Eat your HEART out!

image via veer.com

So…..one of my main goals with living a healthy lifestyle is not to look good in a pair of jeans, or to be a head turner at my 10 year high school reunion…but to actually be physically healthy. (Don’t get me wrong, those first two would be nice) You know, to have good cholesterol levels, and be able to walk a mile, go up a flight of stairs, know what real nutrition is and how to cook for my self.

Well..I’ve made efforts toward those things, and obviously I know how I am doing physically by my body response (not huffing and puffing up the stairs) but I can’t do anything to check my cholesterol or general heart health. And to be honest, I’ve always been a little afraid. I am one of those people who becomes a hypochondriac when getting medical tests. I always convince myself that I am going to have 80 cavaties before I get my teeth cleaned, or that I am going to have an irregular pap. Every summer at camp when we had to have our hair checked for lice, I was CONVINCED I would have lice, even though I had made my mom check the night before. I am not a hypochrondriac in every day life. Just when it involves “testing.”

Today is our Employee Health and Wellness Fair, and some lab donated lipid panels (cholesterol, LDL, HDL, Triglycerides, Glucose) to all of the employees. I waivered back and forth…I’m gonna get it done, I’m not gonna get it done. Will, Wont. Will, Won’t. Will……Will. So yesterday I decided to bite the bullet and sign up for an 8am lipid panel. At least 8 hours of fasting was required, and I was NOT waiting for breakfast even longer than I had to! I like to eat.

So I showed up at work today, and they pricked my finger and my blood came out sooooo slowly. I joked with the tester and said my blood was still frozen from when I was out scraping the windows on my care. He finally got enough blood, and but my little vial in the tester. I stood back and waited for my results. The results were given to you right there, but not privately. I mean, you sat down and talked with someone, but there was no privacy at all. It wasn’t trying to eavesdrop on the people before me, but somehow still figured out the cop whose results came out before mine has been eating too many carbs (or didn’t fast long enough). I was scared….I didn’t want EVERYONE to know that I had high Cholesterol and clearly need to work out more and was sure the person was going to say “as an obese person you clearly need to work on a,b, and c) I told you I got a little maniacal.
So they called my name, and I sat down and the tester said “You have Great Results!! But you probably already knew that!” uh..no actually I didn’t. I’ve never had it tested before, and to be honest, all hyper hypo-ness aside, I wasn’t convinced that I wouldn’t be at least border line high. I do weigh 240 pounds. But..it wasn’t just on the verge of being high,…..it was low. Low enough to be considered great. In all of the categories.

Getting those results felt better than any amount of weight I’ve lost on the scale. Pounds can come and go, but you can still be internally unhealthy. For me, this was one of those things that made me feel like my concerted effort at being Healthy is worth it, for reasons so much larger than any pair of pants. Go ahead and tell me that my BMI is too high…because that is ok. It is possible to be Healthy At Every Size…more people just need to know it.