Last year, we changed our health insurance and I decided to take advantage of that and get some things looked at that have been sort of sitting on the back burner for a couple of years. The justification was I was busy, or it can wait until summertime, etc., and then summertime would roll around and I'd find other things to occupy my time and it wouldn't get done.
When I was donating blood on a regular basis, I knew my blood pressure and weight. Donating platelets every other week, I had a handle on those two things. Because of a lab snafu, where I tested false-positive for something I don't have, I cannot donate blood anymore. That happened about five years ago which meant I no longer had access to my blood pressure and weight on a regular basis. That's when things started to go south.
With the various appointments I've had this spring and summer, I've heard one recurring theme, which was bothersome to me, "Has your blood pressure been this high in the past?" Yeah, that's not something I want to mess around with, so I made another appointment to talk to my doctor about a sensible way to bring my blood pressure down. Obviously, the best way would be to lose some weight.
When we used to live over in Rancho Cucamonga, I could see my work from the back yard of my house and I used to bike to work. I'm not sure why I stopped doing that, but once we moved, the commute ended that. I held onto the bicycle giving myself all sorts of incentives to get back on it, but that never panned out until this week.
My doctor gave me three different options - swimming, running or biking. I have never been a good swimmer and I have never enjoyed running either, but I have enjoyed biking in the past, so I dusted the old bike off, took it in to get it serviced and Sunday went out on my first bike ride. Nothing spectacular, but I have a slight uphill grade for half the ride and the first day I traveled 5.78 miles. Day two, on Monday, I did the same ride, but the GPS said I did 5.83 miles. Yeah, I didn't zero the GPS out on the first day until I was a little ways away from the house, but I have a pretty good readout of how many miles I'm traveling if I take that standard route.
Tuesday, I took the day off as my thighs and rear end was barking a little bit, but I was back on the saddle again today for another run. So in three days, I've traveled almost 17 and a half miles. I'm sure the mileage will increase as I work my stamina back up, but for now, it's baby steps to get back in shape, bring my weight down and hopefully, my blood pressure as well.
I've decided to make this one of the regular occurring features in this blog, so if you don't want to read about my success, or lack of success on the road, feel free to skip it. I'll post the same photo as I've posted above to alert you ahead of time that this post will be a fitness post.
Here's to a thinner me in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment