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As of this morning I have lost 32 pounds. I knew the weight was coming off, I could feel it in my clothes and I could feel it in the way I moved more easily. I could see my face getting thinner when I looked in the mirror. So I knew the weight was coming off. It is still, however, nice to see confirmation from the scale.

This is now officially the most weight I have ever lost. For years I lost a few pounds here and a few pounds there, but I’d always gain them back. I could never seem to lose the weight and keep it off. I also had trouble sticking to a sensible eating plan and exercise routine. Apparently, at almost forty. I’ve found my willpower and my drive. I’m not sure exactly how or why it happened, but I’m grateful that it did.

I still have a long way to go. Unfortunately 32 pounds is just the tip of the iceberg. Still it feels good to have gotten this far up the mountain, and to prove to myself that I can lose weight if I want to lose weight. I won’t say it hasn’t been work, and I won’t say it hasn’t taken some sacrifice, because it has been work and I have sacrificed some foods I dearly love to eat. Still, I know that losing weight will be better for my health in the long run and that’s what really matters.

I guess the next plateau will be 50 pounds. That’s only 18 pounds away, which is totally doable. I just have to remember to focus on the smaller, more immediate goal and not the larger goal which seems so much further away. If I can just keep taking small steps and doing the right things every day, I know I’ll get to where I want to be. I’m very excited by that thought. Getting thin has been a long and hard process, and I’m glad I finally seem to be getting it right at last.

Last night I wore an old pajama top of my Mom’s to bed. I’d had kind of a rough day and I was really missing her and wearing the top made me feel closer to her somehow. A nice side benefit was the fact that I hadn’t been able to wear the top before because I couldn’t fit into it. Last night it was too big. Still, while the fit was nice, it didn’t really matter. It was the comfort of feeling close to Mom that I was after.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do since I’ve been working to lose weight is to train myself not to eat when I’m feeling sad or stressed or scared. I’ve always been an emotional eater and I’ve always used food as a method of stuffing my emotions. When I was mad, I ate. When I was sad, I ate. When I felt any kind of emotion at all, I ate. For years I used food as a security blanket and a comfort. Eating was how I dealt, or didn’t deal, with what was going on in my life.

These last few weeks have been pretty stressful for me. There was the uncertainty about closing on the house. Then there was the closing. Now there’s moving with all the tasks and uncertainties that can bring. Add to that some issues in other areas and I’ve pretty much been a nutjob these last few weeks. I wrote about some of that on my other blog, Settling for More.

So far, despite all the stress and emotional nuttiness, I’ve been doing fairly well with keeping my eating in check. I haven’t dived head first into a bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy. I haven’t eaten an entire bag of Dove Dark Chocolate Squares. I’ve been doing well with keeping my portions in check and I’m still losing weight. I won’t claim I’ve entirely conquered the problem, but I think I’ve made a good start.

I guess I finally realized that eating to reduce stress doesn’t generally reduce stress. In fact, it just gives me another thing, my weight, about which to be stressed. So, for now, I do my best to not let my eating get out of control, but I also cut myself a break if it does happen. Either way, it’s less stress for me and that’s good.

I have always been a member of the clean plate club. If it was on my plate, providing it was a food I liked, I was going to eat it. Whether or not I was still hungry didn’t matter. If it was put in front of me, I’d hoover it up regardless of whether or not I really wanted the food or whether or not it was too much food. I wasn’t one who believed that too much of a good thing could be bad.

One of the things I realized when I started really working on losing weight was that often my problem wasn’t that I was eating too much of something unhealthy. In my case the problem was that I was eating way too much of something that was good for me. If one pork chop was good, two would be better. Why have a small square of lasagna when you could eat a large square? If one piece of bread was a taste treat, think how ecstatic I’d be after three.

Since I’ve started losing weight, I’ve learned to attend to portion size much more carefully. I have a scale now, and weigh certain foods to make sure I’m not eating a large amount over the recommended serving size. I also work on eating more foods at each meal. My plate may still be full, but now it contains vegetables and grains and protein in proportional amounts.

