The Story

Read Time: 5 Mins

Once there was a man. The man worked for a biomedical company that created heart pumps for patients that required PCI (percutaneous coronary intervention). The man worked in the Clinical Operations department. His job was to analyze, and organize patient data from participants in the clinical trials. As the man’s analysis of dozens of patients’ data turned to hundreds and hundreds turned to thousands, the man began to notice commonalities among the patients. For starters, nearly all of the patients were obese, and lived sedentary lifestyles. Another commonality was age. The most daunting pattern of all was that most of the patients had one, two, or even more prior heart complications, or conditions.

The man recalled the motto of his company was along the lines of “Save lives.”

“What was the point?” The man thought. The company was saving lives, but were not solving the problem, which the man realized was not the job of the company. The problem was that, without PCI, patients with certain heart complications would die. The company was providing a solution to this problem with a heart pump. The company did its job.

In helping the company solve one problem, the man discovered questions and, after much research, answers to a different problem.

“How did people end up needing a PCI in the first place?” Well, as the man discovered, they developed heart conditions.

“Developed? How do heart conditions develop? People weren’t born this way?” The man found out that in some cases, people are born with heart conditions or are prone to them due to genetics. On the more important hand, eating too much cholesterol, sugar, and lack of regular exercise are the main ways that heart conditions develop.

“But the data shows that age, obesity, and sedentary lifestyle are the most common risk factors.” Yet another eye opening discovery for the man was that age was not a risk factor. Someone in their forties does not wake up one morning and suddenly become at high risk for a heart condition. When a risk factor says “age” it is really saying “A bad habit repeated over a prolonged period of time.” In most cases the bad habit is a habit that is adverse to good health. For example, lack of exercise, lack of fruits and vegetables, lack of water, too much cholesterol, too much sugar, smoking, and too much stress are all bad habits that will likely lead to a heart condition if repeated for a long enough time.

“How can people solve the problem of living an unhealthy lifestyle?” That’s easy, thought the man, all the have to do is live a healthy lifestyle by eating a nutritious diet, exercising on a regular basis, and not getting stressed. *Cricket noises*

The man considered his own life. He was a thin, former athlete that exercised sporadically, followed a carbohydrate and meat heavy diet, and occasionally binge ate fast food and desserts.

The man decided to become a health coach, and he knew just the right person to be his first client: himself. The man struggled to follow his own strict diet and exercise plan. Sometimes he followed it for one week, or two. Then after cheating on the diet, or missing a day, then two, then three of exercising, the man would give up, and not start again for weeks.

Now the man was faced with more questions to another problem that required answers.

“Why was this so difficult? How can I make this easier?” It seemed simple to the man. The longer a habit exists, the longer it takes to break it. Logical. Too much change at once is overwhelming. Understandable. The man reasoned that he needed to take a step back. He needed to look at the big picture. The man knew that his end goal was to exercise for 30 minutes per day and maintain a weekly diet that was a mix of low levels of meat and dairy, moderate levels of grains, and dominated by vegetables and fruits. The man resolved that he would do all of that, but not at this point in time. Instead, he would work his way up to it. He decided that he would take small incremental steps toward his goal. Instead of making one large lifestyle change, the man would make dozens of small changes.

In the end, the man was successful with his new approach. He would go on to name it “The Progressive Health Plan.” Over the past two years, the man shared “The Progressive Health Plan” with his clients and helped them reach their own lifestyle change goals. It is the mission of the man to share “The Progressive Health Plan” with anyone whom it would benefit, and help prevent serious illness or death due to manageable chronic diseases such as obesity, hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, and coronary heart disease, just to name a few.