Health Update

Well.. I had a return visit to my Doc this morning for a blood pressure check as well as review the results from the blood work I had completed a week or so ago. Bad news first, my blood pressure is still up. This is a cause for concern of course and I will admit I was more than a little disappointed to see that. I actually felt as if I might have made some progress on that front over the past two weeks and in fact when I took my BP myself at Wal-Mart a couple of days ago it had shown a significant drop. Doc informed me that BP is elevated in the morning and a crappy nights sleep might have contributed to it as well, however, if it remains high next visit in two weeks, then blood pressure meds will be likely administered.

Now, I can't say the high BP was a shock, given my weight in conjunction with my family history, it just sucks when you think positive movement is being made and you find out that in actuality, no movement has been made... on that front anyway.

On to the blood work.

I will now admit a HUGE fear of mine prior to getting the blood work results was cancer. No real sane reason for thinking anything might be wrong on that front, but the nugget of doubt was firmly placed in my mind, and like an oyster, it just grew and grew and grew.... happily, no such thing... My overall levels were perfect, iron, red blood cell count etc. etc. with one unsurprising blip. My cholesterol. Its not off the charts, not even in the HIGH risk bracket, but it is elevated. Now that being said. My blood work was taken prior to two weeks of good eating and exercise, so who knows. We have new blood work on the calendar for 3 months time. I am confident that the cholesterol will be in check at that time.

Hmm... there was supposed to be good news with the bad....lol...

Oh, I guess the fact that I am 100% on track, getting my gym membership this week, haven't felt any desire to cheat or lapse at this point is a good news item...lol...

Dee is going out today and picking up a bunch of cooking supplies. I am increasingly disgusted with the amount of sodium I am taking in, all while trying to avoid it. Sodium my friends, is everywhere and in everything, its just plain crazy. For example, I like plain water, but sometimes I like a flavoured water for a change of pace. This morning when I left the Doc's I dropped in the grocery store to pick up my lunch ( grapes, broccoli florets and a friggin Lean Cuisine sodium bomb) I bought a bottle of Aguafina Flavour Splash... guess wat? SODIUM... 170 mgs of the friggin' stuff. So, anyway, we are going to be doing a little cooking, packaging and freezing in order to get the closest to unprocessed as we can and hopefully that will help alleviate the sodium fiasco.

That's about it for now I guess, I hope you guys who are reading this like the new blog layout, I like my banner, everyday its there as a reminder of where I was, where I dropped, and what I screwed up and let slip. I will be changing out the last picture in the banner from time to time as I evolve, so it will be an interesting thing to keep your eyes on.

Hope you all have a good Monday!

Label reading and sodium

Well, after our walk this evening Dee and I went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. We ended up just cruising the aisles and reading the labels on a bunch of stuff. At first blush, sodium is EVERYWHERE and in EVERYTHING. In large amounts. In using my FitDay food calculator I was noticing a fair amount of sodium and was wondering where the heck all that crap was coming from, the sort answer is EVERYWHERE. Crazy...

We ended up in the cereal aisle. Now I am a HUGE fan of Vector Cereal. It's marketed as a healthy alternative, a meal replacement even, and supposed to have a ton of wholesome goodness in it... well, you know what else it has, a BUCKETLOAD of sodium! 365 mgs of the stuff to be exact, and thats before you add the milk, which by the way has, you guess it, sodium as well! What was even more surprising to me was when I compared the Vector to a kids cereal. You would expect the kids cereal to have not so much goodness and more calories via sugar. Surprise, not so... the kids cereal had half the calories in the same serving, only 25 mgs and the actual nutritional values were much the same. Crazy, and then, shreaded wheat... top dog by far, more fibre, no sodium and low calories. Needless to say the shreaded wheat was what came home with me!

Lesson to be learned? Read labels, understand that what you may believe about a food and whats in it may be very far removed from the truth.