This was the first day where I didn’t feel better than the day before. I didn’t feel a lot worse, just sort of blah and uncomfortable. I started my timed walks since I figured I was used to the baseline of walking around the house for routine things. I did 5 minutes walking back and forth the length of the house. I also did 5 minutes walking outside which was quite a novelty. The fresh air felt nice.
I had been thinking about Facebook and the idea of “announcing” my surgery. I’m not really comfortable sharing a lot on Facebook, partly due to it being an advertising platform, and partly I don’t really understand the social media idioms at work there. However, if I started a blog about my experiences, I would control all of the content and how it was presented, I could provide links to the blog in more public places like Facebook knowing that most people wouldn’t click through unless they were really interested in knowing more. The blog might also be a useful resource for others going through this or who might go through this. It felt like a better approach. So I started writing down notes about my experiences so far and planning out how the blog could work.
I want to start talking about food in this post. As I mentioned before, the hospital said I should go on the traditional low fat “heart healthy” diet. Now, I have some big problems with low fat and can speak (rant?) at far too much length on that. Basically, the low fat diet replaces fat with carbs like grains, rice cakes, other stuff and wants us to believe that if we eat fat we will get fat. What really happens is that when you eat carbs, the carbs are converted to fat. When you eat fat, the fat just gets turned into energy. Low fat is what has made us an obese nation.
What about fat clogging your arteries? If you happen to eat a diet high in carbs, the fat particles get hard and sticky and tend to stick to the vessel walls. If you eat a diet low in carbs, the fat particles stay nice and fluffy and just flow through. I can cite references if y’all care enough. Or you can blow me off as crazy. But there is more and more public discussion of this which is making me happy.
That said, not everyone I’m around is in agreement on this so a happy compromise has been arrived at. Here is what I’m typically eating each day:
- Breakfast – Two eggs with a mixture of sauteed vegetables plus 1/2 an avocado diced. Small bowl of diced fruit. Water to drink.
- Lunch – Meat and vegetable soup. or left over meat roasted from the night before with roasted vegetables. Water to drink
- Dinner – Roasted or BBQ meats such as chicken or pork or salmon. Green salad with dressing and blue cheese. Roasted vegetables. Small bowl of diced fruit. Water to drink
- Snacks – 1 oz of cheese. Celery with peanut butter. Sometimes this amazing 100% whole wheat bread my mom makes (recipe to follow in a future post).
- Chocolate – 1 oz of dark chocolate per day. This is for both physical and mental health. If you take that away from me, I will hurt you.
The roasted vegetable system we have going has ended up being really good and easy to make. I knew I wanted to start eating way more vegetables than I normally had and my mom was a little worried about prep time until she found a great simple article on roasting vegetables.
The solution is simple, there are two lists of vegetables that take two different cooking times. Dice/prep the vegetables, put them on foil lined cookie sheets and roast them for the right amount of time. Slide off of tray into a big bowl. Serve. Holds for a couple of days. I’ll be helping to prep in a few days when I’m feeling up to it. I love doing vegetable prep, as well as cooking.
Roasted Vegetables
Oven to 425F
These vegetables roast for 45 minutes:
beets
potatoes
carrots
onions
winter squash (butternut, acorn, etc)
sweet potatoes
These vegetables roast for 15-20 minutes:
broccoli
califlour
zucchini, yellow, summer squash
peppers
asparagus
mushrooms
green beans
tomatoes
eggplant
leeks
Collect all of the diced 45 minute veg into a big bowl, add some oil, add pepper and salt to taste, add herbs. Mix up well and pour onto one cookie sheet. Do the same separately for the 15-20 minute vegetables onto another cookie sheet. For convenience time it so the second goes in later so they can both come out at once.
Serve.
Easy and yummy. Works great in scrambled eggs the next day.