Wednesday, April 8, 2015

4/6/2015 - Gradual Karma - Instant Redemption


After having written the previous entry in March, I decided to wait to actually to post it until after I’d seen for myself that results (some results, any results, though preferably the ones that I was expecting) were going to be possible again. Didn’t want to post a “before picture” if the “after” was going to look the same or (gods forbid!) worse than the original. I hedge my bets, I admit it. I’m a flawed prophet.

So since I’m writing this, and you’re currently reading it, you’ve probably guessed that I did in fact see a difference. And yes, only one month later the “after picture” is far better than I’d even hoped!

Let’s get right to it. First of all, the numbers.

To reiterate, on Feb 26, 2015 I had my cholesterol tested and these were the results:
Total Cholesterol: 185
Triglycerides: 153
LDL: 114
HDL: 40

At that point I also weighed around 175lbs, which was already better than my winter high that was in the 182lb range.

After having cleaned up my diet for a few weeks, I had my blood tested again on April 3rd.

My current numbers:
Total Cholesterol: 113
Triglycerides: 79
LDL: 59.2
HDL: 38

And my weight as of yesterday: 163.4

All I can say is thank you, Plant-Based Whole-Foods diet, and thank you, Dr. Esselstyn!


The Lifestyle (which according to the wisdom espoused in a pretty terrible Metallica song “determines my deathstyle”)

So if you’re interested, how did this happen exactly?

I’m once again following a fat-free, whole-food lifestyle (because it is for life; it’s not just a “diet” and it’s far better to be in that mindset if you’re going to stick with it for the long haul), also sometimes referred to as the RAVE Diet (I know what it’s called but it’s still not a diet). They do allow more nuts than does Dr. Esselstyn, and since I’m following his guidelines I eschew most of them too.*

The guidelines are simple: (I’ve heavily plagiarized these from Dr. Esselstyn’s book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, I hope he doesn’t mind!)
  • 1. Don’t eat meat, including chicken, fish, bivalves, crustaceans, etc.        
  • 2. Don’t eat any dairy products, even the skim, fat-free ones, or any products that contain them.
  • 3. Don’t eat eggs or anything containing eggs.
  • 4. Stay away from processed food – this includes white flour, white sugar, processed vegan meat analogues, chips, junk-food of most varieties, etc.
  • 5.  No oils or added fat – Not in your cooking, and not in the ingredient list of any of your pre-packaged foods. This includes coconut oil, coconut meat and milk, and avocados.
  • 6.  Eat virtually no nuts – Dr. Esselstyn’s recommendation (at least as of the writing of his book) is that if you have no underlying heart condition, you can have a small handful of walnuts a day. If you do have any sort of heart condition or high cholesterol, no nuts for you! (I eat roughly one walnut a day, either crumbled up in my cereal or a salad. It’s amazing how much mileage you can get out of one nut!)
  • 7. Stick to all whole-grain products. If it says “multigrain”, “cracked”, “stoneground”, or any other qualifier instead of, or before the word “whole”, leave it on the shelf! Also stay away from semolina and “wheat flour” which are both just white flour.   
  • 8. Don’t drink fruit juices. (It’s fine to eat fruit, and to use a little juice in recipes. And of course if you’re blending the whole fruits into a smoothie that’s okay since you’re getting the fiber too. Just try not to overdo it on the number of fruit servings in a day.)
  • 9.  Avoid most soy products since they tend to contain excess fat. If you’re going to eat tofu, stick with “light” tofu.  
  • 10. Load up on tons of veggies, fruits, legumes, and some seeds. They are the stars of your plate. Also tempeh and seitan make great meat alternatives too when needed! (Just make sure they don’t have any added oil.)  

Those are the basics. I know it sounds like a lot of rules and "don'ts", but they're super simple once you get the hang of it, and well worth any learning curve that there might be. Stick to food in its most natural form and you’ll be good! 

***

Exercise is also great, but I have to admit, these results include virtually no exercise at all.

