Grilling Memorial Monday

Started with a nice salad with some feta cheese and raspberry walnut vinaigrette

Veggies, they came out a bit under done :(

CORN!

New York Strip steaks before:

New York Strip steaks after, they came out perfect!

Hope I don't gain any weight from this......I am not gonna weigh until Wed. just in case. :D

Healthy dinner...

This was my dinner tonight. When I got to work today (double shift) I discovered that we would be open late because of the holiday and I hadn't packed a big enough lunch. I did have this can of soup left over from forever ago so I put it on the huge transformer we have here in the booth and let it sit for 2 hours until it heated up. Yes, I ate it right out of the can.

Meds!

Ack I walked right out of the house without taking them this morning. I did take my daily vitamin and calcium supplement when I got out of the shower but I totally forgot my real meds. I had a spare Janumet in my lunch kit so I took that when I got to work, but I am with out my Glipizide and Simcor for the day. Hope I'm ok, I will check my sugar tonight before bed.

246!

I got up yesterday and I was 246, I still am today. I had a bit of an eating binge last night. I had some deli ham that I thought was 25 calories a slice and I ate about 5 or 6 slices then later discovered it was 40 calories a slice, it was 25 servings in the pack, whoopsie! Add to that 2 light string cheese sticks, some olives and a sugar free pudding and I was like 500 calories over what I wanted yesterday. I got up this morning and got on the scale and I hadn't gained anything so I was happy with that. Lord god almighty I want it to say 245 tomorrow, but it won't be the end of the world if it doesn't. I am very happy that I got back to where I was and have started losing again having given up a week because of lack of planning. My sugar was 128 yesterday morning and 88 this morning. The only thing I can think of that might have made it higher yesterday was before I went to bed I had 3 big cups of coffee back to back to back, it was decaf, but I like it creamy so I had a fair amount of sugar free vanilla creamer in all 3.
Anyways, we are grilling out steaks tomorrow. They are pretty high in calories as far as meat goes, but I am trying to plan the day around it.

Back to 247!

I am not going to stray this time, I lost a whole week! Blood sugar was 96 this morning. Isn't that awesome?

My afternoon snack

Takoyaki balls. They are made with rice flour and have octopus inside. They have bonito flakes, seaweed, okonomi sauce and kewpie mayo on them. 140 calories!

248 and 89

So I got up today and got on the scale and it said 248.6 so I have lost most of what I gained in the last 3 days so I am thinking that it wasn't fat as much as it was water or something. You don't lose 7 pounds in 2 days, is that even possible? Blood sugar was at 89 and I was out of my Janumet last night so I didn't take it, so that makes me happy.

Grilling Wednesday!

It was raining on Monday so we grilled tonight. Marinated chicken kabobs with mushrooms and cherry tomatoes. Corn on the cob on the side. Also grilled a couple of pork steaks for later consumption, don't want to waste our lovely chunk charcoal :D

Woke up lighter

I was 252 this morning, so I guess some of what I gained was water. I won't be happy until I am back to where I was last week though. My sugar was 64. I have noticed that it goes up when I eat bread products. Not necessarily carbs because I still eat them every day, but when they are composed of a bread product my sugar goes up a ton. Gonna keep an eye on that. A friend wondered if maybe I have a gluten issue. I think I might.

Worked on my patio garden today

I started the patio garden at the end of March by planting starter seeds. About a month ago I moved some stuff to their pots. Today I transplanted the tomatoes to bigger pots.

The larger pots have better boy and early girl tomatoes, the pots on the rail in the back have yellow squash and zucchini and the pots on the rail in the front have various types of peppers in them.

The small pots on the rail have various types of lettuce in them, the larger pots have roma tomatoes and grape tomatoes in them.

The brown planters have herbs, flat leaf parsley, chives and sweet basil in them.

Let me show you my dinner I made....

