May God bless Bobby Kennedy, Jr.
It’s a strange sight to see a 72-year-old Cabinet member doing pull-ups or working out shirtless. But that is our Health and Human Services boss. And with his working out and new guidelines for nutrition, he is trying to reverse the trajectory of the American people being fatter and less healthy, even with the highest per capita spending on healthcare.
It all started so innocently. We were taking apart a bunk bed, and in order to do so, I was swinging at it from under the top bed. I felt a twinge in my back, but I was able to lift and move the beds after their separation. Over the next few weeks, the back pain seemed to continue, but it was low-level and disappeared whenever I sat or lay down. Walking had some small pain, but it was manageable. Until one afternoon. I fell asleep on a couch, and when I awoke, the pain was off-scale. I have had kidney stones, torn knee ligaments, a broken leg, an arm through a window, and a screw from a bomb in my wrist. So I do know pain, and this pain was intense. I figured I could walk it off, but on my way home, I sat on anything that did not move—bus stops, public benches, tree stumps. Even in the cold rain, anywhere I could sit was kosher for use. When I got home, I had to lie down. And for the next few days, I was mostly in bed, and when I did get up, I could stand for less than a minute before I needed to sit. The pain was off-scale. Even Nigel’s “11” would have been too low. I asked a good friend whom I have known since 5th grade, and she said that without X-rays, she could say nothing. So, I—with great effort—made it to the car and then made the sprint from the car to the doctor’s office. He checked my range of motion and then gave me a referral for X-ray. Our HMO is five minutes from home, but we had to drive. I made it with great effort to the X-ray department. The films showed the lowest two discs in contact. It was a pinched nerve, and it hurt.
As I lay in bed, the family did everything that I normally do. That was a lousy feeling, but there was no alternative during the first week. Over time, I could stand for two minutes and tried to catch up on my old responsibilities, but I was still limited by flashing pain if I stood too long. I knew that something had to change. I was way too heavy, and someone who works in the field said that the most important thing is to lose weight and reduce the pressure on the lower back. So I knew that there were three things I needed to do:
1. Believe that I’d get through this and would be better than before.
2. Change eating habits, as daily exercise for decades had not brought down weight.
3. Address the specific issue of the back.
For #3, I turned to a trainer whom my kids had used years before. He is Russian-born and has a knowledge of the body that I believe few doctors have. I arranged to meet him, and with Herculean effort, I made it up two flights of stairs to his weight room. No frills. Simple. You’d walk in and walk out. He had me do some exercises and then assigned me to do one exercise every two hours and add a bit more each day. I expected a battery of drills and maybe some light weights. Nope. Just this one exercise, repeated, with more reps every day. I barely made it back down to meet my wife. I again had to stop on stairs and bus stops. I started the exercises. I tried to walk to synagogue the next morning, and after 100 meters, I declared victory and went home. Over time, I found that I could stand longer before having to sit. After 10 days, I went for the traditional Friday hour-plus walk to the open “shuk” to buy things for the Sabbath. I felt that there was hope. After three weeks, I was given an additional exercise that was mixed in with the original. As of the time of this writing, thank God, I am not limited in any activity. At the weight room, I keep the reps high and the weights low. Swimming has been wonderful, and even when I could not stand, I could swim.
Now, as to food. I know that something had to give. While I like the “Keto” method of dieting, I knew that I would not be able to keep it as required. I like fruits, many of which are not part of the Keto program due to their sugar content. I started with the rule that nothing is forbidden (beyond kosher considerations), but there needs to be a change in selection and quantity. So I dropped bread except for the Sabbath. I got rid of sugar in coffee and tea. I gave up cakes and cookies. I stopped eating sweets, except for 90 percent chocolate, which tastes like the sole of my shoe. I gave up fizzy drinks, even the diet stuff. The thing is that I don’t really miss the stuff I gave up. If I had tried to stop eating these items for “health,” I would have failed in short order. Remembering the back pain and that the weight had to come off and stay off, the removed items are not missed. I used to drink Coke Zero; now I drink zero Coke. It was time to grow up, and my family started saying that I had lost weight. I felt better—less tired, less bloated. It was nice to wear clothes that I had not seen in quite some time.
As to what to eat, the morning has either eggs or tuna with fresh vegetables. Our son makes it for everyone each morning. During the day, I usually go for nuts, natural peanut butter, or cottage cheese—all of which are keto-friendly. On the Sabbath, I still only drink water but will not decline one of my wife’s desserts. I know that if I forbid something, I will eat it by the ton.
And as I started to change my eating, I thought about our health secretary. I recently read that he is doing a “carnivore” diet, eating steaks and sauerkraut for breakfast. I’m not there, but I agree with him that our foods can at times be poisoning us. We are blessed with so much food and at generally reasonable prices that we need the discipline to choose foods that make us healthier and not sicker. My kids were shocked the first time we were at a U.S. amusement park and saw supersized people with 64 oz cups of Sprite or Fanta. They knew that a whole day’s supply of calories was in those cups.
I am not describing the exercises here because everyone has his or her own health needs. The same is true of nutrition. As youngins, we ate anything and everything and never seemed to gain weight. Metabolisms slow down, and there is something about our carbs that seems to make us fat. At Harvard, I worked on an enzyme that took the breakdown products of glucose and pushed them toward energy production or fat storage, depending on the needs of the cells. While glucose is the currency of cellular energy production, our carbs are ending up as fat. RFK Jr. is trying to get us healthy. I wish him total success.
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