Heartburn

May 1, 2019

Mr. Heartburn seems to have gone on holiday. He’s done that before, only to return unbidden and unwelcome to wreak his havoc on my esophagus. Tums, Prilosec, and other antacids help, but I don’t like taking medicines unnecessarily, and it’s always unnecessary for me. I know what I have to do to send him packing: lose a few pounds. When my weight starts edging towards the top end of the 180s, I have to start popping the pills and cut out things like spaghetti sauce and pizza. Since I like both of those, the only alternative is to shed the pounds.

Last week Linda and I got to discussing our health which is good, but at our age, we don’t take anything for granted. The scales for me were creeping towards the 188 mark; whenever I bent over and the heartburn would grab me, so we decided to do something about it. Recently when visiting my 96 year old mother, she commented, “I don’t know when I went from getting old to being old.” Since she has twenty seven years on me, I’m still in the “getting old” stage, and I’m not ready to concede “old” yet. So we decided together to be more careful about our diet. I downloaded an app that supposedly tracked carbohydrate intake, but in fact only calories. No matter. I filled in the general information of height, weight, age, sex, and voila! It calculated my appropriate daily caloric intake as about 1500.

It’s not completely accurate, listing the caloric value of mostly prepared foods which we never eat. We made a few adjustments, I stopped snacking and second helpings, and in less than a week, I’ve dropped five pounds. I don’t look any different, but Mr. Heartburn has packed his bags. For good. Yes, I admit—I like my snacks and seconds, but I like feeling better even more. I am thankful for the modern knowledge of nutrition, for a wife who is with me on this, and for the success I’ve already seen. Years ago, I started exercising because the Lord reminded me of the Scripture that says my body is his temple. “I don’t like the shape it’s in,” he said. Well, I don’t like the fiery feeling in my chest, so it’s on to step two: exercise and now, diet.