This morning, my doctor said the words that I have wanted to hear for a long time. The same doctor, who previously told me that I needed to lose 100 pounds, told me today that he thought that I have lost enough weight. I am now officially on a maintenance diet for life.
I have done a lot of study of the popular diets that many of us are on or have been on at one time or another. The problem with almost all of them is that they are a temporary fix. True, an individual will lose weight while on the diet, but all the weight, and usually more, comes back eventually. That is what has always happened to me.
My former employer has finally figured out that medical insurance costs would come down if it helped the retirees get healthy. I am getting a lot of good, conservative information from this source. Most of the information sounds similar to the principles set out in the so-called Mediterranean diet.
I discussed this with my doctor today. I should really emphasize vegetables, fruit, and whole grains. Vegetables seem to be the magic remedy to secure health and long life. I don’t like a lot of vegetables, but I am going to start eating more of the ones that I do like and trying to learn to eat others. Right now, Nancy and I are trying to eat four to five servings of vegetables a day.
Fruit is also good. The only problem, and the reason vegetables are preferred, is that fruit does have sugar. I like a lot of varieties of fruit and it is always easy to find good fresh fruit in the markets here.
We are trying to limit lean red meats to one or two small portions a week and emphasize fish and chicken. I think that we will eventually give up red meat. Nancy is cooking fish frequently. Our problem is that we strongly prefer two types and they will get old soon. Nancy’s Aunt Fern, who was featured in a past blog, is a wonderful, knowledgeable cook. She will be helping us learn to cook and eat other varieties of fish. Like vegetables, fish is highly recommended by medical scientists to be very healthy and nutritious.
We are not eating any sweets, cakes, pies, ice cream, cookies, or candy. My only remaining weakness is salty, crunchy things like chips.
I weighed 189 this morning on doctor’s scales. My clothing sizes continue to shrink. I am committed to this plan for life.