2021 – A Turning Point

Looking through my prior posts, you will see that I am an open book and detail the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding my health journey. This post will be full of all 3, and serves as an update to bring you up to speed with what I endured in 2020, and 2021, and how it has changed my health, and life, forever.

The year 2020 was an overall terrible year for everyone. The fears from the pandemic spread and gripped the world. Panic lead to hasty precautions and quarantines, which had the side effect of wrecking havoc upon my health and weight loss progress. If you look back at prior posts through 2019, everything was going wonderfully. I had the surgery, lost a lot of fat, successfully gained muscle and was lifting weights daily, in addition to practicing Krav Maga (martial arts). Then the pandemic happened. Suddenly, I was thrust into a world where leaving the house was difficult or impossible. I was confined to a house with a wife, 3 kids, and 2 dogs. While we quickly got our fill of togetherness time and relaxation, it was more difficult to veer away and do my daily workouts. Their eating habits soon became my eating habits, and before I knew it, I was back to eating junk food on a regular basis.

At the beginning of 2020, I weighed 243 pounds. While that sounds slightly high, the majority of that was muscle. The panic set in around March 2020, and by the end of July, I weighed 263 pounds. None of that added weight was muscle, as I had completely fallen off the wagon. Later in the year, the virus positivity rate began to lower and the quarantine ended. I focused again on healthier eating, but did not resume my exercising. By December 2020, I was back down to 222, which was overall good news at the time.

As I have done repeatedly throughout my life, I lose plenty of weight until the holidays, and then I somehow think that holidays and poor eating are synonymous and I end up gaining weight. The end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 were no different. By mid February 2021, I was back up to 250 pounds. That’s an absurd amount of weight to gain for such a short amount of time. On April 22, 2021, my weight was 254 pounds and my body said “enough is enough” and my life changed forever at around 2 PM that fateful day.

I was sitting at my desk, taking a phone call from my staffing manager. We were discussing a very difficult individual and situation when rather suddenly, something in my body felt not quite right. I felt a pressure in the center of my chest, right around the middle of my sternum. It didn’t hurt, it just felt like someone was applying pressure to that location. At first, it felt like indigestion. For lunch that day, I ate some junky Mexican food so having heartburn would come as no surprise. As I usually did when I felt indigestion, I stood up and walked around my basement office. Before long, two things happened, almost simultaneously. First, both of my arms had the pins and needles feeling that one gets when their arm or leg falls asleep. I never experienced that in both arms simultaneously before, and for no apparent reason. Also, I felt amazingly fatigued just from the walking, as if I had just exercised for an hour. At this point, I knew something wasn’t quite right. Having chest pressure, numbness, and fatigue simultaneously and without explanation concerned me greatly. I could still walk, and fielded another phone call during that time period, but then decided to go to a doctor.

I told my wife to please drop me off at the hospital. I was not certain that I should have been driving under those conditions, so she agreed to take me to the hospital 10 minutes away. I went into the emergency room and relayed what I was feeling, and they did an ECG. A short while later I met with the ER doctor who said a cardiologist looked at the results and did not see anything concerning. He said that chest pains were pretty common so not to be alarmed yet. However, he wanted to be on the safe side and did a blood test of my troponin levels. Troponin is a protein that should never show up in your blood stream. If it is detected, it is a telltale sign that someone is experiencing a heart attack and that heart cell death was actively occurring. Unfortunately, it takes a fair amount of time for troponin levels to be detected, so I had to wait for about 2 hours for the results. I continued to feel pretty terrible while waiting. Technology is an amazing thing, however, because I was able to read my test results before the doctor returned in my room. I saw that my troponin levels were way above normal (which is zero). I knew at that moment, that I was actively suffering from a heart attack.

The ER doctor quickly came in and confirmed what I just discovered. Things were a blur after that. I was quickly placed into a hospital gown, shaved in several areas, had to take nitroglycerine, and signed indemnification waivers for the procedure they were about to do. I met with the man who ultimately saved my life, an interventional cardiologist who told me that I was likely experiencing a heart attack and needed heart catheterization to see what was happening, and correct the issues. I was wheeled into the lab and they began the process. The procedure took hours and they inserted 3 stents in my arteries. One artery was 100% blocked, one was 99% blocked, one was 70% blocked, one was 40% blocked. They were amazed that a non-smoker, non-diabetic individual at the age of 42 would be in such terrible cardiovascular shape. The good news is that I felt absolutely terrific after the procedure. This was a happy conclusion to a scary experience, I very well could have died. If I did not have the procedure, I absolutely would have.