This is not a flattering story, but it’s not a flattering blog, so I’ll tell it. I recently bought a new car, and our first night together the two of us got into a minor altercation of which the car was the uncontested winner. I’d been trying to get the backseat to release and fold down, (pull the lever, step back, watch it swing down in a graceful arc... or not,) but it hung on tenaciously. I pulled the lever, I pulled the seat, I pushed, struggled, spat invective oaths, all to no avail. It waited to acquiesce (I will swear to my grave that it timed it on purpose) until my torso was right in line with its hard plastic seat belt brace. Suffice it to say that backseats are heavier than I remember them being.

The result was a few bruised and generally misplaced ribs that kept me from any unnecessary exercise for weeks.  

Upon further reflection, it is possible that the car also subscribed to my age-old dictum that exercise kills, and was, in its own naïve way, trying to save me from an even worse fate at the hands of an elliptical machine or weight bench. Regardless of motivation, I am happy to report that the car and I have mended our still-budding relationship and are currently engaged in a passionate, adoring romance.


So What Do I Eat?

Well, to begin with, every morning I start out with a kale or collard green smoothie. Some variation on the above recipes, give or take certain veggies or fruits. The constants are the chia seeds, hemp seeds or hemp protein, flax and buku greens!

It’s surprising how long a well-crafted smoothie will fend off hunger. I assume it’s the wide range of nutrients that can keep you satisfied without cravings for so many hours.

I generally don’t eat at work, other than the occasional apple or orange. If I’m going to be out too late in the afternoon, I’ll bring a second smoothie for lunch, but that’s fairly rare. 

I’ve been making peace with the feelings of occasional hunger pangs. For too many years I picked constantly. At even the slightest twinge of an emptying stomach I would rush to the refrigerator or cupboard or bookbag and grab a handful of nuts, a scoop of peanut butter, pretzels, chips, a hunk of bread and Earth Balance, anything to stave off even the most mild of discomfort. Consequently I’ve been working with my whole relationship to those feelings. Not that one needs to be hungry eating like this! There are plenty of healthy fruits, veggies and other snacks you can grab in a pinch. But I’m trying to go further and change my old eating habits from the ground up.

It is possible when eating lots of fruits and veggies that you will find for a while that you do feel like you need to eat more to become or to remain full. Most likely that will taper off after a few weeks or months, but even so, the caloric difference between a plate of broccoli with hot sauce and a plateful of chips or a handful of nuts is large enough that you’ll likely still lose weight while eating much more frequently.  


Cereal and the Unending Quest for Non-Dairy Perfection -  

My most anticipated meal of the day is my lunch, for which I still indulge in my slightly modified bowl of cereal. Since I was a kid, cartoons and cereal have been the ultimate comfort duo. Some things never, and should never, change. When I get home from work, or shopping, or when it just hits 2:00 pm, I want to fill up an over-sized bowl and chow down in front of a solid half hour of animated absurdity. As a textbook introvert, I need the time for decompression. My me time.

My cereals of choice have changed a bit over the years, but they still serve the same function.

Recently I’ve been using up my backlog of Cascadian Farm's Raisin Bran, which I’ve always loved (but which unfortunately contains added oil, so I won't be buying it anymore), interspersed with Nature’s Path Mesa Sunrise with Raisins. The Esselstyns recommend Erewhon Raisin Bran, which I now have on the shelf, though I haven’t tried it yet. To that I add roughly a half to a full cup of raw oats, sometimes ground flax, and always a blend of fruits and berries. The most common are pineapple, strawberries, blueberries (preferably frozen), raspberries, mango, etc.  

More importantly, having finished my supply of store-bought almond milk, I’ve been experimenting with some homemade alternatives. Let the quest commence!

***

The following recipes (as well as the lists of Esselstyn-approved packaged foods) can be found here

First up was “banana milk”. A great idea for cereal, though I haven’t quite hit the right combination. The recipe called for a banana, water, and a little vanilla extract. Blend it up and voila, milk, perfect for cereal!

I used a frozen banana so that it would be cold and ready for use immediately, tossed the ingredients in my Nutribullet and gave it a whirl. I’ve tried it a few times now, and even though the bananas haven’t been overly ripe, they do tend to taste it when blended. Perhaps if I’d added maple syrup it might cut the bitter, acrid banana flavor. Once I added some rather sweet frozen blueberries to the blend, but it didn’t make an appreciable difference. Overall, not a successful alternative thus far, but worthy of further experimentation! 

