Doctor visit: My success

This week was time for a check up with the local sawbones. I anticipated big kudos for my weight loss efforts and hoped that the combination of that and the exercise brought my blood pressure down from borderline high. During my annual physical last November I weighed in at about 260 pounds with a blood pressure of 140/100, borderline high blood sugar and cholesterol levels.

My visit this week went much better than I expected. My doctor almost didn't recognize me, I looked so different from the file photo they had from November that he updated it. The best part though was that my blood pressure was "Excellent" as he put it, at 114/61. He was also amazed that for losing so much weight that I didn't have much excess skin that causes some people who lose 50 to 75 pounds to request surgery. I can only guess that maintaining a sane rate of loss (1.5 to 2lbs per week) and a healthy diet gave my body time to compensate. Now I just have to wait for the results of the fasting blood test for my blood sugar and cholesterol levels. I'm sure they're down well within normal levels after all of the work I've been putting into getting myself into shape.

We spent most of the visit talking about what diet I was following and which exercise routine I was using. First I explained to him that I wasn't on a DIET, that I was on a budget, that I ate just about whatever I wanted but tracked every bite. I do this so that I wouldn't get discouraged by feeling that I was denied certain foods. My aversion to empty calorie fatty foods came when I saw how much they cost me out of my daily budget and how much real healthy food I could eat instead of a burger, fries, and a can of Cola.

Then we got into my exercise plan which started with walking 10,000 steps per day and climbing 5 flights of stairs at work. This turned into 15,000 steps per day and 28 flights of stairs over the course of a couple of months, then running 10 flights of stairs two times per day 4 days a week, then finally completing the C25K program and running 5 Kilometers three days per week and doing the 30 day shred workout three days a week between run days.

I grabbed my phone and showed him the MFP app for my iPhone and then the C25K App for good measure. He said that the MFP site looked very useful and that he would be recommending it to other patients to help with their weight loss goals.

All in all a major victory for me this week! No high blood pressure and it was nice to have my doctor shake my hand and congratulate me rather than tell me again that I needed to take better care of myself.