happyone's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Health is Your Wealth I have my yearly health screening coming up in a couple of weeks and I'm worried - is this going to be the year I'm prediabetic? Is this the year my cholesterol is high enough to need meds? I get the A1C diabetes test done every year because my mom is diabetic and my dad was as well. My mom didn't discover her Type 2 diabetes until later in life...maybe around age 60, or so? She started losing weight rapidly and her personality changed. She is usually a very calm, patient person, but she was more irritable and said things that just didn't seem like her. We begged her to go to the doctor as she hadn't been in like 20 years ("doctors are just guessing half the time"). Lo and behold, she had undiagnosed Type 2 diabetes (sugar levels in the 400s) and high blood pressure. She could have stroked out and died her levels were so bad!! She got on all the right medications and brought those numbers down. In the last several years, she's really focused on her health and eats super healthy most of the time (except when I come to town, oops), helping her lose even more weight. I believe her lowest weight was in the 170s. Quarantine put a little back on, I believe she's in the 180s somewhere. She eats a salad every single day for lunch and dinner is vegetable soup or meatless chili. Super healthy. She always says "your health is your wealth" and she's right. She's turning 70 this year and is determined to be healthy and live to be a ripe old age. I've told her she has to live to 100. I wish I could find the same motivation to get my health on track. At 32, I have being young on my side, but I do already have health problems. I've been overweight since probably 7th grade and I've weighed over 200 lbs since 2013. As of today, I'm 256 lbs, which is considered morbidly obese. I developed high blood pressure and have had to take medication for it for many years now. Even with medication, my BP is still a little high - like in the 140s/80s or 90s. In 2018, my A1C was just .1 away from the prediabetes range. That, along with my approaching 30th birthday and a trip to Thailand, encouraged me to lose 10 lbs. My A1C has been 5.0 since then in both 2019 and 2020, even though I've definitely gained back that 10 lbs and more. The pandemic and quarantine definitely threw me off any sort of diet or health path. I work for a school system, and we were closed from March 17, 2020, to September 7, 2020. In those 6 months, I went wild and ate and drank whatever I wanted. I've been back at work for a while now, and I still haven't gotten rid of some bad habits I've developed. I used to have a rule about not drinking wine during the work week, but now I drink several times a week because I like to have it while watching my ridiculous reality tv shows (90 Day Fiance, My Big Fat Fabulous Life, Jersey Shore, etc.). I have this plastic cup that holds about 16 oz of wine and I'll have 2 of those while watching my shows. That's 32 oz of wine several times a week! I know I'm well over the limit for what's considered healthy drinking. Just one drink (5 oz of wine) a day is considered "moderate" drinking. I'm worried what this year's screening will show after really not doing well at this past year. Besides not dieting or limiting my alcohol intake, I've hardly exercised at all. Nick and I used to take walks, but it's been a long time since we've done that. I briefly got on a walking kick around my school at the new year, but that quickly passed. I'm now back to my usual activity level of sitting at my desk all day and going home to sit on the couch. I feel bad for my body and all the horrible things I put into it and the lack of movement. I'm only getting older and this will all only get worse if I don't start making some true changes. Where I struggle is I don't know where to start. I mean, I know I should cut back on alcohol but that so far is hard to do because I don't want to. I enjoy it with my shows. I'm not going to say I'm going to cut certain foods out because that never works. I could say I'm going to start walking every day after work, but I know I won't. Maybe I could start with my after work snacking and focus on making healthier options there? Ugh, I don't know. I saw an article that said obese people have a less than 1% chance of ever achieving a normal weight. I can believe that. The article was about weight loss surgery and how it's one of the most under utilized methods for combating obesity. Not only does it help people lose significant amounts of weight, but it has health benefits that go along with that, like improving diabetes, getting rid of high blood pressure, etc. I've thought about getting surgery before, but never seriously. I enjoy food too much to want to forever change how I eat. There are days, though, that I wonder if that is my only option at becoming a normal weight. I don't even know what being a normal weight is like. 12:47 p.m. - Thursday, Mar. 11, 2021 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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