Back in 2014, when work started doing “wellness initiaves” which included a blood test, I was remotely surprised when some of my tests didn’t come back so great. Nothing major, just more “yellow tags” than I expected. While I was still considered “young”, I was definitely into adulthood, and had zero qualms about eating fast food every other day of the week, and things like my daily coffee was thick with sugar.
Then one day I realized how much I was struggling to put on my jeans. I realized all the “youthful” checks I cashed in going out, as well as eating out had caught up to me. At the time work has started some new wellness programs that were free to employees, so I figured Id see whats involved.
Before I began though, I thought about things, as Ive watched many other people do “diets” throughout the years, most if not all of which ended in failure to some degree. I realized that in all the failure cases, they were struggling with “tasteless but healthy” foods, usually being diet foods, artificial sweeteners, and so on. I promised myself I’d be a little different, and follow some core rules:
- THIS IS NOT A DIET. I promised myself this wasn’t temporary, I intended to make permanent change in the way I eat
- No artificial crap; Im sure it works great for some people, but I’d prefer even not-so-great real foods to chemicals
- Balance intake with exercise
- Eat normal, every day stuff, just choose to pick the “healthier” options whenever possible
- Quit eating fast food
None of this is rocket science, and I thought for sure I’d fail or lose interest as I always do after some time. I DIDN’T, at least not nearly as fast as I thought I would.
In addition to working with a trainer once a week through work, I joined one of the new fangled $19.99/mo gyms that opened near by. I did mostly cardio: treadmill and exercise bike. An hour at a minimum. I started to notice that while my heart was working it’s ass off as soon as I started running, eventually over a few weeks it had to work less to get me up to speed. Eventually I was unstoppable and really had to put my runt legs to work to even get my heart rate up to 140.
I felt amazing. The less sugar I consumed, I more energy I had. My jeans went from barely fitting to donated, as I went from a 34 waste to a 31! I figured Id lose 10, maybe 20 pounds. I lost 40+.
This lasted…YEARS. Even into 2016/2017 I had still kept the weight off and still did great. Eventually though, life happened, things were a little rocky here and there, and for a lack of better description, I lost the enthusiasm to keep it going, moreso on the activity/exercise front. I was too busy for the gym and walking/biking as much as I was. While my high bar of eating healthy waned a bit, I still ate healthy-ish, in preferring lean non-red meats, fish, and keeping sugar intake down. While I have one exception, I have not touched a McDonalds or Burger King ANYTHING since 2014.
In recent years, the pandemic happened. Like most of us I was down quite a bit. I gained a lot of the lost weight back, however I STILL eat healthy-ish, and my work blood tests still came back fantastic, with the exception of Triglycerides, likely indicating “lack of exercise”. (This is different for everyone).
I’m not a complete couch potato, in fact over the pandemic I learned to love walking the neighborhood, and with having a newer Apple Watch tracked that I was walking anywhere from 2-4 miles when I did. Not bad! I also try to kayak when I can, and when I do, I make a point to “open the throttle” for a little.
All this leads up to September 2022; I was happy things were looking somewhat normal again, and looking forward to a combo vaca/conference trip. After 3 days of being away however, I woke up with a crazy fever. Again, don’t need a medical degree to guess what that was; I got covid.
It really didn’t affect me that bad; yes I had a cough and loss taste/smell, but thankfully I didn’t have it nearly as bad as others. I got home (after isolating and missing the conference), and actually felt great. I did a bunch of yard work and even tinkered with my cars, no problem. After a couple days my taste came back. My only beef was I still had a little annoying cough.
So in the middle of the week it was nice so I went for a walk at lunch. No biggie did this a million times. I got two blocks, and ended up in a coughing fit that wouldn’t let up. I was actually surprised, and then..my chest got tight. Not “ok I just need a break”, but in a way I never felt before. After a few seconds, things calmed down, cough cleared up, and I quickly turned back towards home. I was spooked…”something’s wrong”…and figured I’d call the doc again and demand I get checked out.
(To be continued)