While this is a food blog and not a health blog, I ask reader indulgence for this post which will talk a bit about my health. I recently had my two-year checkup for my heart following the angioplasty I had done in 2012.
The news was all good. My blood pressure is in normal ranges now, although I take medication to keep it there. And my doctor took my off one of my post-surgery medications, something called beta blockers which slow your heart down. Taking those the past two years meant I always felt I was walking through mud, fighting my way every step, really.
I never felt rested and I certainly never felt any of the added energy people kept thinking I should feel after having a major artery unblocked. Sleeping was more fitful and I was constantly constipated, which I’m only now seeing is a side effect of those medications.
My doctor remains surprised at how I’ve completely turned around my eating habits since the surgery. I literally eat almost noting I liked before because all of it, big steaks, chocolate cake, ribs, ethnic foods, is too high in either salt, far or sugar for me now. It has been and remains excruciating, especially when eating out with family or friends and watching them eat all the things I no longer can.
I have walked away from friends and activities I once was intimately involved with because there was food associated with them I can no longer eat.
But I have to keep reminding myself the days when I lived to eat are over, now I eat to live so I can finish projects and adventures I want to do, such as my recent play-writing and acting.
I am still on three medications a day, two for blood pressure and one for cholesterol. I can only hope to eventually get off one or more of those too. Every drug has side effects and impacts our bodies somewhere, so the fewer I need to take the better.
John
The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal 