Scientic Testing

I had my ultrasound yesterday, and they couldn't see any stones, which doesn't necessarily mean I don't have them, but the MD said my liver was fatty.  He said a fatty liver was common in obese patients or people with a high fat diet, and that if I make changes to my diet, I should be fine.

I didn't remind him that I kept a very low fat diet, as I had told him before, because he was just filling in for my normal MD and I have an appointment with her today, so I figured I would discuss that with her.

I'm still very overweight, so you may think it's just residual, but the weird thing is that when I had my surgery and I was close to my highest weight ever, the surgeon did an actual liver biopsy, and he said it really wasn't that bad.  He said it was a little fatty, but not as bad as you would think.

So how could it be fatty now?  Even though I gained weight last year, I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I went over 2000 calories/day (which is a normal diet), and in general, I averaged 1200-1500 (rarely) calories per day.  I only gained because my body was used to being in the 600-1000 range - not because I had a high fat or calorie diet.

Malnutrition can also cause a fatty liver, but I don't think that's it.  For the past month, not counting vegan week which was lower, I consumed an average of 848 calories per day.  That's low, but I certainly don't think it's malnourishment low.

Anyway, I've printed out some information regarding the nutrients I've taken in over the past month, and my pie chart showing how many calories, grams of protein, fat, etc... and I'm going to show it to the MD today to see what she thinks.

So why the picture of ribs?  I decided to do an experiement - a little scientific testing, if you will.  I have felt much better since I've been on the vegan diet, but I didn't know if that's because the problem went away for now, or because of the dietary changes.  Since I was seeing my MD today, I decided to order ribs for dinner last night.  I didn't eat the fat, but even without eating the fat, ribs are a fatty meat. 

I ate them, and I felt fine.  Well, technically, I felt gross, and I still do, but not because I'm in pain - just because my body did not like that fatty grossness being introduced into my system.  I don't know what I'm going to do about my diet, but I am going to discuss it with my MD to see what she thinks, and I'll take it from there.

Right now, I'm kind of turned off to all food, and I feel really gross and fat and bloated from my nasty dinner last night, so no more experiments in that direction any time soon.  I'm going to go very low cal and low fat today, focusing on fresh, clean foods.