Bao-cheng worked on a construction site from the moment he left school up until his mid-30s, at which point he decided a change of career was needed and he went to evening school to complete a course in information technology and computer science. Working on the construction site had been a physically demanding job and even though Bao-cheng hadn’t eaten the healthiest of diets, his physical activity had kept him in pretty good shape. Now though, with his new career as IT support at a large investment bank, he was spending more time sitting at a desk, while still eating the same unhealthy diet.
“I found myself quite quickly putting on weight. Without the exercise that was part of the job when I worked in construction, I was struggling to motivate myself to do anything physical, not least to go for a run or go to the gym, and my diet if anything was getting worse,” Bao-cheng says. And a bigger shock was to come. “I was struggling with sleep and felt much more lethargic, so I went to see my doctor. She examined me and took my blood and quite quickly diagnosed me with type 2 diabetes. She told me I had to start taking metformin. She also told me that my diabetes diagnosis, together with my abdominal obesity and high blood fat levels meant I also had a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome. It was quite a shock.”
Bao-cheng took his doctor’s advice and embarked upon a change in his diet and the re-introduction of physical exercise, moderately at first. He soon found that the more he exercised the better he felt and before long he was burning 1200 calories per day and spending 45 mins a day walking to work and back home again rather than taking the subway.
“Getting back to physical exercise was a relatively easy thing to do and I realised how much I had missed it.” Bao-cheng says. “It was just a matter of finding time in the day to fit it in which I managed quite well. It was the changes to the diet that were more difficult and that took a lot longer. But over the course of one year, with the help of my wife, I gradually started to eat smaller portions of food and eat more fresh green vegetables and cut out the takeaways.”
Bao-cheng lost weight and began to feel much more energetic, but most significant for him was the day his doctor told him he didn’t need to take the diabetes medication anymore.
“Coming off of the medication was the biggest thing for me. Now I control my diabetes with just diet and exercise. In addition to this, after my last visit to the doctor she told me that due to my new weight and cholesterol level I have now reversed my metabolic syndrome diagnosis and risk for cardiovascular disease!”