At the beginning of May I announced I was going to try to get into better shape and become a bit more metabolically healthy this summer. I had been a bit alarmed by the results of routine blood tests I had taken in preparation for a colonoscopy. I decided I was too young to be basically pre-diabetic and I would put what I had learned in books like Outlive, The Obesity Code, and The Diabetes Code to work. So, how has that been going?
I'll be spending most of my time in Saint Paul beginning next week, so I thought it was a good time to revisit the blood tests. I had been fasting pretty diligently from late April to mid-July. I did take about a week to ten days off, recently. But I've resumed with two 36-hour fasts this week. I have lost 30 pounds so far, so I'm about halfway to my overall goal. I've been walking quite a bit, including five mile power-walks daily. I got a new bike and have been riding ten miles or more daily, as well (that should increase as my legs readjust after several years of not riding).
So how were my results? I'm happy to say, much more like a normal, healthy person! My cholesterol has dropped by 62 mg/dL and my HDL is up 7. The HDL is in the green band of the normal range, but I'd like to get it up a bit higher. Cholesterol is just a bit above normal but it's in the middle of the "borderline" band now and no longer "high". My triglyceride has dropped by 499 mg/dL, so now I'm right in the middle of the normal band. And finally, my LDL is a little bit above the normal band into the "high", but there was no value recorded on the previous test last spring, because it was so high. So that's an improvement too.
These were just the basic measures in this lab test, so I didn't get readings on things like VLDL or ApoB. But I did get a glucose measurement in the metabolic panel, and it is down by 42 mg/dL and back into the normal band. I thought this was a bit interesting, since at the time of the test I hadn't eaten in about 18 hours. This suggests to me that my liver is making glucose out of fat. I suspect I'm also making ketones, since I just blew into the Lumen for the first time in a while and got a "1" which means I'm burning fat.
I have not been using the Lumen for a month or more, since my initial 30-days of access to the app ended. I had been under the impression that I'd still be able to use the Lumen device even if I decided not to buy the subscription package that included all kinds of coaching and meal planning I had no real interest in. That turned out to be strictly true, but practically false. The device will still give me a reading, but the phone app won't even store it anyplace where I could go back and look at it later. I guess my final opinion on that product, if I was going to review it, would be that it's good technology ruined by a business plan that puts the needs of the company for extreme profits from software as a service above the interests of its customers. Unfortunate, because it really is cool tech.
In any case, the plan for the rest of the summer and into the fall and winter is to continue fasting and exercising until I reach my goal, which will return me to the shape I was in about 35 years ago and briefly approached but didn't quite equal about 20 years ago. I'm also going to enjoy the opportunities to feast on all the great foods available in the Twin Cities, but those feasts will be balanced with fasts. I'll let you know how it goes.
PS. I just looked again at the previous video. This is the difference 30 pounds makes:
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