Healthy (er) Living

So, what's a girl to do after being so sick that the doctor thought it was touch and go?

Well, you re-evaluate your life,(especially when one of your closest friends tragically dies during this time) you change your habits, and you set goals.

Before my health scare, I weighed 270 pounds.  It just happened.  If you'd have asked me in high school, I would have told you that I would do whatever it took to not ever weigh over 200 pounds.  I'm five foot tall, for crying out loud!

But PCOS takes good intentions and throws them out the window.  I will admit that my eating habits weren't the best in the world.  I could have eaten more vegetables and drank less soda, but if you were to compare my diet with other women, you'd have been surprised that I constantly gained weight.  My husband has been continually surprised at the fact that I gain weight with the amount of food that I eat---even when counting calories and sticking with a 1,500 calorie/day limit, I gained weight.

So, I lost 15 pounds in that month between surgeries.  I felt like crap, plus I was on super high-powered antibiotics, so nothing tasted decent.  When I was admitted after my second surgery, the hospital sent a dietician to talk with me about that "drastic" weight loss.  I was all "Whoo-hoo, at least SOMETHING good has come out of all of this", but the dietician was concerned that I was losing muscle mass--as if!  I was really weak, but considering what my body had gone through, I expected it.  I was on really severe restrictions for another six weeks after my stent was removed.

So, as of today, I am down to 236.  I need to lose another 100 pounds from here, but it's a start.  I actually was down to 230 by February, but I'll explain why it's not gone down in my next post.

How did I do it?

1.  I've been methodically eradicating HFCS from my diet.  I'll use products that have regular sugar instead.

2.  If I can make it myself, I'm doing that instead of buying processed food.

3.  Lots and lots of fresh spinach---I even turn it into pizza dough--hubby likes it too, and he's not into ANYTHING that looks vegetable-ish at all.

4.  I've cut out soda.  I will have a couple of swigs to clear drainage in my throat, and we still have our Soda-stream machine that makes HFCS-free soda for hubby, but in the last 8 months, I have maybe had the equivalent of 3 sodas.  I was so sick that I went cold turkey for that month, and then the meds I was on made all soda taste like vinegar, plus I didn't want to throw up ANY more, so I just avoided them.

5.  Daily exercise---I was up to walking 10-15 miles every week, which sped up weight loss.  Now that it's summer, I'm trying to ride my bicycle around town to run errands.  This gives me a two-fold savings: health benefits and reduction in gas for my car!

6.  Adding fish to my diet.  I've been trying to eat fish with at least one meal a week.  If I'm doing really good, I'll have 5 meals with fish  in the week.

7.  Per my surgeon's orders, I've been drinking LOTS of water, lemon-water, and even lemonades (like lite raspberry lemonade--double the water per packet).  According to his testing, I am to be drinking 1.5 to 2 gallons of water/tea/citrus drinks a DAY.  I haven't been able to do this during the school year (um, I don't get that many bathroom breaks because I am always responsible for students), but I've worked my way up to that amount since I'm on break.  It's a chore to drink that much water a day.

So that's what I'm doing.  Stay tuned to find out what ELSE is going on as I now have time for daily blogging!