It wasn't a health "scare," but it was enough to get me to clean up my act

I write these blog posts about a month in advance, so the stuff I say isn't always up to date by the time you read it.

Not that that usually matters in a once-a-week family/parenting blog, where content tends to be evergreen. But as I type this on November 9, I'm interested to see where things stand for me health-wise a month from now.

Unlike many guys my age, I do see the doctor somewhat regularly. But when the calendar flipped to this past October, a full year had gone by since my last physical, and I wasn't in much of a hurry for another one.

There wasn't anything acutely "wrong" with me, but I knew my weight was too high and my diet was fair to middlin', as my dad used to say.

I didn't need a physician to tell me what I already knew.

I know, I know...even if you think you know what the doc is going to say, you still need to go. Just in case.

So I did.

But instead of my primary care provider, I ended up visiting the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine to see one of their docs. We had a good conversation about my history and broad changes I needed to make, and she ordered a comprehensive blood test.

In the meantime, she also set me up with a nutritionist and a health coach, both of whom have turned out to be very helpful.

When the blood test results came back, two things stood out:

• I was quite anemic. I knew this, as my iron levels have been pretty low for the last few years. Every time I show up at a Red Cross blood drive, it's a 50/50 shot whether I'll meet the iron/hemoglobin requirements to donate. I just never thought it was a big deal, so I never brought it up with Amber, my nurse practitioner. Admittedly, not a smart decision.
  
  
• Also, my Lipoprotein A level was high. Very high, actually, at 203. They want you under 125. The thing is, Lipoprotein A isn't like cholesterol or other markers you can influence through diet, exercise, stress management, etc. It's largely genetic, and there's seldom a need to check it again because it stays pretty static throughout your lifetime no matter what you do, at least as far as I understand it.

The anemia can be attributed to a number of things, and I'm undergoing additional lab work to figure out what's causing it.

As for the Lipoprotein A, I don't yet know what it means other than that a high number indicates a higher risk for cardiovascular disease. I'm going to see a preventative cardiologist to ensure my prevention strategy is optimized, which is probably a good thing when you consider I lost my father at 70 and my sister at 56 (my current age), both to heart disease.

Thankfully, I've already made significant changes to my diet. Lots of veggies (especially leafy greens) supported by protein at every meal, healthy fats, probiotic foods, etc. I've also cut down on the frequency with which I snack (no more than 2-3 times a day), and I keep 12+ hours between dinner and breakfast to allow my body more time to digest and heal itself.

Oh, and after years of drinking 3-4 cups of coffee every day, I'm down to one cup in the morning and that's it.

I'll also be working on better sleep and a more comprehensive physical activity routine, along with implementing breathing exercises.

I haven't even mentioned that the first round of blood work also showed that my HDL ("good") cholesterol was low and my LDL ("bad") was a bit high. Or that my A1C indicated I've been inching toward diabetes.

Taken together, all of the numbers brought about some long overdue changes in my routine, which is obviously good.

I'm just not sure what the high Lipoprotein A number will mean over the long term. For the moment, I'm just concentrating on living smart and healthy, one day at a time.

I know I'm not the only middle-aged man who has received a wakeup call like this, but I plan to be in the group that makes permanent positive changes.

I've still got too much to do in this life!

Finding the line between "live your life" and "do what's best for your health"

From the outset, I should establish that I don't believe a fun life and a healthy life are mutually exclusive things. You can (and should) have both.

But there's no denying that, at least for me, a healthy life sometimes means making certain sacrifices and prioritizing my time in ways I might not otherwise.

As an example, let's take the gym-going habit I developed nearly a year ago.

When I started lifting last June, you could find me in the gym five days a week without fail. And it undoubtedly made a difference, to the point that my chest, arms and shoulders are now somewhat bigger, which means some of my button-downs and pullovers are harder to get on than they used to be.

It's a good problem (and a very healthy habit) to have.

