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In January 2011, my husband was not feeling well and was having a hard time breathing. He was about 250 miles from home when he started feeling worse; his symptoms sounded like he might have had bronchitis. After a short discussion about what he should do, he decided he would keep driving but by 6 a.m. the next morning, and another 300 miles down the road, he was feeling worse. He called the number on the back of his medical insurance card to find a doctor, then drove himself to an emergency room. It turned out that he was having a heart attack that started the evening before. I felt so guilty that I did not know that he was sick.
My husband made it to a hospital in time, had 2 stints put in, and is now actually better than new. Since there was no damage to his heart, he was given a second chance at life. That scare woke us both up and now we try to eat healthy.
Both he and I are overweight. We have found that it was easier for him to lose weight than it is for me. I am still struggling. Most of his meals are eaten in a truck stop and almost everything on the menu in those restaurants is considered artery clogging foods.
Since his heart attack, we tried many different diets and supplements to lose weight and to change our lifestyle. I purchased an American Heart Association cookbook, tried a few of the recipes, and put that book away. It didn’t have a plan that we could follow, so we tried another, and then another and finally I found a plan that we could stick to even when we weren’t at home. The New Sonoma Diet has all the heart healthy foods we need and the right foods to help eliminate the midsection. It isn’t structured like a regular diet and although, we were able to change our lifestyle, it fits into our lifestyle not us trying to fit into its lifestyle. By that, I mean, that we didn’t have to make different concessions such as only having to eat at home, eat only at certain times, eat only certain foods.
Both American Heart Society and the New Sonoma Diet have recommended foods in common. The following are foods when eating out are recommended to those who have already had a heart attack and to those who wish to avoid a heart attack besides those who need to lose weight:
- Meats – Order baked, poached, steamed, grilled, or roasted.
- Meats – Choose sandwiches made with lean chicken or turkey on whole wheat bread.
- Entrees – Avoid gravy, cheese, mayonnaise, or sauces.
- Salads – choose fresh fruits and vegetable salads and use olive oil and vinegar based salad dressings.
- Salads – Avoid eggs, cheese, and high fat dressings.
- Salads – Use grilled chicken for toppings and avoid salads made with mayonnaise or sour cream as in tuna salad, chicken salad, potato salad, and pasta salad.
- Side Dishes – Order fresh, raw, or steamed vegetables without the butter or sauces. Order baked potato without the butter and sour cream. Order steamed rice (preferrable brown rice) without the butter.
- Avoid foods that are fried, basted, au gratin, crispy, escalloped, pan-fried, sautéed, stewed, or stuffed.
We were given a choice of many foods that we enjoy. When we are eating out, which is most of the time for my husband, there are choices on the menus that we only have to ask to have some of the ingredients on the side or left out, and we aren’t compromising the diet or dish. It isn’t a strict structure, just a generalized lifestyle change which is actually easy to do.
The best thing about this diet, although the weight itself didn’t come off fast, the fat around the midsection did come off fast, which is important to help lower the risk of having a heart attack.
Please read on to see if this diet plan would fit into your lifestyle.
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Source by Jacki Syverson