Hold onto your hats for some crazy numbers. A person's normal total cholesterol count should be less than 200. Mine is 250. Normal bad cholesterol count should be less than 130. Mine is 180. And I'm only 24 years old.
Based on these numbers, I expect to perish from a heart attack some time around 3:00 P.M. CST today.
Since I got my own place a little over a year ago, I haven't eaten anywhere near as healthy as I did when I lived with my grandparents. Sure, I've had a token vegetable once in awhile to pretend I'm making an effort to do better, but really, I'm in awful shape. I like having eggs for dinner. That probably wouldn't be too much of a problem, except I also like having fried chicken for lunch. And don't forget all the bacon.
You know, I think I can hear my arteries hardening.
So, fresh from eating a turkey breast sub from subway with fat-free onion sauce and NO CHEESE (sob!), I'm making some changes:
- One of these subs a week. Sticking to either the fat free onion sauce or the fat free Italian dressing. Skipping the cheese, even; I just verified that I don't need it. Roast beef and turkey subs are the best for me, followed closely by ham. BTW, choosing the honey oat wheat bread gives you one more gram of dietary fiber. I was eating the regular wheat, anyway.
- Limit egg yolks to two or less per week. I was still hungry late last night, so among other low-fat snacks I boiled an egg and ate just the white. When I was little I used to hate boiled egg yolks. I really like them in my scrambled or fried eggs, though. :(
- A vegetable at every meal, for crying out loud! I'm going to buy tons of cans of green beans and figure out how to fix them so that I like them. I just can't seem to do them like my grandmother did, but we had them every night there and I liked them.
- Fruit! My dad was just telling me an apple, banana, and orange can make a great lunch. I guess I believe him; he is my dad after all and has never lied to me before.
- Limit fried chicken to once every two weeks or less, for starters. In fact, I'm thinking of seeing how long I can last without it before I go nuts, and trying to make myself throw the skin away (SOB!).
- I try to walk 20 minutes every night, but I only get about 2-3 walks in per week. I'm increasing to 30 minutes and doing it every day now. I'll turn some of my online chat time with my girlfriend into telephone time while walking.
- 1% milk. When my dad remarried, we all adapted to skim milk, but when I moved in with my grandparents I went wild and went back to 2%. And I still use whole (3.5%, BTW; I never knew what that number was) milk for things like ice cream and hot chocolate. Really I should go down below 1%, but even the American Heart Association says you can taper down.
If you hear from me again, it's probably a message from the afterlife. ;)
