It has been awhile!!! Like I explained in a past post, my husband and I have been working on our Remento books and it really has taken a lot of time to record, edit, find pictures, etc. We just recently completed and received our books and we really like them! It is actually a 300 page book about myself!!! I will include a picture of the book and the link again to this post. I really recommend doing this yourself or gifting it to a parent or other family member. Below is a discount link if you are thinking of purchasing for a loved one or doing it yourself. It is a great thing to pass on to future generations.
Besides writing my autobiography😂, I have been continuing on this journey of menopausal wellness and I wanted to share my progress and in future blogs I will explain my steps toward this awakening and change in my life.
I first want to remind all of you that I have never been a numbers person. I wrote in an earlier blog that I never kept track of my weight or clothes sizes. I cannot tell you how much I weighed in high school or what the size of my wedding dress was. It just was nothing that concerned me.
I also want to explain that I am not here to weight shame anyone. I believe it is very important for everyone to be comfortable in their own skin and feel positive about their body. However, as I have been on this journey, I have a deeper understanding of the numbers and now realize they do matter for health reasons not vanity reasons and I am now a number watcher. I am not obsessed by the numbers but I am definitely keeping an eye on them and am no longer ignoring them.
Let’s start with the number we all hate–our weight. Again, I am all about body positivity but our weight issues can lead to multiple health issues and I found in my menopause journey that once I was getting my weight gain under control it led to easing many of my other symptoms of menopause. On average, women gain between 12-15 pounds during the ages of 45-55. Again, because I was never a weight watcher, I do not know how much weight I gained during menopause but I can tell you that each year at my doctor’s visit the number was going up and my clothes in my closet stopped fitting. Before menopause, estrogen generated by the ovaries protected us from heart attacks and strokes. We lose that protection after menopause because less estrogen is produced and then the added weight gain brings more risk factors for heart disease. Since I have started on my wellness journey at my lowest I lost 25 pounds. I have recently started gaining some weight back, however, I have been building muscle so this is most likely muscle weight but I am keeping an eye on it. I weigh myself each week, which is something I never have done. By keeping a closer eye on it, I am able to do something about it right away if it starts causing any concern until waiting for a year to go by.
However, I also found that weight is not the only measure of your health and that is my goal–becoming and staying healthy. Body measurements especially around the waist are also important numbers to keep track of. Your WHR (waist to hip ratio) is one of the most important indicators of how healthy you are. There is a very large body of scientific evidence that shows a high WHR can forecast cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, gall bladder disease, even cancer. Your WHR is calculated by dividing your waist circumference by your hip circumference. Make sure you are measuring your waist and hip in the appropriate areas–a google search can help you with this. A .80 or lower is low health risk and .86 or higher is high health risk. Since starting my health journey last May, I have lost over 6 inches in my waist and 4 inches in my hips. My WHR was .90 when I started in May and I now have it down to .83. I am more proud of these numbers than my weight and these numbers tell me much more about my health than my weight. At the beginning, I was doing measurements every week. Now, I do them monthly.
The next set of numbers are going to really blow your mind but I do have to note that besides losing weight, fine tuning my nutrition, and getting more physically active the pharmacy has also been my friend. Besides starting hormone replacement therapy last spring I also was put on cholesterol and blood pressure medication two years ago. I do wonder if I would have done HRT and all of the other things years ago maybe I wouldn’t have needed this medication but it is certainly helping so no going back now. In October of 2024 my blood pressure at a doctor’s visit was 143/87. Now it ranges from 105-115/75-85. My glucose in October of 2024 was 104 and it is now 92. My triglycerides 117 to now 89. And my cholesterol numbers were through the roof. In October of 2024 my total cholesterol was 334! My LDL 245. HDL 66 and ratio was 5.1. In my last blood test this past May my cholesterol is down to 171. My LDL down to 81. My HDL up to 72 (you want that higher) and my ratio dropped to 2.4!!!
The numbers don’t lie and they do matter. I would see these high blood work numbers and ask my doctor about them and she would always give me a pamphlet about the Mediterranean diet with quickly went into the garbage can when I got home. She never offered any explanation for the high numbers(for example, menopausal patients experience as much as 10-15 percent jump in LDL and triglyceride levels) or practical solutions to lowering these numbers. She didn’t even recommend medication until that October visit.
So how was I able to get these numbers down? Like I said, I do have to give some credit to pharmaceuticals. I will forever be a proponent for hormone replacement therapy even though I have had some complications. It has forever changed my life. And even though I hate that I have a pill container, my cholesterol and blood pressure medications have definitely done their job. In some future blogs, I will explain my nutrition and physical activity changes I have made in my life but the start was paying attention, understanding, and finding ways to control the numbers.
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