I’ve also learned to push my plate away when I’m full. I may still overfill the plate on occasion, but now I’ve learned to listen to my body and to say call a halt to eating when my system says I’m full. That means there is often food left on my plate, but I don’t mind that so much. The results of pushing my plate away are showing up in the way my clothes fit and the increased stamina I have when I exercise. That, to me, is worth every bit of wasted food.

If you are struggling with portion size and knowing what is a healthy portion, here are some resources that may help.

Web MD

Portion Distortion Quiz

I know I’ve written about this here before, but I wanted to update everyone on how my new diet is going. I’ve been working to pay more attention to the glycemic index of foods, and I’ve been trying to eat so that I balance my blood sugar. I know, from my last doctor’s appointment, that my blood sugar was high. I’m not diabetic, but my blood sugar was apparently heading in that direction. I convinced Regular Doc to give me a few months to try and control my blood sugar with diet and exercise. She, as usual, wanted to stick me on another pill.

Since that appointment, I’ve been reading and studying and trying to figure this all out. I used to have what I called “jittery” days, where I’d feel shaky and out of sorts. As I read more about diet and blood sugar I realized that my jitters might well be caused by my blood sugar being out of balance. I decided to modify my eating habits based on what I’d learned in my research and see if that made a difference.

I started by pairing any carbs I ate with a protein. The idea is that the protein helps regulate the burst of insulin that the carbs inspire. Carbs tend to cause your body to release a big rush of insulin, which your body might not handle well if you’re insulin resistant. Eating a small bit of protein helps regulate that rush.

I also started eating more frequently. I now eat every two to three hours. I eat three regular meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner and then a small snack in between. Snacks are nothing major, maybe a slice of deli turkey or a small handful of almonds or an apple. The idea is to balance the blood sugar by never getting too hungry.

Finally, I started doing more strength training. Apparently lifting weights helps build muscles and muscles that are stronger are less resistant to insulin. I’m not sure I understand the entire process behind this yet, but study after study has proven it works. So, in the interest of getting the benefits, if there are any, I’ve upped my strength training to three times a week.

So far, things seem to be working. I’m much less shaky and jittery. My energy levels are higher in the evening. My heart rate seems to be more stable and normal too. I can’t be entirely certain that all this is due to the change in diet, but I’d bet that at least some of it is. Right now, that’s good enough for me.

I’ve lost about 25 pounds. I can see it in my face. I can certainly tell by the way my clothes fit, or don’t fit. I’ve had other people tell me I look thinner. Most of the time I’m pretty proud of myself. The rest of the time I can’t seem to escape the knowledge of how far I have to go.

I guess it’s kind of like the guy who is trying to tunnel out of prison with a teaspoon. You just have to keep digging day after day and measure your progress in increments. If you start thinking about how flimsy your tools are and how long the tunnel is that you have to dig, you’ll never get to the end. It’s the same thing with weight loss. If you celebrate every small milestone, you might eventually get to the big milestone. If you stop along the way and look at how far you have to go until you get to the end, you probably won’t get there.

Most of the time I’m a big picture girl. I like to look at the overall goal and plan all the steps along the way. When it comes to weight loss, however, I’ve had to quit looking at the big picture. The truth is that I have a lot of weight to lose. The other truth is that it won’t come off overnight. If I let myself focus on how long this could all take and how much I have to lose, I probably won’t ever lose another pound. So I don’t let myself focus on that. Instead I focus on how much better I feel and how close I am to losing that next five pounds and let the rest take care of itself.

A piece of writing advice that I’ve always liked says something like this: if you want to write a novel, don’t focus on the fact that you want to write 365 pages. Instead, focus on writing one page every day. At the end of a year, you’ll have a novel.

I think it’s the same thing with weight loss. Don’t focus on the 20 or 50 or 100 pounds you need to lose. Focus on losing one or two pounds a week. At the end of a year, you’ll have lost over 100 pounds. Focusing on the smaller goal eventually helps you get to the bigger goal, and keeps you from getting discouraged.

