A 95% chance to live 30 more years
It is so understated that it’s hard to believe we’re not talking about this every single day:
Most survival curves show a simple exponential decay. Data from 1840–1980 reveal that our life expectancy has greatly increased, but the life span of our species remains stable. It has remained the same for >100,000 years. Of 10,000 persons who survive to 85 years of age, one will make it to 100 years old. During the past 140 years, however, the right tail of the curve has shifted to become more rectangular. If premature deaths were prevented, 95% of all deaths would occur between the ages of 77 and 93.
Dr. Esselstyn made a very simple scientific observation. If you remove the majority of premature deaths caused by chronic illnesses, 95% of deaths will occur between age 77 and 93. The above quote is from an article published by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, a doctor originally specializing in breast cancer who began to question the difference in mortality rates when he compared the rates of breast cancer between American and Japanese populations. The fundamental problem he discovered: In the 1950s breast cancer in Japan was extraordinarily rare compared to the US. Then, in the 1970s and 1980s, the breast cancer rate in Japan rapidly increased to match the US.
The only new, material variable? Diet. The US didn’t just give Japan a new constitution after World War II. It also shared its diet, both directly through culture and indirectly through new economic development that made things previously inaccessible like meat more accessible and affordable. It wasn’t just breast cancer that exploded. Over 20-30 years, Japan caught up with the US both economically and in chronic illnesses previously unknown to the majority of the population, and even to the medical community.
I don’t want to watch my kids grow up.
I want to grow up with them.
I’m 47. What he just laid out, very simply, is that I can live a minimum of 30 more years if I don’t die prematurely. I didn’t know about Dr. Esselstyn’s research ten years ago. What I did know was that as I aged, I felt worse, got heavier and tended to get sick more often. I didn’t like this, but I thought it was inevitable. In the last year, I’ve discovered that it’s not.
What if you had a simple, easy opportunity to extend your life, right in front of you? You’d take it, right? An opportunity to live longer. More time to enjoy something in life that you care about, whatever that may be. Traveling. Hobbies. A cause. Time is the one metric for measuring a life that is universally applicable regardless of income or any other inherent advantage. That’s why the ultra-wealthy spend millions, sometimes billions, trying to find any possible way to stay alive just a little bit longer. Time is the key to anything anyone could possibly want.
What I want is the opportunity to enjoy more years with my family.
I had children much later in life compared to my father. I’m 47, with two children, one age 5 and the other 9. When I was 5 my dad was 27. That 20-year delta is what concerns me most, because my father died at age 56 (melanoma). And his father, my grandfather, died at age 46 (medical malpractice). If I die at age 56, my children will be only 14 and 18. To me, that’s not acceptable, especially if there is anything I can do about it.
Little children need their parents, and I love my children more than anything. So I’ve been focused for the past several years on what actions I can take related to health and wellness that would enable me to live longer. What are the implications if I could live just 30 more years? For me, it means being around until my youngest son is 35, and if I’m lucky, he’d be a decent 51 when I die. My oldest would be 56. Think about that for a second. I’d actually have the chance to experience grandchildren. Maybe even great-grandchildren.
To me, that would be worth any price. But what if you don’t have the financial resources of the ultra-wealthy to seek the secrets of longevity? It would be easy to simply give up, to accept that your life span will be a function of things out of your control. A lot of people find it easier to assume that it comes down to luck, and that luck is entirely out of your control. But what if it’s not? Maybe luck is less a crap shoot and more a function of stacking the odds in your favor. Which leads to a key question: How do you stack the odds in your favor in order to live as long as possible?
That’s the question I have been wrestling with for a decade.
Men get pregnant slowly
Starting in my thirties, I found that age made health and wellness a moving target. What worked in my 20s didn’t work 10 years later. I started to put on weight.
In my forties, I approached my doctor, concerned about putting on 15 lbs. “You’re just a new dad,” he said, “it’s completely normal.”
As busy as life was before, it got even more busy in my 40s. I had two kids, two businesses, and my marriage. With babies turning into kids, the focus becomes increasingly on making money to pay for everything. Time isn’t just a scarce, precious commodity any more. Time becomes a memory. In the meantime, I tried running again (too exhausting, hard to wake up), swimming (difficult, not good at it and hate breathing in water), cycling (too dangerous in Southern California where a lot of people drive like **it). I tried a popular form of weightlifting membership briefly, but found the “bro culture” at the gym irritating, and distasteful.
