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How I broke my unhealthy habits
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Develop healthy habits of fitness and nutrition
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Hi, I’m Kirby. I need to fess up immediately – in my 20s, 30s, and 40s, I lived a life of very unhealthy habits. My nutrition was made of fried foods, highly processed meals, and too many adult beverages. Physical fitness was non-existent. And my emotional health was in the dirt. Why? Because I was always feeling guilty about how I looked and, ironically, not living with healthy habits. With help, motivation, and time, I was able to transform those unhealthy habits into healthy habits.
Today I’m where I want to be from an overall health standpoint. I now live a lifestyle of healthy habits when it comes to nutrition and fitness. It wasn’t easy to transform those unhealthy habits into good ones. And I had a lot of help and a good supporting cast (my wife Sandy). It also took a lot of research separating fact from marketing-driven fiction (sports drinks come immediately to mind).
More about me and my journey in a moment. But first…
What brought you here?
Maybe you’re searching for a way to improve your physical fitness. Or maybe you searched for improved nutrition. Then again, maybe you searched for overall health, or emotional health. It may have been a search to find information on how to live well into our golden years – otherwise called healthy aging. Finally, you may have suffered a minor or major setback and need a little motivation to get back on track.
Whatever you searched for, you’re here. And that means we may have a few things in common relative to our health. It could be that:
- You woke up one morning and realized your health was in the toilet – your lifestyle was a revolving door of unhealthy habits.
- You’re not happy with your how much you weigh, how you feel, or how you look. You can’t seem to either accept it or change it.
- Maybe you find yourself looking down and sampling a path of unhealthy habits. You want to change course before it gets out of control.
- And then there’s the inevitable setback that can bring our healthy habits and fitness plans to a screeching halt.
I’d love to hear what brought you to this site. Use the comment box in the side bar (or at the bottom of the page if you’re reading this on a smart phone or tablet) to send me a note telling my why you’re here. Everyone has a story. I’d love to hear yours. It also helps me prioritize information I share on this site – I want to share facts and science that help you resolve whatever brought you here!
It’s never too late to kick-start your healthy habits
In almost all the reasons you ended up here, it’s never too late, and you’re never too old, to change course. Those are popular misconceptions. It can be difficult and complicated to get your head around making course adjustments from unhealthy to healthy habits, but it’s totally possible. If you do improve your lifestyle by adding some or all the healthy habits on this website, you WILL hit your health target. And better yet, your body and mind will thank you by making you feel better. I’m living proof of it. Let me explain…
My founding years of unhealthy habits
When I graduated from Purdue University the first time with a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering, I was anxious to start an engineering career. Sandy and I were married, and we moved to Michigan for my “dream job.” At least I thought it was. I worked in a nuclear power plant and was responsible for making sure our safety systems were always ready to respond.
The position required a lot of hours (some weeks were upward of 90-hour work weeks). It was also a high-stress position and work environment. The consequences of screwing up were, of course, huge. And you didn’t want to be the one to delay a startup after an outage.
Career obsession derailed any healthy habits
I was career driven, so I embraced the long hours, high stress, and shift work. But I embraced that to the detriment of my health. There was no time for exercise, but somehow there was time for socializing. We were in our 20s and had a great time at the pubs, bars, and clubs in the area. The weight started slowly piling on. I knew it, and I knew I needed to change my habits, but I had no goals outside of work. Not having goals meant that there was no path to change those unhealthy habits. But I didn’t know that at the time. And when we’re in our 20s, our bodies are relatively robust compared to a 50-year-old.
We needed a change to kick-start healthy habits of nutrition and fitness
Our first of two daughters was born. That was, of course, a joyous occasion, but then time became an even more precious commodity. It wasn’t long before Sandy suggested that maybe we consider graduate school. That was a drastic change in our lives, and it seemed that was exactly what we needed.
