My Journey To Better Health, Pt. 2

"Check yourself before you wreck yourself"

My first step on my new weight loss journey was to learn what condition I was really in. As I was saying in my last post as the fall turned into winter I was becoming more and more tired and lacked the energy to just do normal day to day things. I was like Eeyore from the Winnie the Pooh stories, LOL. Of course my over active imagination went into high gear thinking of all the things that could be wrong with me. Did I have Diabetes? Or maybe my iron levels were just low? So as soon as my medical insurance became active I scheduled an appointment with my Dr.
He ordered a whole panel of lab work to check for diabetes, my cholesterol levels, my kidney function, my thyroid function and all my vitamin levels. Everything came back perfectly normal, with one exception. My vitamin D levels were really low. "Vitamin D, really?" I thought "I take a vitamin D supplement almost every day". The Dr, suggested that I up my supplements to 2,000 IU's a day and make sure I take it every day. I did and after the first week I was feeling really good, but would still start feeling tired mid day. So, I decided to up my supplement to 3,000 IUs, plus the 800 in my daily vitamins. This made the hugest difference! Right away I started being more active. Seriously, the second day of taking the 3,800 IUs I was running around the backyard playing soccer with the boys. Something I hadn't done in over a year. I'm sure it didn't hurt that by this time the sun had finally started coming out and the weather was perfect for playing outdoors.
I learned online that vitamin d deficiency is a very serious problem that can lead to the bone disease Rickets, because without vitamin d your body can not absorb all the calcium it needs. Because we live in an area with low sun exposure (Did you know Alaska gets more sun than Western Washington?), I don't drink milk and was spending most of my time indoors through the fall and winter I wasn't getting all the natural vitamin d that my body needed. Thankfully it didn't effect me in a way that would have lasting consequences, like bone damage.
Hearing that I was perfectly healthy was such a relief! Now I just needed to make positive changes to my diet and lifestyle to keep everything that way!