Rethinking Food

My doctor called with the results of my annual physical, and there were some surprises, and I don't mean balloons and clowns at a party. Even though I've been taking vitamin D on a daily basis, tests show the level slightly below par. I'm to add an additional 400 IUs to the 1000 I already take. My TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) levels are slightly elevated, suggesting that I have low thyroid hormone levels. That could be due to stress, or more worrisome, an autoimmune reaction (like Grave's disease where the body attacks its own thyroid tissue). 

But even more concerning is a link to heart disease and arterial disorders. Because not only do I have slightly low levels of protein in my blood, but I have high levels of cholesterol. The numbers jumped from 203 (which my doc assured me was fine since I had high levels of HDLs and LDLs and the ratio was good) to 220. While the ratio is still good (<5), the LDLs have increased substantially. My maternal family history shows high blood pressure and several instances of strokes or cerebral hemorrhages. (Personally, I've worried that I've got a knotty tangle of weird veins in my neck and shoulder area ever since a chiropractor took a few MRIs of my neck and told me that this explains some perplexing symptoms.) 

I already know what foods I need to cut out. Foods that have snuck into the meal plan because we're all home with no place to go. We don't eat out because it's just too cold and snowy to sit outside, although indoor dining is allowed with restaurants at 25% capacity. Restaurant food isn't healthy though since it's usually loaded with salt and fat as flavor enhancements. My husband discovered beef tips and loves to serve them at least once a week. Beef tips are highly marbled sirloin strips. We love eating chicken curries as well, experimenting with various jarred sauces found in the International Foods aisle. Of course, they probably contain coconut or palm oils, and lots of salt in the spice mix.  

I'm partial to an over-easy egg sauteed in butter and draped over a cranberry English muffin, then topped with either rooster sauce or freshly crushed garlic. Eating cream-top Brown Cow yogurt is like eating dessert with its luscious mouthfeel. I'm looking at cutting that out, but not the eggs on muffins. Because the jury is still out on whether eggs are good or bad. I'm not happy with not supporting the Brown Cow brand, although it IS owned by Stonyfield. Food restrictions are depressing as hell. 

The doctor's office tells me to exercise more and eat less fatty foods. Uh, duh. Then, instead of a year, I need to come back in 6 months so they can check my blood again. That'd be August. Once, a long time ago, I had the discipline to go vegetarian for almost a year. My cholesterol dropped to its lowest level, 166. I'm not sure I could ever do that again, but there are a lot of things I can start doing. 

One of them is filtering my coffee. We've been using a French Press for years now because we got fed up with the drip coffeemaker which would clog and overflow. We also love how good the coffee tastes from a French Press. Unfortunately, non-filtered coffee appears to raise cholesterol levels. I only drink one 12-14 oz cup a day (as opposed to some who imbibe 4-5 coffee cups worth), but my body tends to be really sensitive to medications and additives. And if pouring my coffee through a filter will drop my LDLs a few points without making the beverage taste disgusting, well, I'm okay with that. (I'm seriously toying with the idea of taking my French Pressed coffee and just pouring it through a paper filter [and single-cup filter holder] before adding the cream and sugar.)

I get to the gym a bit past noon again. I took the dogs to the park, shoveled some of the gates and paths, hand-fed the diva dog, loaded two more boxes of used books into my car, and headed to the gym. I got on the "other" elliptical, the one that doesn't register a heartrate. But it has a smoother glide so I don't mind. The core routine is just that, routine, except push-ups are better today. I'm torn between doing a quick dozen pull-ups or seated cable rows. The station is empty so I pull out my neoprene grips and do rows. The grips are more padded than regular lifting gloves. More importantly, they don't have seams inside the fingers that cut into my skin as I'm pulling. However, the right grip is shredding on the bottom. The left grip looks okay though. Am I pulling harder with the right? Apparently so. 

10 February 2021
Bare Minimum Wednesday

Precor elliptical
35 min
Program 2
HR n/a
Cal 316
Distance 2.85

Crunches x 60 x 2
Piriformis Stretch
Plank 60s
Fire Hydrants 25 x 2
Bird Dogs 60s x 2
Bent Knee Glute Kickbacks 25 x 2
Plank 60s
Pushups 50 Quick piriformis stretch

Seated Cable Row
70 lbs x 15 reps
85 x 12
92.5 x 10, 10, 10