Weight went from 86kg (190lb) to 73kg (160lb). Blood pressure went to 142/72. Diastolic pressure had normalized. Systolic pressure had fallen at best in line with weight loss. Excellent progress, though a bit more was still needed.
A cardiologist said the results of a CT angiogram may indicate a need for unusually aggressive drug treatment and anyway I was dangerously close to the level where drugs are used routinely. My dietary option seemed to be to try cutting coffee, wine and salt to zero. Under the circumstances I wanted a quicker solution, so I used a 14 day water fast to speed things up. Today BP is around 110/75 morning+evening average.
Now is the hardest part of a fast, the so-called re-feeding. I look forward to getting back to delicious McDougall food, and have asked for the new cookbook for Christmas, so with luck it will be in my stocking
The issue now is to keep BP down, hopefully without foregoing a few little sins like a touch of salt, or the odd espresso. Let's see.
FURTHER THOUGHTS ON DIET
While fasting I watched all the lectures on diet and fasting I could. I am open to competing dietary ideas, and there is interesting recent research around both calorie restriction and circadian rhythms. Not really tempted by the current fashion for ketogenic diets. Some people seem to do well on them, though it is early days. Anyway, a diet of pure water is ketogenic enough for me, and it is something I like to do from time to time, though for much shorter periods than this 14 day fast.
Now Paleo: I absolutely love eating blackberries straight off the briar, and blueberries & cranberries straight off the bush, which I suppose is in tune with Paleo philosophy. If Paleo is about catch your own, grow your own, gather your own, and cook your own, they have to be onto something.
You just have to cook at home, as food writer Michael Pollan explains. No more of the supermarket meat and potato pasties I used to enjoy. For example, Whole Foods is a chain of supermarkets with magnificent and very expensive food everywhere. Looking for a soup today, every single one contained rapeseed or sunflower oil. My heart sank: I might even risk it if they'd sauteed the veg in butter, but I am nervous of those industrial ingredients. No choice but to cook my own. I went to the market and bought more vegetables than I could carry for the price of two of those soups.
The McDougall approach feels right for me, and appears to be the best supported among the puzzling and contradictory dietary research, and Dr. McDougall is a particularly congenial representative of the high-carb approach, so this is where I expect to stay in dietary terms, no doubt with the odd lapse and a little fasting thrown in. So thank you Dr. McDougall and team!
