Eight years ago, I had to stop drinking because I couldn’t be trusted to consume alcohol with anything that resembled responsibility. I’ve also been diagnosed with depression, for which my doctor has prescribed a daily combination of citalopram (Celexa) and bupropion (Wellbutrin).

My cholesterol, though? I’d really rather not discuss that. I certainly don’t want you to know mine was measured at more than 300 mg per deciliter back in April.

The level of shame I feel about this surprises me for a couple of reasons.

First, I tend to find humor in the things other people would consider embarrassing. I realize that my mistakes — even galling ones — are part of the experience of being a human being on this planet.

Second, high cholesterol isn’t all that uncommon. An estimated 10% of American adults fall into this category. Not only that, but unlike many chronic health conditions, high cholesterol can be addressed in fairly straightforward fashion with things such as exercise, diet and medication to reduce the risk of heart disease.

And yet I feel not just guilty, but ashamed to such a degree that it’s actually gotten in the way of me addressing the problem.

This is not due to a fear of doctors or needles or doctors who poke me with needles. I get my teeth cleaned regularly, haven’t had a cavity in more than 20 years and underwent a colonoscopy two years ago.

My cholesterol, however, has become something of a sticking point. It epitomizes what I see as a lifelong trend of neglecting my body.

I’ve found when I drag the things that I’m ashamed of out into the daylight and explain why they make me feel inadequate, it actually makes me more confident in myself.

Over the years, I have attributed this problem to a variety of things:

• My focus on my job and pleasing my bosses.
• My ignorance of basic nutrition.
• My lack of self-discipline when it comes to regulating my intake of sugar.

I should know better than to take my body for granted. My father was a strong and active man, who worked as a logger in the woods of southern Oregon. He suffered from periodic fevers and intense soreness through his 20s and was eventually diagnosed with a rare form of rheumatoid arthritis. An array of treatments proved ineffective in slowing the disease. He died at the age of 38, his body having eroded to the point where it was difficult for him to leave the house during the final year of his life.

The fact that my father suffered from something he had no control over makes me feel even more guilty about not taking better care of the only body I’ll ever have.

If awareness were the same thing as action, I’d have this problem licked. Unfortunately, I found that this is an issue I can’t think my way out of. I need to act my way into better habits.

I know what I need to do. I own three different heart-healthy cookbooks steeped in Mediterranean flavors and ingredients.I should stay away from pork and beef and bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. I need to get back on the statin I was first prescribed in 2021 when my cholesterol was almost as high as it is now.

I took action then. I started exercising daily, improved my diet and within six months, my levels were back within the normal range. Then I stopped being so diligent. My weight went up and I delayed going back to the cardiologist. I told myself that I knew what I needed to do. I just needed to resume doing it. The problem is that I would often say this while finishing a bag of potato chips or scooping a second serving of ice cream, vowing to implement the changes starting tomorrow.

This is a fairly common trap, which I learned about while reading Katy Milkman’s book, How to Change. Milkman is a behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, and her book lays out a human tendency to overestimate our ability to exercise self-control in pursuit of a long-term goal while simultaneously underestimating how likely we are to surrender to immediate temptations. The combination often sinks our attempts to change something.

“People have a remarkable ability to ignore their own failures,” Milkman writes. “Even when we flounder again and again, many of us manage to maintain a rosy optimism about our ability to do better next time rather than learning from our past mistakes.”

Milkman outlines a variety of strategies that can be deployed to nudge ourselves toward making the changes we know are in our best interest.

One is breaking long-term goals into smaller steps.

So, instead of thinking about types of food I will need to eat for the rest of this year, I made an appointment with that cardiologist I hadn’t seen for three years. I got my blood drawn, had an echocardiogram and was prescribed a statin.

Another tactic is a commitment device. This is a term scientists like Milkman came up with to describe something that will reduce individual freedom in service of a greater goal.

Promising your boss that you’ll finish a work project ahead of schedule is an example of a commitment device. So is an automatic 401(k) contribution or promising your spouse you’ll do all the cleaning for a month if you ever forget to take out the garbage again.

This column is my commitment device. I’ve found when I drag the things that I’m ashamed of out into the daylight and explain why they make me feel inadequate, it actually makes me more confident in myself.

Talking openly about my drinking problem was something that helped solidify my sobriety, and discussing my mental health has helped me to recognize that the emotional dips I experience won’t last forever.

Given all that, it seems kind of silly for me to be hung up on my cholesterol, but that’s exactly what has happened these past couple of years.

Perhaps talking about it will make it more manageable or maybe it will create a little more pressure for me to follow through on my intentions. At the very least it has forced me to lay out a straight-forward plan of what to do next.

After all, I know what I should be doing. I just need to get busy doing it.