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Greetings all, it has been a looooooong time.
Although over the past few years I have tried to get back on the wagon, I have pretty much failed. I did the Atkins for a few weeks or a few months then fell off the wagon and pretty much stayed there. I have considered "other" diets just to break the cycles of off again and on again. I have been sucessful using a calorie counting diet but I felt like I was starving most of the time, still I did reach my goal which I have yet to do, though I came close, using Atkins. Atkins has been a diet that has been hard for me to stay on, it seems I get bored with the day in day out menus we tend to do, also it is not as easy to go out and eat on and we tend to be quite lazy when it comes to preparing food. My husband is the cook. I have had a pretty hard last few years, healthwise. I was having a very hard time walking for about 3 yrs. I had a lot of cramping in my legs, as time went on the cramping and my ability to walk certain distances decreased. Since I show dogs, this became more and more of a problem. I went to my doctor to talk about this several times, he sent me to physical therapy which was not helpful at all and after about 4 months and no relief, they said they would send a note to him and he would contact me for likely further testing. I really thought it was my back and a blown disc or something since I have a pretty big family disposition to back problems. After a year of never getting contacted (I know I shouldn't have waited that long) and further decreases in my ability to walk, I contacted him again. He sent me for an MRI of my spine, it was negative. I went back to see him and he said he would send me to physical therapy again, I refused to go saying it did not help me before and something was wrong with me and I wanted to know what it was because I was not making up this pain. He said well I will send you to an orthopedic surgeon, although I wasn't sure WHY, I agreed to go, maybe he would find whatever this guy was missing. While I aited for my appointment I decided to do some research on the internet, punch in my symptoms and see what comes up. Unfortunately the ONLY thing I could find that really fit was Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD). Usually strikes men over 50 with High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol, Diabetic, Smokers, those with CAD (Coronary Artery Disease) and those with a family history of Stroke and CAD. So I am a 45 yr old woman, borderline high cholesterol, a smoker with a famil history of stroke and CAD, but no diabetes and no high B/P though I have a family history of those too. So of course knowing that the ONLY risk factors was smoking and a family history, I really didn't think or want it to be this. I went to my appt and he ordered more x-rays of my spine (it had been more than a year and he said perhaps something new would show up as to why I got worse) When he was doing my physical I planted the little seed in his brain that perhaps my legs were not getting any blood flow and maybe this was causing my pain. He felt for pedal pulses and didn't say anything other than well I don't know but we can find out. So he ordered a doppler ultrasound study on both of my legs and for one week later too, no waiting a month to get in! So I went and well eventhough I am a RN, I really didn't have any info on what the results would mean when I went for the testing, but they put this blood pressure cuff, hook to a machine, on my left leg and turned it on, I guess she thought it would be easy and she would take the easy way out, well it pumped up, went down, then alarmed that it couldn't get a reading, she didn't even try the other leg, just went and got a nurse and said they would have to do this manually. So my left leg was 68/un-readble number and the right leg was 62/un-readable number. I had no idea what this meant. She ran the U/S down both of my legs over each artery and took video of it. I went home and again went to the internet to see what my results meant. It meant I had Moderate PAD and likely since both legs were involved, the blockage could be on the main aorta right before it split to supply both legs with blood flow. I KNEW I would need a vascular surgeon so I started looking for someone who I would feel confident would not let me die on the table should things be pretty bad and I also wanted to go to a highly rated hopsital, so I found a doctor who practiced in Louisville at the Jewish Hospital. When the orthopedic doc called me to give me the results, he said my primary had a list of doctors ready and I said I had already picked one which was covered by my insurance and I gave him his name and number. I was by this time, quite upset with my own primary who was an internal medicine doctor and when you have to go to the internet to diagnose yourself, you pretty much loose a lot of faith in your own doctor not to mention he looked at me like I was crazy when I described my pain AND acted like I was out fo get meds or something yet he never presribed me any pain meds at all. I just wanted "fixed". I went to the Vascualr