I, like almost everyone else is trying to drop some pounds. About 4 years ago, I weighed 260, my knees hurt, my pants were too tight, and I just kept on eating. One day I just decided to go on a diet, and I remembered the grapefruit diet. I figured I could just eat grapefruit, cut my carbs down and eat a lot of protein. That had always worked in the past.
I hadn’t been on the grapefruit diet for about 5 years because I was taking a statin. Ah, statin, one of the best selling and most prescribed drug of all time. Most of the world has high LDL cholesterol and I was one of them. I wasn’t off that charts, but my doctor said, “I am putting you on a statin.” The rest is history. I took it for the next five years and when I had my LDL checked again, I was able to get off the stuff.
You may know, that when you are on a statin, you’re not supposed to eat grapefruit. It’s contraindicated, whatever that is. Well, statins and grapefruit don’t get along and can cause problems. There is a statin that is a green color and that is supposed to be OK with grapefruit. Not the one, I was on though.
So here I am starting my grapefruit diet, in late June 2014. To my surprise, I was losing one or two pounds a day. Wow, this is great, because this diet never worked that well before. The first week, I lost 11 pounds and was down to 249 pounds. I was committed now because the weight loss was so great in that week. I knew that some of that was water weight. I knew that in the second week, I would have some bounce back and probably lose a little less.
Week two was over and I had lost another 10 pounds. Holy Cow! 21 pounds in two weeks, I was giddy with delight. The nest two weeks, I lost 20 pounds and I was down to 229. I hadn’t been there since I was 30, so you can imagine that I was really happy. My knees didn’t hurt anymore, and I went from a waist of 42 inches down to 40. This was the best. Over the next three weeks, I slowed down quite a bit and got down to 215.
I hadn’t seen my wife in a month because I was on our farm doing some fix up while she was finishing up the school year at a First Nation reserve. When she saw me, she asked if I was feeling OK because she thought for sure that I had cancer. Another month went by and I was down to 200 pounds. That was only 20 pounds more than my Army weight. I had pictures of that time in my life and I was pretty skinny. I was in good shape though because I was working out every day and working hard keeping those communist dominos from toppling over.
200 pounds, it was unbelievable, and I also was able to get into 36-inch Levi’s. Some weird things were happening though. I got off the grapefruit and was able to maintain 200 with no problem. I was hot all the time and really burnt up at night. I was also pretty easy to piss off and was in a bad mood most of the time. Things were going good for me, but I was always angry about something. Like being on steroids, I think.
That summer, we won a bid on a contract to run the concession stand at a local lake. I was yelling a people all the time and I just had no patience. It was the worst and I had no control over my emotions.
My wife finally got me to a doctor In September. I had a blood test done for my physical exam and my thyroid was off the charts. Elevated T4 levels, TSH out of control, the whole 9 yards. The doctor prescribed Tapazole for me, which is a daily pill that slows the thyroid down. Every time I took it, I felt like crap, so I stopped taking it. Then my doctor sent me to an Endocrinologist, hoping to get my thyroid straightened out.
I had three visits with that doctor. He was an old guy, that had to be at least 80. There was a shortage of endocrinologists, so he came in for a couple of days a week, to ease the patient load. The really funny thing is that he never checked any of my vitals. I would come into the office, sit down and he would look up from his paperwork after about five minutes. What he was doing was copying my medical records off the computer and onto a piece of paper. I thought computers were supposed to eliminate paper. He didn’t get that memo.
Once he finally looked up, he would say. “You have 3 options, tapazole, nuke it or just wait. I chose to just wait an see what would happen. He also told me that I had Graves Disease and that it would probably go away within a year. I did get better and my T4 got a lot closer to normal. Now in the summer of 2019, I am gaining some weight again and staying at 235 to 240. I don’t get pissed off as much. I am still hot, but I think I was always hot.
In late 2018, I had an ECG and I was told that I had A Fib and that it was probably caused by the overactive thyroid, hyperthyroidism. Now, I am on a blood thinner, so I won’t have a stroke and also a beta blocker to slow down my heart rate. You know what. I feel pretty great. Maybe a little fatter and my knees hurt more but all is well.
Check out these Blogs about the thyroid:
