COLUMN: Diet Woes

Like many of you, when COVID had the world on pause, I figured it was a good time to pick up a new hobby. For me, that hobby was cooking.

After all, what was there to lose? All the restaurants were closed, so there weren't better options. I was home alone, so I couldn't accidentally poison anyone other than myself. I didn't have to worry about impressing my friends, because they only saw me over Zoom and if I were to have made dinner inedible, I could just gently scoop the food into the trash off-camera off-camera and say, "Mmm, it's super delicious! I'm really getting the hang of this!"

I was resolved to finally learn how this kitchenmajig worked. I dug out my stovetop from under a mountain of pizza boxes. I bought an Instant Pot and an air fryer. I got groceries delivered to my door from Instacart. I watched a quinjillion cooking videos on Youtube. At first, successes were fleeting and misfires happened often. You might remember my column about the time I tried to glaze a ham steak and instead somehow turned it into rock-hard ham candy. 

Slowly but surely, though, I started getting it. I went from making meals that were barely edible... to meals that were tasty... to meals I'd gladly pay good money at a restaurant to eat. When COVID restrictions eased up, I think I really DID impress my friends. I hosted a few dinner parties. I was starting to feel like cooking was some kind of mid-life calling for me.

But then the no-fun-nik police (or, specifically, the no-fun-nik paramedics) showed up a few weeks ago to put an end to all that nonsense. I've now been tended to by a wide array of doctors and nurses, and they've all informed me that I need to make some lifestyle changes, and diet is high atop that list. See ya, sugar. Farewell, fat. Sayonara, salt. It was good to know you.

Years of eating like an idiot finally caught up to me, and now it's my turn to see if I can't turn things around and start eating healthy.

The problem is, no one's been able to definitively tell me precisely what that means. Here are actual phrases I've heard over the past month by assorted medical professionals:

"You need to eat more fruit."

"Stay away from bananas and pineapple and mangos, they're bad fruit."

"Mango is a superfruit and you should make them part of your diet."

"Orange juice is essentially poison and should be banned."

"When you eat fruit, balance it out with a healthy fat like almonds."

"I would stay away from almonds, they're just fat."

"Your dinner plate should be 1/4 protein."

"You don't have to eat protein with every meal."

With all due respect to the greater medical community (and especially those of you who effectively saved my life,) I'm starting to get the feeling that sometimes y'all might be winging it just a little bit.

I'm pretty sure the lesson I'm getting is this: all food is super duper bad for you, except for maybe brussel sprouts and broccoli. We know this because they taste terrible, which means they must be amazing for your health. If you eat anything that tastes good, it's surely poisoning your body. If it has any flavor whatsoever, it's likely clogging your arteries as we speak. If it tastes rancid and bitter, it might be rotten or it might just be kale. Is that the basics then? Bon appetit!

Vegetables are undeniably good for you. Well, I think. Maybe they're just taking up space on that plate so you don't have any room to add donuts or cake or French fries. Salt is undeniably bad for you, except that it's a necessary mineral and without it you might die, but also with it you might die. Also, it's in EVERYTHING. I wouldn't be surprised if one serving of air contained 200 mg of sodium.    

So I guess it's back to the drawing board and a quinjillion other videos, except this time I'm trying to learn how to make healthy food taste not entirely awful. I'm learning as I go, I guess. With enough spices, turkey can be pretty good. Sugar-free frozen yogurt isn't half bad. Mustard and hot sauce and fat-free sour cream can help make icky stuff taste less icky. 

Wish me luck. My doctor tells me I should stick to a Mediterranean diet, so I figure if all else fails, I can give up and just tell people I'm medically cleared to consume nothing but gyros, baklava, and flaming cheese moving forward.  

COLUMN: Cardiac Rehab

Spoiler alert: In case you missed last week's column, I had a heart attack. I'll give you a few seconds to gasp in shock. Done? Okay, good. 

