0277E: Steady On, Keto!


So I finally got my repeat blood test after 3+ months on keto and the results were pretty GREAT. I'm super happy about it. Let's go over the highlights.

First, low-hanging fruit is the fact that I was about 111 kilos at the clinic's scale back in August and today I weighed in as 95 kilos - that's over 30 pounds lost in 4 months! Knowing that alone already left me feeling pretty motivated about my fitness journey thus far. Plus my blood pressure was a healthier level this time around versus my levels back in August that seemed well on their way to possibly hypertension.

Now in terms of the actual test, the key areas of concern were my triglycerides being high, my SGPT values also above normal and my blood sugar rating technically classifying me as being pre-diabetic. The discussion with the doctor who interpreted my APE results was pretty much along the lines of whether or not I wanted to consider medication already. But we agreed that these things could still be managed through diet and lifestyle change, and so we went with that. Coincidentally my sister gave me an unusual gift of one month of a keto meal delivery service that kickstarted my more serious weight-loss efforts.

For my new blood test, I've gone from being pre-diabetic to being well within normal range. My triglycerides are back in normal range and my SGPT is also very normal. Heck, it was pretty much a clean bill of health except for a spike in my uric acid, which I can certainly keep in mind in terms of how my diet goes. I know this has not been my healthiest week given over-reliance on Starbucks and Salad Stop! to keep me supplied while at the hospital for family. But more importantly, my cholesterol levels were still in the normal range despite the keto diet's reliance on fat, which honestly was my biggest worry other than my sugar levels. Had my cholesterol been dangerously high, I would have had to stop keto and map out an alternate diet plan that would still probably be low carb with an aversion to sugars.

So the conclusion for now is that I'm still safe enough on keto so I'll continue to stay steady and push for more weight loss. I'm still not at a healthy weight so I need to keep that up and continue to increase my activity levels to improve my overall fitness. As per my Fitbit I'm now in the Fair-to-Average cardio fitness level versus being in the Poor-to-Fair level when I first got the device, so that's another sign of improvement.

This is a week for great health-related news in our corner of the world. But that only means that I need to continue to stay disciplined, put in more hard work into things and keep on treating myself like a real-life tamagotchi.


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