How it all started. How a very rude doctor made me mad.

Why do I want to start a blog about losing weight?

I have undergone a personal journey that is both life changing and interesting. Many people ask me how I did it and are interested as to my methodology and systems, however I cannot claim I am a guru, nor a fitness expert. I am just a bloke who gets lots of data sources and finds the ones that work, the ones that don’t, and I want to pass my experience to others who want to start the journey or indeed adapt their own journey.

It is my intention in this blog, to highlight all my data sources fully, I do not wish to plagiarise anyone else’s work and will credit them and link to them.

It is always best at the beginning to say how it all started, so here goes.

I am a 53yrd old white fat British male, I generally was unfit, and my health was declining rapidly into an irreversible abyss. I am 5 foot 8 inches, or 172 cm for the metric fans out there, at my heaviest I weighed in at 122.2 kg (19 stone 3 or 269lbs). As to other health problems, I could list, Hypertension, Prediabetes, Plantar Fasciitis, leg swelling due to BP meds and general tiredness. I sound like a complete wreck; however, I was maintaining a 75-hour working week and carried on with my life blissfully ignoring my symptoms and just putting it down to getting old.

I had to attend a clinic in a very large hospital, with regards to my prediabetes, and they of course gave me a check-up. The nurse said you need to go and see your own doctor immediately and get them to look at your blood pressure, strange I felt fine! Anyway, being the respectful chap that I am, I got in my car drove 9 miles and then walked into my GP surgery.

Now anyone who tries to get to see a GP in the UK knows they must get past the formidable and ruthless receptionist whose job it is to prevent you seeing a doctor at any cost. So, challenge accepted. Me- “Hi, I have just been to the hospital, and they said my blood pressure is really dangerous and I should come see my doctor immediately”. Receptionist - “They would not do that”. Me- “Well they did”.  After a long volley of argument and counter arguments I was getting nowhere, remember how well trained these people are stopping you seeing a doctor, so I opted for a pleading situation, Me “Could you just get a nurse or anyone to take my blood pressure, then I can go home and make an appointment in the usual difficult way”.

They agreed and a nurse duly led me to a side room where she took my blood pressure, as the scale grew larger and larger, her whole demeanour changed. Her face grew more and more caring and when she stopped, she simply said “Wait here I need a doctor”. I glanced at the reading, I had hit a new high score on the machine, which was reading 220/112. When she returned, she had a prescription in her hand, this was now my third concurrent blood pressure medication. I was to return one week later to see the doctor for another review.

So, lets skip a week forwards, I had bought an elliptical exercise machine and done some poor attempts at working out, being mindful of my blood pressure, I had dutifully logged my blood pressure twice a day as requested, however I also had logged each exercise completed, the date, time, and metrics from the work out including blood pressure before and after. If you become a regular reader of this blog, you will see my love for data and information, but more about that later.

So, into my GP’s room, well I say my GP, you never really see your own GP these days, it just someone in a room at the surgery you call your own. But he sat me down and I handed over my BP log, he perused it and said fine, keep taking the tablets.

Then came my EUREKA moment, the time I realised that the professional in front of me didn’t really care about my welfare or any side effects of the medication.

I handed my doctor, my week or so’s exercise log, with all the data included, since you should consult your doctor before taking any form of exercise, I deemed it prudent and thought he would discuss my plans considering my epic blood pressure and weight. Alas, he did no such thing, he literally cast my sheet aside like I had handed him a snotty tissue. Then told me to keep taking the tablets and he would review me in 3 months.

Why did this annoy me so much? Is it that I was trying to prove to my doctor that I was willing to undergo massive lifestyle changes to avoid BP meds, to stop their persistent campaign to put me on statins, to avoid metformin etc. Or was it that I wanted my doctor to encourage me to undergo lifestyle changes in a positive manner, with the support of the health service.

I walked out of that clinic with many thoughts cascading through my mind, firstly I was thinking what an absolute Pr**k of a doctor, I will show him. How dare he cast aside my current efforts and quash my determination. So that was my wake-up call, my eureka moment, when I realised that my doctor only wanted to fill me full of tablets and statins to fund his new Mercedes, which would give me more side effects, to which I would need more tablets and thus entering a never-ending cycle.

I realised that the only person who could do something about this was ME, it was time to change, time to act, time to start living. So, I drove home and emptied my fridge of all food. I embarked on a strict keto diet, bought a jump rope, started a plan for running etc.

5 months on I currently weight 95kg(14stone 13lb or 209lb) which is a total loss of 27.2kg (4 stone 3lbs or 60lbs), I have lost 22.25% of my weight, which is close to a quarter of my body weight, and I am by no means anywhere near my final target weight, but in this blog I hope to pass on my findings, my trails and successes, listing the resources that helped me so much on this journey and books I have read. There is about a billion websites promoting differing diets and health regimes, do this, don’t do this, it’s a mine field of information out there, and I want to just pass on my findings. I am not a health expert; I don’t claim to be. This is just my story, its my personal journey which I am sharing with you. I hope you find it interesting and informative, and if it just helps one person to start changing their approach to health, then I will feel satisfied.

Let the blogging begin,

Pete.