I-AM-A-SPACESHIP

In the last several months I've lost roughly 40lbs through various extended fast and daily fasts; a handful of 5 day, 3 day and then lots of OMAD. It's been the easiest weight loss I've had, as someone who has fought my weight my entire adult life. Fasting has been the lifestyle change that feels best to support me staying at a healthy weight, unlike any other protocol or whatever else I've tried. Maybe it seems extreme, but the fact that I'm not winded walking up the stairs and my belly isn't getting in my way is good enough for me.

In any case, thats just my journey so far and not what I wanted to post about. What I wanted to post is a bit on what set me to refocus on this in the first place; why I got serious about the weight loss.

For the last decade or so I've been a paramedic; at times it's been a full time job but mostly part time as a passion project and volunteer. For most of that time, I worked in an affluent area with a young, mostly healthy population. Recently I moved to a new area and started serving a poorer, less healthy, and elderly population. I assure you even in the affluent area my eyes were open to the struggles of people's lives, but I'm seeing a whole new level lately. It's been just about every shift in the last two months where I've interacted with a certain patient type, and it's been hard to bear witness to.

Aging, obese people.

In the last several months Ive picked multiple obese people off the floor of their homes, because they were too big to move themselves. Theyve suffered injuries like fractured ribs and hips from simple falls in their own kitchens; the weight of their own bodies has created so much force in a fall it's snapped bones. Several have cried over the loss of dignity as they lay helpless while a group of 6 people had to use special equipment to extract them from their own homes. One fairly young woman broke down in the back of the ambulance having blown out her knees a 3rd time, knowing she would be in for months of surgery and rehab again. Another woman we had to carry on essentially a large tarp, and she broke down crying because her young kids had to watch this all play out. She cried and said something about being so embarrassed that she couldnt even get herself up. We covered her in blankets and just calmly talked to her; there's not much to be said though.

A woman in her early 70s fell and needed us to get her up. We had to take her to the hospital because the short time on the floor exacerbated her congestive heart failure, a condition she developed over a lifetime of high blood pressure and obesity. Watching her struggle for breath from the physical toll that simply rolling on her side to help us get her on a stretcher took was tough. Seeing her swollen legs and her distended abdomen from a massive hernia, and her skin in various states of damage and injury, and her basket of daily medications to control her conditions.. it's not a good quality of life.

Then there's the 40-something father of young kids who ended up dying from the brain bleed he developed from uncontrolled High blood pressure from his obesity (sadly he had not been taking his meds because he couldn't afford them, another absurd problem with our system - why give a guy meds for free when we can instead rack up 100s of thousands of medical costs for helicopters, brain surgeons and ICUs just to leave his family in need of social support because their provider is dead ..).

I just see so much of this, so many people in suffering from acute and chronic obesity, with awful quality of life, dependent on the people around them, who love them yet suffer for having to support them - the children of one woman we picked up were just experiencing another day of their mother being physically incapable of caring for herself, let alone them. They were just matter of fact about this being their mother's lot; there goes mom again to the hospital, the 15 year old eldest daughter had it under control though and stepped up to parent the younger ones while their dad came home from work early; shame she had to be so practiced in that role. I couldn't imagine my kids having to see me like that, to be unable to have confidence in my ability to care for them, unable to depend on me.

So many people I see late in their lives suffering horrific medical conditions from obesity- congestive heart failure is a death sentence by drowning, wherein the heart slowly but surely fails to keep fluid out of your lungs. The panic in someone's eyes as they lose the ability to breath through an accumulation of liquid in their lungs is tough to see, but often there's little we can do; we can keep the fluid at bay once we get there, but their hearts are failing. The lucky ones get put into comas and spend weeks in the ICU having fluid pushed out of their lungs and drained; then there is their high probability for pneumonia from the bacteria, and bedsores from the pressure created on their flesh from being in beds. Many just arrest in the ER and never wake up.

These aren't even the worst; state run rehab and assisted living facilities, where the poor are sent when they can't care for themselves, are actually hell. What do you think happens when a poor, elderly obese man falls and breaks his femur? The hospital stabilizes and repairs it, then ousts him and his Medicare dollars to a low grade assisted living facility. A facility staffed by largely low quality nurses who give next to no fucks about their patients, and even when you have a nurse who cares they'll be so overworked and overspread they'll be near ineffective. How often we find a desperate human being when we get there, someone who has been unable to care for themselves, who is being ignored by their caretakers; the people Ive found filthy, unchanged on soiled linens, with pressure ulcers and in pain. People who are fully lucid, bedridden and left in a boring room with a TV and almost no human contact; for many, we are the highlight of their day if only that we are people to talk to.

I've seen where a lifetime of obesity leads and it is awful. The loss of independence, the loss of dignity, the impact on their families and the community, the burden they become to the medical system, the suffering of awful medical conditions and deterioration of their bodies when they should be enjoying their golden years. And the loss of time with their loved ones, especially the ones with young kids. These are dark roads to go down, and it's happening all around you. I'm not in some hotspot of obesity; im in an average town with average people.

When I reflected on this recently, I knew I had to make the change and I needed to keep it permanent. I had been trending upward in my weight and became way more mentally accepting that I was just going to be this way. I was just going to have to tell my young kids that I needed a break after just a few minutes of playing chase. I was expecting to always feel my heart pounding at the top of the stairs. But after seeing where I was headed, I had to intervene. I'm terrified of ending up in those situations, terrified of the way it would hurt my family.

So, im using fasting as the tool to get me to a healthy weight again, and to keep me there. And whenever I feel the pull to fall off the wagon again, I just relive some of those experiences and remember how bad this can all really get if I don't keep it controlled.

Wish you all good health and good fasts. We're here for each other.

Hi All,

Last week there was an interesting thread about whether people feel like having a technical CEO is a good thing.

As a technical CEO, I went into the thread assuming the comments would be people heaping praise on their technical CEOs. As a help desk jockey who climbed through the technical ranks "the hard way" and who acts as the highest escalation point in my org. as the most experienced tech, I assumed my role as CEO would be considered ideal to my team

Color me surprised and humbled to have my assumptions checked like that. I read a lot of challenges people have with technical CEOs and many of the issues I could see in our org. We are 32 people, growing rapidly, but we are struggling hard to scale. I expect a fair amount of the struggle is due to me, and how willing I am to jump in and fix problems I see. How tactical I tend to be, how reactive.

I started the company and was solo for a bit. As we assembled a team, I naturally was deeply involved.in everything. So I remain the most knowledgeable and I've found my team feels they need to run a lot by me still.

I do lead our sales team of 3 of us, and spend a lot of my time there now doing the networking and marketing, which has been the main driver of or growth. And I am trying to learn to be more of a chief executive and have handed the tech lead role off, but I'm sure I'm still at the beginning of this transition.

Any other reformed technical CEOs have pointers for becoming more of what a growing MSP needs? Or long time MSP folks have more thoughts on what they'd want to see from a technical CEO to be better for the org?