Thursday, March 10, 2011

Made some changes

Tomorrow it is 4 weeks (I think) ago that I was told to make some real changes in my lifestyle or I was heading for some serious heart and vascular trouble within 10 years. (think heart attack before I would be 56)
After a bit of a struggle, we are getting there. And yes, Jack is reading the back labels of everything we buy at the Giant also, searches the web for information and eats, mostly, what I eat. And, a bit adjusted, my son does too.
These days we can be found at the organic isle, the vegetarian cooling and the (yes Mom, it is true) at the fish department.
And slowly I am starting to realize that this is becoming a quite interesting change in feeding ourselves.
Certainly after a friend suggested a book that is called 'Cholesterol down'.

This book gave us some clues on what foods are really good on bringing the bad cholesterol down within 4 weeks. Not that I am aiming on just pleasing the doctor next month, but I really want to avoid taking medication for the rest of my life.
Much to Jack's pleasure one of the clues is eating a bowl of oatmeal every day. He boils water, adds the oats and puts some honey in there. To be honest, just the sight of it makes me queasy. I 'll stick to my way of eating oats. After looking around, I found a perfectly fine muesli, add some greek yoghurt and I am happy.  Other things are: eating a lot of vegetables, raw if possible and beans, kidney beans, black beans, all types except for green beans, the well known apple a day (red if possible) and with skin, adding two teaspoons of flaxseed meal, a handful of almonds and for me, adding Metamucil, a fiber, to my diet 3 times a day.
And even if this wouldn't bring down my cholesterol, we can at least heat our house with the bio gas we produce.
For once we are worse then our 4 dogs.

A good way to burn that off and recommended in the book is walking, 30 minutes a day. Now, I still have to get Jack to do that, but for myself I think I am fine in that department, going to the gym 4 to 5 times a week and every week an hour yoga should be enough exercise.
Also for myself I decided to cut out alcohol totally. But, I still drink my 3 cups of coffee in the morning.

All in all we find the new food we try tasty, I love Quinoa for example and we have no trouble adjusting to it.
The only problem for me is, if I eat everything that is recommended, I would end up eating too much and I do want to get rid of a lot of pounds. So I have to restrict myself.
And that is hard, but…I lost about 10 (US) pounds already. It is going slow, but it is happening.

I do have one complaint though.
Did they really have to deliver the girl scout cookies now?

2 comments:

Petra said...

Good job Petra!
Had to laugh about the cookies though.......

Tulsa Divorce Attorney said...

It sounds like you've seized a golden opportunity to make some changes in your life...changes for the better.