Today was the big day. I woke up ready to face the doctor and see what kind of message my blood would reveal. I got my blood drawn last week for the first time since being in the hospital in October when I had my heart attack and bypass surgery. That was when I was 33 years old and about 235 pounds and 5′ 11″ tall.  Not surprisingly, my height hasn’t changed but I am 4 months older and I’ve lost 42 pounds.

My weight is an obvious indication of the changes I’ve made in my life through diet, exercise, yoga, and meditation. But what about my cholesterol levels? And what about my hemoglobin A1c level?

I am extremely excited and pleased to share the results of my lab tests… (drum-roll please…)

Please check out the American Heart Association for their latest cholesterol guidelines.

Total Cholesterol on October 19, 2009: 270

Total Cholesterol now: 103

The “desirable” total cholesterol levels according to the American Heart Association is to be under 200. So I did well here…

My results were so remarkable, my doctor said that it appears as though I have no diabetes whatsoever (of course, you can never NOT be a diabetic once you are officially diagnosed, but you can control it at varying degrees).  Of course, my medications certainly helped me, but the numbers that you see are definitely much better because of the lifestyle changes I have made.

I would love to celebrate by having some cake or going out to eat, but instead I’m celebrating by writing this blog post!

This goes to show that so much of our health is in our hands and that we can do something about it if we just try, and a lot of trying is knowing how.

In future posts, I’ll try to give you some tips at how to change your diet to improve your cholesterol and lose weight. If you really want to change your numbers, you’ll need to really change your lifestyle. But it’s worth it – especially if you can avoid the surgeon’s knife. Believe me, you don’t want that!

If you are even considering trying to become healthy, which if you aren’t, then start for God’s sake, then you must learn how to cook. It’s not even an option. I can make quite a certain blanket statement that if you eat out, you will face culinary dietary gloom. There’s simply no doubt. Restaurants are paid by how much you like their food and do you know how they make sure you like their food? Butter. Lots and lots of butter. Any cook will tell you just how essential butter is to restaurant cooking. And butter is just the beginning. After that, you put in a ton of salt, and add as much sugar as you can, and oil, if you have it, or cream, if it calls for it or even if it doesn’t.

Even once you learn how to cook, you are going to have to learn another thing – how to modify recipes. When you see that something is going to need 2 tablespoons of oil, you’re going to have to switch that to 1 teaspoon of oil.

I thought having to cook was going to be a big pain in the rear. In a lot of ways it was, in the beginning. Cutting, chopping, mincing ingredients, getting the right cookware, making a mess in the kitchen, cleaning up everything afterward. It’s time consuming and tiring work. And when you work with new recipes, not knowing what you are doing, sometimes you will cook something that doesn’t taste too good. However, over time, you will find gems. You will find recipes that are excellent nutritionally as well as tasty. You just have to be patient.

The strategy that I recommend when switching to a healthy lifestyle is two-pronged. The first strategy is changing all the food you eat to homemade. I recommend that if you eat out more than once a week, try to cut it down to only once a week. Don’t worry too much for the first 2 weeks about what you are eating at home, as long as you prepare it yourself, mostly from scratch. Try to avoid processed foods. By processed foods, I mean stuff like frozen dinners, frozen croissants, ice cream preparations, cakes, pies, etc. Try to make stuff from scratch. For the first two weeks you don’t need to worry too much about nutrition. What you need to focus on is actually cooking at home and making that a priority. That will get you used to stocking up on ingredients and planning meals.

The second strategy to employ while working on the first one is to become a nutrition expert. This blog will certainly help and put you in the right direction. You need to learn how to read nutritional labels. You need to be able to be able to read them well, and fast. You need to understand fats, carbohydrates, and proteins thoroughly, and to a lesser degree a little bit about vitamins, minerals, salt, and fiber. You need to understand all the ingredients and which ones are good for you and approximately how much of each you should try to get in a day. When I say 9-11 servings of fruits and/or vegetables a day, you should have some idea of what a serving size is. The key here is not to get too stressed out initially, because the material can get overwhelming. And reading labels can get overwhelming. And frustrating. And tedious. And make you want to pull your hair out and drive to Wendy’s and eat a double-double with cheese, a large Coke and fries. But don’t do that!

Remember that you are going to spend the first 2 weeks to a month focusing on cooking at home. While you are working on cooking the meals, you will also learn about nutrition.

Once you learn about nutrition, all you have to do is start breaking down recipes to get their nutritional content, and once you do that, you are well on your way to planning your meals and enjoying healthy cooking while losing weight, and becoming healthy and robust in spirit and physique!

Bon Appetit!