But there are downsides to a five-day-a-week gym routine, again, at least for me. They include:

• Sometimes getting less sleep than I really need because I have stuff going on the night before I work out
• Perpetual soreness
• A higher risk of injury and less chance to recover

To that last point, in the past year I have sustained injuries at the gym to my shoulder, back, forearm and foot. All were lifting-related, and while all probably could have been avoided with better form, the fact is they happened and they didn't heal quickly.

That was probably because I kept on going to the gym five days a week and never gave those muscles a chance to heal themselves.

Then I cut back to four days a week of lifting, and now sometimes I'm at three. And voila, as I type this, I'm suddenly injury-free!

Who knew?

When it comes to diet, we all have to decide what we're willing to do to maintain a reasonable weight without being in constant self-denial. Few people can get by without indulging in less-than-healthy treats from time to time.

You have to decide what "from time to time" means for you, though, and what potential long-term health consequences you're willing to accept in exchange for the happiness that extra piece of cake or the double cheeseburger bring you.

As I mentioned recently, you and I each have an expiration date, and we can only push it out so far. As Colin Hay, one of my favorite singer-songwriters, puts it: "Nobody gets a sequel, no, everyone gets shown the door."

I think a lot nowadays about these tradeoffs. Maybe it's because I have a grandchild on the way. Or maybe I'm at an age when everyone starts to look ahead to whatever is left of this life, which for me should be at least a few more decades, though you never know.

Pick a philosophy and stick to it. Find your balance. Then go and live your life the best you know how, even if the final number of years you live isn't as long as it could be.

That's the best advice I can give you.

Social isolation is the price I pay for eating sauerkraut and sardines

While I spent much of 2023 eating too much food, I will take some credit for at least eating healthy food.

Most days you can count on me to ingest plenty of fruits and vegetables, some leafy greens at lunch, a lot of whole grains and nuts, and at least a small portion of fish.

There are two downsides to eating healthy like this.

One is that it is expensive and somewhat inconvenient. I make frequent shopping trips just to keep myself stocked with healthy stuff, and I am consistently taken aback by the price of, say, berries. Berries are expensive. So are many other fruits, especially when you buy organic.

But then you ask yourself how much your health is worth, and that admittedly takes some of the sting out of it.

The other drawback is that, in my experience, there are some healthy foods that simply stink. I mean, like, they literally smell.

For example. I try to take in some sort of fermented food every day, either in the form of sauerkraut or kimchi. I like the smell and taste of both, but neither of my housemates agrees.

The same holds true for sardines. When I want to crack open a tin of sardines, I take it out to the garage and stand there with a fork eating it to avoid getting sardine smell in the house.

I do this out of courtesy to Terry and Jack, even though I feel like a smoker huddling in front of an office building getting a nicotine fix.

Ten years ago, I never would have imagined myself a social outcast for wanting to eat tiny fish. I guess when I'm 120 years old and still ticking, I'll have the last laugh.

I'll be standing outside eating sardines, of course, but I'll still be laughing.

What I'm willing and not willing to do to live a healthy lifestyle

I like to read books about longevity and health. Dr. Michael Roizen is my favorite author in the space, though there are many others – Drs. Joel Fuhrman and Neil Barnard come to mind – who are also go-to sources for this type of information.

Of course, there's a difference between reading about healthy living and, you know, actually following through on it. If you were to ask people who know me well, they would say I am generally a fairly healthy individual. But I'm more acutely aware of the areas in which I fall short than those in which I'm compliant with the latest recommendations around diet, exercise, stress management, etc.

And now in my early (rapidly approaching middle) 50s, I am largely at peace with it all.

At some point, you have to decide what you're willing to sacrifice in the name of better health and what less-than-healthy indulgences you want to maintain in your life. And connected with that, you have to be ready to accept the consequences of those less-than-healthy choices.

I don't mean to suggest that healthy = boring/difficult/burdensome, by the way. That's not necessarily the case.

But the fact is, many of us naturally prefer the bag of chips over the carrot sticks, and sitting on the couch over getting out and walking.

Over the past 15 years, I've had four what I would call "significant" weight losses of 20 or more pounds each. The biggest of those came in 2016, when I started around 217 and got down as low as 166, which in retrospect was way too low for me.

Yet, if you go by the BMI charts – and believe me, I'm well aware of the limitations of BMI as a measurement of overall health – 166 pounds for someone my height is within 10 pounds of being "overweight." So what's the answer?

As I type this, I'm approaching significant weight loss #5. I've dropped about 17 pounds since the first of September through my method of choice, Weight Watchers. It's a system that works well for me whenever I make up my mind to follow it.

I also benefit from the gender biology of weight loss, in which men generally have an easier time dropping pounds than women do. You ladies get screwed in a lot of ways, and this is one of them.

Last Saturday when I weighed in at the local Weight Watchers studio, the scale read 187.2. My official WW goal weight, as prescribed by my primary care doctor a decade ago, is 185. Once I get there, I'll switch to maintenance mode and try to stay around that number for...well, for the rest of my life.

Because you see, when you're someone who has had a number of successful weight losses, it also means you're someone who each time has put the pounds back on. I have never in my adult life been able to maintain a healthy weight for more than a year at a time. So my next big challenge is learning how to keep myself where I should be in terms of overall body mass.

I'm willing to make the mental and physical sacrifices necessary to do that. In fact, here is a complete list of the things I'm willing to do to live as a healthy person:

• Cardio: I power walk (usually just over 12 minutes/mile) five days a week, generally covering a total of 12 miles every seven days. I'm very consistent with this, and it's largely because I love getting out and moving.
• Eat leafy greens, beans, nuts, fruits and veggies: These are all staples of my daily diet, as they should be.
• Don't smoke: Not a problem. True story - I've never even tried it. Not even once. I have never inhaled smoke from anything and have no desire to try it.
• Keep my weight down: See above.

Those are admirable, but they do not cover all of the bases, health-wise. There are other habits we should be forming if we want to live longer, happier lives, at least from a physical standpoint. Here are the things I should be doing that I'm not:

• Strength training: The truth is, I hate lifting weights. I just despise it. I know I should be doing it, I know it has amazing benefits. Yet I can't seem to get myself to do it with any regularity. It's the one thing on my "bad" list that I hope to change. Maybe it will be my 2023 resolution.
• Meditation: I don't "feel" like I'm stressed, but the recommendation is that we should all be doing something to manage stress in our lives. Deep breathing is another popular technique. I don't make the time to do any of it.
• Getting enough sleep: I rarely sleep more than 7 hours, and most of the time it's more like 6 to 6 1/2 for me. I feel OK, though, or at least I think I feel OK, since there may be a higher level of "OK" of which I'm not even aware that I would experience if I just went to bed earlier. But as well as I sleep, I just don't love it as much as a lot of people do. I would rather be up and doing stuff. If there was a way to live without sleeping, I would jump on it. As it is, I should be getting more shuteye.
• Inserting even more healthy foods into my diet: I love fish, but I rarely eat it. Too much trouble buying and cooking it. I also don't do a good job with the "healthy gut" foods like yogurt, kimchi, etc., nor do I drink nearly enough water.
• Having a social life: I hang out mostly with Terry and my son Jack, the two people with whom I live. You're supposed to have a wider social circle than that, and men in particular tend not to be very good about building and maintaining friendships. I don't know, there doesn't seem to be enough time, though I know the reality is that I could make time if I really wanted.

I could go on, but the point is, I miss the mark on more items health-wise than I hit. That doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I'm doing what I can manage, and if that means a few years off the end of an otherwise healthy and happy life, so be it.

Or at least that's what I say now. Check back with me in another decade or two.

Your body will break down, so how are you approaching that?

 

 "I knew I was going to die, I just didn't know I was going to get old." - Dave Titman 

Right now, as of this writing, I do not experience any sort of chronic pain. I get up in the morning and feel pretty good, and I feel pretty good all day.

If you're of a certain age, you might read that and say, "You're 51, young man, of course you don't have aches and pains yet. But just you wait. They're coming."

To which I reply: (1) I know plenty of people my age who do have some sort of daily pain, so it's a blessing I don't. (2) Oh, believe me, I know it's coming.

