I Broke 40 pounds!

4 bags of potatoes! Where did all those lumps go? I lost 41 pounds. That was a big goal to get over for me. Now I head towards 50. Went to Home Town Buffet yesterday and ate all their salads and veggies. They have a no fat/no sugar ice cream soft swirl, so I had that for dessert. Didn't seem to be too dangerous and I lost 2 more pounds. Of course, I don't really feel like eating in this hot weather. It was in the high 90s yesterday. :-( Hooray for me!

HMR Works!

Well, I told you all about my doctor visit and how pleased he is. Well, this morning I weighed myself and I lost 39 pounds now! That's exciting because I really want to break 40 pounds. I never get past 30 pound weight loss on other diets. So, now I have no pants that fit me!

Connie Fell

Oops, we had a big boo boo yesterday. My wife, Connie, fell while moving stuff downstairs. She was carrying down some blinds with Zack, they are really long ones, and she missed the last step. She had on flip flops and so she had no support on her food. She twisted it when she fell and sort of landed on it that way. Our friend Mary was here at the house, so she watched the kids and I took Connie to the Urgent Care. Turned out to be a bad sprain. They wrapped her up and she has to stay off of it a couple of days at least. We got ice on it right away, there goes my bag of peas and onions. :-)
So, there wasn't much swelling.

Dr. Visit

Well, I went to the doc today and got a good report. Blood pressure down, sugars down, weight down, my spirits up!

However, we've found that my kidney stones have nothing to do with the parathyroid. Instead, I have the basic kind caused by calcium. Doc had no advice to give me on this. Each doc says different things. Do drink milk, don't drink milk. Very frustrating. But, this diet is eliminating other problems like salt intake. My ears are doing better, the ringing has gone away a lot. So, maybe they'll help control the calcium intake as well. Cuts the fat down to hardly anything, so I guess there will be many other benefits. We'll see.

He strongly pushed me to stay on the HMR diet. He was very excited to see what it had done for me in all areas. Wants me to lose at least 100 pounds, though I figure 125 is more like it. He has just started up the HMR program in our local hospital. I beat him to the punch and started without him, saving myself a bundle. Hey, I can read!

He thinks I will be non diabetic soon because my numbers fell so much already. And cholesteral is dropping too. Nice to get the boost from him on this. Now, if he would just pay for new clothes. I had just spent a bunch on new dress pants before starting this diet. I guess I'm going to a tailor to have them taken in. Should be cheaper than buying new pants. I had spend $600.00 on them! I never do that. Sheesh.

Going Forward

I'm mostly blogging on my diet because that's what things are all about right now. A friend gave me a ton of fruit and veggies the other day. I've got to figure out what to do with the eggplant. All I've ever done with Eggplant was Eggplant Parmigiana. I suppose I could get away with tomato sauce spiced up since that's a vegetable. But I don't know what I could do about the cheese. Boy, I miss cheese the most of everything, I think. But I also got pineapple, cucumbers, squash, broccoli and much more. Got to eat it fast.

I've now lost 37 pounds. I'm pretty excited about that. I've strayed out of the box a few times for special occasions. I know I'm not supposed to, but I still feel pretty dumb taking my little food packets to a barbecue. So I ate some great Tri-Tip. When I break 40, I'll be very happy. I don't think I've done that before. When I break 50, that will be really big. Cake and Ice Cream to celebrate! Yeah!

HMR Secrets I Don't Know Yet

Well, I've started looking for other people who are blogging about their HMR diets. I've found a few and they were interesting reading for me. One posted this recipe on her blog:


Anyway, to make pumpkins bars, I mix 2 vanilla packets, 1 tablespoon of cheesecake sugar free instant pudding, 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, 2 tablespoons of the pumpkin syrup and 3 tablespoons of cold water. Then I bake them in a muffin tin (I make 6) at 375 for 13 minutes. You can eat them warm from the oven or chilled.

I don't know where you get pumpkin syrup though. Hope Barbara stops by and lets me know.

