Summer

It's summer - almost, because today, after a long drought, we had torrential rain as well as snowfall on the mountains. But let's call this an "exception". 

The rule is ... that it's June, we have cherries and strawberries in the yard, and waiting patiently for tomatoes and peppers which are currently in bloom. A couple of more months or so. 

This is the first harvest of the year and yes, they taste as sweet and yummy as they look. 

Historically, it's been easier for me to eat healthier in the summer, just because everything is in season and everything tastes and looks so much more appetizing. But lately, working long days and being stressed out about it causes us to indulge in lavish meals at the end of the day and mostly the week. 

When we cook at home (which is about 75% of the time), we do try to be better about choices with make, with low fat, and good fat, but let me tell you: it is almost impossible to find no fat AND natural foods unless we turn into rabbits and eat 100% grass and carrots! I have been reading about all the junk there is in our foods, all the stuff they sneak in for the sake of "preservation" and increasing the shelf live while making bazillions, that I am paranoid about what goes into my stomach! Much to the despair of my husband who cannot stand me taking 2 hours in the  grocery store to read all the labels. 

No major change in my numbers, but I feel less "mobile" and I just feel ... fat. At 120 lbs and 5 feet, I am still not "very" fat, but I feel just aging and slow... A friend of mine put it right: "I feel like, as we are approaching 40, everything that passes by our lips has twice as many calories as when we were in our twenties". She speaks the truth, right there. 

The heat most days is not helping with feeling more agile, either. 

We have been camping once this year but our hike was not very strenuous nor very long. That's one thing I have in plan for this summer - more hikes and more camping.

No real news to report - just taking it one day at a time and doing everything other "healthy" people do: work, home, chores, seeing friends, and a trip or five in between here and there. 

I am due for another echo-cardiogram in 6 months, but until then, I hope I can just ... coast along ... 

Healthy summer, all!

Simple Food

Not unlike most Sundays, I woke up this morning with a huge craving for eggs. I have been trying to be really good lately, eating a lot of "clean" dishes, all fresh veggies, and if I buy anything canned, it has to be organic, or at least natural.
And I have been very good about avoiding fats lately - more so than usual.
 

My skin has been better, and I feel less guilt when I am done eating. So, fried eggs were not going to be part of the breakfast, if I could help it. I was not going to slip, not even for one little breakfast! 

So, I made a crustless quiche, with 100% egg whites, 0% fat, skim milk, almond cheese, kale and 90% fat free Canadian bacon. I added some onion powder, fresh ground pepper and a couple of drops of tabasco sauce, and ... oh my word, what deliciousness! 

I am really grateful for the out of the carton egg whites, because I don't feel like I am wasting an egg just to harvest its "healthy" part. The almond cheese sounded weird, at the store, but it's actually pretty good - it smells and tastes like a strong (real) mozzarella cheese. 

The whole dish tasted delicious, fresh and very flavorful - fresh from the kale, tasteful from the tabasco, pepper and onion, and it was light yet filling. And my egg craving was fulfilled.

 

Crustless quiche - kale, almond cheese, Canadian bacon, egg whites and skim milk. 

The Foods and Walks of Travels

I have already mentioned here before that I don’t try to be on a diet while I travel. I feel like a lot of the travel fun is in the food, not only because I personally find food part of the overall fun, but also because some places are defined by their food. How can you go to New Orleans and not get a beignet? Or a shrimp po’ boy? But healthy, they are not!

I constantly think of what enters my mouth every day of my life, and how it will affect me, but when I travel, I leave that at home.

We just got back from Oahu, Hawaii. It was really a trip of a lifetime because there are so many unique features of these islands that you will not get to know anywhere else on the Continental US or Europe. We loved many things about it, and food was just one of them.

Hawaii, however, is one of those places, like California, too, that offers a lot of healthy choices, right along the decadent ones.

Yes, you will have to at least taste a pulled pork sandwich. And you won’t regret it. Not sure if it’s in the smoke they use, or the marinade, or even what the pigs eat in these parts, but it was delicious. And not greasy at all, nor drowned unnecessarily in some goopy sauce! No mayo in the slaw – just raw red cabbage as a garnish and a slice of fresh pineapple on the side. Just pure goodness. 

Pork sandwich on Waikiki Beach - the bright red is pickled onion. Very yummy!

And speaking of pineapple: it’s one of the very few fruits I love no matter how you serve it to me, but the Hawaiian one is definitely the sweetest and juiciest there is. Sweet in a fresh kind of way, not in a it-hurts-my-teeth-fake-sugar kind of a way.

A lot of the restaurants allowed you to grill your own food, on an open grill – they called it ‘island style’. You ordered your ingredients and they would bring them to your fresh, then you’d grill them to your liking. You could control your spices, your salt, your sauces, as well as your done-ness. 

