Cholesterol lab results

Things are going better with the regulation of my blood sugar today.  I am writing everything down, including the food I'm eating and my blood sugar readings.  This is helping me see how many carbs I need to add per meal or where I need to pull back.  It's a lot of work, but obviously it's well worth it if it keeps me on an even keel.  I had no episodes today of extreme lows in my blood sugar that comes with sweating, disorientation or any of those other symptoms I have been having.

Yesterday I had a lipid panel done at the Kaiser lab and got the results.  This lipid panel shows me how I've been doing with my cholesterol since starting the Optifast program up to this point.  So here are the results:

I went to my first Optifast meeting on February 6th and then started the products the week after that.  So the first result is right before starting the program and the second column is where I stand right now. When you go on the program, they have you stop all of your medications.  At the time, I was taking high cholesterol medication (along with high blood pressure medication) so this is without that medication.  The things that were most striking to me was the change in my good cholesterol level increasing from 53 to 77 and my triglyceride level being slashed in half from 112 to 54.  That's pretty striking.

I need to see this as a reminder of where I've been and how far I have come because I have a tendency to dwell on what's left and not what's gone.  A friend of mine pointed that out when she was having lunch with me today. She told me that I need to remember how significantly my health has changed and how striking the change really is.  Thank you, dear friend, because I need to always be reminded of that.  I'm a visual learner and this is a way I can see my progress.