Lockdown is lifting across the country. Time to put down the snacks, turn off Netflix, get up off the couch, and get back out of the house. Time to trade in the sweatpants for the jeans. Uh oh. Snacks + TV + Couch = Jeans Don’t Fit. Oh no. Time for the dreaded DIET. Or maybe even a Lifestyle Change. But which diet to pick? There are so many out there. According to Good Housekeeping, (https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/diet-nutrition/a35217200/best-diets-2021/) the popular diet plans for 2021 so far are Mediterranean, Noom, Dash, Volumetrics, Flexitarian, and Nordic.
I am not here to recommend a diet plan. You should consult your doctor for a recommendation if you need one. What I can offer you is a way to track the effectiveness of the diet plan or lifestyle eating choice you do choose. Everyone’s body is different, and a diet plan that worked great for your friend may not work the same for you. To measure how well the plan is working for you, start by getting baseline lab work done. Our office can run a lipid panel and a sugar panel to get your starting values. After you have followed your chosen plan for a month, come back for another blood draw so the lipid and sugar panels can be run again. Then we can compare the results of the second test with the initial values to determine if your new eating habits are delivering the desired results. Not everything is visible on the outside. Skinny doesn’t necessarily mean healthy.
With the results of those blood panel tests, you will be able to make informed decisions about how well your eating habits are serving you. Perhaps you need to try a different diet altogether, or maybe you just need to tweak what you have been doing a little bit to get optimum results. Hopefully, the results will show that you are on the right track to getting healthy and back into those jeans!
As you continue on your healthy eating journey, remember you can schedule an appointment anytime for a blood draw to run another lipid panel and sugar panel to verify the inside looks as good as the outside does. Good luck on your health pilgrimage.
To get started today on your quest for healthier living, click here to schedule your baseline lab work.