I left my doctor’s office two hours after arriving. I decided that I would drive to my wife’s work and tell her the bad news and the good news about my health in person. Instead of just sitting and talking, we go for a walk and talk.
Honey I have good news and bad news, let me give you the short version during our walk starting with the bad news;
I have high blood pressure which is out of the ordinary.
My food intake cannot have more than 1500mg daily of sodium.
Dining out in restaurants is history for me.
Dried spices have sodium so I can’t use them anymore.
I will probably have to take medicine for the rest of my life.
This information explains many things that were happening to me, for example why I have headaches when I eat certain foods. When I looked back, my blood pressure had probably been high for some time, and high sodium foods like wings, hamburgers and fries, and meat-loving pizza probably drove my blood pressure to such high numbers that I didn’t I would dare to imagine.
As a proud man, I never wanted to be told how I should live my life. Success or failure is something I want to be able to control. Now I must take medicine every day if I want to live. The internal argument was brief. It was almost a monologue, take the pills and live.
Now the good news.
I found out I had high blood pressure before something really bad happened to me. This will be confirmed by a cardiologist in the next few days.
We can ward off the silent killer for many decades if we do this right.
There are so many restaurants that serve shitty food, now I have a reason not to eat at any of them.
I can keep running and exercising.
When I was eight, my mom went on a girls’ weekend and my dad had to cook everything. It was the worst week of my life when it came to food. I begged my mom to teach me how to cook. My favorite class during high school was home economics, since all we did was learn about food and cooking. During my college and work days, food was always on my mind and we ate amazing meals. All of this was a preparation for this chapter of my life.
Cooking food without using dry spices will be a major challenge. The food should be flavored with vegetables, fruits and meats. This will be an amazing way to change the way I eat and taste food.