Normal

I couldn't believe my ears, so I asked the doctor to repeat herself, and yep, she said normal in reference to my labs. Now anyone who has met me in person knows that I am a significantly overweight person, I've lost 60 pounds since we've moved to Missouri, I have over twice that much left to go, this news has made it seem much more real that I might actually make it. It at least seems to indicate that I'm finally, after all these years, on the right path. When we moved here, 7 years ago, my thyroid functioned at the lowest point that could be called normal, my insulin resistance was so bad that I was immediately put on glucophage and labeled pre-diabetic and told that I had a very short window to fix this before it was just diabetic, and my cholesterol numbers were horrible, the good was too low, the bad was too high and the triglycerides were just scary. Now normal, thyroid is normal normal, insulin resistance is entirely gone, and cholesterol and triglyceride numbers are right where they are supposed to be.

A little background on me, it was suggested that I have PCOS (poly cystic ovary syndrome) when I was 15, they didn't really diagnose it back then like they do now, but now I have the diagnosis too, that came about 12 years ago. Since being a kid I have tried every single diet that I came across, don't eat, eat only this or that, shakes instead of food, prepackaged food, weigh in times, herbal concoctions, low fat, low carb, everything. All of it worked for a bit, and afterwards all of it failed not only to help me lose more weight but the moment I went off those diets all of it came back and brought friends. I went from a little heavy to putting-my-life-in-danger heavy on diets. I exercised here and there too, but with the awful things that I was doing to myself with diets the exercise didn't have a chance to counteract much of anything. Finally I gave up, none of that packaged low-fat, low-sugar stuff tastes worth a darn, actually the package probably tastes better and so I just quit, all of it.

Now we eat normal food and I have normal labs, that cracks me up, but it makes sense too. Maybe it could be called a whole foods diet, I prefer to just call it eating good food that's good for us. We eat real butter, real eggs, drink whole milk (raw when we can find it), use real cheese, eat real meat, lots of vegetables, lots of fruit, whole grain everything and even use heavy cream from time to time. The recipes that we cook don't come from Light magazines, or if they do we've replaced the non-fat this and that with real sour cream and real yogurt. What we have changed aside from the food itself is the portion size, I had no earthly clue what a normal portion looked like. I learned this from a very dear friend who didn't even realize that she was teaching it to me, I look back now and I can't believe the massive portions that we used to eat. A big help along this road was giving up soda, completely, we drink water with lemon in it through the day and find that soda is now way too sweet. We have John to thank for a lot of this because he can't handle much sugar at all and also can't handle fake sugar either and he eats so little that we wanted to make sure that anything that he did actually eat was the very best we could provide. It just cracks me up that the day that I get the normal lab report comes on the morning that I made bacon and fried eggs for breakfast, one day after making bacon, fried eggs and homemade biscuits for breakfast, and I was eating the same things when the labs were drawn.

Through a lot of this I have said we, and that has also made a humongous difference. This past year when Mark started being tired of feeling fat and wanting to feel better it helped that he too was interested in changing things. I can't believe how much his cooperation, not just support, not just an I-love-you-honey-lets-do-whats-best-for-you attitude but actually wanting to change things for himself has made.

My dad died from arteriosclerosis when he was 44, I turn 43 this May. I was 23 when my dad died and it was hard and I miss him to this day, John will only be 6 the year that I turn 44, I just can't stand by and do nothing. I know that I am not in charge of the length of my days, but I also know that I can do everything in my power to make as many of them as can be, and there's a wonderful little boy zipping around in his power chair at way too fast of a speed who needs me. So now that I'm on the right road I'm in for more of the same, watch the portions, make good real food to eat, and exercise, oh yes there is always that. Actually I really enjoy going for a walk and so have been getting out for 30 minutes a day most days, I want to push that to 45 minutes a day every day and now that John can zip along in his chair it won't be very long until he will just be able to go with me when he wants. Of course thanks to my mom we now spend more nights standing around in the living room playing Wii than we do sitting around watching the tv, so that is some help.

For today I'm still just very much surprised and thankful for normal, ye-ha, who would have ever thought that I could be normal ;)