surgeon and found out that I hardly had any femoral pulses in either leg and likely I had an abdominal blockage on the main branch of my aorta, he sent me for a CT Angiogram and sure enough I had a 100% blockage of my abdominal aorta and the only way my legs was getting blood flow was from a couple of small collateral arteries my body had built up due to a decrease of blood flow to the legs. He told me I had been this way for quite some time to have the aorta have a 100% blockage and that it was a wonder I could walk at all because the vessels that did supply blood to the legs were only large enough to just keep the legs alive, but not for the muscles to work too. So anyway, I was scheduled for an Aorto-Bifemoral By-Pass. I was cut from sternum to pubic bone to allow them to remove all of my abdominal organs to be able to get to the Aorta which lies on the otherside of the peritoneal cavity, next to the spine. I also had to have incisions in each groin (approx 6") to allow them to attach the graft to the legs to allow blood to flow back to my legs. In the process, they had to cut the collateral arteries as they were located right where they needed to attach the graft. This surgery (late Oct 2007) was the worst think i have ever been through. It took me 6 months to even be able to stand to have a waistband on my stomach, not to mention being overweight anyway and having the groin incisions. I quit smoking for 6 months and ate instead, then when I started smoking again, and I still ate. So by last Sept when I went on vacation I realized I was nearly 200lbs and weighed in at 194 lbs. Talk about DEPRESSING. So anyway, I got sick last November with a flu bug and had a hard time eating, I was in bed for 3 days straight and then got PO'ed cause my husband did not take care of my dogs or pups while I was in bed, I was sick for about 5 weeks and wasn't able to eat a lot over that time, I went to the doctor after two weeks of being sick and not getting better and I weighed 189. Approx a week after going for being sick I hurt my shoulder and had to go again and I weighed 184, then Jan 5th we started the Atkins Diet again and I weighed myself and weighed 179, so without even trying, I had lost 15 lbs of weight and thought well at least I have a pretty good start. I weighed on the 16th and was down to 170, then cheated all weeked because I had friends and family over all weekend, I cheated a little for lunch yesterday and at eggs and bacon last night for supper. I got on the scales today and weighed 171, so I didn't hurt myself too bad cheating over the weekend but I had a salad for lunch and will have a salad for supper tonight. I am hoping for my own health and self esteem, to stay on my diet this time and get down to where I want to be. I need to make myself get back on my Wii Fit, which when I DO get on it I really enjoy it and then get on my bowflex for some toning exercises. I am currently trying to stay on the induction phase so I will not have these sugar cravings. I did give in last week and go get some atkins bars with the 2 gr sugar. but I only ate one of them and still have the two boxes sitting (less one) in my cabinette. I hope to come here for some support, maybe find someone in my area who would like to get together and exercise. My husband is trying to loose weight too, but obviously is not as serious as I am since he at like a vegatable soup today for lunch while I ate salad and he did 3 hard days on the bike for the first 3 days which I told him was TOO MUCH for starting out and he hasn't been on it since then (sure he was too sore and I commented on him quiting and he said he should get back on it but has not) He also started with 55 lbs on the bowflex and did only a few exercises the first night and quit. I told him he should start gradual and work himself up to harder levels, but he wanted to go gung ho then he quits. I don't want to quit until I am back down to where I want to be and I am in better shape and able to do the things I want to do not to mention looking good too!!
Right now our meals have consisted of:
Boneless Chicken Breast fried in Olive Oil with the shredded parmesian cheese fried on top of it until it is golden brown and cottage cheese (1/2 cup)
Steak and Salad
Butterfly Pork Chops grilled and Salad.
Fried Keibalsa Links and Fried Cabbage
Eggs and Bacon
and just a Salad on a couple of days for lunch
We also have a local place that does a BBQ Chicken and ribs, no breading, it is smoked with a more or less legal sauce because we have lost weight eating them with their Green Beans.
I guess I need to look around for different recipes but I really want to keep the carbs down and not waste any on foods that can be cooked without the added carbs.
I also dilute my O'Charlies Honey Mustard salad dressing with Mayo, Water, and Horseradish Sauce so I can actually have more of it on my salads. I am considering making my own dressing now since I did play around with a Mustard/Mayo/Butter/Garlic Powder and Splenda sauce for my chicken wings (since I don't like hot wings and the sauce my husband uses is too hot for me) and I did use it as a dipping sauce for the Pork Rinds too!
