Progress Report: March 10
March 11th, 2008 Posted by: ArthritisQuest
This is my first progress report posting. In the spirit of blogs like Get Fit Slowly, I’m going to post regular progress reports of my blood pressure, diet, and weight loss, in order to help motivate myself to eat healthier, lower my weight and blood pressure, and generally be more healthy.
More after the break.
So first: my goal of where I want to be to minimize my lifestyle’s affect on my health.
Weight: My goal is 170. The closest I’ve been to that in recent history was about 183 last year, while I was sick. I don’t think that 13 pounds below that is unreasonable, though at my current weight it will be something of a challenge.
Blood Pressure: My goal is 115/70-ish. Anywhere between 115 and 120, over anything between 65 and 75, will be ok for me. Blood Pressure updates will be less frequent, due to my not having a measuring tool at home, and thus I will need to go to CVS pharmacy, or the docs office to get properly measured.
Diet: My goal is to cut as much sodium out of my life as possible. I’m going to try to meet the NIH’s DASH plan standard, of the following for a 2,100 calorie diet.
Total fat: 27% of calories
Saturated fat: 6% of calories
Protein: 18% of calories
Carbohydrate: 55% of calories
Cholesterol: 150 mg
Sodium: 2,300 mg*
Potassium: 4,700 mg
Calcium: 1,250 mg
Magnesium: 500 mg
Fiber: 30 g
However, I am going to reduce sodium to 1500mg where possible, and overall calories probably to around 1800 or so.
Also, I drink far too much soda. However, I love soda, so I am not willing to remove it from my diet. I am, however, trying to minimize how much I drink it.
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So where I stand right now, at the start of my Arthritis Quest:
Weight: 203.4 this morning
Blood Pressure: 134/80 in the doctors office. I have a history of “white coat hypertension” though, and my BP is usually lower when measured at say, a pharmacy.
Diet: Today I ate a really unhealthy cheeseburger and fries from Five Guys for lunch, and a bunch of steamed crab legs from Joe’s Crab Shack for dinner. The crab legs were probably not bad for me since I didn’t eat drawn butter on them, but unfortunately they had old bay seasoning on them making them quite salty. I probably could have ordered something less salty. I did make up for it by drinking a glass of water first, and then only having less than half a coke. I was proud of that. I wasn’t happy about eating the burger; it was huge and not at all good for me.
Yesterday, I started off better, having a small portion of aged beef at Alero’s (mexican), and a half bowl of seafood soup, of which I mostly drank the broth. I had half a cup of coffee during the day (rare for me because I am not a big coffee fan), and then Filomena’s (italian) for dinner. At Filomenas, I shared a small sausage appetizer, which was in bearnaise sauce: Not very healthy but very small portions so it wasn’t too bad. I had some fried calamari, that lacked salt, so while not too health it was not as bad as it could have been. And I had a few pieces of smoked chicken ravioli, which was probably very high in sodium, but I didn’t eat too much of it. I was overall happy with that day’s meal because I went easy on lunch, and while I got a lot of stuff with dinner, I didn’t over eat it, and I felt satisfied but not overly stuffed after dinner.
So at this point I have 33.4 lb to go on my weight loss quest, 19/5 points on my blood pressure quest, and the diet is not really measurable numerically.
