Getting in Better Shape..

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I have been told I have high cholesterol. Now if you just look at the basic cholesterol labs, I would look like I was in pretty good shape. My total cholesterol is 187 (which is good...you want it to be below 200). My LDL-C (bad cholesterol) is 124 which is slightly high since you want it to be below 100, but it is not so bad as to raise a lot of flags. My triglycerides we 64, which is well below the recommended 150 or less. My HDL-C (good cholesterol) is 49 (it is supposed to be above 40). My non-HDL-C is 138 (which is only slightly above the recommended 130 or less).

If you were to just look at the labs I mentioned above I would seem healthy enough. If you looked at me, I look healthy enough. However, my doctor chose to do a more in-depth blood profile on me and it revealed a lot more problems that I needed to be aware of in order to prevent future heart problems. Without going into a bunch of complicated and hard to understand lab results I will tell you in the easier terms that they gave me. The particles in my blood (fats, cholesterol, etc) are very small. You want them to be bigger. They said the walls around them are like a soccer net..a soccer ball will not get through but a tennis ball would. If they get through it makes you more likely to have blood clots and plaque build up on the arteries. My particles are like the tennis balls (given how high risk it put me, we might even want to call them golf balls or marbles). This means I have to do things that would increase their size. This will involve increasing the amount of exercise I get dramatically and a change in eating habits (less fried foods, less high fat foods like heavy cream, less red meat, more fish, more skinless chicken, more vegetables, more fiber, less carbs, cut out Dr Pepper, etc). I also found out I have Vitamin B-7, Omega 3 Fatty Acids, and vitamin D deficiencies. On the bright side, I do not have the genetic predisposition that would cause me to break down fats slowly, so I can take Omega 3 without much worry. I have also been given a prescription for Niacin (B7) and Vitamin D and will be adding Omega 3 pills to my regimen as well. We are really hoping these work, because I do have a genetic predisposition that could cause me to be more likely to bleed if I take Plavix or a drug like it, so those drugs are a last resort for me.


The nutritionist had a good point when I said it was hard for me to squeeze exercise into my day. She told me about a cartoon one of her patients had brought her. It showed a doctor and patient talking about not having time to exercise and the doc tells him to either plan for 1 hour of exercise a day or 24 hours of being dead. Click here to see the cartoon.

This means that I will start eating healthier. (I will miss some of the foods I love, but I am sure I will miss them a lot less than John and the kids would miss me if I keep up an unhealthy lifestyle.) I will start exercising. I plan to try and do the Couch to 5k program as well as a fitness program on my off days of training as well. I am still reading reviews on all the fitness games on the Kinect (my husband just got one for our family). I will probably get one of them as well. We have a Wii, but I think I will like the Kinect games better since I do not have to be attached to a controller or two. I bought a pedometer so I will keep track of how much I walk in a day. I am also going to keep an exercise log and food diary. I will try to keep up with it on here with weekly updates for anyone who is interested.

I also know that the physical health does not matter if you let the spiritual go. I looked around for a Bible study guide that would have a lot to do with what I am going through in my life. I could not really find anything. I have decided to just address specific concerns and pray and look for scripture that helps me with whatever the "big" concern of that day is about.