If I had to make a guess, I’d say that most people don’t think much about their heartbeat. It’s like breathing, you don’t have to think about each breath you take, it happens automatically. For most people, their heart beating is probably the same thing. Other than wondering if the rate has increased enough when they exercise, I’d guess the average person doesn’t pay any mind to what their heart does. It is simply there, beating regularly, day after day after day.

I used to be that way, even though I’d been born with a heart defect and had surgeries to correct problems. The way it used to go was pretty simple. I’d have a problem, I’d have the surgery and life would go on. I won’t say the surgeries were fun, they weren’t, but I always assumed that the surgery would fix the problem and I’d go back to being as healthy as I was before.

Then, afib showed up. So far no one can tell me why it happened. No one can tell me when it will happen. No one can tell me if it will happen again. I had an episode in March and went on some medication. Things were going fine for three months and then I had another episode in June. They tried some new medication and so far things have been fine. Most of the time I think positively and believe things will stay that way. Most of the time.

Still, I wear a divot in my left wrist because I take my pulse so frequently. I’ve put the blood pressure/heart monitor away because I was using it so often when it was out in plain sight. I worry every time I have a twinge or feel a little light headed or feel like something is off a bit which means I worry all the time. If I can feel my heart beating strongly, I worry. If I can’t feel my heart beating strongly, I worry. Obviously, I worry most of the time.

I’m working very hard toward getting back to believing I’m healthy and taking the strong, steady beat of my heart for granted. I’m proud to say that I’m in that frame of mind more often lately. I’m sad to say that the rest of the time I’m a nervous, stressed wreck. I hope that, as the months go on with no further incidents, I’ll go back to being more relaxed about this whole issue. Except, in a weird way, I don’t want to be more relaxed. Being attuned to my heartbeat has encouraged me to get healthier, to think more about what I eat, and to exercise more.

If being more aware brings me all those benefits, spending a little time monitoring my heartbeat is a small price to pay.

I’ve always been kind of a salt junky. I love salty foods. I’ve never been a huge one for sweets, but I love chips and crackers and dips and popcorn with lots of salt and butter. One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in dealing with my new diet is the fact that salt is limited. I never did use the salt shaker all that much, so my problem isn’t that I have to stop adding salt to my food. The problem is that there’s already so much salt already there.

Take yesterday for instance. I’ve mentioned before that I’m also working to balance my blood sugar. That requires eating a bit less sugar as well. One of my new strategies for accomplishing that goal was to substitute foods that didn’t contain sugar for those that did. I had the brilliant idea that I would make some fat free pudding and use some fat free cool whip and have a nice low sugar treat that I could eat in place of ice cream. It seemed like a brilliant idea until I read the back of the pudding packet. A 1/4 cup of pudding has over 300 milligrams of sodium. That, clearly, won’t do.

It is a sad but true fact that most grocery stores don’t carry an extensive line of low sodium products. You may find some low sodium canned vegetables and perhaps, if you’re lucky, some low sodium soups or chips, but most products will be the full sodium versions. I don’t buy a great deal of prepared food for just this reason, but there are some things I do like to buy. I don’t have enough patience to make my own spaghetti sauce, and I don’t believe I’d even begin to know how to make my own English muffins. Luckily, I have found a few online stores that cater to those on a low sodium diet.

If you’re on such a diet, check out these stores. They do have some great products.

Living Low Sodium

Healthy Heart Market

HeartWise Foods

I’m starting to wonder about the nutritional content of library paste. In the last few days it has come to seem like everything else I might want to eat is bad for me. I’m getting a little discouraged.

When I first started dealing with afib one of the things they told me was to watch my fluid intake and to go on a low sodium diet. That seemed relatively simply. I didn’t eat out a lot and I didn’t eat a lot of processed food so I thought I was in good shape. Then I started reading how much sodium was in things I thought were good for me, and I realized I needed to make some changes. It wasn’t always easy, but I did revamp my diet.

