How’s everybody doing out there? Looking forward to the weekend I’ll bet. Me too, but I won’t be touching alcohol. No siree, not a drop of the stuff. You see, I’ve had two wonderful things happen to me this week and I don’t want to sabotage either of them.

Yesterday, I got my first Slimmer of the Month award at Slimming World. I’ve now lost a total of 12 pounds in weight and I’m starting to notice in both how better my clothes are fitting and also in my breathing, which is continually improving.

Before Slimming World I would run out of breath at merely the thought of climbing a flight of stairs. Indeed, I would shun any building that was not either a bungalow or didn’t have a lift – or at least an escalator! Getting dressed in the morning left me gasping and even the lightest of exercise would have me retching for air.

I would even get out of breath putting the kettle on – honestly!

In fact, my breathing was becoming such a problem that my GP thought it was heart related and put me on aspirin, gave me a GTN spray just in case, and made me an appointment at the cardiology department of our local hospital. I thought to myself, “Oo-err, perhaps its time to take decisive action on this.” And I did, I signed up for Slimming World and things are going great.

Now, about the other wonderful thing that happened; and it’s regarding that cardiology appointment.

On Tuesday morning, bright and early, my incredibly supportive wife, the ever and always lovely Ange, drove me over to the hospital where I underwent an echo stress test on my ticker.

In layman’s terms an echo stress test is where they use drugs (legal ones) to make the heart beat a lot faster so that they can take pictures of it under duress. To anyone who has never had one I can tell you that it’s not something I’d recommend because it’s an absolutely bloody terrifying experience. You can feel your own heart going like a road drill and the blood literally “thumps” in your ears; kind of like sticking your head in Lemmy’s bass bin, which I once did. Not pleasant at all.

But it didn’t last too long and it was then that the good news came. The doctor announced that there was no trace of angina and that apart from a little calcification around one of the valves my blood pump was in pretty good shape for a man of my overwhelming girth! I could scarcely believe it gentle reader. He told me that my heart was good for another 20 years if I lost a lot of weight and behaved myself in all things dietary.

I’ll be honest with you, the test did leave me completely exhausted and with the driest cotton mouth I can ever recall having, but that wore off and the weird thing is that I think the test has actually had a most beneficial effect on my heart. At one point during the test my bpm was 140 and my blood pressure was 215 over 98. That’s a tad high.

But I really do think it’s kind of given my heart a workout of sorts because I am noticing a definite change in how I feel overall. Its as if the blood is flowing more efficiently around my body. Truthfully, I’m not making that up. There’s a change.

So no, I won’t be drinking this weekend. I do not want to undo the good that I’ve achieved so far but instead need to build on it. Who knows, there may be other Slimmer of the Month awards down the line.

One last thought on alcohol actually. My brother-in-law, Malcolm, who is 80, came to see us last year and he told us that although he’d like a glass of Guinness he no longer has it simply because he can’t process it anymore. Now, I did have a bottle of the old vino last weekend and I have to tell you that whilst I didn’t have a hangover (because I never do) my body did feel somewhat gripey (is that an actual word?) I felt sluggish and rubbishy on the inside and I think I’m starting to get a bit like Malcolm – I can’t process the bloody stuff anymore.

In conclusion, I still live with physical and mental health challenges but shortness of breath is no longer one of them and I’m hoping that morbid obesity will soon become a part of my past and not a precursor to my future.

Have a great weekend x