Day: August 13, 2013

Back On Weight Watchers with @Noom

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Exercise, Health, Noom, Weight6 Comments

smart-ones

I have been eating Weight Watchers Smart Ones and using the Noom Weight Loss Coach on my Android phone since January this year and have lost 70lbs, but then I stopped eating the Smart Ones because we couldn’t afford them anymore.  Naturally I hit a plateau and haven’t been able to get out of it.  Not only that, but I have gained 5lbs UGH!  I refuse to let that happen, so I printed out 2 coupons today and we went to Food Maxx and I bought some more Smart Ones frozen meals.

These meals scan as green in the Noom app and they have been proven to be effective, I mean hello, look at me, I’ve clearly lost a lot of weight.  Here are my official before and after pictures.

before and after morro bay

All I keep hearing is that I’ve done so good for such a long time and how it’s okay to eat junk every once in a while, but all of a sudden every once in a while is daily.  No, every once in a while is once or twice a month, I can’t eat a burrito at the Mexican restaurant, then a McChicken sandwich the next day at the McDonald’s and the next day a bag of chips or a few cookies.  That’s not how “every once in a while” works.  I refuse to go back to the way I was.  I have worked too freaking hard to go back now.

I could say no, but here’s the thing.  I’ve been saying no for more than 7 months.  I’ve been saying yes lately because I miss those foods.  You can’t eat something your entire life and then all of a sudden stop and not miss them.  You wouldn’t be human if you did.  It’s natural to want something that makes you feel good or happy, and junk food really does make me happy lol.  Don’t ask me how or why, it just does.  Everyone has their own happy trigger, this is mine.  Some people are happy with alcohol, some are happy with drugs while others are happy with cigarettes, I’m happy with junk food.  It’s my addiction and I am trying to get away from it.

I haven’t stopped logging my food, but I do skip logging the bad things because I know I’m not supposed to be eating them so I ignore those calories, but I can’t do that.  If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right.  So I’m logging everything and eating only food that is good for me.  The Michelina’s were yellow in the Noom app, the Weight Watchers are green.  No more cookies or crackers, if I want a snack I’m going to eat a banana.  We just bought 2 bunches of bananas, so I’m going to slice 2 of them up and freeze them so I can make banana ice cream later tonight for my snack.

I also have my bike back so I can start exercising again.  I don’t have any excuse to not eat healthy or to not exercise.  I want to be healthy and it starts with me learning to say no.  NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!  There, I said it.

I know the weight loss won’t come as fast as it did when I was 264lbs, but I hope it isn’t as slow as it has been over the last few months.  I really do want to get back down to the weight I was, which was 192, but I really would love to get down to my new goal weight which is 170lbs.  I know I can do it, I just have to have a lot of will power.  No, a ton of it.  I only have this one body so I have to be good to it.

Swollen Parotid Gland

On By Michel McDonaldIn Doctor, Health, Pain15 Comments

swollen parotid gland

There is this strange thing that happens to me at the very least 1 time and at the most 4 times per year.  My Parotid glands swell up because there is a blockage and it hurts like a mother effer.  I wouldn’t normally use such profanity, but it really hurts lol.

What is the Parotid gland?  Nobody has ever heard that term, but apparently it’s a saliva gland.  This is where your saliva comes from, well, one of the many glands anyway.  I am not a medical professional or even a student so don’t listen to what I’m about to say if you expect to get an education from this, this is only my assumption based on my experience with this.

So you have these glands that produce your saliva.  They release saliva through veins that run from the gland to the inside of your mouth and it oozes out into your mouth.  If there is a block, your gland fills up with saliva and you can literally push on it and you can feel, and even see saliva squirting out of the inside of your cheek either into your mouth, or on the bathroom mirror depending on the direction of the vein and the position you are facing the mirror.  No joke lol.

When I feel it filling up, I push on it and it releases the saliva which gives me some relief, but sometimes the block is so bad that even pushing on it won’t release the saliva.  This happens to me all the time.  Although, pushing on it really hurts until the saliva squirts out, but then it still hurts, but it does give me some relief for a while until it fills back up.  I try not to think of anything that will make me salivate, but then everything makes me salivate.  I can’t win.  It’s like trying to think about baseball when you have an erection, it doesn’t always work.

About 2 weeks ago I could feel swelling and pain from my Parotid gland and we went to our regular appointment and the doctor gave me some antibiotics which was supposed to help.  The doctor told me that if it doesn’t help then I may need surgery.  When we went back a week later it seemed like it had gotten better because it wasn’t as swollen.  The doctor asked me if I wanted surgery and I said it wasn’t necessary.  Oh boy was I wrong.

Saturday evening the Parotid gland had swollen up again so I pushed on it and the saliva went through the veins, but then got stuck so there was a little bubble with saliva sitting in that vein and it couldn’t exit.  It’s still there.  That one little tiny mistake has given me massive amounts of pain since Saturday night.  I’m not the kind of person who cries when he’s in pain because I am literally always in pain so I’m used to it.  When I broke my arm earlier this year I didn’t cry once.  This swollen Parotid gland and saliva bubble pain is so bad that I want to cry.  I haven’t, but I want to.  Or maybe I’ve just bottled my pain emotion so much that I just want to let it out lol.

So I called the doctor’s office yesterday and they scheduled me to come in today at 11:30 a.m.  The doctor gave me a prescription for Norco as well as 2 antibiotics which he said I don’t take right away, he said to wait for it to get worse.  WORSE?  Holy crap!  I went to Truxton Radiology and had an ultrasound then went back to the doctor’s office to have blood drawn for a test specifically for this problem.  He said I will get a letter in the mail with the information for the surgeon referral which will most likely have the appointment in the letter with an address.

I am ready for this thing to go away.  You have no idea how ready I am lol.  I am just sick and tired of being in pain all the time.  If it’s not one thing, it’s another.  If it’s not my curving back which turns out to be scoliosis, then it’s my freakin’ Parotid gland.  I guess that means I’m getting old lol.