I made miso soup with a few buckwheat noodles. Spring roll type rolls with nori instead of spring roll wrappers. Inside two of them have crab sticks, wasabi, a very small amount of brown rice, and bean sprouts. One of them has chicken breast with chili spice and Japanese mayo, a very small amount of brown rice (there is probably not even a half cup of rice total in this) and bean sprouts. The sauces are soy ginger with rice wine vinegar and the other is spicy peanut.
I have started making all my wraps with nori instead of anything high in carbs like a tortilla. I even made a wrap with a boiled egg the other day and put soy sauce and sprinkled furikake (Japanese rice season that usually has sesame seeds and other nummy things) it was very good.
I also think I know why the Japanese are so thin as a whole. They eat alot of reasonably light foods but also, everything they make is so cute and portion controlled. I mention this because I just got through making more onigiri, this time I added edemame and a slice of light Spam and made them into Spam musubi. I made one too many so we shared it. These are the best ones I have made so far, super nummy!

Healthy snack

I was feeling hungry and I am at work. I always bring the right snacks. Sushi rolls for dinner tonight, can't wait!

Ugh, I've been struggling

I am trying hard not to let one day derail me but man is it ever trying to do just that. I cheated on Saturday and then ate more than I should have on Sunday because we had so many left overs and then yesterday I tried hard to be good but it is like some hunger switch got flipped inside me and I was starving all day and ended up eating about 350 more calories than I should. I got on the scale today (even though I said I wouldn't) and I am way up, it said 255lbs. This was after I ate both breakfast and lunch and had quite a bit of liquid to drink as well, so of course it was up. What am I stupid???
See the thing is, I woke up on Sunday feeling like crap. Not just mentally but physically. Ever since then I have been tired, sluggish and just felt like crap. I didn't feel like this for one second in the last few weeks while I was dieting. I had a spring in my step, now I feel like I'm struggling just to step at all. WTF? You would think that this alone would be motivation enough to pull me right back. Maybe getting on that scale every day is more of a motivator, even if it doesn't move for a few days in a row. I have been trying real hard to get back on track. This is where I usually fail. I want this time to be different!!

I cheated on the diet big time.....BUT

So yes, we were celebrating my rooomies birthday and the fact that yesterday was the first day of my summer and I am off from school until the fall. Yay! We had many friends over and played Rock Band and grilled brats and dogs on the grill. I saved my calories up for the entire day and splurged. I ate around 3000 calories. Waaaay more than I should. I also ate waaaaay more carbs than I should, I had buns and chips and pie and even cookies, but they were all spread out over a 10 hour period so I think that helped. Anyways I expected my sugar to be CRAZY this morning. I took my meds last night and much to my surprise when I got up and checked my sugar it was ONLY 74!! That made me all kinds of happy. Today my nose is back to the grind stone. I am trying to learn that it is ok to cheat from time to time but you have to go right back to it the next day. Since I decided to weigh myself before the party and then ate way too much, I have decided to put off my next weigh in until Monday next week instead of doing it tomorrow. Smart move I think. So anyways, instead of beating myself up for over eating I get to do the happy dance about my blood sugar. *happy dance*

Daily Drugs

These are the drugs I take on a daily basis. In there are 2 combo drugs, if they weren't then you would see more pills down there. I have Janumet, combo 1, that I take for diabetes and Simcor, the other combo that is for cholesterol and triglycerides. Then there is Glipizide which is also for diabetes. Next is a multivitamin, calcium, B12, fish oil and claratin for allergies. Not pictured are Xanax and a pain reliever and muscle relaxer that I take as needed, which is usually only once or twice a week if that.

Dinner tonight....and tomorrow night.

I made some soup in the crock pot. Chicken and white beans with brown rice and vegetables. It has 3 different kinds of white beans. You can see the recipe HERE.

That was kind of scary

I didn't check my sugar right away after I got up and I didn't eat anything either so when I did get around to checking it was 69. That's too low I think. I ate a banana right away and then a fiber bar. I'm going to have to talk to my Doctor about it.

Arrrrgh!

I cheated on my diet. I ended up eating about 350 calories too much. I ate too many mini rice cakes during my snack and then got worried about the carbs so I ate some cheese too and that really popped my calories up. I don't think I had enough solid protein today and it left me hungry. I ran out of boiled eggs so I am going to boil some up. They are always filling and really do the trick.
I'm not going to beat myself up for it though. I still only had 1114 calories today. I wonder if this is some how connected to my final exams and this paper.

