Final-ish Numbers

So I've got my blood test results back! Drum roll please.......

Here were my stats before on 12/31/14...
Total Cholesterol:  231
HDL:  67
Triglycerides:  78
LDL:  148
Chol / HDLC ratio:  3.4
Non HDL Cholesterol:  164

And here they are on 4/6/15...
Total Cholesterol:  180
HDL:  54
Triglycerides:  89
LDL:  108
Chol / HDLC ratio:  3.3
Non HDL Cholesterol:  126

So, my total cholesterol went down by 51 points, my LDL went down by 40 points!! YAY, right?

Now... the interesting things here are my HDL, which actually decreased (that's going the wrong way, people!), and my triglycerides increased (again, the wrong way!). I asked my brother-in-law, who is a doctor, to tell me why my triglycerides would have gone up when I haven't been eating any animal products, and he said it was a "conundrum". Hmm. I had a search over the internet and I have a feeling it might have to do with stress... looking for jobs, living with family, buying a car... all these things are very stressful things, and stress does play a part in your cholesterol! So maybe that's it? I'm not sure, but I'm interested to hear any theories out there.

Am I happy? Well, yes and no. I would have been very happy if they all went in the right direction! Just how much they moved was really up in the air. I'm disappointed that some have gotten 'worse', but we can be clear, these numbers aren't bad anyway! Definitely bringing my blood cholesterol down to normal numbers is a big plus!

As for weight loss? 9.8 pounds. I've still got about 15 more pounds that I wanna lose, so there's that. No, I didn't expect I'd lose all that in 3 months! I was just hoping to be a little closer to 12 pounds down by the end of it... that's 12 weeks at one pound a week. That would have been nice. But let's face it, losing weight is better than gaining it in this situation!

So.... what does that mean for me going forward? I've decided that I'm going to keep going with the vegan eating. Yep, you heard me. I'm keeping it going, and I'm going to try to really cut back on the desserts. Even vegan desserts add calories, right? AND... I'm adding in some more exercise. I really wasn't doing much over the past 3 months - keeping relatively consistent with my dance video and walking... but I wasn't really pushing the limits if I'm honest. So I'm going to start doing some high intensity interval training, and I'm going to put some strength training in there, too. Just exactly what that looks like, I'm not sure yet! I'm told that exercise can really help with the cholesterol levels (d'uh!), so I'm going to try injecting a bit of that action to see how much we can keep the positive streak going and how much we can affect the other ones!

In the meantime, I start my new job on Monday... EEEEEEKS! It's been a year & a half since I was a working girl, so I'm a bit nervous about what it means for my schedule, my diet, my stress levels!! - all of that. I figure that if I can get a good routine going straight from the start, then I'll be that much better off for it. "Begin as you mean to go on" and all that, right?

I'm going to get a blood test in another 3 months to see what's happened then... I figure it took me 40 years to get where I am, I can't expect it will all clear up in just 3 months, right? So we'll see how it goes. Slow and stead wins the race. Slow and steady wins the race...

HERE WE GO!!
xoxo
-VE