***

Next up I tried “oat milk”. Taking the easiest road, because I’m a man, and a lazy lazy man at that, I tossed some oats in the Nutribullet with water, a date, and a little vanilla. I soon discovered there are two problems with this method. 

Though the “milk” is actually rather palatable, it’s incredibly bland when used on unsweetened cereal. Probably my taste buds will grow accustomed, but for now it’s not hitting the “sweet spot”. For many years I've been using sweetened vanilla almond milk. Even the unsweetened stuff takes most of the joy out of the meal for me. Again, maple syrup would help, but I’m trying to avoid adding unnecessary sugar at this stage.

The second big problem with this method is temperature. If I make it when I need it, then from the heat of blending and the fact that the ingredients are only slightly colder than room temperature at best, I end up with warm cereal milk. Blech. I’ve tried adding ice cubes with the water but it doesn’t make enough of a difference.

The next logical step was to make it ahead and refrigerate it. However, when this milk sits for a while it becomes gluey. Not inediblely so, but I had to add a little more water and re-blend it to achieve the proper consistency. And even at that, when eating it, little aqueous strings of milk would stretch from the spoon to the bowl. (Come to think of it, I need to figure out how to incorporate this defect into making stretchy vegan cheese for the future!)

The last resort was to follow the actual recipe. (Man shudder)

The recipe calls for:
1C Oats
5C Water
1-2 Tsp Vanilla
(I added a couple of dates to sweeten it.)

Bring the ingredients to a boil, then cover and let simmer for an hour. Strain the mixture and enjoy the milk.

Couldn’t be more straightforward.

I just made this for the first time yesterday so I haven’t had much time to experiment yet.

The first reaction is that the strained milk is extremely thick. Like wallpaper paste. It does taste good, so I’m excited to work with it. After a night in the fridge the milk became the texture of thick pudding. This is actually rather nice as you can keep it as a “condensed milk”, and then dilute it as needed. (I intend to try an unsweetened version in cream soups, gravies, etc.)

To make a serving of milk I dropped a blob into the Nutibullet, put in around an equal amount of water and another date, then blended. I’m happy to report that this has been the best option so far!

There is one other benefit to this method. You can save the solid “oatmeal” that you strained out! I suspect it has various uses, but so far I’ve found it to be delicious on its own. I hit it with cinnamon, a touch more vanilla, and some raisins. Toss it in the fridge and you have something that tastes like a cross between rice pudding and bread pudding with no added sugar other than what’s in the raisins and dates! It’s amazing how much mileage you can get out of one cup of oats this way; a week’s worth of oat milk and at least a couple servings of dessert!

I’ll keep you posted on my quest for the perfect cereal milk!


Other Snacks?

I have greatly curtailed my bread intake, a major aid in lowering triglycerides alone. I will still eat Ezekiel breads, and Trader Joe’s has a Sprouted Grain bread which is also fat-free and Esselstyn-approved. My favorite at the moment, though, is from Whole Foods' bakery. They have a wonderful Sprouted Old World Seed Bread with raisins and a variety of (as the name would suggest) sprouted whole grains and seeds. This one taxes my willpower. But with no added oils or sugar, it’s a relatively guiltless treat!

Two Moms In the Raw make raw granola bars that are mostly seeds, dried fruit, and a few nuts. I keep one in my bag in case I really need something to nibble on, but I’ve yet to even finish one whole bar.

I’ve also been snacking on celery or broccoli dunked in hot sauce. Also daikon, radishes, parsnips, carrots… Anything crunchy and preferably spicy. They're essentially a replacement for Garden of Eatin's Red Hot Blues, and other various Doritos-style “nacho” chips. I’m still experimenting with a nutritional yeast-spice blend that’s totally satisfying, but I’ll continue in the name of Science!