I was accepted to Michigan Tech’s Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering program. We moved to the upper peninsula of Michigan with all our belongings, and a 4-month old daughter. Those were our homesteading years. We went from processed or fired meals to being fundamentally healthy. We hiked and we cut up firewood by the truckload. Our meals were amazingly simple and were mostly assembled from raw products. We made our own bread, applesauce from locally picked wild apple orchards, and home-raised (our home) chicken. The stress level went down, and the weight started falling off. We both were about as healthy as we could be. Our unhealthy habits had been broken!
We returned to Purdue for a doctorate, and then moved to Kansas State University for a faculty position. And that’s where the wheels really fell off the “healthy habit” wagon.
Career obsession take 2 – back to unhealthy habits of poor fitness and nutrition
Manhattan Kansas was our home for the next 21 years. Our second daughter was born about two years in. Over time, Sandy and I grew and operated a research lab. Life happened for about 15 years. While life was happening, I wasn’t doing much about my physical health. Unhealthy habits returned and I gained about 5 pounds a year. I didn’t have time for fitness or nutrition.
At some point, I gave up ever being physically healthy. I’m not sure why. My emotional health took a hit, too, because I didn’t like being overweight, which created guilt feelings. I considered buying oversized clothes to save money, because whatever fit me today would be too tight a few months from now. I was chronically stressed from work and supporting a family. My perception was there was no time to regain my physical and mental health. The unfortunate part is that it didn’t have to be that way. There was plenty of time to fit in a 30-minute a day exercise program. Healthy nutritional habits don’t take much time, either.
I had truly given up ever being healthy.
Sacrifices and Medications: the norm for unhealthy habits
All my unhealthy habits of fitness and nutrition led to an unhealthy body and unhealthy mind. My weight tipped the scales at 285 pounds on a 6 ft 1 inch frame. I was considered “obese” according to data from the National Institutes of Health. And, yes, I felt obese – very obese. I looked back on the days I was at a healthy weight and wished I could go back. But I just couldn’t figure out how.
Obesity caused plenty of health issues
But obesity is a lot more than how you look and feel. Obesity caused a host of medical problems:
- High cholesterol
- High blood pressure
- Elevated liver enzymes due to a fatty, unhealthy liver
- Borderline diabetes
- Depression because I didn’t like what I had become – and I didn’t know how to change.
These medical issues were the kinds that will cause long-term damage, like damaged internal organs. From a functional standpoint, I had difficulty getting in and out of a car or chair. It was impossible to bend over to tie my shoes. I couldn’t keep up with the kids nearly as well anymore.
Medications will keep us alive
Dr. Wall, our family doctor, prescribed this and that pill to keep the medical issues under control. That’s when it hit me that I could use meds to counter the unhealthy habits. And that meant I could continue the unhealthy nutrition and fitness habits with abandon! Modern medicine was fantastic!
So now, in my 40s, I traded any kind of physical activity for sitting on our deck enjoying an adult beverage. I ate and drank whatever I wanted because that handful of pills I took each day would keep me “healthy.”
Sacrificing activities I enjoy
For years, Sandy and I had season tickets to Kansas State home football games. We arrived 5 hours prior to kickoff and tailgated. Then we’d head into the game. Our seats were near the 40 yard line and were in the second row of the upper deck – really great seats!
One game day, as we walked the quarter mile or so to the stadium entrance from our tailgate, I started getting a little winded. We made it to the stadium entrance and started climbing the stairs to the second deck. I had to rest part way up. Finally made it to our seats. At halftime, we typically return to our tailgate with our friends, and then hike back to the stadium for the second half.
That day I made my first excuse for not doing something because of my poor physical condition. I told Sandy I’d stay at the tailgate and tend to the grill. No one needed to actually do that, but my mind did not want to hike up those stairs again. So, I invented excuses, and in the process gave up watching the rest of the game with Sandy. The reality was that I had effectively just given up watching football games in person – something we had done for years – together. And for some reason, I was okay with that. I preferred to continue my unhealthy habits over other activities I enjoyed.
