Surprise: Diet, exercise are good for you!

Okay, so maybe it is no surprise, but I've been discovering it for myself over the past six weeks.

On Feb. 7, I checked my cholesterol for the first time and was "scared straight" when it came back at 245. Not surprised, mind you, because I knew full well that stomach had served as a toxic dumping ground for the past 38 years. But there is a distinct difference between innately knowing that you're doing bad things to your body, and being confronted by the hard evidence.

So, armed with fear, I began learning all I could about cholesterol. Not surprisingly, the American Heart Association has some good information about cholesterol, and is a great starting point for telling you what cholesterol is, what it does and how to fight it.

Finally, I decided to make three key changes to my lifestyle to get control of my cholesterol level. They included:

Getting back on my bike more often. My riding had really fallen off since the onset of winter, and I was only getting one or two rides a month.

Starting a somewhat modified version of the TLC Diet, focusing solely on reducing my saturated fats to 22 grams or less a day and my cholesterol to 200 mg or less.

Starting to take Centrum Cardio vitamins, after learning about the cholesterol-lowering benefits of phytosterols, also known as plant sterols.

I won't lie. The first week of my diet was hell. Having been the type who was perfectly content to eat a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit every morning and a double-cheeseburger as often as possible, it truly was misery, as my body just wasn't very happy having to cope with the sudden drop in fats. That first weekend, I was just one big grumpy mess.

But after those first few days, it started getting easier. A lot easier. And I think I helped myself by finding ways to enjoy some of my favorite foods in small amounts, just as long as I didn't exceed my daily limits.

For example, I found that if I really watched what I ate for breakfast and lunch, I could treat myself at dinner to not one, but two regular hamburgers and medium fries at McDonald's without doing to much damage to my saturated fats or cholesterol.

(However, that was before I decided to educate myself about trans fat. Now it looks like I'm just going to have to say goodbye to McDonald's permanently -- or at least until they stop killing their customers with hydrogenated oils. Wendy's, on the other hand, has a menu almost entirely free of trans fats, except for the naturally-occurring kind, and you can have a very satisfying chicken sandwich and large fries for under 7 grams of saturated fat.)
These days, I pretty much follow an unchanging diet through the week, having a Power Bar for breakfast and usually some sort of vegetable beef soup and Sun Chips for lunch. For dinner, my wife has been very helpful in coming up with new recipes that are filling, yet easy to incorporate into my daily range. A lot of this has been due to eating a lot of stir fry, but she has also gotten a lot of good advice from Devin Alexander's wonderful cookbook, Fast Food Fix.

Nowadays, the diet does not bother me at all. After I had been on it a week, I found myself easily staying under my daily limits -- without one single slip. I've gotten almost religious about counting my fats and cholesterol, and I don't put anything in my body without knowing exactly what it means for that day's numbers. In a way, the diet has been a lot like learning to ride a bike -- one week of intense effort, followed by weeks of ease.

I didn't get back on my bike for the entire month of February, due somewhat to bad weather, but mostly on a need to concentrate on getting the diet thing down before tackling exercise. But starting March 2, I began concentrating on riding more frequently, and I managed to hit the roads eight times in the first three weeks, logging 85 miles. I have yet to tackle any big rides, as I'm just now starting to feel like I getting my legs back, but I'm hoping to get at least a couple of 300-mile months when good weather finally gets here for good.

Anyway, after six weeks, it was time to check the cholesterol level once again. I was hopeful that I had made at least some modest improvement, and would have been thrilled to death to get somewhere near 200. Of course, I was also scared to death that the numbers hadn't budged at all.

As it turned out, I didn't come anywhere near 200 -- my cholesterol level had fallen to 158, a drop of 87 points in six weeks!

When the nurse told me my results, I was floored. I made her repeat herself. I then looked to where she had written it down just to double-check. I was so happy I could actually feel tears welling up in my eyes, knowing that all the changes I had made and all the work I had done had paid off. And having a family history of heart disease, it is much more meaningful for me to feel like I've made some progress in that regard.

Back in the saddle

I began February with high hopes of getting back into a normal routine. As I wrote before, I rode 21 miles on Super Bowl Sunday, and that had me planning to do at least 100 miles during the month.

But then February got all February-ish. It was cold, or it was raining, or it was cold and raining. Occasionally, it snowed. And to top it all off, I ended up nursing the flu for about a week. As it turned out, February passed by without me getting so much as another single turn of the pedals, much less 79 miles.

March, however, appears to be another story ... so far. I had three rides in the first week, giving me 31 miles for the month so far. That's not exactly a lot, I know, but it's more than February, and it's more than I've ridden in a week in quite awhile.

The previous Sunday, I did something I hadn't done before and rode with someone else. And not just any someone, mind you, but my oldest son. That was a far greater pleasure than I had anticipated. He was quite a trooper and managed to keep up with me (mostly) for nine miles, which is pretty impressive for his first time.

This past weekend did bring a freak snowstorm of sorts, with a full three inches of the fluffy stuff. You folks up north might laugh, but that's the biggest snowfall we've had all year. So instead of getting on the bike Saturday, we drove down to the local Ace Hardware and got some sleds, and I took the family to my favorite spot to sled when I was a kid. So while I wasn't able to log any miles over the past few days, I don't really mind because it turned out to be quite fun anyway.

And now we're back into Daylight Saving Time, meaning there will be at least an extra hour I can ride after work. With the weather forecast looking better and better the further you go (aside from today's rain, of course), March truly is looking like it's going to be a great month.