Reframing Failure: My cholesterol wake up call

Six months ago, I set out with the clear goal of eating better, losing weight, and feeling better in my body. I did the work, and I was sure the numbers would reflect it. But they didn’t. They were higher. A punch to the gut moment. In this episode of Stand Up and Redo, I’m talking about that moment and how it made me pause and rethink everything. Not as a defeat, but as feedback. Sometimes failure isn’t a final verdict, it’s just an invitation to adjust. I’m sharing how I’m choosing to stand back up, refine the plan and use the strength and tools I have today to try again. Because the real win isn’t a perfect number, it’s the resilience to learn, adapt, and try again. If you’ve ever given your best and felt let down by the outcome, this episode is your reminder. We get to redefine failure, and we get to rewrite the story.

#cholesterol #failure #rewriteyournarrative #over50 #standupandredo

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome to Stand Up and Redo. And I am ecstatic that you are here. I had a bit of a setback in a goal. It's something I want to talk about. I want to talk about failure. I'm laughing about it because I gotta keep a good attitude about this one. It's so silly. And you know, my life is so good. And to even look at this as a negative is probably wrong when there's so many other things that people suffer from. But I failed with my cholesterol. I failed so bad. I got my recheck, and my cholesterol overall is higher. My HTLs are higher and my LDLs are higher. I'm sorry, my HDLs are lower and my LDLs are higher. And I have been working hard on my diet. I lost some weight. I changed how I eat. I've even added like stuff. I've added oatmeal. I've added um, which I don't even like to eat oatmeal every morning. I prefer a nice big omelet. I've added um red rice yeast or red yeast rice, all this stuff to my diet, thinking that I was making myself more healthy. And with all honesty, I'll talk about this. I'll explain. Let me explain. I'm very goal-oriented and I'm very strategic-minded. And my idea when something goes wrong is to fix it. So when I got this recheck and I got the results yesterday, I took a dive into being beating myself up, feeling like a failure, and analyzing and analyzing it. And, you know, you can argue about cholesterol. I know my one friend will argue with me over and over about how it's not as important as your overall health. You know, stop looking at the numbers. Think about how you feel and how you look and the healthy lifestyle you're living. And I know cholesterol has a lot to do with genetics too. I do know that for sure. And I understand that. So I'm not gonna beat myself up like crazy, but I am gonna strategize and I am gonna lower it. And I'm gonna do it without taking medication because I if I needed to take medication and it was so, so high, I would not push that away. But I don't want to take, don't want to take medication. I want to change my lifestyle even more. So I was like analyzing this last six months. You know, I was making videos and bragging about what I'm eating, and I can tell you I am eating fairly healthy, but I do uh pop in a lot of sugar now and then. As a matter of fact, right the night before I went to get my cholesterol, I was really stressed. I drove home, um, didn't get home till midnight on a six-hour drive from work, and then on the way home, I was like tired, so I was like pulling over to get little snacks along the way, and I was eating chocolate chip cookies and chocolate to keep myself awake, not so healthy, but that's that might be why my triglycerides were so high, so I'm gonna try not to think about those because they were like they were really high. I'm like, what the heck? But either way, I am gonna um I am going to refocus and make a new plan. And the thought I had about this whole cholesterol thing is the numbers really didn't change much, right? I mean, my cholesterol went up three points, my triglycerides uh went up the highest of anything, my LDLs went up a couple points, and my HDLs went down a couple points. So it wasn't drastic. So my thought is this why didn't it change if I changed my diet? You know, I stopped drinking as much alcohol, I did stop eating as much eating sugar. Um, you know, I eat sugar occasionally, and I really started eating like oatmeal, red onions, eggplant, avocados, lots of fish, less meat, and less dairy. So my diet really changed over six months, but my exercise also changed. I was lifting weights like two to three times a week in that time period six months ago. I was actually running and doing some really intense, high-intensity aerobic exercise. Where the last six months I switched that. I started doing these like casual walks, not lifting weights at all. I do do like a plank every morning and I do yoga. That is not anything intense, though. So I have changed the way I work out. So in my heart, I'm like, wow, imagine if I didn't change my diet and I had stopped working out with intensity, my cholesterol would even be higher. So I'm trying to look at it as a positive that it's the same as it was six months ago, essentially. But I also want to change it still again. So I'm gonna start over again and I'm gonna reanalyze. Well, I already analyzed as you heard. I analyzed and analyzed and analyzed and thought about this and thought about this and thought about this. My life is a lot better right now than it was six months ago as far as stress levels. I don't feel as stressed as I did six months ago. I feel like I'm getting a good work-life balance in place. I feel like I've um learned, I'm healed actually, healed from some hurts, or have healed to a point where I feel really peaceful in my heart. So that's what I can look forward to. I feel more at peace. I feel in a better grounded