The road to sustainable healthy habits
I had hit rock bottom. I was not only eating and drinking whatever I wanted, but I was giving up activities that I enjoy. In fact, they were activities Sandy and I enjoyed doing together. This was a road to nowhere good, but I didn’t realize it – yet.
Life-changing event – My annual physical at 49
Dr. Wall was our family doctor. During my 49-year-old annual physical, he noted that I continued to gain weight, and was now about 80 pounds overweight. All the health-markers (blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, liver enzymes, etc) were inching up. To counteract those increases, Dr. Wall increased my medication doses. He recommended a liver biopsy to make sure nothing was seriously wrong with my liver, as opposed to just a fatty liver (not that a fatty liver is a good thing!).
Dr. Wall asked me if I planned to change my unhealthy habits to control my weight. I confidently said “nope, I’ll just take medications to counter whatever health effects come with the weight. That way I can eat and drink whatever I want.” His response knocked me back into my chair.
His response: “Then we’ll have to change the way we’re treating you. You’re right, in that I can prescribe drugs to keep your blood markers in check. But because of your lack of fitness and extra weight, your knees will start to fail before you’re 60. You’ll be taking insulin shots by then to control your blood sugar. And there’s still the issue of your liver enzymes being out of range. You’ll be using a walker by the time you’re 60. Are you really ready for that life? Because I will keep you alive long beyond 60. You just won’t enjoy it very much.”
Okay, that got my attention.
Moving to healthy habits – Improved Fitness
Not only did Dr. Wall get my attention on overall health, but I was sacrificing things I loved to do because of poor healthy habits. And obesity and low energy that came from those habits. Sandy and I talked about it. We read the first edition of a book that a wonderful friend recommended – Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, Sexy, and Smart―Until You’re 80 and Beyond. The link is to an updated 2019 version so isn’t quite the same as the version we read. The newer edition adds some material on cognition and brain health. It’s written by Dr. Henry (Harry) Lodge, an internist and professor at Columbia who provides the science, and Chris Crowley, who provides the motivation behind the book. In the 2019 edition, Dr. Allan Hamilton stepped in for the cognition and brain health portions of the book.
You must admit, that’s an extremely catchy title for a book! And it’s more than catchy. It’s a good book to read, and it was just another domino to fall in the game to change my unhealthy habits into healthy habits.
Healthy habits for life - Dr. Henry Lodge
Dr. Lodge had some remarkably simple lifestyle rules that are worth repeating – they definitely made an impact on me. These rules are:
- Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life
- Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life
- Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life
- Spend less than you make (this isn’t a typical healthy lifestyle rule, but I like it)
- Quit eating garbage
- Care (about things)
- Connect and commit
These are powerful statements, and we took them to heart. The main message we took from the book is that we simply need to be physically active in a brisk way for 45 minutes a day, 5 or 6 days a week. And of course, pay attention to our nutrition – fruits and veggies, lean protein, healthy fats – you get the idea. We thought we could get our heads around the physical activity portion, but the nutrition part – we weren’t ready for that commitment. We enjoyed what we ate and drank a little too much!
Before leaving this part of the story, I need to tell you that Dr. Lodge died in 2017 at the age of 58. He died of an extremely aggressive prostate cancer. While the prognosis for most prostate cancers is positive, his version was very lethal. He left an indelible mark on society and offered a genuine path to an active lifestyle well into our golden years. There’s a point to this that I now realize. And that point is we can all step on a proverbial landmine…
Stuff happens – do a risk analysis
If we take care of ourselves and live a healthy lifestyle with proper exercise and nutrition, there’s no reason why we must be “old” in our 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond. One might ask: if Dr. Lodge lived such a healthy life, then how did he die early?
