Auspicious Start II

Well, I wrote about the auspicious start to being 63. February has been an interesting month in the on-going saga just trying to stay healthy and fit with a body which has issues with being older. And what has happened this month?

For one I continued walking and got up to 5 days a week on the weeks, and even got up to 7 miles to town and back, 3 miles there and 4 miles back. The goal is to get to 7-8 miles or an hour each way. It was on track until the second week when I got the flu.

I had a flu shot last September but the Center for Disease Control (CDC) wrote recently they've finding the flu shot is only effective about 60% of the time for "older" people, namely 50+ people. Yeah, so much for the shot when I got the flu.

But the flu itself was short-lived, about 3+ days but the lingering flu has lingered to the last week with intermittent 1-2 day bouts of it of lesser severity. But I did manage to get in 11 days of walking so far (up to today) of 6 miles each time.

The good news in this was a doctor's visits, one early in the month for blood test and discussion and another for the blood test results and exam. The body generally is still pretty good, meaning nothing obviously wrong, and the blood tests showed the kidneys and livers are "perfectly" normal.

I know my heart is better than normal for my age from the last 2 years of test with a cardiologist, but the blood test showed something even better from the change of diet, reducing milk fats to a minimum with hard cheeses and occasional whipped cream, meaning drinking lactose-free non-fat milk.

The diet now includes reducing or eliminating FODMAPS, with one main food from the diet, wheat. Yeah, try it. Almost everything we eat is a wheat product or uses wheat. This isn't just eliminating gluten but almost all wheat where I'm down to one brand of cracker, and no bread!

That also meant a very limited diet of fruits, vegetables, meat, and other foods. What has it wrought? Well, a lot. My cholesterol is lower, not the total number which is normal, but the LDL is at the optimal, the HDL is even higher above normal, and the triglycerides is in the low end of the normal range.

What's even cooler is my insulin resistance number is 3 on a scale of 0-100 where, higher is worse. I have always had a slightly higher than normal glucose level (tested annually last 8 years) so all these number indicate the walking and diet are helping.

Now the issue is my weight, mostly being my fat. I weigh about 170, down from ~185 last fall. The goal is to get it down to 160-165 losing the fat I have (about 10-15 lbs) which I've had all my life. Yeah, the genetic fat my body loves to hold on to.

Since running is still out but in the future plans, it's all about walking and adding weight training again once the Siatic nerve heals, whenever that is if it is. So that's the plan, lots o' walking but then keeping one last measure open, yeah, liposuction of the fat the body doesn't want to lose. Sometimes you do need help there.

The Siatic nerve has stablized for now, or so it seems, leaving both legs still weaker than a year ago but the muscle improving with walking. The right leg is still numb from the above the knee down the front of the leg to the ankle. The left leg still has balance problems. All they can say is give it time, lots of time.

That's it for this month.