A matter of life and death

I went to the see the doc yesterday, the one who — due to my Faroukian heft at the time — wanted to put me on statins this past January.

Now we have agreed on a different plan.

I am to keep losing 8 lbs a month till I get to 210 lbs by when I am scheduled to see him next  — in January ’24.

I should be able to drop 35 lbs by October, if I continue to lose 6 to 8 lbs per month — but the the doctor also wants me to start doing cardio and lifting weights.

Replacing fat with muscle will of course appear to cause my weight loss  to slow down.

But I should not be discouraged by that, he said, because my weight loss is program is literally a matter of life and death.

Even with all the progress I have made, he pointed out that according to the atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease calculator used by his clinical facility, I still have a 25% risk of incurring a fatal heart attack sometime during the next 10 years.

If that’s not motivating enough, I do not know what is.

Taking stock of how I feel after losing 25 lbs since Feb, well, I feel and look a lot better.

I still have a long way to go, however.

For example, right now, my BMI is still hovering at 31, with a 44″ waist.

My immediate next goal is to be able fit into a size 42″ pair of pants that I unfortunately still can’t wear today.  This should take a month or two to achieve.

My ultimate goal is to weight 195 lbs, which would bring my BMI down to 25 — normal.

That is a loss of another 50 lbs.

This will take 6 or 7 months; we are now at the end of May, so we are talking sometime around late November, early December.

When it comes to successful and safe weight loss, patience and determination are everything.

Losing weight is not enough.

You also have to tighten up your body.

So my game plan now is to up the game plan.

Instead of being satisfied with just losing bloat, I am going to start working out.

January 2024… .

I’m optimistic that I’ll be showing up for that appointment — despite having a 2-5% actuarial chance of not making it, due to a stroke or myocardial infarction caused by my current state of obesity.

Alas, this is the manner in which one lives, on the edge of 72, when fat.

But I like my chances.