I tend to be an “on and off” fitness guy who will go around 6 months to 2 years keeping fit, and then will take 6 months to 2 years off. Put another way, I get bored or burned out and I start behaving pretty much like everyone else in terms of exercise for quite a while. The bad news is that my fitness goes to hell during those periods. To document my latest warning in this area, I had a lipid assessment (“cholesterol test” for those in Rio Linda) which warned me to get back on track:

As you can see, that last line really bites.

My method of reduction is taking 500 mg of niacin (nicotinic acid) 3x per day, eating almost entirely foods with reputations (some, perhaps, not deserved) for lowering cholesterol,  increasing my exercise to something at least slightly admirable, and dropping my body fat percentage. My weight at the time of the last lipid profile was in the mid- to high-180s (pounds) and I’ve been dieting since March 26th when I hit the scales at 188, and dieting in earnest since April 14th. The 3 weeks in between those dates were time spent developing a baseline for determining my metabolic rate in terms of Calories per day. (I’ll write some future posts on this subject.) What I call my “true weight”, which is a statistical interpretation of my previous weight measurements which helps to screen out factors such as “water weight”, on April 14th was 184.52 pounds. As of today, my “true weight” is 178.59 pounds.

Okay, so that’s enough of an introduction, though I may edit this page later. For now, I think I’ll speed up the ol’ metabolism with a cup of coffee, which has been shown to have some excellent health benefits (Coffee Lowers Mortality) and take some niacin and some other supplements.

(Incidentally, dating can be tough, but that’s another subject.)