Angela Tung Oversharing on the internet since 2005.

Earlier this morning, I had a follow-up appointment with my doctor about my high-ish bad cholesterol.

In case you didn’t already know, I’ve been on a mission for the past few months to lower my LDL. While my New York doctor didn’t see too much of a problem since my good-bad cholesterol ratio was okay, my SF doctor was more concerned and even mentioned meds if my LDL didn’t go down.

Although I’ve been very good about my diet changes, I was still paranoid that my LDL wouldn’t have gone down enough or, God forbid, at all.  Well, I found out the numbers this morning.  Drumroll please. . .

	Nov 2010	Jul 2010	2008	2007
Cholesterol	157	214	216	182
HDL (good)	57	66	67	72
LDL (bad)	88	137	133	99
Triglycerides	62	55	79	53

Not only did my bad cholesterol go down, it went down a shit ton: from 137 to 88! The optimal level is apparently under 100. Under 130 I think is okay. My total cholesterol went down from 214 to 157, almost 60 points. Optimal is under 200.

My doctor was so shocked, he jokingly checked to see if they were indeed my records, and asked, “Are you sure I didn’t prescribe you anything?”

I was disappointed my good cholesterol was lower, but he said as long it was over 50, that was good.

I guess my diet changes worked!  The oatmeal for breakfast every day, the salmon and rice for lunch, fish or chicken for dinner.  Lots of veggies all around.  I’ve always only had skim or low or nonfat yogurt so that was no problem.  Also, I cut out burgers, sausage, bacon, baked goods, bad chips, deep fried foods, mayo, ice cream, creamy mochas, fatty instant noodles, and some cheese.

Recently I’ve worked cheese back in.  I can’t resist the (very) occasional  slice of pizza, or these amazing sandwiches from this deli nearby.  As for ice cream cravings, I opt for Skinny Cow, which is actually pretty good!  Still, I shouldn’t be having it every day.

I lost five pounds pretty quickly, but haven’t lost anything more.  I’ve been sort of lazy lately about my workouts, and I want to get back up to working out at least four times a week because in addition to toning up and increasing my HDL, hopefully it will bring down my borderline borderline high blood pressure too.

Yup, it can’t be all good.  There’s a chance I might have borderline borderline hypertension.  So not actual borderline hypertension but not far from it either.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m always a little tense at the doctor’s, or if I really do need to cut back on sodium.  It is true that I’ve been eating lots of Japanese food, which is both tasty and low fat but quite high in sodium.

So I’ll try to cut my salt intake a little and exercise more.  I also want to get a blood pressure measuring machine and monitor myself regularly.  See if my relaxed blood pressure is actually lower.

Another thing to obsess about it just when my cholesterol is under control.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 5th, 2010 at 3:51 pm and is filed under body. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.