I stopped using the microwave a while ago, but I used to love my Presto microwave popcorn popper. It was basically a bowl into which you could pour popcorn kernels with no added oil, and three minutes later have a big bowl of crunchy fat-free goodness. I still feel skeevy about daily microwaving, so I’m seriously considering an air popper. Popcorn is a fantastic mid-afternoon go-to, but damn, I seriously miss my coconut-oil popped death corn.  It’s all about resetting the taste buds. It won’t take long, but there’s always an inevitable period of adjustment.  


And for Dinner?

I’ll be honest, I’ve been lazy when it comes to cooking dinner lately. (Big surprise, I know.) Some dinners consist solely of a massive salad loaded with tons of veggies, nutritional yeast, a walnut, beans, and raw apple cider vinegar. In others I use collards to wrap up various raw veggies and beans, mayo-less coleslaw, etc. Sometimes I have vegetable soup, stiry fry (minus the fry) with black bean spaghetti, anything that I can make that will give me leftovers for at least a night or two because, you know… laziness.

I’ve been lucky on this front lately too. Having somewhat inspired my aunt to dabble in this lifestyle, she’s been experimenting a lot with beans and oats, particularly in sculpting them into old meat standbys, and even in one case, cookies! 

The best so far has been her take on Lebanese Kibbee. Normally a mixture of lamb or beef with wheat, filled with onions, pine nuts, and cinnamon, and then baked, she's started using black beans and chickpeas in place of the meat. It’s shocking how authentic it still tastes with the major substitution. She’s also left out the oil for my sake, but other than that, she follows her old recipe.

Today she made “sausage” for the first time with oats and beans, along with celery, carrots, and onions. With the sage they actually tasted more like bread stuffing than a sausage, but they’re really tasty and a work in progress.

Last night I felt inspired and ambitious. Not having a real recipe, basically I cooked quinoa with rosemary, then threw in some chopped collards just to wilt them. In another pan I cooked purple and sweet potatoes, asparagus, portobello mushrooms, broccoli, yellow and red peppers, cherry tomatoes, and onions, with hot pepper, garlic, thyme, oregano, and Bragg’s Liquid Aminos. Super nutritious supper with two nights of leftovers to look forward to!


Here's a pic of tonight's leftovers! 

For dessert I might have a little fruit, or in one case, I made mango sorbet with just frozen mangos, a touch of maple syrup, cinnamon, and water in the Nutribullet. It was a little thin at first, but when left in the freezer it came to the perfect sorbet consistency without becoming an impenetrable block of ice.

***

This seems as good a place as any to wrap up for now. I’m not sure how often I’ll be updating, but hopefully enough to make it a worthwhile venture.

I just hope to inspire others out there, vegan or omnivore and anywhere in between, to consider your food choices wisely, to consider getting yourself checked regularly, (the CT scan was $49 out of pocket and well worth every penny) and as the old slogan goes, “Eat like you give a shit”. Not just about other sentient beings, or the planet, which are both excellent reasons to go vegan, but eat like you give a shit about yourself too. And more importantly, consider your future self, because she/he is the one who is going to have to deal with the consequences of the choices you make today.  

As always, thanks for reading!



*In case you didn't see my little disclaimer in the last post, here it is again: 

It probably goes without saying, but in case it doesn't, I have no affiliation with any of the doctors, the RAVE Diet, or any of the products I currently buy and occasionally gush about. I have nothing to sell or anything to push. Also, I am in no way qualified to give nutritional or medical advice. I'm simply regurgitating things I've read and heard elsewhere. I'm just a guy looking to turn his own health scare into something positive and empowering for others! 


My First Two Smoothies of a New Day

Kale, dandelion greens, ½ apple, ½ carrot, date, scoop of chia seeds, ground flax seeds, 4 walnuts, a frozen banana, ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, and water

Kale, dandelion greens, ½ apple, carrot, celery, ½ frozen banana, scoop of chia seeds, oats, wheatgrass powder, ground flax seeds, 3 walnuts, ginger, turmeric, cardamom, cinnamon, and water


The pre-blended concoction!
It looks small compared to my fingers at this angle, but it's actually a 32oz container! 