What I realize today is that “stuff happens.” I could live the healthiest life possible and have a stroke that kills me tomorrow. Or I can get aggressive pancreatic cancer and die in 2 months. These things happen, but for most of us, those things will not happen. There’s always a risk of dying “early” from something. But a lifestyle based on healthy habits significantly lowers the risk of those things happening. Dr. Lodge stepped on a scarce landmine. But that doesn’t happen to everyone, and interestingly that’s a key point in his book.
I started to embrace risk management. I learned how to assess risk by looking at the possible failure modes (heart attack, cancers, liver failure, dementia to name a few). Once we know the failure modes (we all do – we just don’t want to acknowledge them), then we can take actions to reduce the risk, especially the ones that will kill us or put us in a wheelchair. There’s always a risk of something bad happening, and there’s no such thing, when it comes to health, of zero risk.
So… accept the fact, without fear, that something could happen. But again, for most of us, those things won’t happen. Especially if we live a lifestyle of healthy habits.
Goals and change – drop some of those unhealthy habits
I set a goal of dropping 70 pounds and being able to get off the medications. Sandy signed us up at the gym just around the corner from our research lab. That meant it was incredibly convenient. We started every day of the work week at the gym for an hour. All I did was walk briskly on a treadmill for 45 minutes five days a week. I didn’t change anything else about my life – I really liked eating and drinking what I wanted!
But going to the gym was a huge change in my lifestyle. I knew that I wasn’t going to enjoy the rest of my life if I didn’t make that change. And that was enough motivation for me.
By increasing physical activity, I changed my body’s energy balance. What is this? We explain the body energy balance, or BEB, in the nutrition section. But for now, it’s a simple matter that by increasing my activity, I was now using more energy than I consumed. When this happens, we lose weight, plain and simple.
Starting fitness activities made the weight fall off
Over a few months, I increased the speed and elevation of the treadmill to make the 45-minute workout a little more strenuous. I used the calorie counter on the treadmill as a measure of how hard I worked. It became a game – how high can I get the counter to go? It kept it challenging and interesting.
Then I started working in other physical activities like running, resistance training, and a bit of cross-fit (yikes, that was hard!). I felt better physically and mentally. My “fat” clothes were way too large, so I had to buy new clothes – but this time I felt good about it! The lifestyle I was after was within reach. I had dropped about 60 pounds. I was now in the 220 to 230-pound range. Still not a healthy weight for me, but an improvement over the previous version of me.
Blood markers came into the normal range
A follow up visit with Dr. Wall proved I was getting healthier. My blood work showed cholesterol was well-below normal and my blood pressure was starting to come in (too) low (I would feel a little light-headed after a good workout). He reduced the doses of the meds for blood pressure and cholesterol. The liver enzymes that were always elevated came into the normal range – meaning I avoided a liver biopsy. I couldn’t eliminate the drugs (yet), but I was now on the lowest doses of them. My blood sugar was also in the normal range, meaning I was no longer pre-diabetic.
Dr. Wall told me if I lost another 10 pounds, he’d stop talking to me about my weight. That was a challenge I accepted!
Hitting the Fitness Plateau
If you read a few weight-loss stories, they almost always talk about hitting a plateau. The plateau happens when you simply stop losing weight no matter what you seem to do. A plateau is completely driven by the laws of physics. You keep working out, but the weight no longer drops. Why is that??
The answer almost seems like a cruel joke. When I was 285 pounds, it took a lot of energy to walk on that treadmill for 45 minutes. Especially when I elevated it. After my weight dropped by 60 pounds, it took less energy to do the same workout. It’s as simple as that – less energy use meant I didn’t need to burn up fat cells to provide workout energy. Which meant the remaining fat cells stayed put – in other words, a plateau.
Said a little differently, my body was 60 pounds lighter than it was a few months earlier. I continued to do the same workout –briskly walking on a treadmill for 45 minutes. But now it took less calories to complete that workout than it did 60 pounds ago. At this point, my daily calorie intake from food and drink and my daily calorie expenditure were balanced for a weight of about 225 pounds. Continuing to do a similar workout every day and continuing to eat the same number of calories each day meant I had hit the plateau. I increased the time I walked, but that had a miniscule effect on my weight.