Whether it's genetics or the fact that I try to stay active – or a combination of the two – I'm doing OK. But that could end at any time. One injury that doesn't quite heal right and suddenly I'm buying stock in Motrin.

There's no escaping physical decline as time goes on. We can all agree on that. The real question is what your philosophy is around this reality.

Some people throw caution to the wind and figure, hey, we all have an expiration date. You're going to die anyway, so I'm going to indulge and enjoy myself, and if I go a few years earlier than I would otherwise, those are years I would rather avoid anyway.

Others say that, yes, of course we're all going to die. But they want to maximize the years they've been allotted – not only the number of years, but also the quality of those years. They watch what they eat and exercise regularly with the goal of putting off their eventual decline to the very end.

I'm not here to say that either of these attitudes is the "right" one. You do you. (And chances are you're somewhere in the middle of the two extremes anyway.)

I tend to be more in the second camp. I get the recommended amount of cardio each week and I eat fairly well. I'm not perfect in either regard, but relative to many people I know, I do OK.

Maybe more importantly, I'm satisfied with that mindset. However things work out, whether I live to be 55, 75, 95, or 105, I wouldn't change anything. I don't feel like I'm depriving myself. I like what I eat and I enjoy the things I get to do.

I hope you, too, are taking the Frank Sinatra approach to all of this: Regrets? Sure, you've had a few. But in the end, you did it your way.

Here are four things I've learned from 26 on-and-off years of Weight Watchers

My apologies to the marketing folks at Weight Watchers, who have worked hard to rebrand the organization as "WW," presumably to take the emphasis away from weight and present a more holistic approach to health.

It's just that I had to say "Weight Watchers" in the headline because only people who are members know what "WW" means.

I am one of those members. I started "doing Weight Watchers," as people say, way back in 1995 after Terry had been following the plan for a while. She was shedding some post-Elissa baby weight. I was simply trying to get back to some semblance of the slim sprinter I had been less than a decade earlier.

And it worked. It always works, or at least it does for me whenever I make up my mind to be more conscientious about my diet and overall health.

It's just that, for long periods in the intervening quarter-century, I've thrown caution to the wind, eaten whatever I wanted, and gained weight accordingly. And then I've gone back to Weight Watchers and lost it. It's the classic yo-yo cycle.

As my sister Debbie and I have often discussed, our genes are such that we will always have to be mindful of our weight. We're not naturally skinny people, but that doesn't mean we can't be healthy people.

Nowadays I attend the 8 a.m. WW meeting in Mentor every Saturday, and not surprisingly, I'm steadily creeping back toward my goal weight. I dropped 15 pounds in the first two months and am already feeling much better, thank you.

For what it's worth, here are four lessons that WW has taught me, at least one of which might benefit you:

(1) Chill out: This has been the hardest thing for me to learn over the years. I used to live and die by that Saturday morning weigh-in. And now, for whatever reason (the wisdom of years?), I simply don't. Some weeks I lose, some weeks I gain, and some weeks I stay the same. If I do the right things, my weight will eventually take care of itself. I enjoy "calm Scott" much more than "scale-obsessed Scott."

(2) Control what you can control: You hear athletes say this all the time. You can only concern yourself with the things you can influence. There are many things you can't influence. You simply can't control them, but you can control how you plan for and react to them. For example, this is graduation party season. We are invited to several of them. Grad parties aren't traditionally havens of healthy eating, but if I budget a certain amount of WW points before we go, make good choices while I'm there, and eat slowly while enjoying my food, it's really no problem. I can control that outcome.

(3) There is value in community and accountability: I tried doing WW online during the pandemic and the results weren't great. I need that Saturday morning meeting not only to be accountable for my choices over the past week, but also to hear from others who have similar struggles. Putting the time in to go to meetings, even when I would rather stay home, always pays off.

(4) You are more than your health, but that health is still pretty darn important: There are people in your life who want you to be around a long, long time. Even if you don't do it for yourself, consider making healthy choices in gratitude to those who care for you. We all have an expiration date, but we also have within us the power to live a vibrant, energetic, full (and fulfilling) life in the days we've been allotted. Exercise that power.

