- Doctors are notoriously bad patients.
And I fall into that category, headstrong.
And recently, I went for my checkup
and found out something really bad about my health.
And I want to share that with you.
Huge, thanks to Walmart Plus for sponsoring this video.
Peewoop.
I've been kind of slacking on my health
over the last year and a half.
I'd like to blame the pandemic.
And that's certainly been a part of it,
but a lot of it has also come from
the fact that I've been a little bit lazy
and I've been slacking
and that's okay.
But when push comes to shove,
we have to take care of our health.
But I knew, for me
it was time to get a checkup, get my blood work done,
figure out what my risk factors were.
And this is a really important teaching point here
because you don't need to get blood work done all the time.
It's about knowing the right intervals
of when to get your blood check.
That's why it's so important to have
a family medicine doctor to guide you on
when you should be getting your cholesterol checked,
when you should get your sugar checked.
Blood work has to be ordered with a purpose
because we treat the patient, not the lab value.
In fact, when you get blood work done too often,
that increases the rate of medical error
cause something could be off just in that given moment.
And it really confuses and muddles the picture.
Not to mention the healthcare spending
that comes with that.
For me, one of the tests I needed to order,
especially knowing how poor
my diet has been over the last year.
I needed to check my cholesterol.
I didn't expect this at all.
My cholesterol was through the roof.
In fact, it was getting to be at such a high level
that it was almost falling into the category of
"You can't get it this high with just the diet.
We need to check if you have a familial gene
for hypercholesterolemia".
If I had a patient my age walked in with that cholesterol,
I would have a very serious conversation
about genetic testing.
My number, my LDL cholesterol was 185.
Getting into the 190's is like,
potentially have a heart attack at age 40
with no symptoms, bad.
And I don't want to have a heart attack.
I don't want to die.
It was a brutal wake-up call for me.
The general goal is we want to get
the LDL cholesterol below a hundred.
So in going back to see what I was doing,
I realized I developed some really bad habits
and they're bad habits
that I want to highlight with you today
because it goes to argue the point
that weight is not the single determinant
of your health status.
I was not eating a lot of calories during the day.
Therefore my weight was okay,
but my cholesterol markers were terrible
because of the type of foods I was consuming.
Here's how a typical day went.
I would wake up, not eat anything.
I'm a big fan of intermittent fasting.
Don't have much of an appetite in the morning.
So then I would continue along with my day till lunchtime,
where I would have a salad.
And then came dinner time,
I was still working cause I work really late hours
where it would be like 10, 11, 12 am.
And I'm done with work, but I'm starving.
And I worked out in the morning.
So I burned like 800 calories.
I need to consume some serious calories right now
in order to not lose weight and keep some muscle on.
So what I ended up doing was binge eating late at night,
really low quality foods
and extra cheese pizza with pepperoni on it.
I would take it to the face.
A cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, nuggets,
or some kind of like crispy shrimp.
So for the day I only consume like 22, 2300 calories
burned 800 in the morning.
I was good. My body was looking great.
Like my six-pack started even coming in,
but my cholesterol levels
were quietly going through the roof.
Because I was consuming a lot of saturated fat,
a lot of fried foods, unhealthy foods,
a lot of red meat, giant steak,
like it was way too much red meat.
Because I need someone to be objective,
I reached out to my good friend, Dr. Danielle Belardo,
who's a well-trained cardiologists,
knows everything about cholesterol, lowering cholesterol,
and I knew she could be of help.
- [Dr. Danielle Belardo] LDL Cholesterol is the actual,
most important cholesterol that we look at
with regards to cardiac risk.
Even though I think you may have possibly
some genetic components of high cholesterol,
I do think that there's a lot you can do to reduce your LDL
with diet significantly.
- Dr. Belardo gave me three tips
on how to lower my LDL cholesterol
from least to most important that I follow.
Third is to decrease dietary cholesterol.
- [Dr.Danielle Belardo] Reducing the amount of any sort of,
kind of processed foods, junk foods,
refined carbohydrates, that can make a huge difference.
- Second, is to bump up my fiber intake
to about 60 grams of fiber per day. Not an easy task.
- [Dr. Danielle Belardo] Fiber only exists in plants.
And so by eating more plant-based foods,
whether it be fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes
this can help reduce your cholesterol as well.
And your LDL specifically.
- And first and most important is
to decrease my saturated fat consumption.
- [Dr. Danielle Belardo] Saturated fat
we can see in both animal products and plant products.
For example, coconut oil is really high in saturated fat.
It can raise your LDL.
