Member-only story
Why I’ve Tracked My Weight and Body Fat for the Last 15 Years
My dad died in 2002, at the young age of 55, of heart complications resulting from arteriosclerosis.
He had his first heart attack in 1990 at the insanely young age of 42*. I was in 8th grade, sleeping over at my friend Joe’s house when we got the call from my mom.
“Weird. Your dad didn’t *look* unhealthy. He’s not a giant, red-faced yelling guy!” Joe would say.
“Yeah. But he *did* get pretty winded climbing up those sand dunes in Cub Scouts.” my buddy Kevin noticed.
Looking back at my dad’s routine, he was, in hindsight, a bundle of quiet risk factors. He was super sedentary, even by 1980’s couch potato standards. A binge watcher before binge-watching was a term, dad was a Cheers connoisseur, a Frasier fanatic, and a Seinfeld savant. Dad also had a poor diet: Picking at the healthy dinners mom would make, and counting fun-size Twix bars and Pepsi among his sneaky late night staples. Worst: He never really quit smoking after the “scare” in ’90. I’d find the occasional cigarette butt popping out of the back door sewer drain after a hard rain.