I also read about her making chicken soup crackers, lemon bars and chocolate cookies using HMR stuff. I'm missing out here. But I don't take the classes, so maybe that's why. I'll go look at the recipe book again, but I don't remember seeing any of those type of things. Would love to try making them. I'm a good cook and Connie is a great baker if I can get her the recipes.

The Little HMR Tricks I have found

Ok, here are my secrets to share with anyone on HMR. I hope some more HMR people will find my blog so we can interact more. That would be fun.

Strawberry Dip: I take some nonfat sour cream and put Splenda in it until it gets sweet. It's wonderful on Strawberries. I dip them in it. Sort of like yogurt. By the way, is nonfat yogurt allowed? You can also make some of this up and put berries in it. That's very good as well.


Strawberry/Banana Shake: Ok, so not too orginal, but sure is good. Just add frozen strawberries and half a banana to the vanilla HMR 120 Shake. Oh, so very good and thick!

Zesty Salad: Take a green salad. Add onions, fresh mushrooms, bell pepper strips and whatever other veggies you like. Top with Trader Joe's peach salsa for a real zip. Use instead of a dressing. Mighty good stuff. There's also a pineapple salsa that is great.


My original HMR counselor told me I could have air popped popcorn, so I bought one of those microwave types. I make my popcorn, spray with the "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" spray that has no calories per spray, though I use this lightly, and then I add garlic powder to it and mix. Pretty good.

Forgive me HMR, for I have sinned!

Well, taking my Doctor's advice, I took my wife out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants in town, Clearman's Northwest Inn. They have the best filet mignon I've ever had with a big old baked potato and salad and rice stuff I actually like. (Not a big rice lover.) So, wife didn't want to go because it would force me off my diet. However, my doctor told me, my regular MD, that I should not let a diet deprive me from celebrations like that, so I ate the whole meal. Good news, I didn't gain any weight! Yea for me! I'm now down 33 lbs. It's slowing down, but that's expected. I am still losing 2-3 lbs a week and that's pretty good. In a few years I will disappear all together!

I appreciate Barbara's posts because I'm not involved in the meetings. I'm doing this all on my own. They won't counsel me on phone because I'm a diabetic. There aren't any classes in my area, but there will be soon. But, they aren't at a convenient time for me. But I don't really think it would make a big difference to me. I mean, this isn't very hard to follow. Eat the stuff in the box. Well, that's the diet! Not too hard. The fruit and veggies is what gives you your fun and change you need to keep going.

Keeping On

An update on the HMR diet is about due by now. I had cake and ice cream for our 1 celebration of 4 events, Liz's birthday, mom's birthday, Becky's birthday and Connie and my anniversary. So, I only cheated once for all of those! Anyhow, I survived it and didn't gain any weight. Pheewww. But I seem to have plateaued a bit at 32 pounds lost. Not that I'm complaining. But I've been there a few days now. But, I usually have trouble passing the 30 lb. weight loss area. But I shall persevere. :-)

So, I'm trying to find ways to help this diet along. A few things make a big difference to me. One that I have read and heard about the most is the magic of Trader Joe's. They have the most incredible salsas around. I've bought a pineapple, peach, bean and the best - a CORN salsa that is out of this world. If you add these to plain beans, on top of a salad instead of dressing, you've got a great meal. I spice up my meals with the veggies for the most part instead of the en trees themselves. Though I'm going to start working on that.

The other nice surprise is making my own Hummus. Just take a can of chickpeas (Garbanzo beans) and drain them. Put them in a food processor and let 'er rip! When it's about the consistency of mashed potatoes, add some flavor you like. I used a Green Onion dip, but I've also tried Garlic powder. Probably some of those salsas would be great too. I use this as a dip or put it on my more bland foods. Sliced cucumbers have become my green "chips" for snacks. The hummus is very low calories. It's just beans, but smack full of protein. Give it a try even if you aren't on a diet.