3/6/2015 - And So It Begins


My father and his father both died of heart attacks at 43. It’s not the thing you bring up on a first date, but ultimately, it’s my reason for writing this blog. I’m a few weeks from turning 37, and as much as I have a hard time believing that I’m not still fresh out of high school, I’ve heard from numerous reliable sources that calendars rarely lie.

The knowledge of my family’s history of heart disease has always lurked in my mental periphery, and I’ve often joked about being the Danny DeVito twin who inherited all the worst genes from both of my parents’ respective family trees, but I never put a lot of stock into the idea that my lifestyle choices would one day catch up with me. (And for the record, I still hope they won’t.)

***

Almost ten years ago, for a variety of reasons, some physical, some ethical, I decided to go vegetarian. Determined to do it right, I first saw a nutritionist. Now, a little back-back story is needed here. I’ve had high, sometimes dangerously high, cholesterol since middle school. Early on my pediatrician steered me toward a “fat free” diet, still heavy in animal products, still heavy in processed “fat free” (ie. high sugar, low fiber, pure chemical shit) snacks.

I did this for the better part of my middle, high school and college years, with some considerable digressions, yet I still had borderline high cholesterol and off-the-charts triglycerides. But at least I was trying, right?

Some exceedingly bad dietary behaviors sneaked their way in in college. For instance, I would often buy a large loaf of Italian bread and a couple pounds of cold cuts, then make half of the loaf of bread into one enormous sandwich stacked with meat and cheese, slathered with mayo, and maybe a little iceberg lettuce and some onions to ensure that it was a balanced meal. Not surprisingly, I was up in weight, up in cholesterol, down in overall health.

But that was nothing compared to the all-out culinary debauchery of my post-collegiate years. I would, without compunction or shred of decency, order an obscenely large meatball calzone, devour the whole horrifyingly massive thing in one sitting, and then chase it with a couple slices of Sicilian pizza. 

***

Jumping ahead a few years to my late 20s: As I said, spurred on by my studies and modest commitment to Buddhism (along with my vow to stop killing or intentionally harming sentient beings, yes, even annoying ones like mosquitoes) as well as the promise that I might drop some pounds so I would look less like a Hotei Buddha and more like a Shakyamuni Buddha, I finally decided to go vegetarian. At this point I was up in the mid-to-high 240 lb range, so a change was certainly warranted.

Initially all seemed fine. At the behest of my nutritionist I was keeping a daily log with every calorie, gram of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, carb, fiber, net carb, and protein that I put in my mouth. And initially I lost some weight and my numbers improved a bit. Yay.

However, I had fallen for the common American misconception that we need MORE PROTEIN! Never enough! If you’re not making your kidneys scream for mercy from the strain you must be protein deficient! And so I was loading up on sliced cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt, eggs, lots of animal-derived protein sources heavy in saturated fat and cholesterol.

Low and behold, my liver numbers started going wonky. The AST and ALT were consistently high. My doctor at the time gave me his reassuring opinion that “I don’t think you have hepatitis and I don’t think you have cancer, so come back in another month and we’ll test your blood again.” And it went on like this, month after month, the numbers steadily rising and the answer staying the same.

It also didn’t help that my average meal portion was still in the range more suited to a land mammal a few times my size. There was a particular Taqueria (which is no longer in business, I say with a mixture of nostalgia and gratitude) where they would build a burrito of the customer's design. The people working there were more than liberal with the toppings. In fact, they often had to use two overlapped tortillas to keep them from rupturing the oozing, writhing mass of black beans, rice, sour cream, shredded cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, olives, hot peppers, cooked peppers, and a suspiciously Velveeta-esque goop that they called "espinaca con queso", but which I happened to know was some chemicalized concoction that came in frozen in a giant plastic bag that was reheated by soaking the whole thing in a vat of warm water. Yum…  Anyhow, the burrito would often weigh upwards of two or three pounds! And of course, in about ten minutes it would be gone, along with a bag of tortilla chips and another container of the espinaca con queso which had virtually no espinaca to speak of, (and probably nothing that could legally be called queso either).

All of which is to say that even though I was vegetarian, I was still basically a junk-food vegetarian. And my body was responding in kind.

