Happy Saturday!
DIET stands for “Did I Eat That?”
Congratulations to Paul, Sandy, Dina, Sherrie, and Bill for guessing correctly last weekend that Tracy and I are the vegans. (The five of you should keep an eye on your inbox in a couple weeks. There may be a little something special show up. Shhhh…don’t tell anyone!)
I never thought in a million years that I would end up “going vegan”. Really. I loved bacon and eggs for breakfast, loved pork chops and chicken breasts for dinner, and there really is nothing like a good steak. But, when the results came back from the doctor — high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar — we decided we obviously had to make a change. Either that or we’d have to start the all-too-common (at least, these days) prescription after prescription after prescription.
We managed to get the doctor to hold off on those while we tried to “make a lifestyle change” and I’m sure, in the back of the doctor’s mind, she was probably pretty doubtful that would make a difference.
So, we came home, jumped online and started researching. Eventually, we found this: https://www.forksoverknives.com/the-film/ (If you’re curious, it’s a little over half an hour long, so make sure you have time.)
After a lot of discussion, we figured we’d give it a try. What did we have to lose?
It’s a lot of work, cooking everything from scratch. It disrupted our routine like you wouldn’t believe.
Three months later, we had to go back in for more blood tests and etc., so the doctor could assess the results of our “lifestyle change”. Blood was drawn, urine was sampled — you know, all the usual things.
A week later, we get a call from the doctor’s office. “We’ve got the results of your blood tests back. Can you be here in an hour?” Talk about two freaked out people!
Why would the doctor want to see us on such short notice? They must have found something seriously wrong!
So, we rush to the doctor’s, spend the requisite twenty minutes agonizing in the waiting room and another twenty minutes agonizing even more after being shown to the exam room.
First thing the doctor says when she walks in is, “I want to show you something.” and she swivels the computer monitor around so we can all look at it. Then she punches a few buttons and say, “Look at this!” and she follows it up with, “I’ve never seen anything like this!”
Let me tell you, when you’re frantic, thinking something is big-time wrong, that is totally not what you want to hear!
Long story short, in just three months, all those test results that had five-alarm bells ringing had dropped down into the “normal” range. Yes, they were on the high end of “normal” but, they had dropped significantly. Enough so that the doctor had no need to write us those prescriptions.
In one week, we’ll have been on this DIET for six months, and I’d be willing to bet the test results would come back even better now. And where I started out with, “I can’t imagine ever ‘going vegan’,” now I can’t imagine ever going back.