Many of us are trying to get ourselves together, health-wise...again

I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago and then, a few days later, completely erased it and started over.

The original post was a whiny rant about how my weight has yo-yo'ed over the years and how I have a hard time creating lasting change when it comes to weight blah blah blah. It wasn't fun to write, nor would it have been fun for you to read.

Not that this will be particularly "fun" for you, either, but in the days after I wrote the first post, my wife started a 28-day transformation program bought for her by some of our kids as a Mother's Day present. She had to scramble to align with the timing of it, as it has a real-time online component and officially began the day after Mother's Day. But Terry did the requisite shopping and food prep in short order, and she has stuck with it well and is seeing great results.

This was inspiring to me, so I went back to the only method of weight loss that has ever truly worked for me, which is Weight Watchers.

"WW" is how they brand themselves nowadays, and I should mention that it works for me only when I do the in-person program (i.e., go to weekly meetings and weigh in, which creates a certain level of accountability...the online-only version doesn't really go well for me).

So I've been attending meetings and weighing in at my local WW "studio." And of course I'm losing weight, because all it is, really, is a well-designed system that makes you do what you already know you should be doing: Eat less food, eat healthy food, eat tasty food.

If you do that and move more, and you have weight to lose, you're going to drop pounds, guaranteed. We just all have different mental and emotional make-ups that necessitate different approaches to achieving that goal. They're different paths, but they all travel in the same direction and all lead to the same place.

Will I get back down to my goal weight? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I will. I started around 208 a couple of weeks ago and will aim to get back into the 185 range.

The question is, though, will it be permanent? That remains to be seen. But before you can answer that question, you have to start down the path. And that's what I'm doing.

On healthy eating, food that tastes bad, and the Ultimate Trade-Off

By all accounts, I eat in a manner that most people would term "healthy."

Of course, as an American, it's not difficult to eat healthy compared with your countrymen. When you begin to understand what healthy eating really is, you quickly become appalled at what doctors call the Standard American Diet (and its appropriate acronym, "SAD").

We don't exactly eat in a way that promotes feeling good and longevity, folks. We just don't. And what's worse, our #1 export as a nation is our poor dietary habits. The Type-2 diabetes epidemic is becoming a global phenomenon, though I would guess we still lead the world in insulin shots per capita.

I ate that way for a long time. Not as much as some folks, but still not ideal from a medical standpoint. Then I started doing some reading and found out what our bodies truly need. And it ain't the chemical-filled "low-fat" stuff that was all the rage in the 90s and beyond. It's real food, as close to its natural state as possible.

My diet is not perfect. I'll be the first to admit that. These days I don't eat as much protein as I should, and I've not been able to give blood in a while because my iron levels are always too low (though interestingly, I feel like I have a lot of energy most days). I also eat way, way too much fruit. It fills me up, and there can be a lot of sugar in fruit, though as I understand it, it's a natural sugar that's metabolized differently from the added sugar that permeates everything at the grocery store.

But as I try to evolve my eating patterns, I think I'm definitely getting better. There's improvement, which is good.

Here for example is absolutely everything I ate yesterday (Friday, March 31st):

BREAKFAST: 

* 1 cup oatmeal (1/2 cup plain oats, 1/2 cup water...I honestly love how it tastes, though I know many people would say it's incredibly bland)

* 1 banana

* 1 cup coffee with 16-18g of half and half

SNACKS (eaten throughout the day...I snack a lot):

* 3 more bananas

* 4 apples

* 1 grapefruit

* 1 carrot

* 1 ounce walnuts

* 1 packet Chicken of the Sea pink salmon

* 1 cup plain Greek yogurt (yes, I eat it and like it plain)

* 1 whole-wheat mini bagel
* 1 Weight Watchers cheese stick

* 3 more cups of coffee prepared just like the one I had at breakfast above

LUNCH:

* 1 greens salad (even mixture of spinach and kale) with a combo olive oil/red wine vinegar dressing

DINNER:

* 2 ounces bran flakes with a cup of almond milk (NOTE: This is a very, very light dinner for me. I usually eat more than this, but Terry is out of town and the kids ordered pizza that I didn't want to wait for. So cereal it was!)

