & credible, though I hear it bashed a lot. The things I've looked up have been useful and in sync with other sources I check, such as CDC website or my doc.

Everything you've said about your BP is important to bring up. I'm sure not a cardiol or doctor, nor do I play one in real life, lol!. A while back I completed a quarter of NursePractitioner training & our first several lectures of primary care were about BP. My takeaway was that it's crucial, though sometimes challenging, to balance the effectiveness & the side effects. My teacher was an internist and he said he sometimes used 2 or more BP meds at lower doses to minimize side effects.

A lot of patients are maybe too overwhelmed or for some other reasons not interested, just want to the Rx. But it should be a relationship of equals and the doc is the consultant to help find what works for the patient's life. not just dictating from a cookbook. I don't know if many do that--they are under so many constraints and it takes good listening, a skill that is vanishing as they fill in checkmarks on a computer screen during the visit.

Anyway, I hope you don't stress about the appt. Your concern re heart rate is really important imho. Btw, re your lower rate, I think you reap the benefit no matter if it comes from medication or lifestyle. But as you pointed out, too low has its own set of problems.

My parents and grandparents had a similar thing as you describe, cheap carbs, protein not affordable. They were Ashke**** Jews from eastern Europe, so likely had some dietary similarities. There was obesity in middle age on both sides. No wonder my sibs & I are always always either overweight or dieting. I used to rail about all the inheritances that I didn't like. Then it dawned on me that they must have done things pretty well or else I wouldn't be here at all.

Sheesh, 3FC edited out the end of my word. Guess I should have misspelled it Ashkenasi?

Today's menu....

Break - sausage burrito w/hot sauce and ice tea w/stevia
Lunch - leftover Swedish meatballs and pasta
Dinner - bourbon chicken & broccoli on jasmine rice

Oh Carol, I think we all agree that there are too many carbs around these days... Oh my! Perforated bowel and heart surgery--goodness you have been through a lot! Do you know specifics on your family's heart issues? Sounds like paying attention to your diet is helping you--thank goodness for that! It could be that the woman in your cardiac rehab has an underlying genetic defect that causes structural damage to the heart. Not much can be done to correct that, although, high blood pressure and clogged arteries would greatly exacerbate her situation.

Re the bacon grease comment (Gaw! I should be careful to avoid any insult to bacon grease on this forum!)...I don't think you can compare high fat diets of today with greasy food diets from the last century. That bacon grease on the stove top was probably rancid, and was re-used at temperatures past the smoke point. Oxidized and broken down fats are not good for you. Even fast food joints changed their ways and started using better oils and replacing them more frequently. All the trans-fats we used to eat!--from cottonseed with all the non-food safe pesticides. And all the cigarettes! Fewer carbs, Better fats and NO second-hand smoke...ahhh the good life. But as for me, I'm trying to be a pescatarian--just don't tell the chicken I ate today.

I don't like how some of the carb studies lump all carbs/sugars together: starches, non-starch polysaccharides, simple and compound sugars, processed complex starches, even fiber. There's a big difference between fruit versus pasta or a muffin.

But it's probably all going to boil down to the kind of bacteria in your gut anyway. There are some reports that some gut bacteria might increase the amount of calories you get from fat or even foster heart disease by breaking down fats into TMAO.

Good fats/bad fats; good carbs/bad carbs; good gut bacteria/bad gut bacteria--I know nothing about the sequence of my genes or my gut bacteria, or even exactly what's in or on my food! I just experiment.

Oh, Ha, Mars, on the editing.....

Went out for lunch today, and had a salad. Not MY salad, so worried what the scale will say..

Upcoming MIA
 

Morning All! I hear ya re salad SMF! Did the same thing--got the mid-afternoon hungries at work & trolled the cafeteria. Ended up with some string beans & a salad bar salad that I topped with, hmmm 1/4C? bleu cheese crumbles, a few croutons & tortilla strips, olive oil. Coulda been worse. evning hungries & had a big bowl of turkey chili, after dinner. And an Alleve for sore ankle. I'll myself spare the angst of WI.

Stress of stuffing everything into my suitcases just to see what I have to jettison to get them closed. I have been dreading this moment of reckoning, but now that it's done, I feel pretty calm. Maybe I won't have the urges to snack, one can hope. My luggage, like me, is about 15 lbs overweight, lol. But that just means paying $, a lot of the weight is from things I am donating. Wouldn't it be nice if we just could pay our way to make peace with the scale :rofl:

On Tuesday I depart for Cuba and will not have internet access for 2 weeks. I will miss you all on this thread, bigtime, and look forward to catching up the moment I am back under the Verizon sun.