Nutrition healthy habits
Hitting the plateau meant that something had to change to hit my target weight. I either needed to significantly ramp up my workout durations, change our diet, or both. I really didn’t have time to double my workout times, and to be honest that didn’t seem like a lot of fun. So, Sandy and I tackled our nutrition.
We traded our fried and processed foods for fruits and vegetables. We transitioned from fatty cuts of meat to leaner cuts like pork loin and chicken. We eliminated many of the processed snacks from the house – Oreos, crackers, and the like. We focused on a healthy balance of the macronutrients – carbs, protein, and healthy fats.
Was this an easy transition? Not at all! In fact, it was harder than starting the workouts. But the payoff was a higher energy level, the loss of another 15 pounds, and another lowering of cholesterol. In fact, I was finally able to drop the cholesterol med!
Living a lifestyle Void of Unhealthy habits
Within a couple of years of being in the worst physical condition I’ve ever been in, Sandy, who was always in good shape, and I were fit, running several miles a day, and eating a healthy diet. I started training in the martial arts (taekwondo). We found a sustainable lifestyle full of physical activity that we enjoyed. We vacationed in the Appalachian Mountains to hike. Bike riding became a norm, as did walking places. Our diet resembled the Mediterranean diet, considered one of the healthiest and easiest diets on the planet.
We moved from Kansas back to Chicagoland as a career move for me, and a way to get closer to our families. Even though the position I accepted was high stress, I now was better equipped to handle that stress – go for a run, focus on living in the moment, eat a healthy meal. It all worked great. We lived in a very walkable village just outside of the Chicago city limits. We loved everything about our lifestyle. Until the setback…
The inevitable setbacks can derail our best fitness and nutrition plans
To live a perfect life without setbacks of any kind would be an absolute miracle. My experience suggests that are three types of setbacks: nutritional, physical, and extreme. I’ve struggled through all three.
Nutrition Setbacks
Nutritional setbacks seem to happen more frequently than that others. I don’t know why, but you see healthy looking fit people eating crappy food all the time in restaurants. You know by looking at them that this specific unhealthy meal isn’t their norm. So yes, it’s a nutritional setback that you enjoy now – it’s just part of life. But you know you can’t always eat this way (thinking pizza and fried calamari) if you want to be healthy. It’s really that simple.
I fall off the healthy diet bandwagon about once a week. But I don’t let that one pizza turn into a week of poor eating choices. I could continue to gorge on pizzas, or I could tell myself that was a nice diversion, but it’s time to get back to our healthy diet. When I start arguing with myself, I start thinking how stuffed and lethargic I felt after gorging on pizza, but how energized I feel after eating our typical healthy meals. Yes, the pizza tasted good, but the longer-term effects were being uncomfortable and lethargic. I’ve learned that sticking to our normal meals still tasted good and had longer term benefits like higher energy levels and alertness.
Nutrition setbacks are relatively simple setbacks to manage – we made sure one weekend of fun and food didn’t turn into a week, and then a month.
Physical Setbacks
Colds, sore muscles, and physical injuries are facts of life. Most doctors say we can exercise with a cold, but sometimes we don’t feel like it. Sore muscles are an outcome of exercise. Injuries will inevitably happen – especially if we’re increasing the rigor of our exercise program.
When I have a cold, I go to great lengths to follow through with my exercise plan. It might not be my best effort, but I’ll do it. The same goes for sore muscles caused by exercising, called delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). I know that having sore muscles (not to be confused with injured muscles!) is the process of increasing my fitness. That tends to motivate me to keep after it.
Physical injuries are another story. I’ve had my share of shoulder and knee injuries. I learned these need to be respected and treated by my doctor. You can tell the difference between DOMS and an injury. DOMS mostly goes away once you start exercising – you might still feel it a bit, but it’s not limiting. An injury, though, hurts enough to keep you from doing specific movements. I learned that powering through an injury is a bad idea.