This was about how I ate every day last week, and I lost 1.4 pounds (I also jogged four days, which is important to note). That's a good, sensible weight loss, and I didn't feel especially hungry at any part of the day.

Should I have eaten more whole grains and protein? Yes. But that's just one day. It's a snapshot. I get more of those things on other days.

Every day I try to get my share of healthy fats, which generally consists of nuts, the olive oil on my salad, and any fish I can scrounge up when it's available. I try to get whole grains (i.e., not white bread or white rice), I try to get vegetables (though generally not enough), I have no problem meeting my fruit quota, and I'll eat lean meats when we do have meat.

I read all kinds of books and articles about healthy eating, and I know the areas in which I'm lacking. You can suggest anything and I'll probably be aware that I should be eating it. But this is my general approach, and medically it seems to work in terms of my blood pressure, blood sugar, etc. All of those important numbers the doctor always talks to you about.

Many people will say that this type of food isn't enjoyable for them, and that they would rather have fewer but fun years vs. more but bland-eating years. And I offer up no judgment on that whatsoever. It is, in the end, what I call "The Ultimate Trade-Off."

You have to ask yourself: What do I want? What are my goals? What makes me feel best? And while we all know the "right" answer to that question in terms of health and wellness, the real "right" answer varies for each of us.

It may be that you want to eat steak every day for the rest of your life, and if you die early, so be it. And I completely respect that. I am not the Food Police for anyone but myself. What I want out of life and what you want out of life may differ, but neither of our approaches is inherently better than the other.

In the end, as I said in yesterday's weight loss post, we all have to make our own decisions. The key is being truly comfortable with the one you make and living with it. If you can do that, then you've got a big part of this whole "life" thing figured out.

Make health my hobby? No thank you.

I used to read a lot of health and wellness books. These are books that tell you, in minute detail, what you need to do to live a long life with the maximum number of "quality" years.

These books spell out how you should eat, what exercise you need to do, how you should manage stress, what you need to do to keep your brain young, etc.

I once figured out (this is true) that if I were to implement everything these books told me to do in order to achieve optimal health, I would have to get up every morning at something like 3:00 a.m. to fit it all in. I'm not kidding.

Going under the assumption that my evenings are too packed and unpredictable to regularly schedule any sort of exercise or self-improvement activities, I need to relegate health and wellness solely to the morning hours. And if I were truly doing everything I'm supposed to do in order to be a robust, happy person, I would need like three or four hours every morning.

That list would include (but is certainly not limited to):

• Aerobic exercise
• Strength training
• Flexibility exercises
• Balance exercises
• Brain building (i.e., learn something new, like say a language you don't know)
• Bible reading
• Meditation/breathing exercises
• Breakfast (THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY...they think)
• Brushing and flossing
• Something else I'm sure I'm forgetting

I don't have the time to do all of those things, so I do some of them. And I'm fine with it.

I haven't always been fine with it, by the way. For several years, I agonized over not hitting 10,000 steps every day, not lifting weights, not learning Tai Chi, not stretching, not not not not not not. I was so about what I was "not" doing that I never recognized all the good things I WAS doing.

I once read a book in which a doctor suggested making your health your hobby. The implication was that your spare time should be spent learning and implementing all of the things that science and personal experience show to be good for your body, mind and general well-being.

Which is great, except that in spending so much time trying to build a better life, you leave yourself no time to actually live that life.

So I've finally (FINALLY) learned to do the best that my schedule and self-discipline will allow and to be happy with that. And I'm so relieved. All of the "nots" above were, ironically, killing me. Now I feel so much more content.

In case you're wondering, I do get out and run four days a week, and it's never for more than a half hour at a time. I don't lift weights, I don't stretch, I don't meditate. I DO read the Bible daily now and I DO eat breakfast, brush and floss without fail.

And I feel great. The burden of having to be perfect with my health was too much.

It only took me five years or so to get that through my thick head.