hot dogs, baseball games and your cholesterol.

I spent the day yesterday with an R.D. in Cardiac rehab. Moore's Cardiac Rehab program shares a building with the hospital's fitness center, which is actually a very nice facility. I showed up with the rest of the Cardiac Rehab team: a nurse, an exercise physiologist, an M.D. and the R.D. early in the a.m. to get ready for the first shift of participants to show up at 8am. When these referred clients show up, their blood pressures are taken, BS's are taken if they're diabetic, and they hook themselves up to a portable heart monitor if their level requires them too. Then group warm up time takes place, followed by closely supervised aerobic exercise tailored to each individual. During this exercise period, the second group of participants will show up, and the R.D. I was with will do some one-on-one counseling with pts. It was neat to see the med team interact with the clients by name and know their stories. It was definitely a different dynamic than what you see in the hospital, for sure. At one point during of the overlaps with one group leaving and another showing up, the R.D. told me not to mind the chaos. I thought to myself, wow, this is actually pretty tame compared to how I feel in the hospital sometimes! On another note though, I had the opportunity to talk with one of the program participants, and he was such a fan of the program. In fact, for each of the classes taught by the R.D., the man's wife would come in too and join him and they would sit next to each other and ask the R.D. questions. In general, this program has a really high retention rate, and it really does get results. Most clients finish the program having met their goals of losing/maintaining/gaining wt, exercising 3x week, improving their eating habits, etc. The program lasts 12 wks, and meets 3x/wk, so the participants really get to know their group's members. It almost seemed like a social club at some points. While one group was getting their BP's checked, one of the men was pointing and laughing at a group of three men sitting side by side making jokes at each other...he was calling them the three stooges, and I'm not gonna lie, they could have been!

Anyway, midday the R.D. gave a class on Cholesterol & Dietary Fats. There was a really great turnout, and the participants would ask questions throughout the presentation/talk. Near the end of the presentation one of the men speaks up and says he used to be the poster child for junk food since apparently he ate really poorly before his cardio event. He shared that he had only eaten 3 hot dogs within the past 2 months, and he was so proud. He then said that his doctor told him he could eat hot dogs when he was at the baseball game (I don't know what kind of advice that is) and he continued without skipping a beat: "so I'm going to buy season tickets!" The room erupted in laughter. He was kidding, really, but it was cute to see all these old folks having a good laugh about their new food habits and such. I was impressed with the degree of self-motivation present in these people, I guess because I have gotten mixed reviews about outpt rehab experiences.

I'll be spending one more day in cardiac rehab, so we'll see how things go.