Shane Life

I was over at my brother’s site last night and saw the sidebar image he had from when I bought a cow last January.

Part of the deal with buying the cow was that by not eating the red meat, I intended to lower my cholesterol. By combining the lack of red meat with my daily oatmeal, I hoped that by altering my diet, I could bring down my HDL level.

Well, that didn’t work. So my doctor put me on a statin (yay Zocor!) and told me to take it for 2 months and then get tested again. My cholesterol wasn’t totally off the charts, but it was 203 with only about 1/5 of that being good cholesterol. I took the medicine for two months, but then forgot to schedule my follow-up appointment. The doctor gave me another 2 months of medicine and I got my appointment scheduled, complete with the 12-hour fast beforehand.

I got my results back after a few days to some fascinating news: my cholesterol had dropped 60 points.

You read that right: 60 POINTS.

Apparently the statin did what not eating red meat and having oatmeal everyday could not. All 60 points that I shaved off my cholesterol were of the HDL persuasion. Awesome.

It’s a fitting close to this weekend.

Saturday turned out to be awesome. I woke up at 5 with the rain and lightning and was convinced we wouldn’t be able to golf. However, with some prayers, the weather cleared and by 10:00, the only thing we had to worry about at Royal Meadows was the wind.

Golfing was a lot of fun and then we joined some others for an 18-person poker tournament. But in order to give myself a challenge, I grilled 40+ cheeseburgers so Jake’s Man Day attendants would have something to nosh on.

The rest of Man Day was a blast. I finally had to call it a night at 12:30 shortly after I got everyone to the Brooksider. I hope everyone had fun.

Yesterday was a little more relaxed. We went to church, made lunch and I took a nice long nap. Last night, we spent some time at a friends’ house in their recently redone backyard, which made me insanely jealous to redo our backyard. We lazed around, watched the pilot of Iron Chef America from a few years ago, then turned in early.

It is, after all, Red Meat Day.

We’re going over to my parents’ house today. My dad returned from Dubai on Friday in time to ask me what I wanted to have for lunch today. He went and picked up my requested steak - a ribeye from McGonigals. So I’ll finally get to have what I missed for Jake’s birthday.

Three days left until my self-imposed meat boycott is over.

For those who are new to the game, in January, I challenged my blog readers to raise $500 to buy a dairy cow from Heifer International. The catch was that if the money was all raised by the end of the month that I would swear off all red meat until Memorial Day.

It’s the home stretch. I should have made my boycott until Memorial Day weekend so I could eat it tomorrow, but it’ll be like my last big challenge. And it will be a big challenge because we have a huge weekend planned.

More on that in a bit…

When I undertook the task of raising enough money to buy a cow from Heifer International, one of the added benefits of all the do-gooding was going to be that eating less red meat was good for my rapidly increasing cholesterol (weighing in a year ago at 197).

So I thought.

Today, after my physical and subsequent lab testing I found that 4 months of eating no red meat actually managed to INCREASE my cholesterol by 6 points, bringing it over that dreaded 200 mark and bringing my doctor to prescribe Lipitor, made famous by the creepy Jarvik artificial heart guy.

I’m not thrilled about the news in the least.

After 4 full months of not eating red meat, I was expecting my doctor to say, “You’re doing great. Your cholesterol is no longer a problem.”

Not so much.

After talking it out with Alli, I’m pretty sure I know why this is: I lead a sedentary lifestyle. My life consists of getting up, showering, driving a half-hour to work, sitting at a desk all day, driving a half-hour home, and sitting all night. Occasionally (when it’s nice out), I’ll take the dog for a walk, but that’s not happening nearly enough.

In talking with my doctor, I found that I need to lose about 55 pounds to get into the “normal” range for my BMI. I’m a tall, big guy, but 55 pounds is still a lot of weight. It’s daunting, for sure. But now I know that diet alone is not going to cure my health problems. (Let it be stated that I consider myself in “okay” shape. I couldn’t run a marathon or anything, but I grew up an athlete, so the muscles are still there.)

Whatever my circumstances, something has to change. Maybe this latest bit of news will be the kick in the pants I need to work harder.

Back in January, I challenged my readers to help me raise enough money to purchase a dairy cow from Heifer International. If I raised the money by the end of January, I promised to not eat any red meat until Memorial Day.

This may have been a bit over-zealous, but I’ve stuck with it for the last 106 days. 42 days left.

I’m excited because next week, I’m going to the doctor for a physical and I’m planning on getting my cholesterol checked. Prior to the Red Meat Experiment, I had received a note from my doctor that my cholesterol was too high and I needed to keep an eye on it. For the past several months, we’ve been diligent about eating food that should help with my cholesterol, specifically eating natural steel cut oats for breakfast.

With the decrease in red meat as well as other changes I’ve made, I’m looking forward to seeing the progress I’ve made. And while my weight hasn’t necessarily decreased, I am confident that my cholesterol has.

Thanks again to those of you who helped make it happen. My cholesterol thanks you, my heart thanks you, and my wife thanks you for helping me cut down my red meat intake.

Today is Jake’s birthday. His lady-love Kelly’s birthday is on Wednesday. We had a little party for them today at my parents house after church today. (Alli totally killed her sermon today, BTW. She’s a serious Rostrum Rockstar.)

Jake, in his infinite kindness, decided he wanted STEAK for his birthday. Having to look at these gorgeous steaks all day was not fun. Everything else was a lot of fun. We had a blast hanging out with the family all day, playing with the kids, playing Apples to Apples, overeating. All of it was a lot of fun.

Being with the family was fun. Watching Jake and Kelly be great parents was fun. Even the parts where the baby got scared of me and started bawling…those were even fun.

Happy birthday brother.

At least the envelope is…

So there you go. I’m not sure if I’ll receive anymore than that, but hopefully, I’ll get a picture of the cow later. But I doubt it.

Rather, WE (me and you, my readership) are the owners of a cow. I apologize for the delay. It took about a week to process some of the payments on PayPal for some reason. As more details arrive, I’ll share them, but I wanted to make sure that you all knew that I’ve gone forward and bought the cow. Now if I could just get the milk for free…

Payment Method: CREDIT

The following summarizes your order:

Total: $500.00
ID: 75592991

Thanks again to all of you that donated. You guys are awesome. It’s only 3 1/2 long months until I can eat red meat again. Man, this is going to suck.