***

We’ll fast forward now to the first Vegetarian Expo in Saratoga, NY. At this point I’d been vegetarian for two years, but felt like I was somehow copping out. Like I was on the right path but that I should be following it further. Like I knew I could and should be doing more. I’d heard about veganism, but also heard rumors about how extreme and unhealthy it was. Like, don’t they just live off of wheatgrass, salad, and martyrdom? And seriously, where the hell do they get their protein?  Besides, everybody knows somebody who went vegan and got terribly sick and/or cancer and/or died.  

So ethically I was feeling more compelled to going whole hog-less, so to speak, having only recently been exposed to footage of the great abomination that is factory farming, and the inhumane, rather absurd world of even the “ethical, family-owned, local farm” dairy industry. But still… I shouldn’t have to DIE for my fledgling morals, should I?

That day I attended a talk by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn*, a respected cardiac surgeon and long-time vegan, that literally changed everything. He described how a vegan, whole-foods, plant-based diet was optimum for making you not only heart attack proof, but for even reversing heart disease once it had begun. Veganism is, he continued, the healthiest diet for all of us. No way! It’s healthy and ethical? I decided immediately that I had to go vegan. I bought his book, asked him some questions, and stepped out of the Saratoga Convention Center that day on my path to a healthier whole-foods lifestyle, feeling like a huge weight had been metaphorically (and soon to be literally) lifted from my shoulders. 

The transformation was strikingly quick. In total over the next six months or so of veganism I lost over 60 pounds, had more energy, improved complexion, and more importantly, after ditching the dairy, my liver levels were back to normal within the first two months! It turns out I was giving myself cirrhosis of the liver from fatty foods! And for the record, my AST and ALT levels have been perfectly normal ever since.

My cholesterol too was down to a record level in the low 120s (down from the 200s in my earlier dietary iterations). And even more stunning, my triglycerides which had formerly been up in the high 700s, came down to a record low of 23. Yes, 23.

***

I’ve always hated exercise. I am a firm believer that exercise kills. This was my partly tongue-in-cheek mantra for most of my life. Seriously, though, didn’t Bob Marley die from toe cancer from kicking a soccer ball or something?  I did, however, at this point begin walking around the block a few days a week. Surprisingly, it didn’t send me to an immediate grave, and it probably did speed up the numerous benefits.

At first I stuck very strictly to Esselstyn’s regimen; no added fats, all whole grains, no processed foods, moderate exercise… But slowly the little temptations (and old familiar laziness) eased their way in. I don’t actually have a heart problem, and vegan food is still a hell of a lot healthier than what most of the rest of the country eats, so I can totally have seconds of this vegan turtle cheesecake laced with homemade caramel and pecans and coated with a chocolate-coconut ganache. Besides, I walked all the way down the hall to the fridge, and then back to the computer chair; that had to have burned off at least half the calories, and this morning I traversed a whole flight of stairs to get a chocolate chip cookie from the freezer, which left me with no choice but to climb the damn things again to get back to my computer chair… Screw it. I earned a bag of Kettle Maple Bacon potato chips.

***

Cutting to the chase, in the past few months, (or maybe the last year or two, I have no concept of time,) when I do make the effort to mount the treadmill and put in an agonizing half hour of inclined walking, I’ve found that I’ve experienced a bit of chest and back pain, and that the exercise-induced asthma I’ve been suffering from my entire life (and that has also helped confirm my earlier hypothesis that exercise kills) has been getting worse. So last week I finally worked up the nerve to ask my doctor if we could check my heart. To that end he ordered a Blood Lipid Panel, and sent me for a Coronary Calcium CT Scan which can actually see the plaque inside your arteries. I expected the worst, but hoped for my not-so-perfect vegan diet to be in some way protective.

For the past few years I’ve been riding a roller coaster of food-related guilt. I’ll fall significantly backward on my whole-foods goal, only to feel terrible and turn a corner for a month or two, soon to be tempted away yet again. One of my biggest vices is bread. Twice a week I would buy a beautiful loaf from the farmers market (made often of horrible bleached white flour) and proceed to annihilate the entire loaf in well short of 48 hours, often slathered with obscene amounts of Earth Balance.

