Success Stories | Pat King's FitnessLifeClub.com

Meet Michael Aulia! Back in October Michael had been to his doctor and got some bad news about his triglyceride count. Below you can read his blog post from October about this situation.

Michael’s Post:

If you say “trigi- what?”, then welcome to my world. Well at least, until a couple of months ago that I heard what that trigi-ga-gu-gu means. There are some definitions of what Triglyceride is on the web, but words from the doctor saying that “the level of fats flowing in your blood is too high” were much more than enough for me. According to the blood test, my triglyceride level (you can think of it as a cholesterol level) was 500 (below 200 or 150 is usually considered the safe level)!! How I am still alive, amuses me…

First of all, this is just a rambling. I don’t even expect people (you) will actually read other people’s stories or moaning. I shared this story to my friends at church and they are all amazed lol. I’m not trying to get attentions here (well maybe a bit heh heh) but I’d like to share what I’m doing at the moment to keep my body healthier and if you are still reading this story, then most likely you are either interested about my story or you have a high cholesterol or triglyceride level yourself

A nice sentence from AmericanHeart.org:

“Triglycerides in plasma are derived from fats eaten in foods or made in the body from other energy sources like carbohydrates. Calories ingested in a meal and not used immediately by tissues are converted to triglycerides and transported to fat cells to be stored. Hormones regulate the release of triglycerides from fat tissue so they meet the body’s needs for energy between meals.”

Why Triglyceride is bad, you ask?

I’ve felt lots of aches and sores around my shoulder many times. It felt like some elephants are sitting down on your shoulder and you have this feeling that your shoulder needs a very long and good strong massage! I remember the night when I ate crispy pork on rice that I took away from a restaurant in Melbourne and half time through eating, I’ve felt this tremendous pressure on my shoulders and this weird feeling that I can’t explain here. I stopped eating and threw the food away to the rubbish bin. I felt so scared and I knew at that time, that something must have gone wrong with my cholesterol level or my body was falling over somehow.

Oh well, the verdict has been read. I had a 500 triglyceride level. I deserved it. Why? I ate lots of oily food. I mean, LOTS of them. I don’t do sport because I’m a geek who sits in front of his computer more than anything, I drink all of those sugary-sweet drinks and who knows what else have I eaten.

But, let’s see what I usually eat for breakfast:

* Spinach Roll (those fried croissant type)
* Bacon and Egg Roll (bacon)
* McDonalds’s Hot Cakes (sweet and sugary)
* Fried DimSim (ugh..70% oil, 30% healthy)
* What I drink for breakfast? COFFEE, of course! (with full cream milk)

Not bad for a nice and healthy breakfast, eh? Let’s move on to what I usually eat for my lunch and dinner!

Okay fast forward to July 2008, let’s see how Michael is doing!

So finally today I got my blood test result from the doctor.

Back in October 2007, I went for a general check-up and found out that my triglyceride level (that is the amount of fat circulated on my blood) was sky-high. It was 500 mg/dL (or 5.645 mmol/L) compared to the acceptable level of around 133 mg/dL (or 1.5 mmol/L)! Anymore higher, I could probably end up with a stroke or a clogging on my blood artery

So I took a good diet (as in eating healthier apart from not-eating kind of diet) and got my blood tested again last week.

Today I got the result and the verdict is….
My high triglyceride level goes down to 124 mg/dL (or 1.4 mmol/L)! Yay! I never expected that much of an improvement, really.

Everything else is normal, although my cholesterol level is a little bit higher than the acceptable range (it was okay back then in October 2007).

So, what I’ve been doing to get a lower triglyceride level? (You should pay attention to this too for your own sake)

* Drank a once-off medicine to lower my Triglyceride level, called Lipida or something
* Change the milk on my morning coffee from a full cream milk to skinny milk
* Eat healthier breakfast (cereals and oatmeal apart from croissants, donuts, and fried dim sim)
* Eat less KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) - from twice a week to once a month
* Exercise more (I play badminton every Sunday now after church)
* Eat less deep fried food and fats as much as I can
* Drink fish oil tablets every now and then
* Drink less sugary drink (Coke Zero instead of the regular Coke, etc)

However, thanks for all of your support and concern on my health so far. If you never take care of your health, then it’s about time that you do before you regret it! Watch what you are eating, and stay healthy! God bless!

Michael's Blog