Which?

On the last day of December, 2011, I had an appointment with my doc for a physical. I'm really bad about keeping on top of those routine appointments, but I was motivated to get in to see her because I was worried about my heart. At 49 years old, I was about 230 lbs., my right knee was always throbbing with a dull pain, and I suspected I might have sleep apnea. My primary concern, however, were the odd pains and pulling that I felt in my chest almost daily.

My dad has dealt with heart issues, as well as diabetes most of his adult life. Last summer, he had a triple bypass, and I saw him right after he came out of surgery. The whole process - surgery prep, waiting for the doc, dealing with nurses and procedures, waiting, waiting, waiting - was very sobering. Because of my family history, when my odd chest pains became a daily occurrence, I decided I needed to find out what I could. I asked my doc to run whatever tests were appropriate to find out about the health of my heart.

I had a variety of cardiac tests for a few days. During the appointment, they x-rayed my chest and I had a blood panel. The x-ray showed nothing unusual. A few days later, I did a stress test. I walked on a treadmill until I couldn't breath easily, and then the techs did several checks of my various pulses. That test showed nothing wrong either.

My cholesterol numbers came back a  few days later, and that was the stopper for me. I had the following stats:

Total cholesterol (Range 100-200): 286
Triglyceride (35-150): 183
HDL (45-65): 53
LDL (1-130): 19

Because my cholesterol was so high, my doctor prescribed a statin for me in that mailing: Zoloft, 20mg. That bummed me out. I would prefer not to be on any meds, other than supplements, but I went on the drug with the promise that I'd get off of it someday soon. My doc was not so sure, but she said we'd cross that bridge when I got there. She had recommended the DASH diet, and told me to exercise at least 30 minutes a day. The diet didn't scare me much, but the exercise? Ugh.

I purchased the DASH diet book for my iPad shortly after that, and started cooking the recipes that intrigued me. They weren't very different than foods I already ate, other than being low in sodium. I don't crave salt, so being more aware of sodium levels and restricting it didn't bother me. The biggest change for me has been eating more vegetables and fruit. I have always been pretty good about getting veggies in, but not fruit. I've become somewhat of an orange-maniac. I just love them!

As far as restricting things in my diet, I have completely cut out fast food and as much processed food as possible. I don't eat any sweets, and rarely will eat dessert. I've not missed or craved the sweets. I'm not positive why that is, other than I know those things are not good for my heart health. I limit the carbs I eat, trying to have only complex carbs - whole grains. I eat hot cereal every morning, with Greek yogurt and sometimes add orange juice or almond milk on running days.

I think that I've been successful with exercise because I let myself settle into a new way of eating before I took on a new goal of regular exercise. I started walking in midwinter. I bought some walking shoes and planned to walk up and down all the staircases at work. At first it was kind of discouraging. It was hard work and I could barely make on trip across the school without feeling like I was going to keel over. I've always dealt with getting headaches when I exercise, and I did get close a few times when I first started. One of the benefits of regular exercise is that I have not had any headache issues this summer, even when I've been really hot and sweaty.

I exercised for a few weeks at work, but I didn't enjoy it. I didn't like running into teachers when I was trying to work out - it felt too personal. The last winter turned out to be a boon for me because it was so warm and dry. I was able to walk after work almost every day. I aimed to walk as many hills as I could, which worked out pretty well, but I wanted to get the same workout as I did at school with the staircases. I started jogging a little. It was hard at first because I didn't have the right "support" so I had to buy some more appropriate exercise clothes. I fell flat on my face during one round, so I bought some better shoes - some trail walking shoes.

I tried to add more jogging into my routine every day, and created a few 30-minute song lists to help me judge time. I got better at jogging, so I extended my route. I had a path that included the entire span of the neighborhood, which I discovered was about 2.3 miles. It took several weeks before I could jog the whole trip, and my time was about 11:30/mile. Nothing stunning, but I was pretty proud of myself. I remember counting the songs on the list, and always feeling like I was going to drop by song 5. Once I started running for 30 minutes, I have not had to stop since then. Knock on wood!

I started researching running and figured out that I really needed real running shoes, instead of the walking shoes I was using. I bought a nice pair of New Balance sneaks, which have been really comfortable. I also got good advice from some folks about taking days off so my knees and muscles could rebuild. I started running every other day, and walking on the off-days. My knees liked that plan, which was nice because I could run better with the off-days in between.

More later, this is just a start.

What I Ate Today
Roast Chicken and Butternut Squash
It was just okay. The potatoes and squash were a bit bland. The chicken was tasty. I didn't use a whole chicken; I put chicken tenders on the veggies half-way through the cooking cycle. I would add some more spices to the veggies - garlic powder perhaps.

Quote for Thought
"It’s not that hard to lose weight—motivated dieters do it all the time—but maintaining that loss is a bitch, with success rates as low as 2 percent or as “high” as 20 percent, depending on which studies you choose to believe."