The below Before Guy is First Life Me in 2022. After Guy, with the newly prominent proboscis, is Second Life Me a few minutes ago. First Life Me was your typical six-foot-tall, 215-pounder who works sitting down. Same typical guy who arrives at the Pearly Gates Improv on November 9, 2022, after ironically dropping dead from a widowmaker heart attack on National Fried Chicken Sandwich Day.
Lucky for me, I am already on the trauma table when it happens. Nothing says “lucky” like a trauma table. Couple of jolts later, my set at the Pearly Gates Improv is abruptly cut short when I pop back to life.
In my mindless first life, I’m just like you. See a thin pop star? “OMG! Eating disorder. Prayer emoji.” Then it’s right back to the Oreos.
My mindful Second Life is analytical. Eating is a verb. Eating is action. Eating is something you do. Check out the split screen of First Life Me next to Current Life Ariana.
Which one of us is getting in on the eating action? Fat Fuck or Skinny Pop?
In my signature before photo, I am not technically obese. I am simply overweight like three out of four of you, which is why I say typical. Ariana is atypical, which is why people are concerned.
100M obese individual Americans have the identical behavior problem I used to have.
My cardiologist is on record in the video below. Eating killed me. It’s as if he knows those Twizzlers, M&Ms and Peppermint Patties didn’t unwrap themselves and magically pole vault into my piehole!
Not eating might kill Ariana Grande, but I doubt it. If ever there was a diminutive gangster of major proportions it is her. I will be genuinely shocked if she does not navigate her way through this rough patch.
This is a good time to mention you are talking to an idiot. I have a well-documented history when it comes to learning the hard way. I don’t know anything about food. I don’t know anything about medicine. I did not attend college. The first cardiologist I ever met is Dr. Christopher Suhar in the video above. Doc runs the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine in La Jolla.
We bonded at 10:00 AM my first morning in the ICU because we were excited that Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock were coming to town. That, and I readily knew all the punch lines to his silly riddles. I was like, “How about you do the cardiology and I do the jokes.”
That got a huge laugh from the team of six residents he was leading around the ICU. After rounds, Dr. Suhar returned to my room, confessing how much they all needed and appreciated the laughs in the wake of Covid.
Doctor burnout is real in the best of times.
What Dr. Suhar did not know was four hours earlier I had already declared myself an addict with a lowercase eating disorder. The luxury of not being in clinical practice is that you can speak in plain language.
When you actively eat yourself to death, that should be definition of an eating disorder. “Eating Disorder” is like “School Shooting.” Nobody shot the school so let’s lose the soft language.
Three out of four of you reading—100M of you—are actually obese, which is a national behavior problem. Why behavior? Because you already know what’s good for you. You can be as ignorant as I was (and am), but four out of four of you know a carrot is good for you and carrot cake is not. You know a banana is good for you and banana bread is not. You know fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, fresh fish, chicken, and lean pork are good for you.
I certainly knew all of these things when I would joke, “Give me the whole heart attack!” after the drive-up speaker asked, “Do you want the meal deal?”
Here’s one for ya’. The trauma center is drive-up, too.
That Thursday morning, November 10, 2022, in the ICU, I silently declare that “Food Is Binary.” I create two columns: Life and Death. No middle lane. If it is good for me, I eat it. If it is not good for me, 90% of the time I do not eat it.
The results of what I eat every day are a matter of public record. On November 9th, I will have been on my binary system for four years. Each week I eat about 25 pounds of produce, drink three gallons of water, and a gallon of black coffee.
That’s it.
90% of the time I eat Life Points. When I eat something that is not good for me, I get three Death Points. (You can change your behavior starting one minute from now by clicking “Activate Piehole” in the main navigation bar, above. Piehole is free. No credit card. Totally free.)
My tripartite declaration—addict, eating disorder, food is binary—combined with keeping the lifetime promise I made to myself that morning in the ICU, is why I have been deprescribed from the many medications my stent surgeon said I would be on for the rest of my life.
This is not the part where I say I showed him. I am not here to show him. I am here to show you!
What he said to me is Standard Protocol. The prescriptions they issued are Standard Protocol. Standard Protocol mirrors patient behavior. When I radically rejected my old, mindless behavior by logging, auditing, and scoring my intake, my doctor was duty-bound to deprescribe me.
It was never my goal to be deprescribed. I was happy to take whatever they told me to take. I didn’t even know what I was taking, and to this day I cannot tell you what I am no longer taking.
What I do know is that I am down to a daily baby aspirin and a daily tablespoon of high-octane olive oil, both of which can be bought next aisle over from the Doritos and Oreos.
I spend one hour a year with my cardiologist. My Piehole Protocol governs my behavior during the remaining 8,765 hours in an average year. When I tell doctor friends my doctor deprescribed me, they cannot believe it. My business partner’s primary care physician rejected the notion out of hand: “In all of my decades practicing, I’ve never seen it. Not even once.”
His reaction, gentle readers, is a comment on your collective behavior, not mine. His comment reinforces how deeply cemented Standard Protocol is because you all are like I used to be.
You do not change when your doctor warns you. You do not modify your behavior when he says, “What about that gut?”
Widowmaker survivors don’t either. There’s a saying: “Dead people tell no lies.”
But the Undead? We have stories.
The test for addiction is simple. Can you stop? If you can, activate Piehole Protocol and prove it.
Or don’t and be like your protocol.
Standard.