The scale is slowly creeping downward, so I'm at 224 this morning! Hopefully it will be there or lower for tomorrow's MWL weigh-in. Meanwhile, super enjoying the daily walks. I doubled my goal to 4,000 steps, up from 2,000. And while on my morning walk today, I got to thinking about my visit to the foot doctor a few years ago.
I was suffering daily with what I call "pain socks"...pain from the tips of my toes to my ankles. Random. Some days worse than others, some days one foot or the other, and some days both feet. Some days would be just fine and suddenly BAM a foot would collapse just while standing in the kitchen. That is, just standing there and suddenly my foot would not bear any weight at all. It was just horrible. So I went to the foot doc. He found slight calcifications in my left ankle. The beginning of a bone spur in one heel. No fractures. I weighed in at about 245 lbs and was eating vegan junk food frequently: high in sodium, sugar, and fat. Like potato chips, cookies, store bought hummus on store bought crackers or pita...etc. IOW, not eating healthy.
And my doctor told me not to walk. He told me to make sure and sit with my feet elevated above the level of my heart for 60 minutes every day. He told me to wear shoes ALL the time. If I wasn't in bed or the shower, good supportive shoes on my feet. Period. Shoe inserts. Period. Can't remember what else he advised, but I took all his advice. Stopped walking except when necessary. In fact, during this phase of my life, I was using store scooters often. Wylie had to push me around in a non-motorized wheelchair when we went shopping for a bedroom set. I just couldn't. My feet were killing me and I would never have been able to stroll slowly around Ikea's cement floored meandering mega store.
Anywayzzzz...So I didn't take walks, but I couldn't have anyway. Not further than a few steps, honestly. Sitting with my feet above heart level every day helped a lot. Wearing shoes all the time also helped. Still does. These days I don't sit with my feet elevated every day, and I DO WALK. Every Day.
What day was it that I committed fully to leaving processed oils out? Some time last summer after my sister's diagnosis of hypercholesterolemia. I stopped adding fats to my food, and within a couple of days my aches and pains, including The Pain Socks, went away. I started taking short walks amounting to the near end of my street and back. Then to the far end of the street, and there's a river walkway further down from the far end, so I started going there once in a while. There's an incline on the way home from that one, which is nice for an elevated heart rate. Lately, I've been going past the close end of the street and up a block or two for new neighborhoods to walk through. I now know where two more Little Libraries are, and have a book from one of them. I also know where a squirrel is making a nest
It's almost like I'm getting my old walking habit back and I love it! And my foot doctor couldn't advise me to quit refined oils. He might have mentioned losing weight, but I think I did it before he could, but he didn't press it. So I'm grateful that a friend at church in 1995 had discovered The McDougall Plan, long before the word vegan had appeared in our Rural Idaho vocabulary, and I picked up a copy of the yellow book for myself and followed it, then dropped it ...and years later, in 2009, knowing I needed to get serious and lose some dang weight, thinking back on what I'd like to do I remembered McDougall and got back on in earnest. Labor Day, 2009. And even though I strayed again, I never did go back to eating animal flesh, but yeah the oils and fats crept back in, and the sweets. The trifecta of food addiction: fat, salt, and sweet...and frequently tbh. So the weight came back on and with it SO MANY aches and pains...
And I learned some things, one of which is "Refined foods are not food. They are bad for my health. Do not eat processed." This along with my long-term "no animal proteins" ... well, if I eat dairy I pay for it immediately. If I eat refined I pay for that as well. And it's too bad my foot doctor didn't have that advice. "Eliminate refined foods, especially fats, from your diet"...it would have resonated with me. Maybe I would have been motivated those years ago to do what I finally got around to doing this past year: no fats, nothing processed. But that's okay. I'm 20 lbs down from that 245 when I visited the foot doctor, and currently 11 lbs down from March 1. It's happening.
It means I'm making soup frequently but that's okay. 
I made them for dinner one night, enough for two meals but couldn't finish either time, so I combined the plate for lunch on the third day. So, noodles ARE a flour product, but they're low in calorie density so I'm not bummed about it or anything. HOWEVER...the scale did go up. But that's whatever. Scale goes up and down on the daily anyway. *shrug*
and was back to my "default". I mean, I was happy that I was 4 lbs down at the time, but so disappointed in myself, back wearing a jeans size I never thought to see again and with the flabby fat on my belly and huge ass. BUT check it out! That was in Feb 2018. I weighed 246. Today, some three years later plus change, and I am at 222. That is 24 lbs down in three years. And for most of that time, it's been me trying to get my mind in the game and take it seriously. 
