Column Healthy Fats

Hi There,
Four and a half months ago I was overweight by about 13 kilos and had my blood and general condition checked. I went to the doctor and they took my blood, analyzed my blood pressure and tested sugar and other substances that were floating around in my body. I don’t like this; surely not when they poke a needle in you and have you pee in a cup. Then ask you to take off your shirt and pants and then you stand there on a scale, they measure your height, blow up a thing around your arm and listen to the blood flow… Well anyway, I got through it. Oh yes, I forgot, they also stick these electrodes on you to listen to your blood flow and heart beat… Very unpleasant as I have a hairy chest and these things had to be stuck on there with sticky tape, … and pulled off again too, leaving me with about four epilated areas on my chest. Ok, whatever.
Anyway, that was that. For the outcome, quite good on first sight, age: 33, length, 175, weight, 93, ouch!…there the problems started as per the body mass index calculation she did I should be ideally weighing 77 kilos, shoe size; 42, 5, blood pressure; 125 over 84; “that’s a bit on the high side Mr. Liekens”, “OK, go on”, “urine shows a little sugar” and the blood we will have analyzed by tomorrow, why don’t you give us a call tomorrow?” “OK”
There I was, overweight with too much sugar in my pee. What next?
I go home and was very tempted to have a big steak in the café with a load of French fries and béarnaise sauce and maybe a beer or two, just to muster me up… I didn’t, I controlled the urge and had a green leafy salad with olive oil. I thought that by eating one nice salad my problems would be solved… my God, did I not know how much pain was standing in front of me!
The next day; call the doctor: “Mr. Liekens, you have too much cholesterol and your sugar values in the blood are also too high for your age…, other fats in the blood indicate you have too many saturated fats floating around in there…” “Euhm, OK, Can you send me a mail on that, so I can see these things on paper? “ The same hour I got an email from my doctor with the results of my blood.
Cholesterol, HDL, LDL, triglycerides, glucose, my, my my… what’s all that? In a later conversation with the doctor she explained me a bit what all that was about and she wanted to know if I needed drugs for the high cholesterol like in pills and tablets and the likes, I declined. She also told me that I was part of the fast growing group, as per the statistics these people make, of young adults (between 30 and 40) that suffer from high blood pressure and too high blood fats, cholesterol,…by long I was not listening to her anymore and I thanked her and hung up: I HAD BECOME PART OF A STATISTIC!
Not only was I fat but I also had too much blood fats, from the wrong kind, in my blood.
A statistic…! Darn!
And this for a guy that would do sports every day in his adolescence years, for a person that had, one of the best upbringings a kid can get with wholesome good food 3 times a day on the table, I would drive my push bike to school 10 kilometers up and down every day and for the rest did everything with that bike. At 16 (legal age in Belgium to drive a moped) all my friends got Vespas, I got new tires on my bike… I was the first in a competition in Dubai “the Game” it was called it was like a trip around the world but then with fitness machines, I went to the gym every day there, in China too, in the hotel gym; I ran flat out the 10 km in 50 minutes… and now this…a statistic…
What the hell had gone wrong? Where did my de-motivation and my intake of fat, sugar come from, I’m a chef for Christ sakes! I know what is in food, what is good and bad for you! Had I, myself become victim of the food industries indoctrinating game of marketing products that are bad for you? Or was I just over doing it on certain fields and under-doing it on others?
What had gone wrong? And, more important, did I really know or do I really know what is in the food I eat?
Do we all know what’s inside the things we put in our bodies…?
Well, to my astonishment I DIDNT!
Then and there in my office in the kitchen down in the bellies of the hotel, I decided to do something about it! And That I want to share with you! What I did, ate, read and contributed to the life of my friends and loved ones. As for myself, I lost 13 kilos (and counting) in 4 months and I run again the 10 kilometers!
These letters will be informative and fun and I will as much as possible refer to as much works, books and websites so as for yourself to go and visit them and reed what I have read in order for you to make up your own opinion in whether you want or want not to change your eating and living habits!