Disclaimer: I am not trying to sell anything with this post. These are my observations about what’s been going on with me and the steps I’m taking to change my situation.
Things are changing at the beginning of this month.
I have had nothing but trouble between my doctor’s office and the pharmacy keeping my blood pressure and cholesterol meds in good standing. Months of “your prescriptions could be canceled” because the pharmacy falsely switched my doctor, and since he was not my doctor he rejected the script, and the doctor’s office isn’t returning phone calls to the pharmacy, blah, blah, blah. So I basically gave them both the giant middle finger and am now moving on. The blood pressure meds ran out on the 28th of June, the cholesterol meds will run out in about a week or so. I still have my diabetes meds, until they decide to pull the plug on that one too, but I have a couple of months supply so I’m alright for now.
A lot of people would panic about this, and I have to say when this issue first started, I was in full-on panic mode. How am I going to survive without these medications? Is the bottom going to drop out once they’ve all been canceled? Fast forward to today, I just don’t care anymore about that and I am finally taking measures into my own hands. What measures you ask? Well I’ll tell you, and it is a shocker….
Diet and exercise.
Now, before you go start surfing for cute cat videos on self-driving vacuum cleaners, let me explain. I was never motivated to diet or exercise. I wanted to eat what I wanted, when I wanted. Exercise? It’s a lot of work and so boring doing the same thing over and over. You would think that being diagnosed with borderline Type 2 diabetes back in 2013 would have been the great motivator, but it really wasn’t. It sounded like a bunch of rules that I was not inclined to follow.
That crap catches up to you. Nerve pain has plagued me for 6 years now, making walking very difficult, and sleeping? You can forget about sleeping a good solid 8 hours (I had nights where the pain was so bad it kept me up all night long). This past year I have had problems walking, keeping my balance, a whole plethora of issues. Now that these meds are ending, I have no choice but to make drastic lifestyle changes so I don’t end up as an invalid, or worse… making my daughter an orphan.
The first step was to find an exercise program that wouldn’t be boring and have me on the floor for 90% of the time. I opted for combat training. It keeps me off the floor for most of the time and it engages all of my body, not just parts here and there. I have found some really good training exercises that have challenged me, and will increase my overall strength, and more importantly, my balance. This will also afford me the opportunity to learn stage combat, something I was not allowed to learn because I wasn’t a guy. Will I become the next action star? No, but I can make it look good! 🙂
The next step is to find a diet that I can actually stick to. I have a 30 day challenge that I’m doing where I choose certain foods from three different columns. This will allow me to get a variety of different foods in the portions that are necessary this way I don’t feel like I’m starving to death, or become bored with what I’m eating.
My goal for the month? I don’t have a set weight goal to get to by July 31st, but my hope is to be more fit so I can sing and run around a stage without getting out of breath! I will post again at the end of the month to give you my results, as well as any successes or failures that I encountered along the way.