Okay, the book is over now
Although over the past few years I have tried to get back on the wagon, I have pretty much failed. I did the Atkins for a few weeks or a few months then fell off the wagon and pretty much stayed there. I have considered "other" diets just to break the cycles of off again and on again. I have been sucessful using a calorie counting diet but I felt like I was starving most of the time, still I did reach my goal which I have yet to do, though I came close, using Atkins. Atkins has been a diet that has been hard for me to stay on, it seems I get bored with the day in day out menus we tend to do, also it is not as easy to go out and eat on and we tend to be quite lazy when it comes to preparing food. My husband is the cook. I have had a pretty hard last few years, healthwise. I was having a very hard time walking for about 3 yrs. I had a lot of cramping in my legs, as time went on the cramping and my ability to walk certain distances decreased. Since I show dogs, this became more and more of a problem. I went to my doctor to talk about this several times, he sent me to physical therapy which was not helpful at all and after about 4 months and no relief, they said they would send a note to him and he would contact me for likely further testing. I really thought it was my back and a blown disc or something since I have a pretty big family disposition to back problems. After a year of never getting contacted (I know I shouldn't have waited that long) and further decreases in my ability to walk, I contacted him again. He sent me for an MRI of my spine, it was negative. I went back to see him and he said he would send me to physical therapy again, I refused to go saying it did not help me before and something was wrong with me and I wanted to know what it was because I was not making up this pain. He said well I will send you to an orthopedic surgeon, although I wasn't sure WHY, I agreed to go, maybe he would find whatever this guy was missing. While I aited for my appointment I decided to do some research on the internet, punch in my symptoms and see what comes up. Unfortunately the ONLY thing I could find that really fit was Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD). Usually strikes men over 50 with High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol, Diabetic, Smokers, those with CAD (Coronary Artery Disease) and those with a family history of Stroke and CAD. So I am a 45 yr old woman, borderline high cholesterol, a smoker with a famil history of stroke and CAD, but no diabetes and no high B/P though I have a family history of those too. So of course knowing that the ONLY risk factors was smoking and a family history, I really didn't think or want it to be this. I went to my appt and he ordered more x-rays of my spine (it had been more than a year and he said perhaps something new would show up as to why I got worse) When he was doing my physical I planted the little seed in his brain that perhaps my legs were not getting any blood flow and maybe this was causing my pain. He felt for pedal pulses and didn't say anything other than well I don't know but we can find out. So he ordered a doppler ultrasound study on both of my legs and for one week later too, no waiting a month to get in! So I went and well eventhough I am a RN, I really didn't have any info on what the results would mean when I went for the testing, but they put this blood pressure cuff, hook to a machine, on my left leg and turned it on, I guess she thought it would be easy and she would take the easy way out, well it pumped up, went down, then alarmed that it couldn't get a reading, she didn't even try the other leg, just went and got a nurse and said they would have to do this manually. So my left leg was 68/un-readble number and the right leg was 62/un-readable number. I had no idea what this meant. She ran the U/S down both of my legs over each artery and took video of it. I went home and again went to the internet to see what my results meant. It meant I had Moderate PAD and likely since both legs were involved, the blockage could be on the main aorta right before it split to supply both legs with blood flow. I KNEW I would need a vascular surgeon so I started looking for someone who I would feel confident would not let me die on the table should things be pretty bad and I also wanted to go to a highly rated hopsital, so I found a doctor who practiced in Louisville at the Jewish Hospital. When the orthopedic doc called me to give me the results, he said my primary had a list of doctors ready and I said I had already picked one which was covered by my insurance and I gave him his name and number. I was by this time, quite upset with my own primary who was an internal medicine doctor and when you have to go to the internet to diagnose yourself, you pretty much loose a lot of faith in your own doctor not to mention he looked at me like I was crazy when I described my pain AND acted like I was out fo get meds or something yet he never presribed me any pain meds at all. I just wanted "fixed". I went to the Vascualr surgeon and found out that I hardly had any femoral pulses in either leg and