One of the self-cooked meals on the grill, at Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ Restaurant: steamed rice, with grilled chicken and grilled enoki mushrooms.

You find fresh fruit salads just about anywhere. We got some at a flea market and ate it as street food, while browsing the crafts and souvenirs tents. I ordered a fresh fruit salad for breakfast one morning, and I think that is a very first for me. I am not a fan of fruit, for sure, much to the demise of me, considering I should live on these to stay alive. But I had to “do as Romans do” in Oahu, and enjoy what this lush island had to offer. 

Our flea market snack.

 My fresh "bowl of fruit" breakfast. This was enormous -
there was no way I could finish this! 

Since you’re surrounded by water in this archipelago, sea food is, of course, everywhere, and plenty. One night, we went to Morimoto Waikiki, owned by the famed Iron Chef, and offering unique eats from the sea and turf alike. I had, for the first time, chirashi sushi: a bowl of steamed sesame rice, with a wide selection of all sorts of fish, roe and pickled veggies on top. Apart from the mercury poisoning I might have committed to myself, the raw fish was out of this world delicious and very light. The portion was huge, I thought, and although I was so stuffed that I could not finish it, I never felt guilty eating it, even a little bit.  

Miso soup, with chirashi sushi dinner

Another reason why this trip was a “feel good trip” was all the walking we did. We did rent a car, but we walked mostly everywhere. In the last couple of days, we drove to the mountains, and there, we hiked the rainforest towards Manoa Falls. The vegetation was unusual than anything else I have ever seen, fresh, incredibly overgrown with amazing blooms, and so green!

The trail was easy, but long enough to actually feel like we moved some muscles and burned some of that pork. Despite the high humidity in the air, I really enjoyed hiking at sea level again! My chest never clogged up, my throat never felt tense, and I was never out of breath. 

The mountains we live in surely are pretty and the hikes are challenging, but the altitude surely takes a toll on a cardiac patient like me. In contrast, there is something to be said for comfort, even when you push your body to exercise. Call me a wimp, if you want, but I personally feel much better when I can breathe freely and my veins are not screaming for oxygen. 

  

 Hiking in the rainforest, the Manoa Falls Trail

It’s Yet Another Start

They say you’re not defeated when you fall down. But when you’re not picking yourself back up. And I am definitely one to always pick myself up, as long as I am able. And today I have yet another start.

You all know that I have had a love-hate relationship with exercising. And trust you me, it’s the biggest conundrum of my life. I am usually so disciplined in all the other areas of my existence, and I always want to do the best, in everything I set my mind to. Why can’t I put staying fit, and healthy and having a routine for making sure these things happen on my list of “to do” things, I have never understood.

Sure, it’s hard, but I do so many other “hard” things – like holding a job down, and over-performing, and paying my bills despite my expensive travel hobbies, and the list goes on. I guess the problem  is the missing of instant gratification. I just want to do 30 minutes of exercise and see the pounds literally drop off of me. Or see actual cholesterol dripping out of my veins, or something like that. And since there is a fat chance  that’ll ever happen (no pun intended), it’s easy to put it off.

The hardest thing is to stay focused on just walking, when I am on the treadmill. I opt for the treadmill  lately, versus the yoga mat, because I feel it in my heart better than the latter. I tried music, and I tried radio, as well. And sometimes either works only a little bit – because I still cannot stop watching the clock, and wishing 30 minutes or 45 or whatever I wanted to do that day has passed! And I watch the calorie count to reach at least 100, to be able to live with myself, at least…

Today, I found another trick to hold it and reach my goal. I figured, I do so well with executing what others give me as a task. So, I asked the treadmill to make the routine for me and all I had to do is just deliver. Like a good little student, I just needed to accomplish the task given to me. I selected one of the programmed workouts that came with the treadmill, it was 30 minutes long, and had various inclines and speeds, and I was not going to stop till the machine stopped me. And … I found the right music, too. It turns out that what pushes me is not crazy disco work-out music, but … zydeco. Hot, hopping Bayou music, folks. And I think all the lyrics about jambalaya and fried shrimp po’ boys and fried catfish are just extra-motivation to keep running.

The programmed routine is good for my short attention span, because every 1-2 minutes something changes in the routine – either the speed or the incline or both … So, you’re constantly doing something different. It was great! And great fun, for the first time ever, that I can remember.

And I burned more calories than ever before – and the proof is below. I know, I know, some people burn 1000 a day, or more, but … this is a giant leap for me, so I am going to take it!

I am going to Hawaii soon … and you would think trying to look good in a bathing suit has been motivation enough. But you know what – I am not even thinking of that at all! All I think about is the advice of one of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott – who says “we need to start where our butt is”. So, I start where my butt is, every day, and if my butt happens to end up on the treadmill, then, I walk. And instead of thinking of my slim figure in a bathing suit, I think of just my old, clogged up heart. I try to visualize always that with every step I take, I am gaining maybe one more heart beat … Trying to keep that focus. One step at a time. 

