So why '120OverEighty' you ask?
As you probably know 120/80 is the ideal blood pressure (BP) number for healthy adults. Along those lines, I wanted to start a blog that was more encompassing then only food, my current passion, or exercise, or stress management etc... and create one for fostering activities/habits we can all do to have a positive impact on our health. Diet of course isn't the whole story when it comes to our health but it is a great place to start. Other things like lack of exercise, sleep deprivation, disease, family history, medication and stress of course play key roles too.
Day 414:
In looking back to August 2011 when this journey started, I knew I was overweight at 238 lbs/108 kg (Body Mass index of 28 - see pics below) and that my doctor was for the first time talking with me about my blood pressure numbers (127/93 - Stage 1 hypertension). Around the same time I was also struggling with the most basic elements of life from getting up out of bed in the morning, sitting behind the wheel of the car or even bending over and picking something up. However, it was my husband Mark's doctor visit last year that brought everything to the forefront when he was told that if he didn't lose weight he had to get on high blood pressure medicine - we knew we needed a change.
After reading some articles on diets we decided our food choices were horrible and decided to become Vegans: No meat, dairy, poultry or fish. We also decided to cut out salt and the majority of processed foods too and focus on nutrients first... Think crash course in "food detox".
- For us, the most influential factor in this decisions was a book by Dr. Joel Fuhrman called Eat to Live (ISBN number 978-0-316-12091-3). I highly recommend this book to anyone curious about this topic with the disclaimer that everyone should check with your own physician before changing your own dietary intake levels.
Below is a chart on my own weight loss that I tracked on our Nintendo Wii; each dot represents me weighing in from August 22, 2011 to today. Dr. Fuhrman's main theory is the more nutrients you eat, the less you will want to eat other foods and your body will naturally return to a healthy Body Mass Index (BMI) between 20 and 21. That is exactly what has happened to me as you can see below.
- They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words:
Summer 2011
 |
BMI was 28 - Weight 238 lbs/108 kg |
Fall 2012
 |
BMI is now 21.5 - Weight 181/82 kg |
Next up on the agenda - Starting to workout again and managing stress better!
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