Last week of school before summer break

I got 2 final exams and a 16 page paper due this week. Help me now.

Zucchini Bake

So I had some zucchini and a yellow squash left over from "Grilling Monday" so I made a zucchini bake. This entire meal has 231 calories.

Goals

The shirt on the right is a 2X, the shirt on the left is a XL. These are two of my goals right now. At this time I wear a 3X. Eventually I want to make it to a large, but these two would make me happy right now.

My food journal

I do keep one, but I do it online a livestrong.com. I am making this blog to use as my own personal diet and weightloss journal but on the off chance that somebody besides me is actually reading it, and you would like to follow along with my food intake etc, then you can check it out on my plate at Livestrong, here is a link to my Profile. I set my calorie goal at 1800. I am not trying to eat that much, I use that so I can see daily what my calorie gap is as well.
Like I said earlier, I am following the nutrition plan that people use AFTER they have bariatric surgery, only I am not getting the surgery. I am taking supplements daily and strive to make sure that I am getting foods from all groups, plenty of protein and fiber, not too many carbs, but I am eating good carbs. For the first two months I am keeping my calories between 600 and 800 per day, then after two months I am going to step that up to 900 to 1000 calories per day. This is the way they do it after the surgery so that is what I am doing now. Also as stated before, I am trying to keep my calories low because of the study that showed that people who have type 2 diabetes can "cure" themselves with a low calorie diet. The study makes mention of this as being very similar to what patients who have had obesity surgery experience, so I am hoping for that as well and I have to say, I think it is working because my sugars have dropped dramatically in the last couple of weeks.
So anyway, you can keep up with my food intake if you want to. I have to say that I am lazy about marking what was breakfast and what was a snack etc, but the daily totals are there and you can see them if you like.

98 and weight

My sugar was at 98 this morning, that continues to make me happy. Also, I usually weigh myself daily, but now that the initial phase is over and weight loss is going to slow down I have decided to only weigh myself once per week. The reason I am doing this is so that it doesn't get the chance to demotivate me when I see three days go by and I haven't lost anything.
I have also decided to make very small goals so that they are 100% achievable and not just some fantasy idea of what I would like. That being said my first goal for when I weigh in next Monday is to be under 245. I don't care if it is 244.9 as long as the scale says under 245. Since I weighed 247 yesterday when I got on the scale I feel that this is a totally realistic goal and as long as I stay the course it is achievable. I would love to be in the 100s, otherwise know as Onederland by labor day, but as far as setting goals goes, I will be happy with just getting close to it.
Fingers crossed.

Grilling Mondays!

You know, taking a small amount of meat and a large amount of vegetables and putting them on skewers makes them seem like a whole lot more than what they are. Makes them feel like you are eating something special when you grill them up. I love grilling Mondays!


Before:

After:

And Corn!

Lunch!

I had a salad of mixed greens with chicken breast and a boiled egg, pepper and salad spray. It's pretty good, has about 1 calorie per spritz. It was nummy.

247 & 94

Got on the scale this morning and it said 247lbs, then went to the kitchen and checked my sugar, 94. Everything's rocking. Also, tonight is GRILL NIGHT! Grilling turkey sausage, corn on the cob, squash, zucchini, pineapple, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.

Rainy day all day today

It has been a rainy day ALL day today so I choose to counter with hot tomato soup and cheese toast, take THAT!!

94 this AM

I like this trend :D

77!!

So my blood sugar was 77 this morning, what a shock! I guess maybe yesterday's 124 was perhaps influenced by the stress I was feeling. That would make me happy but it also shows me how even the smallest thing can effect my body.

This is how I feel right now!

I have two papers due this week and finals next week, eek!

248.4

Yay! I was down another 2 pounds this morning. I didn't weigh myself yesterday. So I was 248.4, this is the lowest I have been in well over a decade and usually 248, at least in recent years, has been where I fell off the wagon. Not this time!