 

My new "achievement" ... 

More Pain. No Gain.

I sometimes have this fantasy that I will walk away from it all, and I will just live a “normal” life … with no doctors’ visits, no drugs, and no tests. Ever. For the rest of what’s given to me.

Some days, like today, this fantasy is more like a nagging “can do” plan.

I have been bitter about doctors almost all my life, but since I moved to Utah it’s gotten worse. And no, it’s not just me getting older and having less patience. But it’s the lack of knowledge and care and, yes, knowledge of the doctors I have found here. I sometimes joke that the Medical Schools or America cannot flunk doctors! Can you imagine? Going to school for 6 years, investing all that cash and at the end of it, you can’t pass your graduation exams, and they won’t give you your diploma?! THAT can’t happen.  People would sue!

So, instead, they let them pass and they give them the degree to practice, to the worst and least prepared of them, but they make a deal that they will only practice in Utah – and thus we have what we have here. I am sure there is fine (she says with restraint!) medical staff around this state, but for now, for 4 years (almost), I have not found one!

My new doctor (because, yes, I am always looking for that “alright one”, at least) cannot diagnose my pain, in my gallbladder/ liver area, and all the other symptoms that come with it – bloating, GI changes, sense of fullness, rashes on my face, etc. He keeps ordering more (very expensive) tests, but all of them come back clean.

As you know, the endoscopy showed no ulcer on my stomach, so now, he wants a HIDA test, which can show problems with my gallbladder. Although, I have symptoms closer to celiac disease than gallbladder, but that’s another story …

That test is $1500 and right now, I can’t do it, because the one facility that does it around us is out of the drug necessary to do the test. Apparently, a “nation-wide” shortage. OK. It’s probably good timing, though, because I have not met my insurance deductible for this year, so I can’t pay that out of my pocket anyway. But in the meantime – can we do a celiac blood test? No, he says. Should I stop taking the meds for my cholesterol, which can cause gallbladder disease (he said!) – no, he says. Don’t change anything till we figure this out, but he won’t do anything else, other than the impossible to do right now gallbladder test … So, more delays.

Can you give me anything for my rash? No – because it’s near your eye, so I don’t know what to give you, but here, go to a dermatologist and he’ll figure it out! He asked me twice what I have put on my rash and told him twice that I have used Neosporin and Benadryl. Twice, while he is apparently typing notes into the computer. Do you think he got it?! Probably not …

In the meantime, my eyelid is peeling into my eye ball, and I am doubled up with pain, daily. Maybe around March, they’ll have the drug for the HIDA test and I’ll gather up some cash to actually pay for it.

But until then, it’s more delays, more tests and mostly – more pain.

What Has the World Come To?!

Happy New Year, everyone! I truly hope it’s happier and healthier for all of us!

I can’t even pretend that I have been “good” for the Holidays, because that was not in the cards for me! I wanted to eat all the traditional Romanian and American foods, and not worry about dieting. And eat I did! And gained weight I did – more precisely around 2 lbs – which is exactly what I lost before Christmas, since summer! So, I guess you can say I broke even.

I have been feeling poorly, though, which was no fun. This made me realize that this was probably the last holiday season when I paid no attention to what I eat. My body cannot take the “regular” foods and excesses, evidently, and my liver and GI system have felt the consequences for sure.

I sped up my doctor’s appointment from February to this week, because I must get to the bottom of where this pain under my right rib is coming from! I am up all night sometimes with it – and I have no idea what triggers it and what makes it feel better – it never does feel better. So, we’ll see. I know for sure it’s not ulcer – because a CT scan and an endoscopy later, there is no proof of that! Hoping they find something that they can treat.

I am also hoping I can keep up my treadmill walking, at least a couple of times a week. I have a new trick to keep me going: I downloaded the NPR app on my iPhone and I listen to Radio West while walking . I know I am not supposed to, that I am supposed to focus and savor every moment, and I am probably encouraging my Alzheimer’s with this new “trick”, because I am multitasking, but for now, whatever works is what I say …  

And this is very much a first for me, in many ways: if 10 years ago you’d told me I’d have a treadmill and that I would one day love listening to NPR, I would have called you nuts. I used to say “if you need to walk, use the road” and I used to hate NPR! But living in the desert and commuting more than an hour a day forces you to re-evaluate your radio choices. And now, I have several programs I am hooked to. I wish all my other weaknesses would be this healthy – to some extent. And with winter temps in the teens for 6 months out of the year, a treadmill is a saving grace. This is precisely why I never say “never”, really.

I don’t make resolutions, but for the new year, I made a wish: that I am at least as healthy as I was last year. Make it a great one, all!