Changing old habits

I was at the doctor about a month ago.  I had gained 10 pounds since the last visit.  My blood pressure was quite high and it had been inching upward for some time.  Blood tests showed a liver abnormality that was consistent with fatty deposits caused by gluttony.  The doctor compared it to force feeding geese in order to make pâté.  I think that's what did it. 

Plus, I couldn't stand to see the fat guy that was appearing in pictures of me.  It's easy enough to avoid looking in mirrors but the pictures were hard to ignore.  The camera wasn't adding 10 pounds in my case, it was more like 40 or 50. 

To top it all off, I will turn mid-50s this year and I'm well aware that numerous health problems accompany excess weight.  The doctor sent me to have a sonogram to confirm that nothing more serious was wrong with my liver.  The results were consistent with fatty deposits and nothing worse, but that was bad enough.

I cook for about 6-8 people and eat leftovers for breakfast and lunch.  Cooking that much food several times a week means there's a lot of food around all the time, which encourages over eating.  I also eat just for something to do while sitting at the computer.  Comparing my eating habits to the horrendous and inhumane method of making goose liver pâté struck a chord.  It was time to make some changes. 

I went on medication for the blood pressure, but I knew that food was really the root of my problem.  My approach to this wasn't to go on a "diet."  Instead, I'm thinking about it in the same terms as quitting smoking.  Over eating was the result of a long slow slide into a bad habit that had become an addiction.  I'm not going to quit food, obviously, but I knew I have to change the way I eat and never go back. 

Lettuce, shredded broccoli and carrots, asparagus,
snow peas, and shrimp.

Rolled up in a tortilla it's somehow
more substantive than a salad.

As a first step, I zeroed in on the recommended 5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day.  I would need something to replace the junk food that I ate out of habit.  Now when I want something, I make myself eat some fruit first.  Most of the time after doing so, I'm satisfied and thereby avoid the box of cookies or crackers I would have consumed. 


Most of this stuff is available pre-prepared and packaged.
There's an infinite number of possible combinations.

Eating salad gets old after the first one, but I can eat salad in a wrap.  Lettuce, broccoli slaw, shredded carrots, fresh asparagus, cucumbers, feta cheese, supplemented with some shrimp, tuna, or chicken, all make for a pretty satisfying wrap.  The other benefit of eating this way is that I can't do it while sitting in front of the computer, so I hope to break the tie that binds those two habits. 

I've also made a 16 bean soup, with a lot of veggies added, tomatoes, barley, and a small amount of beef.  I'm not going vegan, that's not for me, but I do recognize the need and benefit that comes from eating much lower on the food chain.  I've even drinking vodka with V8 juice from now on. 

The other element to this is exercise, of course, and I haven't really addressed that yet, but with spring coming I will be more active outdoors.  I need to get back to hiking.

Today I went back to the doctor for a recheck.  I had lost 10 pounds in 4 weeks and my blood pressure was 30 points lower--much more of a drop, he said, than would have been expected from the medication alone.  The doctor is confident that as I continue to lose weight I'll be able to stop the blood pressure medication and that my liver will return to normal.