Ten Pounds: The Scale Was Right, I Was Wrong

I gained 10 pounds in two weeks.

I was staying in New York. There were friends and things to celebrate — the Knicks, the World Cup, birthdays — and I celebrated them all. A calorie-rich junket, mixing business with pleasure as New Yorkers know how to do so well.

When the scale moved, I thought I knew what happened: too much of the wrong foods, late nights and drinking (a martini and one or two glasses of wine).

So I cut back, exercised more, ate right, no booze and got my healthy streak going again. I was annoyed with myself, but I had a plan to get in the healthy groove again.

I was also a little scared. My feet were swelling, and I started to check in on my swollen ankles, pressing a thumb into the skin to see how long the dent stayed. My socks were leaving a line.

On my flight home to the West Coast, I did the math on how fast a person can put on 10 pounds. I got too many answers to get an answer.

Then I went in for a full prescheduled workup — body scans, bloodwork, and an hour with my physician and a cardiologist. Do you know what they told me?

My body was holding water, which isn't just a diet problem. With my cardiac history and my stents, that’s a symptom of something else.

This how my cardiologist explained it:

The heart is a pump that keeps fluid moving through the body. When it becomes weakened by coronary artery disease, gets stiff with age, or is strained by excess weight, blood returning from the body can begin to back up in the veins. That pressure forces fluid out of tiny blood vessels and into surrounding tissues, where it collects as swollen feet, ankles, or legs.

Stents restore blood flow through blocked arteries, but they can’t reverse a damaged heart muscle or keep it pumping efficiently. Fluid retention can be more than a sign of aging. It can also happen when a cardiovascular system is struggling to keep pace with the body’s demands.

My demands had become too much, and my body reacted. I put the longevity regimen on hold, and I faced the consequences.

My doctor adjusted my medications and told me I need to sleep better. Not with a sleeping pill, though, but with a pill that should cut short the number of trips I take to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I’ll report back on whether that holds up.

That’s the part I didn't fully grasp. The scans and the cardiologist found the problem, and it pointed straight back to my time in New York. Even though I was E-biking and walking every day and doing the sauna, pool, and steam room, it didn't make up for the pattern in the evenings.

Read my cardiologist’s words again: ‘Strained by excess weight.’ The scale wasn’t wrong, and it was measuring two problems at once.

Lifestyle is where it all started and it is what wrecked my sleep. Then, I skip serious cardio, and the doom loop begins.

An unhealthy cycle, with a cardiac complication on top.

But let’s reverse-engineer that. When I don’t drink, I don’t swell, and I don’t hold excess fluid. I also exercise more, eat better (with less salt), and sleep through the night. Those aren’t just four separate healthy habits. They're one decision with four big benefits. My heart is the fifth and the most important one for living a longer and healthier life.

Longevity is sold as diet, movement, protocols, panels, supplements, and biomarkers, and they can all be very useful— mine caught something I had misdiagnosed.

I had a scan on the calendar, so I was lucky. If you put on weight fast — weeks, not months — and your feet or ankles swell, make sure you can also diagnose the problem properly.

Most parts of a healthy lifestyle are elementary, stuff I have known about for years. Modifying behaviors and routines (in this case, the ones that build up excess fluid in my body and could endanger my heart) is the hard part.

But I’m back on track and I feel much better for it.