Back home from the hospital

That’s certainly motivation. I don’t know where you live but riding a bike can be a lot of fun. Thing for me is I hate hills. Riding up hills is non-motivational. Where I live now I have too many hills. I used to ride a bike to work and deal with the hills, but I changed jobs some time ago and I couldn’t ride to work due to the new route – way too much angry morning traffic. I miss it. My body misses it.

If you want to try a sport, pickleball can be fun. It’s mild exercise but it moves you around. It’s an oldsters sport mostly, but some 30+ people play. It’s a much easier racket sport than tennis or racquetball. I find it fun.

If six meals a day works for you, great, but if it doesn’t try skipping one regular meal a day instead. I find skipping the first or last meal of the day, every day, very effective for appetite control.

Another option is to fast for 18 hours. Only eat between noon and 6pm. Studies shows positive results.

My sodium intake is probably higher than it should be. Yesterday it was 1600mg, but I only ate 1200 calories (not enough) because I woke up late and then went to a local gaming store to watch two guys in a group of players I belong to play the tabletop miniatures Game of Thrones game and it lasted longer than I’d expected so I missed one of my 300cal meals.

Pickleball is fun, but right now I’m too heavy to run much, knees can’t take it. So walking and elliptical machines (not allowed the latter for a week, gotta let the cath incision heal since it’s in the groin) are my best friends.

Good news is the headache seems to be slowly receding as my body adjusts.

It’s pretty cool that you were able to recognize the symptoms and get ahead of the problem. Glad you’re still doing okay. I’m kind of in a similar boat where I really do need to lose weight now if I want to have a normal lifespan. Losing weight is hard though.

My eldest brother, a doctor, finally found something that worked for him. The Keto diet. Going into Ketosis and having 75% of your intake be fat really worked for him. He finally lost fat around his stomach, and eating very little once a day was really hard at first, but now that his hunger hormone doesn’t kick in anymore, he says it’s really easy for him.

I just don’t think I can do something like that without full backing from my wife, and she’s kind of a big believer in the whole “fat is bad, you should have lots of carbohydrates with every meal so that you’re not hungry” school of thought. And is also a really hard headed person, and changing her mind would require a LOT of effort.

Anyway, my brother showed me videos over thanksgiving break to explain his diet. There’s a youtube person called “What I’ve learned”, who has a nice series of videos that break it down nicely. I think this was one of them.

My whole family is on the keto diet, with excellent results, except me. I just f’ing love carbs, sugar and fat way too much. So instead I just counted calories using the LoseIt app. It’s a total pain the arse but it does work, I went from almost obese to almost normal over the course of a few months, something like 25lbs.

I usually only eat one real meal per day too, typically fasting until dinner time.

I don’t think I could eat only once a day.

Anyway, isn’t it total calories per day consumed as much as anything? What’s hard is sticking to a number. It only takes one cookie from the goodies tray at the office to throw you off.

One of my adult kids, who was not overweight, decided to really work on it anyway, and he does that interval fasting which is no calories after 6 pm. He’s become really slender. He’s also young at 27 and he runs, so he’s doing it all pretty well.

For me this goes well with the only once a day method. If I just eat once a day I can eat most anything I want and whatever amount I want. This isn’t 100% true of course but it mostly works like this for me. I find I end up with a surplus of budgeted calories at the end of the day when I do this, which is great.

Everybody is different though. My wife could never ever last to dinner time fasting. She becomes a totally different person when hungry, whereas it doesn’t affect me much.

@John_Reynolds I’m glad you’re on the right track after such a huge scare. While my medical expertise ends at blue pill or red pill, it sure sounds like you’ve got some great doctors.

Good thing you rushed yourself to the ER. I had to have open heart surgery for an aortic aneurysm 8 years ago that was discovered when I made my first trip to a cardiologist in about 10 years (doctor said that if I hadn’t gone, I could have been dead in a few months).

There was no severe pain or sudden sign something was wrong, I just felt “off” for a few weeks - very slightly lightheaded, some anxiety. And in my case it turned out to be hereditary - a genetic connective tissue disorder that may affect other body parts but that I did not know I had, though I always suspected something heart related would happen due to my father passing away at 36 years old, and his father at 42.

Still, I got checkups regularly throughout childhood and in my adult life and always the results came back positive. I had a very healthy heart and excellent blood pressure and cholesterol levels, which I attributed to exercise and very healthy eating habits. So I went less and less until I stopped going. Now I tell everyone I know, see a cardiologist (and try to have a reasonably healthy diet). Even if you’re perfectly healthy, no reason not to get your heart looked over every few years and of course, maintenance.

Good luck!

