No More Delays

As my lab results poured in, I already knew what they would be and there were few surprises. blood sugar right at the high end of normal, I have been toeing that line for a handful of years already, but I was happy I was not over normal. Literally, the cutoff between normal and high is 99 and my result was 99. My cholesterol is high, but I've had a huge improvement in good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. which is good. I guess. The areas that scared me the most were the kidney and liver labs and both were a little higher than normal. I started to panic and feel super depressed then I looked at the previous two years labs and they were essentially the same so they label them as stable. None of it makes me feel good. So I knew that I was planning on starting back on a plan I have had success with before, and that is the South Beach Diet, but I decided to download their keto-friendly version to see if it was something I think I could do. The creator of South Beach Diet is a cardiologist so I trust his information. The first time I found out I had really high triglycerides they were over 600 (they are supposed to be less than 150) and I went on South Beach Diet, lost some weight and my triglycerides dropped to less than 100. The problem was that I was following the program and doing what I was told but I wasn't working on the mental stuff so when drama came knocking I let it derail me. I regained it all and it took a couple years to attempt again. That's where this blog started, way back in 2010, and when I did it that time, I had lost 40 pounds in 9 months and felt really great about myself, but then I started working again after being unemployed and I let my schedule overwhelm me. I didn't go back without a fight, and this blog chronicles the many many re-starts with varying degrees of effort, but none nearly as successful as when this blog began. So I found the Keto-friendly South Beach Diet book extremely timely considering I just had my labs done. I learned a lot about the connection between all of these things. Maybe this is common knowledge but as much as I have read about weightloss and the like I did not know all of this. I will try to summarize to the best of my understanding. When you eat sugars it puts glucose and fructose into your bloodstream (blood sugars) and your pancreas releases insulin to help move the sugars out of the blood and into the tissues. Glucose is more easily distributed but fructose goes straight to your liver. If you take too much of these sugars in, your body can't remove all of it from your blood so it becomes stored as fat (triglycerides) and a typical storage place is the liver. When the liver becomes fatty your body stops being able to process the insulin as well (insulin resistance) and we feel like we biologically crave more sugars. Also, the more insulin we have in our bloodstream, it makes our kidneys retain sodium instead of flushing it our, which leads to kidney failure. And when your kidneys aren't working properly it puts stress on your heart (enter high blood pressure) Dr. Agatston says that almost everyone who has a belly already has insulin resistance and a fatty liver, and most will also have high triglycerides. The crazy thing is, by the time you are experiencing these things (insulin resistance, kidney failure, high triglycerides, high blood pressure and fatty liver) your body is already in a disease process that will lead to diabetes, which puts you at a higher risk for heart disease and cancer. So for the past handful of years that my blood sugars have been on the high side of normal, I was feeling like I was safe because they weren't way above the normal category when in reality the disease process was already in full swing inside of me. I finished reading the book on Friday night and my immediate response was that I wanted to comfort with food. I was disappointed that we didn't go out to eat so when my my husband decided to walk to our neighborhood winery to grab a bottle of wine, I decided a glass of wine would be my treat. I ended up eating a bowl of white rice drenched in low sodium soy sauce that evening and I can tell you I don't remember a time where I have felt more dehydrated in my life. Saturday came and it was time to decide my direction for the coming week becauseIdo the grocery shoppingfor the week on Saturday morning. The way this Diet plan works is you stay in the more restrictive stage 1 for 28 days or until you reach your goal weight, then you get a little more freedom. In stage one you can have up to 50 grams of carbs per day, in the second phase (meant for maintenance or slower weight loss) you can have up to 100 grams of carbs per day. So it's not nearly as strict as true keto which is the reason I have decided to try it. The one problem I have with the book is that all the recipes require so much time and ingredients. So, when I woke up on Saturday I was thinking about how I need more time to plan and prepare because I would need a lot of ingredients and didn't have a lot of available time to prep foods this weekend. I was thinking of excuses to delay starting. I had a little micro-panic and then I identified my excuse for what it was and decided to eat the same thing I did last week because as it turns out, all of my planned food is on plan. The best part about repeating the menu is, I already have leftover veggies prepped. So I can set that excuse aside. When I got to my tiny grocery store I began really looking deeper and discovered there are more options there than I thought, which put my mind in an even better place. We ended up eating out twice on Saturday, one was pre-planned because I won a gift card to a new farm-to-fork restaurant just outside of town, and the lunch was not planned but we were out hiking around a huge park along Lake Michigan and stopped for lunch. Luckily, at that point we were an hour away from home because the food was so so good (dinner at the farm-to-fork place was just meh). I think I am in the right mindset for this. I have been doing morning meditation and even did some yoga last week. I am easing into a place where I know my temple is badly damaged and I need to repair it with loving care. It's not about looking hot on the beach, it's about not having to interrupt every outing by needing to empty my bladder so frequently. It's about being able to roll over in bed easier and snoring less (hopefully) and not breathing heavy from being over to put the dog's leash on or my shoes. It's about not having to go on diabetes medicine or dialysis or having my liver fail. It's about setting up my health now so it's there for me in the long run. I know there will be times when I crave unproductive stuff but I know that for almost every single food you crave there is a keto recipe. No matter what happens, at least I'm not just letting nature take its course with my deteriorating health. I have eaten my Cool Ranch Doritos and had my Nutty Bar and I am ready to start doing better. Here goes nothing!