Fat at 50...
Six Pack at 60
By John Assaraf
As I left my doctor’s office, I couldn’t help but feel dejected and somewhat embarrassed.
Here I was, about to turn 50 with everything to look forward to, and my doctor tells me that I am 45 lbs. too heavy and fat.
The fat part I could handle as it was pretty easy to see every morning and evening in the bathroom mirror and, truth be told, I had gotten used to it.
It’s all the other stuff that my annual physical revealed that shocked me.
“First,” he says, “you are borderline diabetic. Second, you are hyper tensive. And third, you have severe sleep apnea and atrial fibrillation.”
“Atrial what?” I said
He shared that in the cardiovascular tests I did, my heart was skipping beats and acting irregularly at times.
This was all exacerbated by the fact that, at night when I slept, I was waking up an average of 20 times every hour, and this was one of the reasons I was exhausted all the time.
In disbelief, I said, “What? Are you kidding me…...???”
In my 40’s, I always had this image that I would age gracefully, filled with energy and vitally without having to take any medication. Now here I was with my doctor writing prescriptions and making recommendations to fix my plethora of health issues.
What happened?
How did I go from being energetic and in decent shape most of my life, to being a constantly tired, poorly aging, unhealthy man with 45 extra pounds of fat on my body?
How did my health get so out of whack?