How Quickly Things Can Change

Every year when I have my bloodwork done, my goal is to have everything in the normal range. Last year I had to work on getting my vitamin D in the normal range. Everything else was normal. So I started taking 2000 units of vitamin D everyday, and my number is now 45, with 40-80 being normal. Yea. Not so fast. Now my cholesterol numbers are all out of whack.

For the past 18 months I have been eating a semi-vegetarian diet. By that I mean eating mostly vegetarian meals, with chicken, fish, and occasionally beef about twice a week. My dinner would often consist of roasted veggies, all different kinds, like kale, turnips, butternut squash, beets, etc. with a bowl of vegetable soup or a grain dish. I loved eating this way. But now I have someone else to cook for, whose culinary tastes are different than mine. Don't get me wrong. I love a burger and fries, and that's what I've been eating a lot of lately, in addition to steak and other high cholesterol foods I had gotten away from. How quickly your numbers can change. My cholesterol was 180 in March of 2010. It is now 230. That's a wake up call for me.

I'm back to my old ways. I stopped by Sprouts this morning and stocked up on swiss chard, yams, butternut squash, turnips and beets. The negative change in my numbers is MY fault. No one is forcing me to eat pizza and steaks. I do have a choice, and my choice is to return to a more vegetarian diet.

Many years ago both Ron and went through the Pritikin Program in Santa Monica. (several times). Nathan Pritikin was a client of Ron's until his death, and his son Robert, who ran the Longevity Center in Santa Monica was a client and long time friend of ours. I learned through their program of diet and exercise how quickly your health can change.

The Pritikin Center dealt mostly with heart and high blood pressure patients. The results were startling. In the residential program, within a month most of the patients with high blood pressure were off their meds. This was the result of the both diet and exercise. The results I saw for myself when I went through the program remind me of how to get the numbers that I want. It's not all that easy, but it sounds easy. Just exercise 45 minutes a day (walking is fine) and control your fat intake. In weeks most people's cholesterol will go down significantly. I'm on a mission: to get my cholesterol back to 180 and lose 10 pounds in the next 2 months. Sounds easy, but I know it will be hard. I hope my numbers come down as quickly as they went up.