Its 55 months already! Every time I pass a mirror it's a bit of a shock. I was so fat for so long the reflection of my new normal is of someone I'm still getting to know. Not quite a stranger but also not the reflection of the person ingrained in my head. Body image is a real thing. Since I was close to becoming a member of the former 300 pound club, I've made some friends who all say the same thing. Instead of highlighting the amazing improvements, our brains register our flaws. Varying amounts of excess skin, stretch marks and sundry remaining bulges capture our attention more than the vast loss of adipose tissue and the extreme health improvement. I know how much healthier I look and how much better I feel, but my brain wants to compare my flaws with airbrushed magazine images of perfect bodies. I know where I was 5 years ago and how far I have come. I'm very grateful for the guidance I've received from my friend, Joel Kahn, MD and the resulting new lease on life the changes have given me.
My transition to a whole foods plant based diet was pretty easy. I already liked to eat unprocessed whole grains, fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, berries, seeds and nuts prior to starting. All I had to do was eat more of those things to keep me from being hungry and replace the calories from meat and dairy products. As long as my tummy felt full, there were no cravings and no feelings of hunger. Since all those things are carbohydrates which break down into glucose and glucose is the fuel on which our bodies prefer to run my energy level went up overnight! Over time I became bolder and introduced new types of plant based foods into my everyday diet. Things that I never thought I would like turned out to taste really good! The weight started to come off quickly. After 3 months I had lost 40 lbs without any exercise. I plateaued for a while and found out I was eating too many nuts and seeds. Nuts and seeds are both high in oil. I didn't give them up but just cut way back on them. To get the nutrition out of them that I needed I limited myself to a palm full of walnuts, almonds or sunflower seeds as a snack. At first it was every day, then every other day and now about twice a week. Nature put nuts in hard shells and up in trees to make us have to work to eat them. Buying a 1 pound bag of them already shelled for $5.99 at the local supermarket was not the way Nature intended for us to get them. More weight starting coming off until I met resistance again at minus 60 to 80 lbs. 
That is when I attended my first lecture on nutrition through the Plant Based Nutrition Support Group (www.PBNSG.org). At that time I was still using either a little olive oil or vegetable oil to brown onions, stir fry veggies and to make vinegar and oil salad dressing. I learned that oils, and I mean ALL oils are inflammatory calorie dense processed food with little nutritional value. They inflame the endothelial cells that line every artery in your body leading to plaques, peripheral vascular disease, high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes. T. Colin Campbell PhD also taught me that oils increase the risk of certain cancers. As if that weren't enough, oils also plug up the ability of insulin to move sugar out of the blood and into muscle cells where it's burned as fuel. We call that Insulin Resistance and that's Type 2 Diabetes. Learning that and giving up oils I was able to reach my goal of losing a total 100lbs.
That was around Memorial Day of 2016. That's when my niece invited me to run a 5K race with her Labor Day. Of course I said no. I'd never run that far ever and had no intention of changing that. But my niece was persistent and informed me that I would get a free t-shirt along with a shiny finisher's medal if I did it. I guess dangling something shiny in front of me is all it took. I signed up and started running just a little, slowly around my neighborhood. In 3 days I was up to 1 mile.
Adding a little at a time I got the distance up to 3.1 miles within 6 weeks training 2 or 3 runs per week . Race day came. My wife and daughters came to cheer for our niece, our son-in-law who decided to join us and me. It was a brisk, clear morning with no significant wind. The race started and my niece set the pace for me. She was so nice and stayed at my side slowing herself as I strained to keep going. It was such a thrill to cross a finish line for the first time in my life that I did a little Grapevine dance as steam rose off my shoulders. As we were eating our free bananas and drinking our water the race results were posted. Out of the 28 people in the 60 - 65 age group I came in 3rd! Bronze medal winner right here!!!
With the running I managed to lose an additional 10lbs over that summer.
I became a grandfather almost 3 years ago. The first thing I said to my new grandson was: "Get used to this face because its going to be around for a long, long time!" He is an excellent motivator. All he had to do was be born and I immediately wanted to live long enough to watch him grow up. Prior to going plant based I had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep apnea and was prediabetic. Since eating my way out of all those high risk categories, I have a much better chance of being around long enough to see him graduate from college and remain an active and involved part of his life. At almost 3 years old he already loves to swim. I can get into the pool with him now, teach him a few strokes and not be embarrassed to be seen in my bathing suit. I hope to be the fit, happy and involved family member that I am today for many, many years into the future. Nobody knows how long they have. I know I have more years behind me than I do in front of me. You can't control all the things that may go wrong with your health but you can control what you eat. My big picture goal is to not shorten my life by eating things that subtract years from it. Plants don't do that and they give me everything I need to stay healthy.I was 58 years old when I finally started to pay attention to my health. I didn't wait for a health crisis to convince me to change my habits. That heart attack or stroke that may have been in my near future and could have killed me is now much less of a probability at age 63 than it was then. My family is proud of me, my friends are in disbelief and my family doctor is as confused as Hell.
Its really quite simple:"Eat whole foods that are plants, no oil and go for a walk."
Those are things that only you can do for yourself. Do it for a month and see how you feel. Don't wait for some extrinsic motivator to come along like a heart problem that you may not survive. This is way too easy not to do. The results I have experienced are typical, expected and profound! It's easy to see the difference. Take your "before" picture today and start living that long, active, healthy "after"!
