In my last post, I was riding high on hitting the 10% clinical weight loss milestone and finishing my first 36-hour fast since the flu. I thought I was back on track. But as it turns out, the ‘Machine’ had one more lesson for me this weekend.
While my flu was gone, the fainting spells weren’t. I was regularly checking my blood pressure, and on Saturday morning, I hit another snag. A quick check of my blood pressure revealed the startling truth: my standing BP had cratered to 82/56. My heart was racing at 105 bpm just to keep me upright. For those not familiar with BP readings, a normal, healthy BP is typically around 120/80!!! The reason I was on medication for hypertension (high blood pressure) is that, 3 years ago, my BP had skyrocketed to 206/112! Now I’d gone the other way entirely. Low blood pressure is like a hydraulic pump with a leak – and my blood pressure was barely enough to keep me upright.
It became clear that even after halving my Losartan, my body was still over-medicated for my new, lighter weight. It was now the weekend so I couldn’t talk to my GP so it was clear I’d have to either tough out the weekend mostly horizontal to prevent any risks of fainting, or take drastic action myself.
Since I’ve been ill for a week, I’ve been absolutely chomping at the bit to get back to my exercise regimen, and obviously, this was simply not an option with such instability in my blood pressure. Running would almost certainly lead to me fainting. Swimming…well, let’s not even contemplate that!
I took a long look at my medication. One of the meds I’m on, 2.5mg of Indapamide, is a diuretic whose main role is to reduce overall blood volume by encouraging more frequent urination. But given my increase in exercise and lower weight, the reality is that this was flushing out electrolytes along with water, notably potassium and magnesium, which are essential to maintain pressure.
I had to make an ‘executive decision’: I paused the Indapamide entirely.
The results over the last 48 hours have been nothing short of a revelation. By Sunday evening, my standing BP had climbed back to a rock-solid 118/77. The ‘haze’ had lifted, my seated readings were perfect at 117/75, and my resting pulse was a calm, efficient 63 bpm. It was still dropping during my standing BP test – but only to 91/70. That said, my heart rate was rushing up to 103 bpm in order to support the extra effort of pumping my blood around my system as I stood up.
But this morning – Monday – things were completely fine! My seated blood pressure was 115/79 with a heart rate of 61bpm, but standing saw no drop in my BP At all – if anything a slight rise, no doubt caused by the reflex of a system that has become used to having to work harder to pump blood around a taxed machine – my standing BP was – 118/77 with only a jump to 77bpm!! So it was clear that standing up was no longer stressing my system!
It’s a strange irony of this journey: sometimes you struggle because you’re failing, but sometimes you struggle because you’re winning. My body has changed so fundamentally in the last two months that the very drugs keeping me alive through 2025 were becoming a dangerous liability in January 2026!
Obviously, I do NOT recommend making changes to prescribed medications without discussing with your GP – but in this instance, I knew exactly what the problem was and what my medication did, and had researched potential side effects of not taking my Indapamide. Since it was only a diuretic, the worst case was some water retention and my blood pressure going back up, but obviously the latter was the intended effect, and I’ve been checking my BP twice a day so I wasn’t too concerned about the risks.
I’m now looking forward to getting back to the pool tonight for my first swim in over a week. I’ve been fasting again today but I am very conscious that fasting also can lower blood pressure, so I’ll be monitoring through today and if there’s any sign of low blood pressure, or a drastic change when standing up, then I’ll break my fast a couple of hours before swimming.
I’ve subsequently messaged my GP this morning with an update on what I did and why, and a request to make this change official – I now have a follow-up appointment booked tomorrow evening to discuss.
But as far as I’m concerned, it’s a huge win, and a really profound step toward my goal of being once again medication-free.
I’m not just ‘dieting’; I’m recalibrating a complex machine. And tonight, that machine is finally ready to get back to exercise with my first swim in over a week!
Leave a Reply