What are normal blood sugar ranges for healthy people?

The American Diabetes Association acknowledges these as normal blood sugar for healthy people who do not have diabetes:
fasting/before eating <100 mg/dl
2 hours after eating (post-prandial) <140 mg/dl
A1c blood sugar test (3 month blood sugar indicator) 4-6%



What does the American Diabetes Association recommend for those with diabetes?

The American Diabetes Association recommends the following blood sugar goals for those with diabetes:
before eating (pre-prandial) 70-130 mg/dl
1-2 hours after eating (peak post-prandial) <180 mg/dl
A1c blood sugar test (3 month blood sugar indicator) <7%

124 today

Well my blood sugar this morning was back up to 124, which still is fine they recommend it be under 130 for people with type 2 diabetes so I am still good. It did make me sad that it wasn't below 100 though. I want it to be there every morning. I was stressed and rushed today because I overslept and woke up 15 minutes before I was supposed to be at work and was running 45 minutes behind so maybe that is what made it higher. Here's hoping for tomorrow.

Does the happy dance

Okonomiyaki first attempt ever

When I was at the Japanese market the other day I also picked up the stuff to make okonomiyaki, which is often refereed to as a Japanese pancake or Japanese pizza and really it is neither. It is made with a rice flour flat pancake like base, but you also add Chinese cabbage, bean sprouts, green onions, bacon and an egg. After it's done you top it off with okonomiyaki sauce, Japanese mayo, bonito flakes and crushed seaweed. I had a hard time flipping it, but all in all it did ok and OMG, it was wonderful. It was smokey and sweet and fishy and savory all at the same time. Everything you could ever want in a dish. I only made one and Geena and I shared it.

Compact and portable

In my lunch today. When I was a kid every time my mom would pack our lunch for school she would put a peeled boiled egg with salt and pepper in the bag in with it and by lunch time it had marinated into wonderfulness. Today's egg was such an egg.

128

Alas, my blood sugar was 128 this am, not horrible, good for having diabetes but back in the actual diabetes range, soldiering on.

119!

Ok so we grilled the kabobs last night and I ate a fair amount of fresh cut pineapple so I was kinda worried about my blood glucose and what it was going to be this morning but much to my surprise it was 119, this made me VERY happy! Usually everything makes my sugar go up, I mean everything. As you can see by the guild below that makes it actually down in the per-diabetic range. Now that was with me taking my medications as prescribed, but I can't wait for the day when it says that all by itself. Now to just have it be in the 90s when I'm fasting. That is my real goal.

This is the meter I use. I like it alot. It is the Accu-check Aviva. I got it from the pharmacy at my doctor's office and it was free. The strips on the other hand are NOT free, but my insurance does cover part of the cost. I can't wait until that monthly expense is gone!

Compact meals on the go.

Last night I made a batch of onigiri (Japanese for rice ball). This was the first time I have attempted to make them.

I got some season packets and a press at the Japanese market yesterday. I used brown rice, crab flavored seasoning, diced turkey ham stuffed into the middle and wrapped them up in nori (roasted seaweed). They are a wonderful compact meal you can take on the go. They are very popular in Japan and are even sold at convenience stores. It is like getting a taste of sushi without going out or having to hassle with the long process of making sushi, which I have done many times. They came in at under 150 calories a piece and are delicious!

We always grill on Monday

Since we generally work on the weekend because we work in the movie business, Monday is our Saturday and that is when we grill out. Since we are on the diet I wanted to keep it as slim as I could. First thing I did was hold off on anything most of the day so I could still have my calories for dinner (I couldn't do that if I had weight loss surgery) We made shrimp kabobs with fresh pineapple and turkey ham, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes with half a cob of corn on the side. Total for the day 719 calories. The kabobs with the sausages and the pack of sausages are for our roomie.
This one is hard to see because it was dark out, but it flares and sizzles beautifully. :D

This was from Friday but today's was very similar only I had an apple and a low sodium V8 instead of the cheese.