I look for ways to exercise around an injury. That’s different than powering through an injury. During a shoulder injury, I could still run and do most of the taekwondo workouts. With a little effort and creativity, you can almost always find a way to exercise even with a physical injury.
Physical setbacks are more difficult to manage than nutritional setbacks. The best way to manage them is to not give in to our mind games to take the day off from exercise. We must learn to work around these physical setbacks.
Extreme setbacks
These setbacks are significant events in our lives. My experience with an extreme setback started with a sore left shoulder. I thought my worse case scenario was shoulder surgery, which would have been extreme. Shoulder surgery requires a long recovery time. Shoulder surgery, it turns out, would have been good news instead of the news I got…
These are much more difficult to work through…
My extreme setback
During my annual physical in December 2016 when I was 59, I mentioned my sore left shoulder. My doctor looked at it and referred me to a Rush University Medical Center orthopedic surgeon who specializes in shoulders. The orthopedic surgeon took one look, and immediately sent me for an MRI. That happened later that day – my first of several MRIs.
I was in my office that evening. My orthopedic surgeon called and said he had me scheduled to meet with several other doctors the next morning at Rush. He also scheduled a more extensive MRI even earlier in the morning. Then he said… some of the members of the team I would meet with were oncologists.
Oncologists? I thought I might need shoulder surgery, but cancer never entered my thoughts.
I called Sandy immediately. She was on her way home. I then called my VP and filled him in. He told me to take care of my health and not worry about work – he’d take care of anything that needed attention. I was fortunate in this regard – Mark was one of the best people I ever reported to.
Sandy and I headed to Rush the next morning. I had another MRI and then met with a medical team. I had cancer. There was a large mass on my left shoulder blade that had ravaged my shoulder blade. It was fractured and the muscled was riddled with cancer cells. They weren’t completely sure until I had a biopsy, but they were fairly sure that it was non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a form aggressive blood cancer that spreads through our lymph symptoms.
Treatments
The diagnosis was indeed non-Hodgkin lymphoma, stage 4. I had lymphoma masses in my liver, pancreas, and smaller masses in and around my heart.
Fortunately, the head doctor for lymphoma treatment and research at Rush heard about my case and took me on. After a series of tests, I started chemotherapy.
Chemo is a treatment that kills cells in our bodies. You just hope it kills all the cancer cells before it kills you. It works well with aggressive cancers, because the cancer cells suck up more of the chemicals than our regular cells. They are the proverbial “pigs at the trough,” sucking up the poison and killing themselves. There are other fast growing cells in our bodies, such as hair follicles and the lining of our mouths. Unfortunately, they also suck up the chemicals and die. They’re collateral damage from chemo. And of course, our bone marrow is severely damaged as well by chemo. And that leads to low red and white blood cell counts, and platelet counts.
Treatment #1 wasn't good enough
The first treatment was a one-day treatment that would happen every three weeks. I planned to continue my exercise program, but the medical team did not want me doing contact sports – which meant no taekwondo sparring. They were concerned about serious bruising because of low blood platelet counts. What I didn’t realize at the time was that low red blood cells meant low endurance. And low white blood cell counts meant a weakened immune system.
By the time of the second treatment, more pathology results were back from the biopsies. I had a more difficult form of NHL that required a more aggressive chemo treatment. The second and subsequent treatments required a 6-day stay in the hospital attached to an IV pole undergoing controlled poisoning. Not a fun time physically or emotionally…
Exercising around treatments
Rush has a complete floor with private rooms dedicated to this type of treatment. Sandy, bless her heart, slept on a plastic couch in my room. They had an exercise bike that I used daily. I walked laps in the hall with ankle weights. The resistant band was for my arms and shoulder. The soft-covered baseball – well, that was just for fun. I kept trying to exercise around the treatments.
