Taking advantage of my lower cholesterol level due to taking
generic Lipitor, I went to Vons grocery store to buy ice cream which was on
sale. Not merely a sale but the container had exactly ½ gallon instead of the
downsized 1 ½ quarts which is the norm nowadays. I don’t remember the last time
I bought ice cream, but I know it’s been years. With the ice cream, I became a
little bit more adventurous with my diet which meant that I started eating food
that I used to eat before my cholesterol level started going up. For three days
I ate a couple of hamburgers, ham and cheese sandwiches for two nights at work,
and half gallon of ice cream (a coffee flavored concoction with caramel bits,
YUM!). That's not even counting halloween candy. Well, in just those few days of a
fare of unhealthy foods, I gained weight. I don't know how all that eating has affected
my cholesterol level but I'm supposed to have it checked a week after
Thanksgiving.
That just shows you that even if cholesterol
level is normal or low, you still have to be mindful of what you eat because
the calories can still make you gain weight. To add to that, it's the type of
calories that will do it and in this case, fat calories from the burger, ham, and
ice cream. The weight gain is a risk factor in itself so regardless of
cholesterol level, I still have to eat healthy foods, especially that I am no
longer able to run and can't rely on it to burn off the extra calories.
So I
ate badly for three days and gained about three pounds which I tried to work
off with exercise. I had to add extra minutes to my workouts to try to burn off
the weight gain but that didn't work out too well. Even an intense one hour
session of a spinning workout barely made a dent. In my delusion, I tried to
justify the weight gain as muscular weight due to a more consistent routine of
weight training in recent weeks. Um, yeah, right!
Then I did two days of sensible eating and got
my weight back in control. It all boils down to portion control, not going
overboard with the calorie intake, and choosing good calories instead of junk ones.
Mind you, this is just an experiment of one and I'm not trying to be preachy
here since all I've said has been researched and advised time and again. The
most important thing about losing or maintaining weight is eating sensibly
and using exercise as a supplement. A healthy diet counts more in keeping
weight down than making it up by exercising excessively just to compensate for
eating badly.
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