So dropping a saturated fat by cutting back
on red meat, butter, bacon, cheese, or high-fat dairy,
that can make a huge difference too.
- Knowing my cholesterol was so high,
I knew I needed to start eating healthier.
But eating healthy, isn't always so simple.
But it has become easier
because of my Walmart Plus membership.
You see a membership gives you free same day delivery
of fresh groceries from your local store.
They've got high quality ingredients
for your everyday cooking,
like organic fruits or vegetables
or boneless skinless chicken breasts.
With a Walmart Plus membership,
prices are the same as they are on the shelf.
So there are no markups,
which means you get the same fresh high quality food
you've come to expect from Walmart at reasonable prices.
And because of these low prices,
the Walmart Plus membership is perfect
from everything, from weekly meal planning,
to preparing seasonal dishes.
Or just filling in the gaps,
when you've unexpectedly run out of something.
And believe me, the selection is excellent.
Offering fresh fruit like these avocados,
which can lower your LDL
or plums that have a lot of fiber in them.
Something I need a lot of right now.
And once you place an order, specially trained shoppers
hand pick the freshest items,
just like they're shopping for their own family.
Organic fruits and vegetables like these tomatoes
are picked the day of the delivery,
not the day before.
So you can really see and taste the difference.
And they don't just deliver a fresh food products though,
they also deliver a lot of what you need for your home,
your family, like paper towels, beauty products,
and even my most loved sparkling water.
I just need those bubbles.
Click the link below to start your free trial now.
I was primarily now getting my protein sources
from fish as the number one source.
Plants, like beans and then chicken.
Those are like my three primary sources of protein.
When it comes to the second point of increasing fiber,
that was probably the hardest.
Not only was my GI system, kind of a mess,
Like I was bloated, having some flatulence issues.
Once my body adjusted to the huge jump in fiber content,
I started feeling a lot better
and I became more regular and all of that improved.
But how did I get there?
First, I started having to take a fiber supplement.
The reality though is even when you take a fiber supplement
twice a day, you're only increasing
your fiber intake by like five or six grams.
So I still had to find other ways to get my fiber in.
The best way that I found to get my fiber in
was through black beans.
And I like black beans.
I think they taste great.
They have some protein and the fiber content is amazing.
There's ways you can pick bean foods
that aren't actually beans.
There's ways to make your pasta to be legume based.
You drastically increase
the amount of fiber you're consuming.
I also found some fiber to-go bars,
protein bar that had some fiber in them,
that was also plant-based.
I got some freeze dried blueberries and raspberries,
which have a great amount of fiber in them.
Over the next month,
cause it's been about a month now, following this,
I will say certain changes became visible quickly.
First, I actually lost 10 to like 12 pounds.
I wasn't intending to lose the weight, but I was,
and I was starting to look and feel better.
I feel more energized when I wake up in the mornings,
my stomach isn't as bloated.
I don't feel as full,
like nasty full throughout the day,
but it's also made a big difference
in how I perform in everyday tasks in life.
But the benefit that I'm doing for my health
by eating this way is huge.
The raspberries and blueberries, I'm eating,
don't just have fiber,
they have vitamins and minerals in them.
The beans that I'm consuming are good for my heart.
There's so much other added value in eating this way,
that goes just past the cholesterol point,
like it really woke me up to the mistakes
that I was making in my dietary habits.
And this goes to show two things.
One, that just because you're a doctor,
or you're an expert in something,
doesn't mean you're always making
the right choices for yourself.
Doctors are probably the biggest hypocrites.
And second,
that despite being in a healthy weight
and having nearly a six pack, I was unhealthy.
Our health goes past our weight.
All right, it's been a couple of days.
I got my test results back.
I needed to see that my total cholesterol would go down.
And by changing my lifestyle,
I know that if my total cholesterol goes down,
it's because the LDL went down,
which is the bad cholesterol.
And it worked.
My total cholesterol number totally went down
and it went down significantly in just five short weeks.
Initially my total cholesterol, 265.
Now 217.
If I check this three months later,
it probably be even below 200,
which is ideally where we want it to be.
So now I have to keep my cholesterol low
and healthy by continuing this lifestyle.
That doesn't mean I won't occasionally indulge in some pizza
or burgers or like chicken nuggets or something,
but I've learned to love fiber rich foods.
I've learned to incorporate
more plant-based foods in my diet.
And frankly, I feel like my palate has evolved.
It's like a Pokemon.
Now you know, my cholesterol score,
but do you know my sister?
Click here for a special video about us.
Huge thanks to Walmart Plus for sponsoring this video.
Don't forget to click that link in the description
and start your free trial now.
As always stay happy and healthy.