Editing

Veggies for My Fried Rice.

What this image doesn’t show are the three critical ingredients of my “dietary” fried rice: two strips of bacon, chopped; a slice of ham I cut into little cubes; and two eggs, over-easy, on top.

This was a meal that was a little off the map. Pre-surgery my fried rice would have four strips of bacon and maybe no ham.

But this image looks so healthy.

I’ve gotten a few e-mails that make me think that I’ve been making it sound like I’m on a terrible diet and I have more discipline than a renal dietician. Neither of these things is true.

I've always been a person who has been able to eat pretty much whatever I wanted and not gained weight. In the past, I ate sensibly, which means fried food only maybe three meals a week. (That is to say, deep-fried, which doesn’t count stir-fry). But I'd overeat without really thinking about it. And I used to eat more than my share of red-meat.

It's only been in the last couple years that my doctor even told me I should try to get my blood pressure down. In those last two years, my BP was just edging up from the high side of normal to low end of high.

Remember that x-ray I posted last May? I’m sure my outline was the effect of the close-up P.O.V. and the wide-angle lens used on those machines. NOT!

Basically though, I've never had to diet long term at all. Essentially, my “diet,” which sounds so restricted, is just no overeating, eliminating the dumb fatty things that I was eating, and cutting serving sizes of meats by about 1/3. Oh, and I’ve been eating oatmeal seven days a week. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Since it appears that my other kidney has taken over normal and complete kidney function, I'm not going to follow a strict kidney patient diet. I'll just keep exercising and watching the scale to see if I am gaining weight. Then I'll wait for my next blood test to see how I'm doing.

This was weird: to reduce my cholesterol, I’ve been taking red yeast rice because it is said to be as effective as statin type medications, such as Zocor. Although it is effective, there seems to be problem with red yeast rice itself. I’m not taking it anymore.

The study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings is labeled as open access.

Stay tuned.