Self Scrub

I'm an utterly meticulous housekeeper. My home never gets dirty because I won't let it happen. My simple, aspiration mantra is: if it looks like it needs cleaning, I've waited too long.

While I might be almost obnoxiously disciplined about maintaining a well-ordered and immaculate house, I haven't been quite so good about my own self. Not the external part, mind you. I always wear clean clothes, of course—that's part of the housekeeping, after all. I'm also a daily-shower guy, and I shave every morning. I use antiperspirant and such.

It's in the personal health care that I've fallen somewhat amiss. Again, I'm good about some of it, such as taking my prescriptions on schedule. But the biggest area of failure is my weight. I haven't been as good about watching my diet and calorie intake as I should be. Well, I've been pretty terrible about it, although I am a great believer in healthy breakfasts and virtually never stray away from breakfast menus that any cardiologist would applaud.

As for the rest of it, well—the weight has ballooned upwards over the years. I was utterly shocked to discover myself topping the scales at 224 pounds, and a BMI of 31.5. Disgraceful. More to the point, a bit dangerous as well. A long-standing issue I've had with frequent needing to pee (far more than your usual older gaffer), plus certain other discomforts, has been revealed in all its glory as a pair of inguinal hernias, one of them symptomatic, the other considerably less so. It's the hernia pressing on my bladder that's been the cause of a lot of the gotta-pee mischief.

Now, I'm not one to blame myself for health issues per se. We all have bodies and they all develop problems. Perhaps I could have acted a much earlier date back in my 40s to stave off the coronary artery disease that required interventionist treatment by way of angioplasty and stents. It was a long time ago and the specter has not re-arisen. I've learned a lot about cholesterol and all that, and I'm very good about taking my daily Crestor dose. Still, maybe I could have done better about it.

I feel the same way about the inguinal hernias. Something like 1 in 4 men get them. Being overweight just adds to the odds since there's more abdominal pressure. I'm pretty sure I've had at least one of these for some time, thinking back. But of late the thing has gotten bigger and badder and more insistent, and now absolutely requires surgical repair, which will happen about a month from now. These are routine outpatient surgeries; something like 800,000 of them are performed yearly in the United States alone, 20 million worldwide. The techniques are well honed nowadays, with the use of laparoscopes and even some robotic control to take care of stitching the mesh over the weak spots in the abdominal wall. It's a big deal to me, needless to say. Such things are kinda scary, no matter how routine they are to the surgeons. I'll need to take it easy at home for about a week or so.

I can do something about the weight, though. I've done it before. After the coronary artery scare, I went into extreme mode and embraced full-on veganism for several years. I also got into the habit of jogging quite a bit. The weight peeled off and I was at a 32-inch waist before I got bored with the whole thing.

Not too long ago, I became concerned about a tinnitus in my left ear, and after having consulted with a ear-nose-throat kind of doctor, who found nothing of any real concern, I asked my cardiologist if I could make an experiment to find out if it was my blood pressure medicine that was the culprit. He humored me. I went on a diet that provided me with a damn good overall cleanse. No salt, no sugar, no refined carbs of any sort, no butter or full-fat dairy, no fatty meats, no processed anything. It's a pretty ascetic affair but it's about as healthy as it gets.

And I lost weight. I tried doing more jogging but my knees just aren't up to that any more, even with knee guards and the like. So just long walks and bicycling as possible. Most importantly, I lost weight.

So I'm returning to that diet. Back to Buddha bowls and their ilk. In an odd way I rather like it. Culinary thrills are in short supply but the satisfaction of knowing that I'm putting in only natural stuff into my aging body makes up for that. I've never been all that big on salt, anyway, so the complete lack of extra salt is no problem. (Foods have enough built-in salt to take care of my body's basic needs for salt.)

The trick is that food preparation becomes simultaneously more complicated and a lot simpler. More complicated because there's no just popping a pizza into the oven or saying to hell with it and opting for takeout. Things have to be cooked properly. But it's simpler because the kind of stuff I'm eating and preparing is best with minimal preparation: simple steaming for most vegetables, a nice big batch of a whole grains such such as farro, barley, brown rice, or quinoa that I can then dole out over a period of some days. The meats could not be simpler: thin-sliced chicken breast, ground chicken or turkey, fish. All cooked as simply as possible, usually just a light sauté in a bit of olive oil with some nice herbs or salt-free seasonings.

No sodas or processed anything. Mostly pure water. Fortunately I have a reverse-osmosis water system in my kitchen so I can have as much molecularly-pure water as I want. Only almond or oat milk, and dairy-free sugar-free coffee creamer for my one cup of coffee per day. Tagatose instead of regular sugar, since tagatose is 7 calories per teaspoon, cannot spike your blood glucose, and as a natural component in fruit such as pineapple or root veggies like beets, is actually 100% natural. (It's expensive because it's difficult to separate out.)

The trick is to keep one's calories below 1500 daily while ensuring a good mix of protein, vitamins and minerals and all that. Full nutrition is critical. Beans of various sorts come into play, since when combined with whole grains they form whole protein chains. I'm digging giant California Corona beans, big lovely meaty things. They're fairly high calorie (300 or so per cup cooked) so not too many. Ditto a light hand with avocado; it might be a superfood, but it's a high-calorie one. So no more than a half avocado per day.

Plenty of fresh fruit, always available here in California. I'm almost addicted to Cara Cara oranges, with their deep orange flesh and rich flavor. Lots of pears right now since the spring and summer fruits haven't yet arrived. Berries. Bananas. Apples.

And I'm losing weight. My blood pressure has dropped like a stone. The swelling around my ankles has dramatically decreased although there's still room for improvement. There's a good possibility I could have myself down to 175 pounds by August at this rate—which is a BMI of 24.4 and considered within healthy weight range.

Finally: my grocery bills have nosedived as well. The best thing about all this lovely healthy food is that it's often the cheapest stuff in the store—whole bulk grains, veggies, etc. So really it's all to the good, except for cutting out certain things that I tend to love but don't love me back—ice cream, sugar, high-fat and processed meats, cheeses.

Well, I'm doing just fine without them. It's not a matter of just bearing what has to be borne. It's a matter of really enjoying it.