And to make matters worse, for the past few months, hoping that all the pro-coconut propaganda I’ve been reading has some merit, I’ve been eating fresh coconut meat three times a day, along with snacking every couple of hours on nuts or scoops of peanut butter from the fridge, and often eating a huge bowl of popcorn cooked in coconut oil as a late afternoon snack… (Not to mention my even worse habit of plowing through almost a whole bag of spicy chips of one variety or another in a sitting.)

So when I had my tests done this week, I was really really really hoping that my daily kale smoothies (with peanut butter and fruit) had sufficiently preventative benefits to compensate for my other digressions.

Not so much. 

My total cholesterol had risen to 185, not bad for the national average I suppose, but terrible for me. My triglycerides were up to 153, my HDL was down to 40, and my LDL was up to 114.

This was understandably discouraging, but the results from my CT Scan were far more distressing. I had a score of 250, on a scale where 0 means you have no arterial plaque, and 400 means you have extensive plaque (and possibly a heart attack or stroke in your near future). 250 is a moderate amount of plaque, and much higher than they would expect to see in a 36 year old.

It is my hope and suspicion that the plaque was accumulated primarily in my pre-vegan years, and that I'm just now finding out about it, but unfortunately there's no way to determine how old it actually is. 

That was my wake-up call. We all need one sometimes.

Thankfully, I’m not in a fearful death spiral. I’m not wondering “Why me?” (I know full well why me!). I’m not feeling like a victim of my genetics. (There is some reason to think that my body might collect plaque at a more accelerated rate than someone else’s might, but I'm inclined to think it was really just the result of bad dietary and lifestyle choices.)

Instead, I am empowered. I have the tools of diet and exercise to reverse this. And I plan to. I’m thankful that it was caught relatively early, and that I’ve had the exposure to some proven antidotes. And I’m hopeful that I can manage this myself without needing to resort to statins or baby aspirin. I’m going to see a cardiologist in the next few weeks, but I have no interest in starting any meds at this point.

That is why I decided to write this blog. To chart my journey from the beginning in hopes of inspiring others, and to warn other vegans that just because you’re not eating animals, it doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to consume everything else you want with impunity. Every bite we take can bite us back.

***

I’ve pulled Dr. Esselstyn’s book off the shelf and am going to follow his very strict recommendations of a diet consisting of no added oils, no processed foods, no coconut, few actual nuts, but tons of fresh fruits, veggies, legumes, seeds and whole grains. I’m sticking to my daily kale smoothies (though revised with more veggies and no nut products), and will probably be having them for breakfast and lunch most days, replacing my usual lunch of oats, organic cereal, fruit and a couple cups of vanilla almond milk. I know it still sounds rather healthy, but the only days I would ever lose weight were the days that I skipped this decadent treat. (I might still indulge in a version of it occasionally, just in a much smaller bowl.)

I also plan to exercise on a more regular basis. I have two seasons of Adventure Time DVDs cued up, along with a Netflix account that I can access on the big TV in front of the treadmill. And if all else fails, I’ll play Wii while I walk and double the exercise. Distractions are key.

I am starting this blog weighing 175 pounds. I hope to end it in a couple of years with a lower plaque score, lower cholesterol, and body weight in the 150 pound range which would be an optimum BMI for my height.  

I’m not much of an exhibitionist. I don’t post much on Facebook. I never Tweet. But I feel like this is important enough to get me to add my voice to the blogosphere. Again, I hope to inspire others, as well as to make people aware of what could be going on inside their bodies.

I welcome constructive comments and questions.

Let’s hope we will all end it in a healthier place!

Thanks for reading! 




*It probably goes without saying, but in case it doesn't, I have no affiliation with any of the doctors, the RAVE Diet, or any of the products I currently buy and occasionally gush about. I have nothing to sell or anything to push. Also, I am in no way qualified to give nutritional or medical advice. I'm simply regurgitating things I've read and heard elsewhere. I'm just a guy looking to turn his own health scare into something positive and empowering for others!