When My Attitude Helped Me
July 17th, 2010
I had a medical check in mid-May and among other things they did several blood tests, took my blood pressure and did an ECG. About ten days after that I had an appointment to meet the doctor and get the results. When I had these tests I found that my blood pressure was high at 185/95 (should be around 135/70), my weight to height was 105kg (should be around 90-92kg) and there was sugar in my urine. I wasn’t so much shocked as surprised by this, and I went away with very mixed feelings!
After a few hours I made the decision that from now on there had to be some changes; in future I will take more care of my body’s well-being and that will take care of the whole of me. I was very motivated.
I started to exercise at least 4-5 times a week, three of them by jogging and the rest by cycling or power walking. I changed my diet to the GI method and reduced the size of each portion I ate. My weight goal for the end of this summer is 90kg. I discontinued drinking wine during the middle of the week, including with my evening meal.
Ten days later when I met the doctor my weight had decreased by 3 kg to 102kg. Now I had to get the results from my blood tests. My blood fats were VERY high – my triglyceride was so high that many of the blood fat measurements were impossible to make. The good thing was that there was no high level of sugar in the blood test this time and my blood pressure had decreased to 159/85 which, although still too high showed I had made progress. This was probably the combined result of a big reduction of salt in my food and my weight loss.
My doctor told me I needed to have medicine to reduce my blood fats and my blood pressure. I asked if I could do it without medicine, by just continuing to change my way of living. The doctor said NO! He added that it’s absolutely impossible to do and that I should not forget that my father died of a heart attack at the age of 44! It was at that very moment I decided to do it my way and not take the ‘drug way’ – after all, I’d started the journey already.
I asked the doctor if I was gambling by doing this and he said no – it’s more like Russian roulette! However, he continued by asking how long I needed to continue the fight to get in shape and have new tests. I asked him to give me one and a half months and he agreed. He said I should go back in mid-July and take new blood fat tests, then we’d meet a few days later for the results. This meeting was yesterday.
What was the outcome from this meeting? Well you’ll get the answer on Sunday in my next blog text!
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