SeeMyFeet, my mother's father had heart disease, but still he lived into his mid to late 70s. All of the children, 11 I think, had heart disease, except a couple who died young of other diseases. I don't know details. My mother was only 64 when she died with her third heart attack. My uncle, the second youngest lived to be 92. He was still getting around well and still driving up until he had a stroke 2 months before. He had had open heart surgery and several angioplasty procedures through the years. He was never overweight and told me that he walked every day, rain or shine, and I think that had something to do with his longevity. He was around when they had started doing open heart surgery as opposed to his older siblings. I also had an older cousin from the same family who had open heart surgery in his 40s and lived to his 80s. My two siblings are both gone...one was older and one younger. They died from other causes. I am the last.

I don't think my diet is bad, but not the greatest either. I eat mostly low carb because of my diabetes. I don't seek out fat, but don't avoid it either. So many low carbers recommend bacon, but I don't like it. Although my mother cooked with bacon grease, I don't like that either. I don't eat fried foods and don't like greasy fatty foods. But I use butter, eat pork sausage, dark meat poultry, etc. I use PAM to cook my eggs, but I do that for easier clean-up rather than fat reduction. When DH cooks eggs he uses butter and his do taste better than mine. So I think I just eat...no extremes one way or another.

I judge my heart health by how long I've gone without a heart incident. Along with the blockages I've had, I also have 2 leaky heart valves. My cardiologist seems to be more concerned about them then about blockages. I have an echocardiogram once a year and there isn't much change. So far they aren't bad enough to warrant valve replacements. I may never need them replaced, but if I do, I hope they are able to do them laproscopically, as I've been cut open enough already.

Mars, I am going to miss you terribly while your gone. It won't be the same here without you, but I hope you have a very enjoyable trip! You are going to have a lot of posts to read when you get home! LOL

Hi Everyone :wave:

I have always said this thread and the diabetic thread are a wealth of information. If you need to know something, just ask the question :) I haven't read everything so I may ask some questions that you have answered sorry ...

Jacqui, congratulations on 174. I weighed in at 172.5 today. Your gonna catch and pass me for sure :). Are you going to Boston for vacation?

Mars, you are the sweetest :hug: Gonna miss you while you're gone :hug:

PrairieQueen, I hope I'm not being an air-head but is your way of eating for maintenance or are you dieting and losing? Didn't know if you had told us before or not.

Carol I saw you were feeling well at one point. Are you feeling better? Did you find out what was going on? I love bacon, pork sausage and ham, yum.

SeeMyFeet, I remember the bacon grease/lard can. They cooked everything with it. I remember not eating eggs for that very reason as a youth. YUK ...

... me I think I've been in a maintenance frame of mind, if any kind of mind at all re: food. My mornings tend to start out good then I blow it in the afternoon. I almost like the way I look minus the belly blubber. I bought some sweet potatoes from a local farmer so I've been cooking those for the family. I bought a bag like thing at Big Lots called Quick Potato that cooks up to 4 of any kind of potato in 4 minutes and I do like that. It beats cooking one potato in the microwave and having to flip it midway for 8 minutes for sure. I have decided that rather than think about losing weight and getting to 150, I will focus on getting back to the weight that I started at on January 1st which is 165.8. which means that I will need to only lose 6.7lbs by December 31st. That sounds/seems doable. I will them focus on the 15.8lbs to get down to 150 by April 14th then I will give myself the remainder of 2016 to do the last 18lbs. Sounds like a plan ...

That does sound like a plan, Rennie, a good one. I rarely plan past the next meal.

I have one of those potato things but mine is called Potato Express. I got it at Goodwill and have never used it. I don't make baked potatoes very often and didn't think the bag would make a difference. I have 1 sweet potato left from my last purchase so I will try it. I buy a lot of kitchen things at Goodwill because they look interesting and the price is right. But I don't always use them. I bought a little kitchen scale but I don't use it to weigh my food. When I am wrapping my ground beef into hamburger patties to freeze, I weigh them to make sure they are 4 oz each, the size we like.

I still have the tail end of my cold but it's getting better each day. Never did end up going to the DR. I am still coughing and blowing my nose, but no longer feel sick. Thanks for asking!

I am so happy that you stopped by Rennie!! I missed you!