A while later I started noticing I was getting shaky and tired a lot. My doctor had told me my blood sugar was a little high. I started cutting back on sugar and investigated the glycemic index. Once again I started revamping my diet and learning to eat in a new way. The good news is that paying more attention to the glycemic index and eating more carefully seems to be balancing out my blood sugar. The bad news is that, yet again, there are foods that are verboten, and those foods are the ones I like most.

Sometimes I wonder if knowing as much as we do about health and how food and drink and other things effect our bodies is such a good thing. I could, if I wanted to, spend half my day deciding what to eat and when to eat it. All I want is to be healthy, and I’m willing to do what is necessary to accomplish that. I guess I just wish it were a bit simpler sometimes.

So, for what it’s worth here’s my plan. I am going to watch my sodium. I am going to try to use the glycemic index to incorporate more low glycemic foods into my diet. I am going to work to fit more exercise into my schedule and I am going to add more weight training to my exercise routine. What I won’t do is become a Nazi about all this. I will do the best I can do and feel good about it. I won’t beat myself up if I have that piece of chocolate or handful of chips. As of right now, I’m eating better and more mindfully than I ever have in my life.

That, I hope, will count for something.

I went to Applebee’s tonight. The choice of restaurant wasn’t made by me and it wasn’t one I would have chosen, for one simple reason. It is impossible to find nutrition information for Applebee’s meals.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I’m on a heart healthy, low sodium diet. I want to make food choices that are within my diet parameters and healthy for me. I need to know how much fat and salt are in the foods I eat, or at least to be able to make a reasonable estimate. When I go to Applebee’s I have no way of doing that.

On the Applebee’s web site they have this to say about why they don’t offer nutrition information:

We do not provide nutritional information on other Applebee’s® items - with approximately 1,900 locations in the U.S. alone there are many different vendors, which makes it extremely difficult to obtain nutritional information for our items.

You’ll forgive me if I’m a little skeptical about that statement. Other restaurant chains have as many locations and offer as many different types of food and they can manage to release their nutrition information. Take, for instance, Outback Steakhouse, which I have mentioned on this blog before. They can manage to have a whole section on their web site which talks about nutrition and how to eat for specific diets.

Even fast food places are getting into the act. Wendy’s has a nutrition calculator which lets you add different foods from their menu to see how many calories and how much fat and sodium each combination contains. Even McDonalds includes nutrition information on their web site.

In today’s health conscious world, I’m guessing more people are going to be looking for information that will help them eat healthier. I know, when it’s my choice, that I’ll be going to restaurants that will give me the information I need to make an informed choices about what I eat. I’m guessing a lot of other people will too.

Every day about 5:30 in the evening I feel like I fall into a sort of black hole. My energy levels drop. I get tired. My interest in doing anything but sitting on the couch is almost nil. The thought of exercise seems like a cruel joke, and not a very funny joke. If someone would roll a cot up to my desk at work I would happily take a nap.

The problem with this energy drain is the fact that I still have a lot to do in my day. I usually work until 6:30 or so. My plan after I leave work is to go home, exercise, eat dinner, clean up and then do whatever work I have to do that night. Maybe I write blog posts. Maybe I work on other projects. The plan is that I put in an additional couple hours of work and then go to bed. Except lately the plan hasn’t been happening.

By the time I get home at night I’m starving and tired. I usually have a light supper which only leaves me tired. I either have to force myself to exercise, which only leaves me more tired, or I skip the exercise. I have trouble keeping my eyes open when I’m working after dinner, but can’t seem to fall asleep when I finally go to bed. The whole thing is most perplexing.

I know that part of the problem is some of the medication I’m on. The pills cause fatigue and drowsiness. I also know that my sleeping patterns aren’t always the best for leaving you well rested and energized. I also have to wonder if my diet plays a part. I have pared back my diet, and I’m wondering if I’ve gone a bit too far. I’ve noticed I generally feel better when I eat something a bit more substantial in the evening. Maybe I need to look into adding a little more to my evening meal.

I would really like to find a solution to this problem. I have a lot I want to accomplish in the evenings and being a sleep deprived zombie just isn’t getting the job done. If any of you have experienced this problem and conquered it, I’d love to hear your solution.