Healthy Eating | Heart attack waiting to happen

People lose weight in different ways; Some lose it in fits and starts, getting seemingly random outputs from consistent inputs; Some struggle to lose any, no matter what they try; While others only seem to need to think about going on a diet for the weight to fall away. I’m sure these change over time too: “past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance”.

Someone else’s feet!

For me, it appears that I’m losing weight from the top down and the bottom up. To date my “health kick” (this should be “lifestyle change”, but let’s take it one step at a time”) has not extended beyond thinking about what I put in my mouth and walking (up to 2 miles, twice a day).

I think these small changes have started to deliver some results: my legs have definitely “shaped up” a bit as a result of the regular exercise, and while shaving off my facial hair last night I discovered evidence of a long forgotten jaw bone.

The upside of losing weight in your face is that it’s relatively easy to show external signs of progress. The downside is that it’s easy to declare success too early, before the hard work has been done. (Not this time!)

As a result, I was greeted on several occasions today (my first day back in the office) with:

“You look much healthier than you did before!”
“Yes,” I was tempted to respond, “but the last time you saw me I was a heart attack waiting to happen!”

So, independent verification that things are headed in the right direction!

Someone else’s body!

The next task is to move forward with the fitness regime… I wouldn’t say I was particularly toned right now. In fact, the combination of losing weight from the top down and bottom up, together with years of giving up diets too soon, has resulted in all the pies gathering around my midriff, in combination with my Umpa Lumpa feet (Always wear sunscreen) I’m really not an attractive sight!

Rehabilitation starts tomorrow. I’m not exactly sure what to expect, but I’m really looking forward to it!

So, although the pies were only a minor factor in my heart attack, they will be (or, in fact, the lack of them will be) a major feature in my recovery / future quest for health.

My Body Mass Index is high. At 29 “point something”, I am at the top end of “Overweight” (25-30), borderline Obese (>30). To get into the “Normal” range I would need to lose about 40lbs (2.5st). This seems like a huge amount of weight to me.

“Big bones” have always featured in our family… it appears that it’s generally accepted that inability to account for differing frame sizes is one of the flaws in the BMI (incidentally, muscularity for athletes is another one, but I’m not going to go there!).
http://www.nhs.uk/tools/pages/healthyweightcalculator.aspx

Having said that, losing weight really won’t do me any harm. As with everything, it needs to be one step at a time – no need to set a firm “final” target just yet.

There are other reasons to think more carefully about what I eat… the heart attack has increased my awareness of “good” (HDL – High-Density Lipoprotein) cholesterol and “bad” (LDL – Low-Density Lipoprotein) cholesterol, of my “five a day”, fibre, Omega-3, etc. etc. As a result, my diet has already changed dramatically… Sustainably? Only time will tell.

Fortunately I (we) like many of the “good” foods… salads, fruit and veg will feature more heavily going forwards… crudités have already become the snack of “choice” and oily fish is the new cold meat.

Equally as important are the foods to be avoided… Fish Supper, Onion Bahji, Butter, Roasted Nuts, Bombay Mix, Pâté, Cheesy Nachos, etc. etc. (“MMmmm!” – Homer Simpson)

Diet for diet’s sake won’t work for me. Creating a healthy heart is a good, noble incentive, but I may well need to set myself a different target, something more tangible, something that ties in both exercise and diet.

I’m starting from a fairly low level of base fitness so I’ll give it a few weeks, until I’m into Rehab Phase 3, before I decide what that target might be.