Let's talk some about losing weight and being a heart patient. At what stage you are in heart surgery recovery, and your current weight status, is something which probably will affect your goals. First is weight loss. Your cardiologist has probably discussed this and your cholesterol levels with you. I know one of my first conversations with my cardiologist, after being released from the hospital and sent home, was asking what I had to do to avoid having another heart attack, or heart surgery? His reply was take care of my health, keep my weight under control, lower my cholesterol, and avoid continued stressful situations. Now for weight loss. We know for most of us weight loss is going to be a complete change in lifestyle when it comes to eating habits. Educating ourselves about healthy foods as well as foods that are not healthy. We must know how to take the weight loss, eating healthy, and remain focused on lowering cholesterol. You must not get too focused on this is all about losing weight. If we do it right, hopefully, we will lose weight, lower cholesterol, and lower blood pressure at the same time, which is exactly what we are going to do. But we have to be dedicated to doing this, and have a mental picture of where we want to be physically in 6 months. We are going to be changing most of our eating habits, if we are really serious about getting healthy, changing won't stop us.
If you were to ask me to draw you out a healthier menu for the first couple of weeks to get you started on eating healthy foods, it would be something like this.....You already know what number one is. Breakfast every day a large bowl of plain hot oatmeal. Have coffee and a small glass of orange juice. About an hour later have a banana. If you get hungry before lunch eat an orange. Lunch, a can of tuna packed in water, with 5 saltine crackers. Have some dill pickles sliced, and a sliced tomato. Optional for lunch the next day, large bowl of cornflakes with skim milk, or repeat the oatmeal. It is okay to eat oatmeal for lunch too. Or have a large bowl of Campbell Soup, vegetable, chicken noodle, or tomato. For an afternoon snack have fruit. Any reasonable amount you want. You be the judge. We keep strawberries, oranges, apples, pears, peaches, cherries, watermelon in the refrigerator. Whenever you get hungry, morning, afternoon, night, eat fruit to take off the hunger edge. I know seasons have to do with fruit availability, you will work that out for yourself. Every time you want to reach into that bag of chips, or have a Snickers candy bar, grab a couple of strawberries and think how sleek you're going to be in a few weeks. I drank fruit juices, and water.
Now here are some secrets that helped me, just for you. I used small serving size glasses when drinking juices. We had small children size glassware for our grandchildren and that is what I used. I always measure out the fruit juice at about 3/4 full in the small glass. I never have a refill. When empty, I put it down and that is it. Other than the oatmeal at breakfast, I never ate everything on my plate or in the bowl. I would leave some of the fruit, cereal, tomatoes, soup salad or whatever it was... For me dinner was the blandest and most difficult meal of the day. Always a salad with basalmic vinaigrette dressing. Either a plain baked potato, soup, or chili. I normally would put left over soup or chili over the baked potato. Sometimes, salad and skinless baked chicken breast. Sometimes oatmeal for dinner. There you go, no charge, guaranteed, it worked for me. I lost a lot of weight, and didn't have to buy the first expensive special meal plan from some TV celebrity. Why would you want to pay someone to tell you how to lose weight...? Think about that for a moment. If you're that determined to do that, hire me as your personal coach !
I would not check my weight every day for the first few weeks. You'll get discouraged. Remember, our goal is getting healthy, and recovering fully. To be fit and enjoy doing physically what we use to do, or more, and better. Shedding weight, getting thinner is just a great bi-product of our new program. We are taking our first few steps in transforming ourselves. Somewhere between the 6th and 8th week you're going to look in a mirror and see a different person. And when you put on some clothes that use to be pretty snug, that now fit loosely, you will feel real good about yourself. When you do, think for just a moment, hey he told me I could do it.
Oh, I almost forgot. Every night I would treat myself, before bedtime, and have a small glass of skim milk. It gave me something to look forward to and finished the day off not going to bed hungry.
Remember, you and I are not dieters on a weight loss adventure for a few weeks. We have health problems, need, should, and have to lose weight. Must get our cholesterol levels lowered. We are making complete eating habit changes that we are going to live with for the rest of our lives. We are going to find foods that work for us and fits our new lifestyle.
When you get past the first few weeks, you will feel good about yourself and will begin to get your new food routine established. You can experiment. Try some things like nuts for snacks, begin to add treats, like apples and strawberries to your salads. It is not going to be as difficult as you think. Trust your instincts, you will figure out what foods you need to give up and what new foods best fit your taste and needs. You'll also feel accomplishment when your blood pressure and cholesterol levels start going down. You will look forward going to your cardiologist, rather than having a sense of dread.
Next post we are going to finish this up and talk about the one issue I have avoided here. What are you going to do about eating processed and red meats?
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