One of the fun perks of undergoing such an ordeal is that I'm now enrolled in cardiac rehab. It's a 12-week program designed to get your heart back in shape and teach you the necessary lifestyle changes to hopefully avoid repeating all this nonsense. It's essentially an hour of monitored exercise followed by education and nutrition classes. Well, except for me. It turns out my insurance won't cover the nutrition and education part of the extravaganza, because I guess it's easier to carry around all those blue crosses and blue shields if you're fat and stupid. So for me, cardiac rehab is essentially a 12-week deluxe gym membership. 

Me and gyms have never gotten along well. I'm pretty sure every occurrence of anxiety, doubt, and self-loathing I've ever had in my life can be firmly traced back to middle-school gym class. I was the kid who was always picked last. The kid who always struck out. The kid who couldn't climb the rope in the Presidential fitness test (as if Donald Trump could've done any better.) Gym class was a non-stop nightmare of embarassment and ridicule that scarred me forever, so I've never been in a big hurry to return to that arena.

Even as an adult, I've been reticent to join a gym. I have little to no clue how any of these cardio machines work, and I don't wanna be the embarassing chubster asking some roid-rage dude how to work an exercise bike. I realize adults don't ALWAYS act like 10 year olds, but I still fear everyone pointing and laughing at the fat idiot. Couches might not keep you in shape, but they generally keep you safe -- well, until your arteries clog up from eating like a moron and being the posterboy for a sedentary lifestyle. So now I guess I'm a gym rat whether I like it or not. Thankfully, the staff at cardio rehab are more supportive than intimidating.

We have to keep a little weekly journal of our rehab progress. There's a line we had to fill out at the beginning that says, "What is your goal of this program?" I wrote, "To get all buff and super-sexy (and hopefully not die.)" I stand by my response.

Day one was a little scary. They took my blood pressure when I walked in the door and noted it was high. "Nah," I told them, "that's my nerves. Take it at the end of class and you'll see." They did. They saw. Stress and fear alone raised my b.p. some twenty points. It turned out, though, that I had nothing to stress over. Working out is kinda simple. And kinda fun.

The rehab program has a staff of nurses and exercise gurus that oversee and lend a hand when needed. On my first day, my guy Lance had me on a variety of different fitness machines, and none seemed especially taxing. "I barely feel like I'm exercising," I told him. "It's a starting point," he replied. "And I bet you'll feel it in the morning." The next morning, I woke up... and did NOT feel it. My muscles weren't aching and I didn't feel worn out. 

This could only mean one thing: I guess I'm a stud. I thought I was out of shape, but clearly I must be super ripped somewhere under all this fat. I just handled a full hour of exercise and barely broke a sweat. Wait, am I a... a jock?

Actually, it turned out all of the machines were set on absolutely zero resistance, so I was doing little more than just stretching some muscles that day. In the days since, I've been gradually adding resistance to actually get some work into my workout. Based on how wrecked my muscles felt this morning, I might actually be accomplishing something. One of the machines is this silly little contraption that works your arms while you sit pedaling with your hands against a moderate amount of resistance. The first two minutes were fun, but by the time I hit ten minutes, my arms were shaking, my teeth were clenched, and I'm pretty sure my sweat was sweating.

I've been there four times, so I'm clearly now an exercise expert. I've already been offering my unsolicited advice on how to better the program. If there's one thing this gym desperately needs, it's an in-house DJ. Every day, they stick on a radio that plays the same Journey and Bon Jovi songs that have been ingrained in our heads for decades. But here's what I noticed. Whenever a song came on with a tempo between 90-100 beats per minute, I found myself naturally exercising in rhythm to the beat. But when a song came on with a higher tempo that I couldn't match, I would instinctively slow down to about 80 reps per minute without a song to keep pace to. If you were to make a non-stop music mix of classic tunes that stuck in that 90-100 bpm range, I think everyone in that class would maintain a steadier pace.

