Diet Implications of a Life on Metoprolol, Losartan and other Medications

I feel so much better when I am not carrying around a whole lot of excess body weight and when I am also involved in daily physical therapy.  My heart beats happier too when I do these things.

View from my bedroom window

Our bedroom window opens up to a magnificent view of the Florida flatwoods, complete with tall pines supported by an understory of thick saw palmetto, and this is where on the floor I sit when stretching.

Morning routine consists of about two hours of me attempting various aerobic stretching exercises and lifting two pound weights on a limited basis (wow!) all the while monitoring my blood pressure at varying intervals.  Last thing I want to do is a Valsalva maneuver or attempt anaerobic type lifting.  Keeping blood pressure down below the bursting pressure of my aorta is important here, and I really mean 'important'!

Rest comes next followed by mid-day pool therapy where I walk in the water, tread water and do the breast stroke for a moderate work out.  Lunch follows as does more rest.

Walking or bike riding is my afternoon physical therapy.

By seven or eight in the evening I am exhausted.  Problem is I usually can't sleep, for a number of reasons including my loud clicking heart valve and the complex combination of medications I take.

You'd think that with all the physical therapy I am involved in I'd keep my weight down to a lower BMI than the  twenty-two to twenty-three I hover around.  Yes, I know this is in the normal range but ideally I'd like to keep my BMI around twenty.  My heart and joints feel much better around the twenty number.

And you'd think with my diet keeping excess weight off would not be difficult.  I know that in my pre-dissection life, if I'd eaten then like I eat now, the weight would fly off.

But my severly dissected aorta, stretching from the present Dacron graft that has replaced the ascending aortic arch, down through my thoracic and abdominal areas into my kidneys and legs, complicates the situation.

So the doctors want my heart to beat as slow as possible.  And the doctors want my blood pressure to stay quite low too.  I call this one-two punch, 'Zombie therapy'.

And the knock out facet of this one-two punch are the medications that keep my heart beating sooooo slow and at a reduced pressure.  In and of themselves at normal concentrations they are widely used and not too terrible I hear.  However all thrown together and taken multiple times a day they have turned my once hot metabolism into a cold, practically frozen in time metabolic rate.

I told my daughter yesterday that I can actually get all the calories I need during a day just from breathing.  I was kidding of course, but even on the 1,000 calorie per day meal combinations I been treating myself too my weight maintains itself on an even keel.

Heaven forbid if I eat a dessert or treat.  I have done this occasionally and, OMG the next day I've gained three or four pounds that stay on.

If not careful I could gain fifty pounds over the span of two months.  I bet I could easily gain one hundred pounds in a year on a fifteen hundred calorie per day diet.

Food is one of the things I enjoy most in life, especially good food!  But now I have to eat lots of good-for-you-food instead of good food if I want to keep my weight steady, meaning lots of raw fruits and vegetables, staying away from sugar and moderate caloric intake and other boring 'control my eating' activities.

All this is frustrating, extremely irritating.  There are some days I am ravenous!  I am hungry, hungry and hungrier ever! Pavlov's Dog won't shut up!

I suppose that is why all of those zombies on the television programs now-a-days are constantly walking around looking for something to eat.

I am sure I am not alone.  So for all of you out there on massive amounts of Metoprolol and Losartan and other -olol's or -artans, I know what you are going through.

Check out the diet tab on the blog's homepage if you are interested in my rather dull diet.  And enjoy a cuke dipped in vinegar too!