suffered<\/strong>. I ate cheerios with almond milk for breakfast nearly every day. I had salads for lunch and I don\u2019t even remember what I had for dinner. I was starving within an hour of each meal. I had the discipline to endure it, but fun was not in the vocabulary.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAt that point, I had lost 35 pounds and my cholesterol dropped 61 points. Sounds great, but like I said, I was suffering…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the office, we used to have lunch together as a team every Wednesday. The CTO had lost a lot of weight (clearly way more than I did) over the past few months and was looking great. One lunch, I noticed that he had a giant<\/strong> plastic container of tuna with mayo and chopped celery.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe tuna itself was probably fine for me to have, but mayo? As much as I craved it, I knew that was a no-no<\/em> for my cholesterol\/heart issues. However, it also happens to have been one of my favorite things growing up!<\/p>\n\n\n\nI asked him how it was possible that he lost so much weight and yet ate that kind of stuff. He said: \u201cThe Atkins Diet<\/strong>\u201c. What was this magic?<\/p>\n\n\n\nI immediately ordered the hardcover from Amazon and devoured<\/em> it (I know, a little too clever…). Not only did it sound too good to be true, Dr. Atkins also claimed that by following his diet, your cholesterol would go down<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI was ready to go for it, but I was cautious enough to discuss it with my cardiologist. He said that he was OK with me trying it, but we\u2019d have to keep an eye on the bloodwork after a few months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first two weeks of the diet were brutal. I was so full after each meal that I didn\u2019t want to ever eat again, but you have to eat every six hours during that initial period whether you\u2019re hungry or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I loved everything I put in my mouth. Breakfast was an omelette with bacon and cheese. Lunch was a chicken caesar salad. Dinner was two hamburger patties with cheese (no buns). But, like I said, I was forcing this delicious stuff down my throat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fast forward. A few months later, I\u2019m down another 25 pounds (so around 205). That\u2019s the Win<\/strong> part of this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut, when the lab results came back, my cholesterol was 39 points higher than when I first saw the cardiologist (now close to two years later!). He was absolutely insistent that I immediately<\/strong> stop Atkins and return to my original diet. I was crushed. This was the Loss<\/strong> part (obviously).<\/p>\n\n\n\nEverything that Atkins said in his book was accurate for me, with the overwhelming exception of the impact on my cholesterol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next post will be a very high level review of 2003 (when this post happened) to 2019, so you won\u2019t be suffering a month-by-month recital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the second post in a series on my Health Journey. If you\u2019re just tuning in, this was the first post. For 18 months, I suffered. I ate cheerios with almond milk for breakfast nearly every day. I had salads for lunch and I don\u2019t even remember what I had for dinner. I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"categories":[1401,2],"tags":[1402,1379],"class_list":["post-14423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-2","tag-health","tag-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14424,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14423\/revisions\/14424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}