place than I did six months ago. I'm eating better and I've already created really healthy eating habits that'll stick with me. The oatmeal is a struggle, I have to say. I do travel with it. I've been putting flaxseed in it. I'm gonna start doing smoothies a little more to make life a little more exciting. But um food-wise, I could always cut out sugar completely, right? You can always like decrease your sugar. But sometimes I find joy in sugar. So I'm gonna still eat an occasional ice cream, I'm gonna eat a piece of chocolate now and then. I'm not gonna obsess on changing my diet much more than I've changed it now. Because it's good. It's really good. If anything, I'll watch my calorie intake and decrease my overall calorie consumption. But not the food I'm eating. The food I'm eating is really good. Okay, so next. The next six months, the change is gonna be weights. I have to get into the weight room, have to start lifting. And the thing I'm gonna do is I always think lifting, like you have to get in there three times a week. You have to be really, really um hard on yourself and give yourself this huge difficult workout. And I'm gonna stop thinking that way. I'm gonna start thinking this way. I'm gonna do two sessions a week, and I'm gonna not beat myself up. I'm gonna do a good, you know, a good focused, purposeful weightlifting workout, but I'm also not gonna go all out extreme balls to the wall with working out. I'm gonna just make it part of a healthy lifestyle that I know I can continue doing through my whole life. So that's what I'm gonna do this next six months. And then the intensity of my workouts, I really, really miss actually riding my bike 20 miles all the time. And I miss running in the woods. But I also know time is hard, like time is what is hard for me to do that. So I have to figure out how to do some shorter intensity, harder cardio workouts. Like, did you ever hear of a fartlic? I think that word is so hysterical. But when you do fartlicks, you actually run between like telephone pulls, you sprint, walk, sprint, walk, sprint, walk. I'm gonna try to do more, I guess, the the cardio workout that you know kind of works on your VO2 max. I'm gonna try to do the intense um cardio in a shorter amount of time. And I'm gonna try to make that my new healthy habit because even though I love the 20-mile bike rides, the 30, 40 mile bike rides, I really love them and I miss them so much. But my lifestyle right now is really not conducive to that. Like my lifestyle is working and traveling a lot for work, and I have to be honest with that. It's not that easy to pump out a 20, 30, 40 mile bike ride when you're in a location that you don't even know what the roads are like, you don't know if there's a berm on the highway, you don't know where is safe to ride on a gravel road when you're like six hours from home. So even if I could pack my bike and take it, which I could, I think I could do that. I feel like I could make that happen. I feel like when I get to places, I don't always know if it's safe to ride my bike there. So I have to be realistic on changing the way I do things. And I guess when I'm talking to you in this podcast, that's kind of what I want to make it all about. Not about my cholesterol, but about failure and about reanalyzing what you've done wrong. Re well, I don't know, it's not a word reanalyzing. I want to talk about looking at what you failed at and trying to figure out how you can make it better by using what you have, not beating yourself up if you can't do what you want to do. Like I have to be honest, I want to go for these long bike rides. I want to run on a trail that I don't even know where it is in the middle of nowhere. But I have to be realistic and I have to be safe. And I can't act like because I can't do what I want to do, that I'm gonna fail. I can't. I just have to reanalyze and figure out how to make the situation better and change things, right? Like if you can't do something suddenly, you have to learn to re-evaluate. I always think that way. I remember getting in the car accident and being in traction and not feeling like a failure. I remember thinking, okay, I'm gonna get better, but I'm gonna have to exercise in a different way. So I would lay in bed and I would do these purposeful, like um, you know, where you squeeze your muscles and you release, squeeze, release, squeeze, release. I just remember thinking, Petra, you've got to get in shape and it's gonna be different. You can't, you're stuck here. You gotta make the best of the situation. And I'm not saying that you should leave yourself stuck in horrible, horrible situations, but what I'm saying is you should take what situation uh what situation you are in and work it to make it the best possible outcome. And I like this podcast a lot. I like the fact that this moment I'm talking about standing up and redoing, and I'm using my cholesterol as an example, which is such a silly thing for me to be obsessive on my cholesterol. It really is because I am a really healthy person. God has given me the ability to exercise. He's giving me a healthy body that has overcome a lot of crazy stuff. And you know, I always tell you about the positive things, but there's a lot of things going on I don't talk about just because it's not what I want to obsess on. But I can tell you this podcast, this episode right now, a stand up and redo, is one of my favorites because it's telling you that yes, when you feel like you failed, when you feel trapped, when you feel like you can't get out of a situation, look at it again. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Take what you can do and make the best of it, right? Take what you have, take what tools you have at that moment, and work them and make things better. And that's my stand up and redo. Thank you.