329lbs to 255lbs

This is a photo of my weight loss progression over the last 6 years, yeah that is slow. So slow in fact that nobody in my real life can tell anything has happened. I can tell though. I can't wait to put an even thinner pic in there. They say that to keep it off you need to lose it slowly. I am not sure they mean this slowly though. When I hit a plateau, baby I do it right.

After my recent hospital stay the doctor told me to eat a soft food diet. What this means is that I couldn't eat anything that took any effort to digest. I could not eat anything that might give my intestines any kind of workout and I was told no foods with seeds, peel, whole grains or fiber. Needless to say when I got home and started digging around my kitchen I had almost nothing I could eat. I have been eating whole grain and multigrain so long that I didn't have anything I could eat in the house. I had to head out to the grocery store and pick up something I cold eat. I got a breakfast cereal that had no fiber, white bread from the bakery and some stuff to make sandwiches with. When I got home and made a ham and cheese sandwich on a white deli roll with mayo, yellow mustard and ketchup. It was just like eating a sandwich I might have made when I was 14 in the 70's. The taste was familiar and yet strange. I prefer the foods I eat today. After a few days of this I was ready to scream. I got on the scale and discovered that I had gained back all the weight I lost while in the hospital (4lbs) plus another 2, I did scream, 257lbs. That was last Thursday. When that happened I had planned on starting my no surgery bariatric diet on Sunday but my sudden weight gain prompted me to go ahead and start it on Friday morning, which I did. I got on the scale and today I was at 252lbs. This makes me happy.

I did some research on what people eat and what their goals are after surgery. I found the USFC Medical Center website for post surgery patients. So for the first month I am striving for 500-700 calories per day. I am tracking my food and nutrition intake on My Plate which does a great job of tracking foods and their content and is free to use. It has a HUGE database of foods to select and is easy and I like using it. One difference between me and the people who have actually had the surgery is that their stomach is very small and they have to blend their foods and can't drink and eat at the same time. I don't have to follow those restrictions since I am not actually having the surgery and I can eat and drink at the same time and will have my whole stomach to use for digestion, so that is a plus! At first I was worried about that small calorie count per day but then I found this study from Web MD about the effects of a very low calorie diet and people who have been diagnosed with the disease in the last 2 years and how it for all practical purposes "cures" diabetes. It has been just over 2 years since I was diagnosed so this motivates me even more that this can be done. So the plan for now is to eat every 2 hours, small servings with all food groups being represented daily. Drinking plenty of liquids throughout the day. When I lost the weight for the Army I didn't know anything about nutrition and just starved myself eating only 300 to 400 calories per day for several months until I had lost the weight and then I went right back to eating normal and with in the first 6 months had gained back 30 pounds and that plagued me while I was in the Army because I couldn't lose it despite all the physical things you do in the Army. After I got out I put on another 50 pounds because I stopped doing any of the physical things that were keeping me where I was. I averaged another 10 pounds per year after that until I was past 300. This time around I am more educated about nutrition and have a guild line to follow. I feel very good about this. Today I'm eating: Activia light yogurt, 2 light sting cheese sticks, Pure Protein bar, 4 oz chicken meat, large mixed salad w/light dressing, sugar free jello cup, herbal tea, and low sodium broth. The nutritional content of that is, 626 cal, 1471 mg sodium, 18 gm fat, 72 gm protein, and 47 gm carbs.

Making the change.

