Confronting the brutal facts

I've come to dislike books on leadership, but back when I still thought they were interesting, I read one called Good to Great by Jim Collins. It's about companies that made the leap from being good to being great and why and how that happened. Try to ignore the fact that this "greatness" was mostly associated with stock prices (offends my socialist soul:)), but there was interesting stuff in there. My favorite part was the observation that great success is often preceded by facing the "brutal facts" meaning an honest accounting of where you are.

Well today I went for a biometric screening that kicks off my A New Me program and I had to confront the truth. The truth is that after a summer of progress I have completely fallen apart until very recently. Let me share some numbers to illustrate what I learned.

On August 16th of 2011 (4.5 months ago), a similar screening showed the following:

Height - 5'8"
weight - 198 lbs
BMI    - 30 (this is obese)
Blood pressure - 139/93
Total Cholesterol - 185
HDL (Good Cholesterol) - 29
LDL (Bad cholesterol) - 128
Blood Sugar - 94

Today (1/5/12) I showed the following measurements

Height - 5'8 1/2 " ( I think they misread and meant 5"7 1/2" but I'll take it)
Weight - 204.4 (up 6.4 pounds in 4 months...)
BMI - 30.6 (more obese and I think they gave me more height than I should get)
Blood Pressure - 112/80 (my only real good news)
Total Cholesterol - 220 (Holy Crap a 35 point jump in the wrong direction)
HDL - 37 (a minor gain, but under 40 is "at-risk")
LDL - 154 (Good Lord up 26 points)
Blood Sugar - 108 (this is pre-diabetic)

I also learned that I am at 28.1% body fat.

These are my brutal facts. They make me want to wallow and whine, but mostly they tell me to get busy living or I'll soon get busy getting sick and eventually dying (to paraphrase Shawshank).

I also need to get busy learning and that's the purpose of the class I'm taking starting the 16th. I need to learn to deal with stress some other way than fast food and slothdom, and I need to learn to eat like a 41 year old man/athlete.

I won't get these screenings again for a year in this program, but they will measure my weight and body composition in 12 weeks. I promise progress by then, mostly to myself, but I'll share it all.

So those are the brutal facts of my health and I think owning them starts me moving forward. It certainly justifies a focus on health for a while, rather than work or other extraneous crap. As they say, if you don't have your health...

I wonder what brutal truths others need to face to get unstuck in their lives?