I was then informed that I would have to remain in the hospital for the next few days. I received absolutely outstanding care. It also gave me plenty of time to get my thoughts and plans together. Obviously, what I had been recently doing for my health was not working. If I did not get my act together quickly, the next heart attack could very well be my last. For the previous 7 years, since bariatric surgery, I had been researching health and nutrition constantly to become better educated in those areas, because I found the subjects to be fascinating. I realized that it was time to put all of that research and knowledge to use, and I devised a game plan that would change my entire life, and health. I remembered that I had bariatric surgery to stay alive for my family, my employees, and myself. Since the stakes were suddenly higher, I had to up my game and revamp my lifestyle immediately. I vowed to focus on improving my mind, body, and soul, simultaneously. I was letting all 3 atrophy, and I was paying the toll of that negligence.

1. Mind: I knew virtually nothing about the heart, or heart attack prevention or cure. I vowed to learn all that I can and I began with the book by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, “The End of Heart Disease”. I read most of it while still in the hospital. If you look at my prior posts, his book “Eat to Live” inspired me to eat healthier in the past, with positive results. Despite what the doctors were telling me about heart disease being a lifelong condition, he shared multiple stories of those with heart disease being cured with diet changes alone. I started here, but otherwise did research into how to avoid a second heart attack, and how to potentially reverse arterial blockage. Some cardiologists, including mine, say that blockage reversal is impossible and that the best you can do is to avoid making things worse. I don’t like being told that something is impossible. I see that as a challenge to prove them wrong. I vowed to be that one guy that reverses heart disease, or to die trying.
2. Body: Everything I thought I knew about a healthy body went out the window. While looking good and muscular is usually appealing, I decided that life was more important. I no longer cared about meeting protein thresholds to maintain muscle mass. At this point, I just wanted to have a healthy body with clear, functional arteries. In all the diets I have ever researched, the data seems to point to the healthiest one being the Nutritarian diet, devised by Dr. Fuhrman, as being the absolute best. There is a plethora of literature out there that shows that meat, processed foods and carbs, and calorically dense junk food as being toxic to our hearts and bodies. Also important, our body requires large amounts of natural nutrients that just cannot be fully obtained in supplements. There are thousands of micronutrients found in plant phytochemicals that scientists still don’t understand, but that we know play a role in our bodies. In any case, in the hospital, I decided to become a Nutritarian and follow a minimally processes, nutrient dense, plant-based, meatless/vegan diet. I have also begun some basic cardio exercise in the form of walking on the treadmill and riding on the exercise bicycle.
3. Soul: I quickly realized that my soul was the most malnourished facet of me. My beliefs were all over the place before the heart attack. While laying on a table in a hospital gown about to receive a potentially deadly procedure, I did something that I had not done in a long time. I prayed. I prayed for my life, for improvement, for everything, since it was all on the line. I also was disgusted at myself for waiting for a near death experience to seek the help of an entity that I had largely ignored most of my life. I vowed right then and there to research scripture and improve my faith. That has evolved into attending church every Sunday, reading a few scripture chapters daily, and trying to implement spiritual lessons learned into my daily life. The benefit of this was unexpected and nearly immediate. A huge weight has been lifted off me and my stress levels have plummeted. Understanding that an entity is there to turn to and has your back during the good and bad times is an amazing relief. It has also changed my entire attitude in how I interact with people, especially the difficult ones.

“Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face.”

Ronald Reagan

“I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Armed with these three focuses, my life has changed drastically. Today, exactly 5 months after my heart attack, I weigh 52 pounds less. I am closing in on my all time lowest weight in adulthood, and I even weigh less than I did after Weight Watchers and other fad diets. I’m thoroughly enjoying my diet. I purchased a lifetime membership to Dr. Fuhrman’s website so that I can access the nearly 2,000 Nutritarian recipes that it offers. There are other Nutritarian websites out there that have also been amazingly helpful and delicious. The meals are fantastic. Special kudos goes out to my wife for helping make the majority of the meals. Typically she will make 2 or more dishes a week for lunch and dinners, and I’ll have cut fruit and homemade smoothies for breakfast. I have plenty of frozen veggie soups and other frozen meals that I can always reheat to mix things up as necessary.

In addition to the weight loss, and because of the medication I now have to take, my cholesterol has plummeted. My total cholesterol at the time of the hear attack was borderline at 205 mg/dL. Today, my total cholesterol is a fabulous 133 mg/dL. My blood pressure has been good all along. All indications are that this diet and new approach on life have really worked well. Looking back, I see the heart attack as a blessing and a curse. While heart attacks are no fun whatsoever, nothing motivates like mortality. I am following my new lifestyle with ease, and I have the full support of everyone in that process. I pray that my arteries remain open and clean, and hope that this lifestyle keeps me perpetually healthy and happy. In a way, this is exactly what I have been looking for in the past 7 and more years of this journey.