Cardio Report Card!

Going away to a cottage for a week so I'll leave you with my report card from the 13 week rehab program. It may help some design a program for their own cardio health.

My stress test last week went very well, in fact, it couldn’t have gone better!
I was worked really hard and was on the treadmill for 9 minutes 52 seconds. My heart rate went up to 150, mind you, I was having a hard time breathing by then and was going to have to tell him to stop soon, but I so didn’t want to do that! I hung on even though I was practically running and the elevation felt very steep, probably 12 %.

The doctor said my heart was in A-1 shape and that I didn’t have any limitations, short of running marathons…big laugh! I increased my METS level (oxygen uptake into the blood with every heartbeat) from 10.2 to 11.5 throughout the course. That doesn't sound like much of an improvement and other people improved by more but they said I had a pretty good level before the heart attack, thanks to the walking I had been doing for the past 5 years. Had I not had a walking program, I might have had a heart attack 10 years earlier!

My weight is good with a BMI of 22, although BMI isn't the best way possible to measure body fat. Weighing a person under water is quite accurate, but I guess they didn't want to do that with some elderly cardiac patients!
All this good news gives me great incentive to carry on the program on my own.

Here is my prescribed program:

Warm up: 5-10 mins-easy walking and stretching
Cool Down: 5-10 mins

Frequency: aerobic endurance exercise activities lasting 15-20 minutes gradually increasing in time to a maximum of 40-60 minutes at moderate to strong effort, 3-5 days per week.

At present, I am only at about 35 minutes, 3 times a week, so I do have a long way to go yet. Some days my muscles, greatly affected from fibromyalgia, will be too sore. Some days I will be too tired. Some days I simply won’t feel well. But I know it is crucial to work at this and to watch my fat intake. I also have to watch carb intake and try my hardest to match my insulin so that my blood sugar is not too high or too low.

This will be the way it is for the rest of my life so I might as well get used to it.

Here it goes!


Mother of Invention, wearing her heart rate monitor and ready to tackle the paddleboat at the cottage!