During the two weeks of “recovery” between treatments, I would walk several miles a day. I quickly realized that taekwondo practices were not going to happen. Something as simple as walking up a flight of stairs left me gasping for breath because of low red blood cell counts. At one point I needed a transfusion. But I kept walking – that was about the only thing I could manage.
Recovery
In May 2017, six months after starting chemo, it was over. CT scans showed no signs of cancer. That was, of course, great news! But at the same time, my body was ravaged by the chemo war that was waged against the cancer cells. My blood counts were in the dirt. Endurance was non-existent. I had lost about 20 pounds, but somehow my pants were a little tighter around my waist. The only way that is possible is if I lost a bunch of hard-earned muscle mass and gained some fat. That was a little (maybe a lot) depressing!
I went to physical therapy three days a week for another 4 months. They helped me heal my left shoulder and start the muscle healing process. They helped me gain endurance, which I had completely lost. And finally, I was able to re-start taekwondo training (I set a goal of being able to run three miles first – it was a slow three miles).
Training to get to the 3-mile mark was daunting. It took a lot of perseverance to get up each morning and try to work a little harder than I did the day before. But I kept at it. Throughout all of this, I had an excellent supporting cast – Sandy and our two daughters, Carrie and Emma. They wouldn’t let me camp out on the couch. One of our daughters would call me daily to make sure I was doing something.
That was three years ago. Today, I’m healthy and there’s no sign of cancer returning. The left shoulder muscles will never be the same, but I haven’t found anything I can’t do. The real achievement was making it to not only the state taekwondo championships, but also the national championships in 2019. I came away with gold and silver medals from each competition. I fully planned and trained to bring home all gold in 2020, but unless you’ve been under a rock, you know how that turned out…
Lesson learned – fitness and nutrition are critically important
The lesson I learned from the cancer experience was that being physically fit and nutritionally sound are critically important to our health. At work, I’m known for eating healthy lunches of my own making. One person asked me if I was going to continue eating that way even though it didn’t prevent cancer. His point was that it apparently didn’t matter what I ate – I still got cancer. But cancer is one of those landmines that some of us step on. In my case, I am fortunate to be in remission. Now, I figure living with healthy habits lowers my risk of it coming back, or something else happening. But what if it does?
Here’s what my colleague didn’t know. My medical team was really glad I had great physical fitness when I started chemo. This meant they could treat me much more aggressively than if I were in poor physical condition. I tolerated the highest doses, which meant the odds of beating cancer were higher. I know of other more sedentary people who went through a similar treatment plan. They didn’t fair quite as well. Their treatments were at low doses, and sometimes stopped mid-treatment because their bodies were not tolerating the treatment.
We can do so much more than we think we can
I’m more motivated now than I was pre-cancer to stick with healthy habits, maintain my fitness, and stay nutritionally sound. It saved my life. And while I don’t relish the thought of going through a cancer treatment again, I’m going to be in the best shape possible in case I do have to go through it.
The other point I learned is that we can overcome setbacks if we are motivated to do so. We can do much more than we think we can.
Overcoming the cancer setback just shows that we can do much more than we think we can. Most people can overcome whatever difficulties or setbacks they are struggling with as long as they can get their head around it. I see people give up every day just because they think they are not capable – that’s their mind playing games with them. I want to help those people achieve what they think they cannot.
What setbacks have you had to overcome?
Of course, my hope is that you are not suffering from something like cancer. But even if you are, I am here to help you overcome setbacks and reach goals, just like I did. Your first step is REALLY simple. It’s free. And it’ll take you a whopping 30 seconds. Just join The Healthy League and start improving your life today.
Before you go to the next page, though, I’d really appreciate hearing your story. The comment box near the top of the page is for just that. I’m not asking you to write a novel, but just a few sentences about what brought you to this site. What prompted you to write the words you did in the search box? Everyone has a story – and yours is as important as mine! I won’t share your name, but I will use these stories as a guide to what other information I post. If you check the “I approve for use” checkbox, then I might use it directly in a post. That’s up to you.