I’ve spent my career fixing hearts.
But the longer I do this work, the more important another question becomes: What could we have done before this person needed me?
Heart surgery can save your life. I’m grateful every day that I get to do it.
But I would rather help you avoid the operating room altogether.
I joined Karen Norheim on Always Lifting to talk about my own health transformation, why metabolic health changed the way I think about prevention, and how that mission now reaches beyond my patients to families and workplaces.
What we get into
- How losing 100 pounds changed my approach to medicine.
- Why heart health requires looking beyond cholesterol alone.
- Why I believe we need to reconsider our fear of red meat.
- How workplaces can help people build healthier habits.
- Why understanding your reason for getting healthy matters.
I knew how to operate. I didn’t know how to help myself.
I was a heart surgeon who was over 100 pounds overweight.
Every week, I treated people with serious heart disease. Meanwhile, my own health was heading in the wrong direction.
I was trying to follow the advice I had been taught to give. Eat less. Move more. Avoid fat.
It wasn’t working.
That experience forced me to reconsider what I thought I understood about food, weight, and heart disease.
Changing how I ate helped me lose the weight. It also changed the questions I asked as a physician.
I wanted to understand what was happening long before someone arrived on my operating table.
Prevention deserves more of our attention
A bypass can restore blood flow. It can give someone more time with their family.
But an operation doesn’t take care of every factor that contributed to the disease.
The food we eat, how we move, how we sleep, and how we manage stress still matter after surgery. They matter before it, too.
That’s why metabolic health has become central to my work.
Cholesterol deserves attention. So does the broader picture of how your body is functioning and the daily habits shaping your health.
We need a better conversation about food
For years, I feared many of the same foods my patients feared.
My own experience made me take another look.
In this conversation, Karen and I discuss why I believe red meat has been misunderstood and why I focus on real food in Stay Off My Kitchen Table.
We’ve made eating complicated. Packages promise better health, while basic foods become the subject of endless arguments.
I encourage people to step back and consider what they’re eating most often—and how it’s affecting their health.
Health belongs in the workplace, too
Karen and I also talk about bringing metabolic health education into the workplace.
People need practical support where they spend their time. A workplace can help make healthier choices easier, and the benefits can extend home to families.
Start with your reason
Near the end, Karen asked where someone should begin.
My answer: understand why you want to be healthy.
What do you want better health to make possible?
Keep that reason close when changing your habits gets difficult.
If you want to hear the full conversation, watch the interview. And if you’re ready to explore my approach to food and metabolic health, Stay Off My Kitchen Table is the next step.
I love being able to save a life in the operating room.
Helping someone stay out of it is the work I want to do more of.