likely I had an abdominal blockage on the main branch of my aorta, he sent me for a CT Angiogram and sure enough I had a 100% blockage of my abdominal aorta and the only way my legs was getting blood flow was from a couple of small collateral arteries my body had built up due to a decrease of blood flow to the legs. He told me I had been this way for quite some time to have the aorta have a 100% blockage and that it was a wonder I could walk at all because the vessels that did supply blood to the legs were only large enough to just keep the legs alive, but not for the muscles to work too. So anyway, I was scheduled for an Aorto-Bifemoral By-Pass. I was cut from sternum to pubic bone to allow them to remove all of my abdominal organs to be able to get to the Aorta which lies on the otherside of the peritoneal cavity, next to the spine. I also had to have incisions in each groin (approx 6") to allow them to attach the graft to the legs to allow blood to flow back to my legs. In the process, they had to cut the collateral arteries as they were located right where they needed to attach the graft. This surgery (late Oct 2007) was the worst think i have ever been through. It took me 6 months to even be able to stand to have a waistband on my stomach, not to mention being overweight anyway and having the groin incisions. I quit smoking for 6 months and ate instead, then when I started smoking again, and I still ate. So by last Sept when I went on vacation I realized I was nearly 200lbs and weighed in at 194 lbs. Talk about DEPRESSING. So anyway, I got sick last November with a flu bug and had a hard time eating, I was in bed for 3 days straight and then got PO'ed cause my husband did not take care of my dogs or pups while I was in bed, I was sick for about 5 weeks and wasn't able to eat a lot over that time, I went to the doctor after two weeks of being sick and not getting better and I weighed 189. Approx a week after going for being sick I hurt my shoulder and had to go again and I weighed 184, then Jan 5th we started the Atkins Diet again and I weighed myself and weighed 179, so without even trying, I had lost 15 lbs of weight and thought well at least I have a pretty good start. I weighed on the 16th and was down to 170, then cheated all weeked because I had friends and family over all weekend, I cheated a little for lunch yesterday and at eggs and bacon last night for supper. I got on the scales today and weighed 171, so I didn't hurt myself too bad cheating over the weekend but I had a salad for lunch and will have a salad for supper tonight. I am hoping for my own health and self esteem, to stay on my diet this time and get down to where I want to be. I need to make myself get back on my Wii Fit, which when I DO get on it I really enjoy it and then get on my bowflex for some toning exercises. I am currently trying to stay on the induction phase so I will not have these sugar cravings. I did give in last week and go get some atkins bars with the 2 gr sugar. but I only ate one of them and still have the two boxes sitting (less one) in my cabinette. I hope to come here for some support, maybe find someone in my area who would like to get together and exercise. My husband is trying to loose weight too, but obviously is not as serious as I am since he at like a vegatable soup today for lunch while I ate salad and he did 3 hard days on the bike for the first 3 days which I told him was TOO MUCH for starting out and he hasn't been on it since then (sure he was too sore and I commented on him quiting and he said he should get back on it but has not) He also started with 55 lbs on the bowflex and did only a few exercises the first night and quit. I told him he should start gradual and work himself up to harder levels, but he wanted to go gung ho then he quits. I don't want to quit until I am back down to where I want to be and I am in better shape and able to do the things I want to do not to mention looking good too!!
Right now our meals have consisted of:
Boneless Chicken Breast fried in Olive Oil with the shredded parmesian cheese fried on top of it until it is golden brown and cottage cheese (1/2 cup)
Steak and Salad
Butterfly Pork Chops grilled and Salad.
Fried Keibalsa Links and Fried Cabbage
Eggs and Bacon
and just a Salad on a couple of days for lunch
We also have a local place that does a BBQ Chicken and ribs, no breading, it is smoked with a more or less legal sauce because we have lost weight eating them with their Green Beans.
I guess I need to look around for different recipes but I really want to keep the carbs down and not waste any on foods that can be cooked without the added carbs.
I also dilute my O'Charlies Honey Mustard salad dressing with Mayo, Water, and Horseradish Sauce so I can actually have more of it on my salads. I am considering making my own dressing now since I did play around with a Mustard/Mayo/Butter/Garlic Powder and Splenda sauce for my chicken wings (since I don't like hot wings and the sauce my husband uses is too hot for me) and I did use it as a dipping sauce for the Pork Rinds too!
Okay, the book is over now
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