Modest Success

I know I mentioned this on my Facebook but I'm not sure if I said anything about it on my blog before this but last month, when I had to go see my family doctor about some blood work she'd requested I have done, I had a sneaking suspicion that things weren't quite right. Why else would her staff have called and had me set up an appointment to come in and "talk to her" about the test results anyway?

Well, I found out and truthfully, I wasn't very impressed with the findings of those tests.

Seems my cholesterol AND my sugar levels were all too high -along with something else too that was elevated a good bit more than my doctor -or I -really wanted it to be -my weight.

I know I have mentioned in the past that I do have some weight problems. Some may say "Oh no, you're not too heavy, Jeni," but they aren't the ones dealing with trying to find clothes that fit half-way decently and don't make me look like a big old stuffed sausage, ya know. That alone tells me that I should try to get at least a few of these ugly old pounds shed sometime in the near future -hopefully.

But my doctor is the one who really put this issue out there to me -lose weight, get the cholesterol and sugar levels down by March or else I could be looking at meds to control the cholesterol and possibly even insulin in the future if the sugar levels don't come into what she considered to be a decent range.

So to do this, I started out trying to find something that would be doable for me - some kind of diet plans that work -ya know. Not an easy thing to search for, not an easy thing to follow through on either.

So here's what I did in an effort to get a little bit in shape at least.

First off, because my doctor recommended some type of exercise (which is really a very dirty word in my book, ya see) and because of certain physical constraints I have -problems with my back and my legs too -I tried to figure out something that would be considered a form of exercise that I could utilize.

And I came up with this: I try to walk good old Sammy, our dog, every day if possible -meaning if it isn't pouring down rain or sleet or heaven forbid, freezing rain! I walk him up to the intersection in the middle of town and back which is roughly a distance of a mile and a half, round trip. No, I haven't managed to do this every single day, but I have given it the old college try to do this whenever I can.

Then I also resolved to cut back on my intake of food -particularly much much loved pastas! Now this is a tough one for me because the majority of our meals here involve pasta, mainly because that is usually a substance that Kurtis and Maya will eat -most of the time, anyway. And although I don't dislike cooking, I do hate the idea of fixing two different entrees for each supper we have here. When my kids were growing up, the standard rule for each meal was "Sit up, shut up and eat" followed by my re-informing them that "I am not running a freaking restaurant here, so you'll eat what I cook or go to bed hungry."

What to do now though when I need to cut back -a lot -on my pasta intake but yet, can't really cut back on preparing foods like that to get the kids to eat?

I've taken to eating a lot of salads! Sometimes, just a big old salad first and then a very small helping of the beloved pasta. Other times, depending on what I have in the fridge or what other foods I may be serving, I take and doctor up my tossed salad with pieces of chicken, sometimes plain flaked tuna fish and frequently, lots of other veggies, like chunks of red and green peppers, plenty of celery, hard-boiled eggs and a lot of fresh slices of mushrooms too! All are good for me, gives lots of extra roughage which my system also needs, and makes for a very filling meal for me too.

I can't really gauge very well at home if I've had any success with this program because our scale doesn't like to give true readings but today, I had a doctor's appointment (not with my family doctor, but with another physician I see from time to time) and when I was called to go back to the examining room, I was really anxious to see if any of my program had done anything for me with respect to weight loss.

And though this is a very modest loss, I'm really proud to say that I have taken five pounds off!

I am still a long way from having this situation totally under control but so far, I haven't found myself starving and I even made it through the holiday season without going overboard too on all the sweets and goodies that were often present in the house too!

Granted, this is just a start for me, but I have to say that even though I've made many of those walks with the dog when the temperatures have been really, REALLY, low and very cold, I still survived and actually felt better when I came back inside from those walks too!

If nothing else comes of this, by April when my family and I participate again in the Autism Walk, I should be in pretty decent shape for that then and that consists of walking almost two miles -one way!

Wish me luck, won't 'cha?