[QuikSand]

So... I'm among the people who got the ball rolling in this thread some time ago. It's been a long enough time to feel significant, and I will sua sponte share the essentials of what I have and have not done, over the last 11 years or so.

How I Got Started

In my mid-40s, with young children, I was hearing from my primary care doctor that I needed to ramp up my blood pressure medication to a higher dose. My bloodline is not favorable, my dad didn't make it out of his 60s, his dad didn't make it out of his 50s, and in my 40s (with many trappings of a high stress lifestyle to boot) I felt I was on a similar path.

For multiple reasons, I became persuaded that a whole foods, plant based diet could be the change I needed, and committed to doing it. I chose the day of the 2011 Belmont Stakes (a decadent-foods travel day each year back then) as my sign-off from eating animal products. The following day I quit cold turkey.

What Really Happened

I wanted to lose weight, but also wanted to improve other health metrics as well. So, I accompanied the diet change with some lifestyle improvements, but not dramatic ones. I remained "reasonably active" to "active" through the first several years of doing this.

I wanted to commit to both parts of the dietary change, but the pursuit of whole grains and insisting on far less processed foods proved to be really difficult for me. The clear line about not eating animal-derived foods was, oddly enough, easier to do -- in part because it was so clear what was okay and what was not.

So, approaching 12 years later, I am still eating a fully vegan diet. I have had a handful of missteps (like, learning after the fact that something had milk ingredients, etc) but not a single "day off" or anything consciously violating the plant based principles.

However, I have absolutely slipped in the pursuit of whole foods, whole grains, un-processed, and pure form foods. I am an aggressive consumer of various plant-based burgers and nuggets, which are, truth be told, hyper-processed foods in the same way that their animal counterparts are. That's not necessarily "healthy" in the most important ways, even if they do sidestep the downsides of eating high in the food chain (which I still believe to be a worthy pursuit for health purposes).

So... a split success here. Plat Based. Not Whole Foods. Basically: I eat the Impossible Whopper (synthetic), I always hold the mayo (eggs), but I do eat the white flour bun (over-processed).

My Health, Over Time

I was 42 when my triggering event (a hike in my BP meds) started my gears turning. Dad had dies a couple years before. 43 when I pulled the trigger, and made the lifestyle/diet switch.

Around the first of the year in 2012, I switched to a doctor who specialized in this sort of diet. After a battery of blood tests, she showed my triglycerides WAY down, and my cholesterol levels also well down into the pretty normal range, bordering on "healthy." The FoK people talk about getting you to "heart attack proof" and these are some of the measurables that underlie that. A really good feeling.

My blood pressure was down as well, to the point where she took me entirely off medication for it. This was also a psychological success for me, a feeling of accomplishment.

And, related, I had lost some weight. I'd guess without notes that I was down maybe 15 pounds from my pre-decision peak... not a huge loss, but meaningful.

So... with this notion more or less coalesced for me as "it's working," I committed to figure out out what I could/would eat at all the restaurants near my office. (In my work, I do a fair amount of social eating/drinking, so this is a big deal for me) Eventually figured out what places were me-friendly and what places were less so.

Somewhere in this stretch (like in 2013 or so) I did have a parallel spike in my attention to better fitness overall, and THAT (more deliberate exercise, more flat out disciplined calorie counting) led to some real weight loss that lasted a year or so -- like -40 pounds from my pre-decision peak. I suffered a leg injury that knocked me off my walking/jogging routine, and (I'm making excuses here as I type...need to cut that out) really just neve regained that level of discipline for a long stretch. So I am back to a mildly unhealthy weight, but still something like 15-20 pounds below my pre-decision peak. So, a bit better, but definitely not the peak of which I am capable.

One Scare Along The Way

In 2016, I had a scary incident... I will spare the tick tock style replay, but it turned out to be a AFib incident. In an ambulance on the way to a hospital, I was told that my pulse was 180. It took medication overnight and they were just an hour or two away from scheduling a "paddles" intervention (that sounded scary as shit) when it dissipated, as they had advised it could/should.

Follow-up with cardiologist, lots of stress testing, etc. No signs of any real defect. Apparently this fact pattern happens fairly commonly. Doc effectively says "take a beta blocker and a low dose aspirin every day, and we'll see you once a year... pretty good chance this never happens to you again." And it has not.

I believe my AFib was a by product of apnea, and I have since gotten a CPAP which I am apparently incapable of wearing for very long, it ends up on the floor overnight.

And The Latest Chapter

So, I made an appointment with a new cardiologist recently. My weirdo vegan doctor retired, I needed a new PCP, and I had gotten out of the habit of checking in on heart stuff.

New doc talks me through things. Not worried about the AFib, really, fine with the low-tier meds for that. Wants me to double down on sleep stuff, and I'll see a sleep specialist soon.

BP is back up into borderline worries, and he wants me on Losartan. I am no going to disagree with this, but it is... discouraging. I have made my peace with it...and now more or less feel like my dietary changes bought me a full decade of time, but I'm kinda back (at age 55) to where I previously was at age 42.

So, that's my current health status. Still could stand to lose weight, and that would likely carry residual benefits with at least some of the other things mentioned (apnea, blood pressure). Writing this, I am hoping, might serve oddly as a kick in the ass to get back to it -- took two good brisk 3.5m exercise walks with my 14yo the last two days and enjoyed it, I'd like to get back into that as a cycle more days than not. That and dropping stupid idle snacking would probably get me back to losing a pound every ten days or so, truth be told.

Anyway

That's my story with this stuff. I believe my psychological makeup is probably fairly common, but it was WAY easier for me to just stick to a hard and fast rule/system than it ever has been to "just do better." Once I concluded it was just too hard to insist on whole grains and I'd just order the pasta... my ability to really, really stick with the whole-foods side of the diet was doomed. But sticking to the no-animals stuff was easier to do, just because it's a clear bright line.

So, I have done part of this really well. I think it has brought me health benefits that I really wanted. I am convinced that I am going to see a lot more of my kids' lives than I likely would have without doing this. I feel good about that.

I certainly could improve, and hope that I have the resolve to do so in the months ahead. I don't think that I am even going to commit to trying to live up to the full whole-foods side of the diet, but if I can remain fully vegan (likely) and just whip myself into better eating/activity habits overall, I think that's a worthy and achievable goal for the next year.

I am going to figure each year's Belmont Stakes is my check-in with myself, as the working anniversary of my switch to "doing better." Tally ho.