I’ve started a new diet and exercise plan. I heard about the "Mayo Clinic Diet Plan" and so went in search of it. Guess what? It’s not one of those fancy, buy-my-book-cuz-I’m-the-expert type of diets. This is the real kind of diet and exercise plan. What do I mean by "real"? Well, duh, stop eating the fats, the processed foods, and the junk and start stuffing your face with vegetables, fruits and healthy stuff. The exercise portion is "moderate to vigorous exercise 30-60 minutes most days". From the site:
The Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid helps you adopt a healthy, lifelong eating plan. This means no severe restrictions on the foods you eat and no extreme hunger. The base of the pyramid focuses on generous amounts of healthy foods that contain a small number of calories in a large volume of food, particularly fruits and vegetables. Healthy choices in moderate amounts make up the rest of the pyramid, which focuses on whole-grain carbohydrates, lean sources of protein such as legumes, fish and low-fat dairy, and heart-healthy unsaturated fats.
[...]At the most basic level, physical activity means moving — every motion of your body burns calories and is therefore beneficial. Cleaning the house, making the bed, shopping, mowing and gardening are all forms of physical activity. Exercise, on the other hand, is a structured and repetitive form of physical activity that you do on a regular basis. Exercise improves your fitness, as well as helps you lose weight and deal with everyday stress. Whatever activity you choose, the key is to commit to doing it regularly. Aim for 30 to 60 minutes of moderately intense physical activity most days of the week. Moderately intense activity or exercise should increase your heart and breathing rates and possibly lead to a light sweat. Brisk walking and yardwork that entails near constant motion are examples of moderately intense activity.
They have a link to the pyramid that the government has adopted in an effort to make their recommendations more personalized. Enter your gender, age, height and weight and you’re given the total number of calories you should consume a day, exercise recommendations and food choices. They even provide a link to healthy recipes for those of us that aren’t too sure how to cook without the fat and calories. My own pyramid tells me that I should eat no more than 1,200 calories a day, exercise 60 minutes a day, take in 5-7 servings of veggies and 4-5 servings a day of fruits. Also included is the amount of fat and junk I can safely eat everyday and still lose enough weight to get to a healthy level. Very basic and very simple. And there’s really no need to buy the book (there is no real book from the Mayo Clinic!) since you can look at it, download and print it all from the website for free.
The Mayo Clinic has partnered with Microsoft to provide a health manager for users. Of course, I signed up when I saw the link. The health manager tracks more than just your weight loss (which was what I was interested in) but also your blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other risk factors that could endanger your life. Then they provide recommendations on how to manage that and lower the risk as well as a graph which shows whether your levels/weight has increased or decreased, giving you an idea of how you’re really progressing (without the doctor’s fees). They also provide you with a "vault" to input your medical history, medications you’re on and doctor’s appointments (among other things). For your doctor’s appointments, they will email you a reminder and will give you a form to print out with all of your medical concerns (which, of course, you input into their system) so that you can bring those to your doctor’s attention and don’t forget something important (which I do all the time). It’s an amazing little system. By the way, you can add all of your family to the system and keep track of them also. Everyone’s in the same system and accessible. If you want to know if your husband is going to fit into that tuxedo in January, start a graph for him and keep track. You’ll see his progress and can more easily nag him into shape. 
Now, privacy could be a concern with the above system, considering the nature of the information involved. If you want to use it, but are concerned that someone could hack your account, just sign up under a pseudonym. The Clinic and/or Microsoft aren’t going to call around asking if that’s really you in the vault. The program is only designed to help you manage your health, not get super secret information. If that’s a major concern for you, just sign up under "Jane Doe" or something equally off-the-wall. The only person that will know any differently is you.