And you’re right: hospitals suck for resting! I was only able to sleep in a hospital when drugged. Too damn cold, too noisy, too much light, too many interruptions. Gotta love the nurses sticking or unsticking needles and tubes in you at 5:00 a.m.

I may have told this story before on another thread but I had a friend who was a big guy, tall and while not obese he was too heavy. He ended up getting divorced in his 40’s, helped run a business and so had some stress. He joined a gym (worked out with an employee of mine). He was after a time in the best shape of his adult life, and then one day at the gym he just fell over dead. Turned out he had a hereditary heart problem and it was just his time. Same thing had killed his father. I never found out if he knew that he had it or not.

Sorry to hear of your experience, John, but good to see you attack the problem to address it. We’re getting old, and our old invulnerability spells are fading. All the best.

See, my family history is what alarmed both the ER doc and the cardiologist so much. I thought the cardio office visit would result in a stress test, but when I got there he basically said, “There’s no way I’m risking that, you’re a textbook case of unstable angina, you’re going to the hospital right now.”

One of my best friends came over today, we went out to eat for lunch at Chipotle, so I got a burrito bowl with a very thin layer of brown rice, black beans, chicken, and just a little shredded cheese on top, with water. A week ago that would’ve been a mound of white rice, per my request, with black beans, steak, a lot of shredded cheese, and chips with a cup of queso sauce washed down with a diet coke. MyFitnessPal estimated the bowl to be around 450 calories, but that’s OK since my breakfast was two eggs, scrambled, with a Yoplait light blueberry yogart and my afternoon meal was a Muscle Milk protein drink (160 cal). So far that puts me at 67g of carbs, 34g for fat, and 83g for protein. We’re eating dinner here soon, baked pork chops with steamed broccoli, so I’ll need two more meals to push me closer to 1800 calories for the day.

After lunch my friend and I played the Game of Thrones LCG card game using the new intro faction decks (I sold my card pool last year once I decided to get into the tabletop miniatures game by CMON) and I absolutely crushed his Lannisters with my Martells. Very relaxing, sometimes it’s just the small things in life. . .such as routing Cersei from the battlefield. My wife and I also just got back from a 2-mile walk, which really helped the headaches the Imdur is causing me. Just so nice getting away from work and de-stressing, anyone who is friends with me on FB sees what I’ve been posting over the last few months (a co-worker I share an office and duties with had a nervous breakdown a few months ago).

Check out the sodium content on Chipotle’s website. I stopped eating there a while ago. And I was getting the brown rice, veggies (I’m mostly vegetarian but have fish maybe 5 or 6 times a year), bowl and no cheese and it was still not the healthiest meal due to insanely high sodium content.

Yeah, that burrito bowl blew my allotted sodium intake for the day, no doubt. In fact, I’ve been checking out other meals at some of my favorite haunts for my cheat meal this weekend (the cardiologist highly recommended having one, within a 1-hour timeframe) and the calories and sodium listings are insane. I had no idea one slice of Godfather’s pep pizza was 330 calories. If I eat 3-4 slices it’s not that horrible in terms of carbs for a cheat meal, but the sodium is just jacked.

The headaches from the Imdur seem to be getting better so I’m gonna try going back to work tomorrow. Things should be slowing down with the holidays anyways.

Had my first cheat meal at Godfather’s last night, feasting on bread sticks and pep + 'shroom pizza. Had 3 slices of a medium and was stuff, which really surprised/impressed me. Normally I could’ve eaten 5-6 slices, if not the entire pizza. And I still didn’t blow my 2k calorie count for the day, though I destroyed the suggested amount of sodium, especially since I’d had 3 slices of turkey bacon with breakfast.

I woke up last Thursday headache-free for the first time in almost a week and decided to go into work. It’s obviously a slow time of year so nothing too stressful. Made it through Christmas day at my sister’s without getting into too much bad food, though I did eat a thin slice of my wife’s Oreo chocolate cheese cake. No ham, no cookies, no Buckeyes, no fudge. . .it wasn’t easy, but I did it. My wife even made the kids cinnamon rolls for breakfast Christmas morning and I stayed away, eating two boiled eggs and a banana instead. Been averaging around 1600-1700 calories around the weekend, which for a holiday season isn’t too bad. Need more carbs though, I’m having Adkin’s diet-like reactions (stool softeners are your best friend). I’ve discovered a fondness for unsweetened apple sauce with cinnamon sprinkled over it though.

Stay away from bananas - they are loaded with sugar. You might as well have had the fudge.

Weighed myself today, I’m down a little over 20 lbs since coming home from the hospital three weeks ago. Helps when you start off weighing as much as an aircraft carrier. Celebrated by having my 3rd cheat meal afterwards (pizza followed by a small Cold Stone Oreo Overload).

Kidding. Great job John, keep up the progress.