I am My Own Science Experiment

So about a month ago now, I started two weeks of no sugar. The goal was to get my body out of the habit of the highs and lows of sugar consumption in a structured way that got me out of the trap I had fallen into of eating healthy most of the time, and then feeling like I "earned" any junk that was put in front of me ("Have a cookie?" "Why yes, I'll have 6").

Not long before that, I had my infamous encounter with the life insurance blood demons. I had signed something saying I wanted to be told if my HIV test result was positive (negative -wooho!), but hadn't thought I'd be getting any of the results back.

But then in the mail today, I got a confidential letter with the results of ALL of my bloodwork.

What's great about the results they sent is that there's a column for what they tested, a column that has the result, a column that says whether the results are low, normal, or elevated, and then a column that tells you what the "healthy" range of results is. Blood work reading for dummies. It's great.

Anyway, turns out I have elevated triglycerides and cholesterol. AND, interestingly enough, it turns out that one way to fix that is to eat less sugar (and more healthy food in general). Which is what I'm doing.

So I became my own science experiment last Friday, when I returned to my doctor's office (because I had finally made the time to have a physical and establish a PCP in Boston). In addition to getting my TB test read (No TB either! Woohoo!), I got blood drawn so she could see how healthy (or not) I am.

So, since painful, multi-stick, blood draw A was done before this low-sugar food intake modification, and much less painful, single-stick blood draw B was done after I had begun intentionally trying to cut back on sugar in my diet, I hypothesize that my triglyceride and cholesterol levels will be lower in the second results than in the first.

Aren't I an interesting little science experiment!? I'll let you know when I get the results of the post-test.

On a slightly related note, I've been going run/walking again since the weather has gotten nice (we went from winter to summer weather and completely skipped over spring here). Everything hurts and I look like an idiot trying to walk down stairs, thanks to my sore muscles, but I like feeling like I'm working towards being back in shape.

On a completely unrelated note (meaning: now I will talk about how there are times when it's absolutely justified to not take care of myself), I'm off to the library, where I'll be living forever today. As a consolation prize for heading to the library for hours and hours of fun, I'll be going to the school cafeteria, where they make yummy (no really, I mean it) food, and serve things like cookies and ice cream (which go quite well together with a little whipped cream and chocolate sauce). Because sometimes, something that tastes good and gets me through an epic library stint wins out over triglycerides and cholesterol.