So, I’m beginning my new regimen soon. After my illness, I did drop quite a few pounds, but I’ve been inactive, so it’s slowly coming back as my appetite increases. I want to make sure that I’m not only slimmer, but also healthier. I’ve recently read an article (which I can’t find quite at the moment) that you can be slim but still have the heart of an obese person. How? Dieting without the exercise can leave the fat suffocating your heart and other internal organs. Muscle is needed to burn fat more efficiently for all the body parts you can’t see and that requires exercise. Not to mention your blood flow is increased (necessary for muscle buildup and metabolism as well as healthy bodily functions) when you’re active. Eating 5 calories a day will help you lose weight, but if you’re lying in bed while starving yourself, you’re just not going to win in the long run. And that’s what I’m trying to. I want to have enough strength and energy to fight my disease effectively and be a mom to my little girl. I also want to make sure I don’t end up with heart disease and/or diabetes later on—both diseases which are mostly preventable, but which plague our country (and my family). I’m even more conscious of my health than I’ve ever been so I’m thrilled that I found this site and the tracker. Anything that makes things easier for me to get through this and finally win is a lifesaver (maybe even quite literally).
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Lizzie on AC
Triggers and disappointment
I’ve mentioned that I’ve started a new diet and exercise regimen recently. I’d looked into the top diet pills and other diet wonders, but settled on a diet recommended by the Mayo Clinic. I’m also doing a lot of exercise, including, but not limited to, increasing my mundane daily activities. I’m walking stairs, cleaning walls, running around work like a chicken with my head cut off. I’m trying to get the blood flowing and the muscles building.
Unfortunately, I seem to have forgotten that I’m not the same as everyone else. I have a chronic disease that is aggravated by too much physical exertion. I forgot because I was feeling so good. So I kept going and going and going—determined to get off that plateau I’d reached with my weight loss. Sadly, I’m remembering now that I should take it easy and do only a little at a time.
For two days I’ve been in the middle of a flare. The last week or so I’d felt really good and almost forgot about the pain. A couple of days I even went without my pain meds and got a decent night’s sleep. I was under the impression that I could go further and do more. Of course, the extra exercise does help with Fibro pain, the doctors are right about that. But it doesn’t eliminate the pain or keep the flares at bay forever. It doesn’t cure the disease. It just helps—as long as you don’t push yourself beyond the threshold of the pain.
I knew that I’m one that should do two days of the exercise program and then take 2 days off. That’s just how my body copes. I know this. I get the adrenaline pumping and the endorphins going, then have to stop, rest, and regenerate (??). I have to give my poor body a break no matter how good I feel. Of course, I didn’t do that. I’m too stubborn. I want to be normal and when I start to feel that way I think I am normal. But I’m not. I will never be again. I’m different and have to come to grips with that.
That’s the hardest part of having a chronic disease, I think. Accepting that this will be the rest of my life and there’s nothing I can do to change that. My lifestyle can’t be like someone else’s, I will never be without pain and I will never go more than two days at a time without the crushing fatigue. That’s incredibly depressing for me. I want to get the house in order, play with my child and do my job better than anyone else there. I want to go out dancing and canoeing and experience the fun of summer—every single day. But I can’t. I can only do a few things at a time when I feel up to it. That means that on my good days I’ll have to make some choices about how I spend my time so that I will have more good days and shorter, more rare flares. I have to learn to plan every day as if I’m going to have a flare, because otherwise I’m disappointing the entire family as I can’t do with them what I’d promised I would do. Do I do the yard work today and sit out the dancing? Do I rest on the elevator instead of taking the stairs because we have plans later on that day? Will Mags and I have to paint indoors instead of walking to the playground today?
Some days I really hate my body and what I feel is it’s betrayal. My mind and soul need to be active and out and doing things until I pass out from exhaustion. But my body won’t allow it. And when my body rebels, my mind follows and the pain, depression and fatigue come calling. When I’m really enjoying myself and really making progress (I think) then it’s 10 times worse. It’s like I’ve been taken out and beaten down with baseball bats. I felt good getting active and getting the blood pumping, but now I feel like curling up and hiding from the world. It’s back like the monster it is and there’s nothing I can do about it at this point. I have to find a way to accept that this is my life forever and adjust my lifestyle accordingly. Rest is good. Taking it easy is good. Pain is bad.
Actually, that’s a pretty good mantra. I might just add that to my meditation practice.
I think I’ll address the problem of the family, job and doctor refusing to accept my illness either. No, I can’t do the laundry today even though I was throwing shovelfuls of mulch yesterday. No, I can’t do extra assignments today even though I was like Flash Gordon yesterday. No, I’m not superwoman today, yesterday or ever. Heh, like that ever works for me. I have a list of things my husband wants me to accomplish today before he comes home from work because he says “You want to lose weight don’t you?”
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