I mentioned it to a nurse and she said she'd be willing to try it sometime. I bet she thinks I won't make that mix. She doesn't know me well. By the end of my run at this place, I'm giving them a mix. I just can't make it TOO cool. Don't wanna run into any nasty scenarios where my vast fanbase starts binge-eating lard in hopes of giving themselves heart attacks to get through the door. Trust me, this might be one of the most exclusive clubs in town, but you probably shouldn't try to be a member.   

COLUMN: Heart Attack-ack-ack-ack

Well, I guess I needed SOMETHING new to write about. Didn't think it would be this.

For the past few weeks, it was starting to feel like I was just babbling on about the same ol' stuff, week after week. Life had become so uninteresting that I was even starting to tire of my fall-back topics. My cats are mostly just boring. There's nothing interesting on TV because of the writers' strike. I haven't done much this summer, so I've had very little to openly whine about.

It was time to do something exciting to breathe some life into this column. I spent days weighing all my options before deciding on the perfect course of action that would invigorate my writing and give my massive fanbase the tantalizing and exotic content they've come to expect.

Clearly, I needed to suffer a heart attack.

And I was right. It was just the shot in the arm I needed. In fact, it was several shots, in both arms. And an IV. And a catheter. And a stent. And a lovely overnight stay in a deluxe resort complete with 24/7 attendants, complimentary round-the-clock blood testing, and a medicine cabinet's worth of souvenirs I get to take twice a day for the rest of my life. Umm, yay?

And to think, all it cost was most of my life savings, pretty much all of my dignity, and my future ability to ever eat anything that tastes good pretty much ever again. On the whole, I'd have to give this spontaneous vacation a 0 out of 10. Do not recommend.

But yeah. The good news is that I'm still ticking, thanks to some skilled cardiologists and some assorted miracles of science. Big ups to the hard-working staff at UnityPoint who were stretched to the bone but still made me feel like I was in good hands. Also a super huge shout-out to the nurse who let me pick the music while I was undergoing angioplasty. That's right, I DJ'ed my own heart attack. And apologies to the whole cath lab crew for being forced to listen to the Cocteau Twins against their will. I'd like to think that the moment I was out, they changed the channel. In hindsight, I probably should've just voted for whatever the cardiologist wanted to hear. I don't ever want to run the risk of irritating the person who's trying to save my life. "Well, I was GONNA do a good job, but man, this song's terrible."  

I'd love to make serious fun of the whole situation, but there's a loud voice in my head saying, "TOO SOON, DUDE." I'm just not removed enough from the trauma to laugh about it quite yet, nor am I remotely done with all its fun. Ahead of me lies a nifty road of rehabilitation and tests and some rather serious lifestyle adjustments that I'm sure to be whining about in future columns if we're lucky. 

I've already been given sample heart-healthy menu plans that sound about as appetizing as gruel. Except I probably can't have gruel because it's carb-loading, unless it's whole-grain, low-fat gruel. One of the items on the heart-healthy sample menu I received is -- and I quote -- "a gilding of shrimp." No explanation, no details beyond that. Simply a "gilding" of shrimp. And no, I don't have a farthing of a clue what a gilding is. I'm guessing it doesn't mean deep-fried and covered in cocktail sauce, though.

I hold some truths to be self-evident: Greek yogurt tastes nothing like sour cream. Salt substitutes are all fairly lousy substitutes for salt. Cauliflower that's been chopped up to the size of rice still tastes like cauliflower. If anybody knows how to make these icky vegetable things taste a bit less icky (that doesn't involve salt or cheese,) I'm all ears.

For reals, though, it's definitely leaf-turning time, and I'm all in. While couch-dwelling and pizza-eating has its pros, I believe I just ran smack into the cons. And they kinda hurt, and I'd very much like to never do this nonsense ever again. So here's to a future that might be full of diet and exercise and other gross stuff I'm not a big fan of, but it's a future nonetheless, and for that I'm thankful.