I created this blog a couple of years ago and at the same time I made a facebook page for the same thing. I have to say that I never really used this blog and did most of my posting to the fb page. I decided today to convert this to my main blog on this subject and have stopped posting to the facebook page. That being said, I started a journey 2 years ago. At the time I was pretty fed up with my life, I was staring down the barrel at 50 and wanted to change. The things that I wanted to change the most were basically my weight, the fact that I have sleep apnea and type 2 diabetes and the course of my life. I had never gone back to college after the Army and when what would have been my retirement date came and went it really got to me. I have been pretty much just marking time since I got out. I wanted to change all of these things so I set about making a two year plan on changing my life. The biggest changes I have made so far are the way I handle money for the better and I have gone back to school and it is going great and I am very happy with it. The big change I didn't make was losing weight and getting rid of my diabetes and sleep apnea. I have lost weight in the last 2 or 3 years. At my highest several years ago I topped out at 329. It was just after the holidays in Jan of 2006. I got on the scale and freaked. I went on a diet and lost down below 300 and leveled out at about 285 where I continued to hover until 2009. After my first and second hernia surgeries in the same week I had a long slow recovery that lasted just about 9 months. During this time lost down to about 245 but after my recovery I gained back up to the mid 250's and that is where I have stayed ever since. I have made multiple attempts to go back on a diet but can't seem to manage to get past 248. I have seen that number several times since then but for what ever reason I can't get past it. I spent this past week in the hospital with a bowel obstruction. I spoke with the surgeon and he said that it was a combination of my hernias, which have come back and scar tissue left over from my older surgeries that caused it to occur. I am better now but while I was there he told me that basically my abdominal wall is shredded now and will have to be reconstructed surgically and that since I have all this weight still on my body that no surgeon will do it because it would just rip itself back out. After telling me that he suggested that I have bariatric surgery. Now I have always been against gastric bypasses and the like. I have always considered them the cheaters way out of having to have self discipline, especially since I willed myself into losing weight so I could join the Army and lost over 80 pounds to do it. Believe me when I say this, it plagues me that I can't seem to find that kind of self discipline again even though I have such great seemingly motivating factors as diabetes and sleep apnea but at any rate I told the Doctor how I felt and he told me that it would also "cure" my diabetes and that for most patients, they were off their medication in under 2 weeks. He also told me that many insurance companies today do cover the surgery because of all the other health related things it addresses besides losing weight. This got my attention and I told him that I would talk to the people from the hospital's program which I did. We asked them many questions about different procedures etc and over the next few days laying in that hospital bed I decided to go ahead and do it. After I got out of the hospital I went online to my insurance and discovered that they would not cover any kind of weight loss surgery. Needless to say this brought me back down and for a couple of days I tried to cope with the idea of being right back where I was, getting nowhere and then it struck me. I got online again and looked up the diet that people who have had the surgery follow. I had just spent the last week without food and then when I did eat it was liquids for 2 days and then I have been on soft foods since. This is what people who have had the surgery eat and I am doing that right now. So after much contemplation, I am going to attempt to be on a bariatric diet without the surgery. I think I can do this, here is to hoping I can.

School Update

So it has been over a year, but I have been attending Troy University Ecampus, that is to say, I have been going online. I decided to major in Social Science and as of last term made the chancellors list. It has been going pretty good actually. I consider it one of the best decisions I have made in the last 10 years! http://www.troy.edu/etroy/

Meal Plan

Will soon be returning to this schedule:

Breakfast:
Homemade Yogurt w/fruit
Crumpet with butter spray and fruit spread
Coffee w/splenda

Lunch:
Fruit w/cheese

Dinner:
Lean meat with fresh vegetable salsa or chutney.
Soup

High Protien, Low Fat, Reduced Carbs

Home Made Yogurt

1/2 gallon of milk
set the crock pot to low and cook for 2 1/2 hours
turn it off and let it cool for 3 hours
add a 1/2 cup plain store-bought yogurt and mix it well
wrap the crock pot with a blanket for 8 hours
I strain it in batches through coffee filters or paper towels to get the thick consistency. I also use a mixer to mix in splenda and a little vanilla.

College bound......again, well sorta.

I went and spoke to a college rep about returning to school to finish my degree. I've filled out the application and will be sending it in as soon as I get a spare $30. I have filled out my transcript request for my old school and will be faxing that off as soon as I find out the status of my application for school. I will be filling out my online paperwork for financial aid. I'm moving forward.

Today the diet goes back into full effect. Same style as when I was laid off over 5 years ago and it was very successful only I gave it up as soon as I got back at work.

Workouts at the gym start next, as soon as I figure out when and where to fit it in. But I will fit it in, even if it's just 2 days a week it's happening.

Taking it all back muther fuckers!