How Changing My Diet Changed My Health
Time for something a little personal.
I like to think that I’ve always had a healthy diet, but deep down, I know that’s not entirely true. Take, for instance, my freshman year of college when I lost about 50 pounds (yes, I know - I lost weight going off to college rather than gain). I drank diet coke every morning for breakfast and ate a huge frozen yogurt from the food hall for dessert every night. In between was usually some form of canned soup or a turkey sandwich on a bagel, and usually a plain baked potato for dinner. Add in a bag of lowfat butter or kettle corn popcorn as a late night snack, and congrats, you have a wonderfully unbalanced diet! I was also working out every day, to the point where if I missed a day I’d go twice the next. But that’s not what this post is about - one day I’ll talk about all the things I tried to lose weight, when I probably should have been more focused on just developing habits that focused on my health.
This story only goes back to October 2021. My employer provided an incentive to get a biometric screening completed, so I made Eric and I go to Quest and get our blood drawn in order to get our several hundred dollar HSA incentive. The results, while not AWFUL, were a little alarming all the same. Here’s what I saw when the results came in:
Glucose: 105 (reference range: 65 - 99)
Total Cholesterol: 202 (reference range: 125 - 199)
Triglycerides: 126 (reference range: < 150)
HDL: 79 (reference range: >= 50)
LDL: 100 (reference range: < 100)
Blood Pressure: 124/77 (reference range: < 120/80)
My glucose and total cholesterol were just over the normal ranges and my LDL and blood pressure were right on the cusp of being abnormal. I was 36 and that did not feel good. I didn’t want to end up on medication - I was young, active, and should be healthy! I think it took a couple months for these results to settle in, but like all good dieters, made a pact to start fresh in January to really turn things around. I took a long, hard look at my diet and lifestyle and realized there were some easy (and some not so easy) changes I could make to improve these numbers.
We started January 2nd (need that grace day!) and committed to a version of the 75 Hard challenge. If you’re not familiar, well, just google it. But I’ll share what we committed to for 75 days:
Stick to a diet: in our case, we committed to not eating foods with ingredients we didn’t know, no white breads, no sugar (honey being the only exception), and importantly, no alcohol.
Exercise 2x a day for 45 minutes each. The “real” 75 Hard challenge states one of those sessions needed to be outside, but given it was winter in the Hudson Valley, we decided against that requirement. Sometimes our 2nd workout was just a restorative yoga class, and most times it was an easy walk, so nothing insane.
Read 10 pages a day from a nonfiction book
Drink 128 oz of water a day
The “official” 75 Hard states that if you miss one of these requirements in a day, you have to start over. Because we were just doing this for our health, we didn’t follow that requirement. But we did stick to this almost 100%. The one big exception being when my Bengals made it to the Superbowl, I had a couple beers, but that was it. Otherwise, we ate really good food - fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, and local meats. We tried to get as much food as possible from local farmers markets (which meant eating a lot of root vegetables in NY in the winter), and no longer bought meat from factory farms and only local farmers. I wasn’t hungry all the time like on most diets, and just felt really good eating real food. It wasn’t a huge shift from how we had been eating, but just cleaned up the edges a bit and cut out some of those things we knew weren’t great.
The part I was most nervous about was the no alcohol. We had done “Sober October” in years past and abstained from drinking for a month, but 75 days seemed like an eternity. How would I unwind or have a good time? What would my weekends look like without having a bottle of wine? At the time, we were probably drinking most nights of the week. A bottle of wine with dinner was more common than not, and a 2 or even 3 bottle night on the weekend wasn’t out of the question. Reflecting back though, I knew deep down that that way of living wasn’t healthy or doing me any favors and was ready for an excuse to try not drinking and thinking about my relationship with alcohol.
And you know what? I survived. And I felt great. I woke up ready to work out every morning, with an energy I hadn’t had in a long time. It was amazing what my days were like without a hangover, regardless how mild they may have been. I found that I could spend my weekends hiking and having a mocktail with dinner, which satisfied my “itch” for a drink. That 75 days set me up for a much better relationship with alcohol in the year and half since.
As far as exercise went, I wanted to get my running endurance back after a couple demoralizing years of pandemic shutdowns and general depression. I was registered for the Chicago marathon in October 2022 and really wanted to feel good through my training, so I started at the beginning with my running. Over the 75 days, I went from running 1 minute, walking 2 minutes for 45 minutes to running the 45 minutes straight with no breaks - something I hadn’t really been able to do ever (at least mentally). More to come on this in a future post, but I’m sure eating right and abstaining from alcohol was a huge help to improving my running abilities.
Back to my health markers. We went and had our blood work redone after the 75 days, and the results were:
Glucose: 90, down from 105 (reference range: 65 - 99)
Total Cholesterol: 185, down from 202 (reference range: 125 - 199)
Triglycerides: 73, down from 126 (reference range: < 150)
HDL: 59, down from 79 (reference range: >= 50)
LDL: 110, up from 100 (reference range: < 100)
Blood Pressure: 111/69, down from 124/77 (reference range: < 120/80)
My glucose, total cholesterol, and blood pressure were all down from October into the normal range. Hurray! My triglycerides were WAY down, something I found from research was probably related to both my increased exercise and decrease in alcohol consumption. My HDL and LDL were out of normal range for some reason, something I couldn’t quite figure out, and still can’t. But overall, there was a huge improvement in my health just from changing my diet and increasing my activity.
This was a huge motivation for me to continue my lifestyle in a sustainable way. This means that I still aim to eat foods with ingredients I know and avoid ultra-processed foods. I avoid sugar most of the time, making exceptions for special occasions. I drink again, but usually 1 or 2 nights a week instead of 6 or 7, and a bottle of wine split between Eric and I instead of a bottle each. I continue to exercise, but not twice a day, and usually take 1 or 2 days of rest a week.
I recently had my blood-work done again at a doctors visit, and the results were again very encouraging. A chart comparing these 3 visits is here:
Glucose (reference range: 65 - 99): 8/23: 87 3/22: 90 10/21: 105
Total Cholesterol (reference range: 125 - 199): 8/23: 169 3/22: 185 10/21: 202
Triglycerides (reference range: < 150): 8/23: 53 3/22: 73 10/21: 126
HDL (reference range: >= 50): 8/23: 63 3/22: 59 10/21: 79
LDL (reference range: < 100): 8/23: 95 3/22: 110 10/21: 100
Blood Pressure (reference range: < 120/80): 8/23: 113/66 3/22: 111/69 10/21: 124/77
I was able to successfully improve important health markers through diet changes, and continue to see those numbers improve as I stick with it. This chart is really all the motivation I need to stick with it and learn how to have a balanced and healthy diet for the rest of my life.