Then I noticed a new hernia. I had a hernia in my early twenties. It was a tear in my muscle tissue from lifting something way too heavy and twisting the wrong way. This time, it was a small umbilical hernia. Basically, a very minor discomfort in the belly button from a similar kind of tear. So I decided to go back to the hernia doctor and have him check it out to see what my options were, and when I needed corrective surgery.
Sitting in the doctor’s office, he looks me over and says “JC, you’re in pretty good shape. At least compared to those other guys.” He was referring to all the other men in the waiting room, almost all of them either super-old compared to me, or super obese. I felt a little better. Then he goes on to explain what an umbilical hernia is, how they happen and where mine is on the spectrum of risk. His style of communicating was like a cross between Garr Reynolds and Robin Williams: Super cool presentation with Keynote slides on an iPad and tummy-hurting humor. I wonder if he injected punchlines into his presentation as his own unique way of measuring the pain scale for each patient. When he was done, I was still processing. Then I asked, “so how did this happen to me?”
After a brief pause, he said, “Well JC, basically, men get pregnant slowly.” He went on to explain that belly fat accumulates slowly as change happens in your 20s, 30s and 40s. He explained that just like pregnant women can see their belly buttons go from innies to outies because of the pressure from a growing baby, the same eventually happens with men as they build up visceral fat in the abdomen.
Gross.
Then I moved to Japan
In Japan, I found myself in a unique position to create a new routine. I didn’t have all the noise of society around me — no ads, no pressure. It was the perfect time to find out, what can I do to maximize my health and ultimately increase my life expectancy? At first, I got back into running. Kobe is a runner’s dream. By-the-bay breezes and clean ocean air. An endless supply of visual entertainment while running with the new and old architecture, artisans and shops everywhere. I also tried weightlifting again.
Experimenting with exercise
With a relatively new gym open a few kilometers from my home, run by mostly Japanese staff, I thought maybe the “bro culture” I found so unappealing in the US wouldn’t be present, and to a certain degree I was right. The problem I did run into wasn’t cultural, it was sports injury. The program at the gym was very effective at increasing my strength, but In under a year, I hurt myself severely four times, and one of the injuries still causes me pain to this day, two years later. I’m not lacking in experience; I lifted weights for 12 years and studied kinesiology throughout high school and college.
“GAINZ” ≠ wellness
The problem is that most trainer-led weightlifting activities prefers someone in just the right intersection of weight, age, conditioning and strength. If any one of these is out of balance, the risk of sports injury increases. In my case, my strength outpaced my conditioning and led to some small but very painful accidents, resulting in months of frustration. I’m not opposed to “functional fitness” as a goal, and I’m sure intense cross training with weights is good for some people, but as one senior physician pointed out to me last year during a physical “there is zero correlation with functional fitness program performance and mortality.” That’s the key point. Short-term “gains” do not equal long-term health and wellness. In fact, short term gains in strength can cause long-term damage.
At this point, I was beyond frustration. By my own estimation I was still 20kg overweight (about 40lbs). The gym that I was working out at was no longer fun or enjoyable by any measure, and one gym accident was still paying forward pain daily, making walking and climbing stairs hurt. At one point, I found myself in tears of pain picking up my then 4-year old, because the searing pain in my shoulder was so intense. Something had to change.
Frustrated, in pain, overweight, I stopped going to the gym and instead started meditating several times per day.
I spent hours upon hours thinking through the pain, trying to find calm first. Clarity second.
Experimenting with food
Up until that point I had tried all sorts of diets in parallel with various workout strategies. Paleo. Vegetarian. Keto. Even Tim Ferris’ “Slow-carb diet”. I had even lost about 15 kilograms (about 30 lbs) during a one-month “nutrition challenge” held at the gym in Kobe where I had been working out. My 30 lb loss was certainly well-earned: I followed the advice of my coach at the gym to near-perfection. His formula was pretty simple: Every plate should include, in a certain ration, all of these in some fashion:
One lean animal protein (like fish or chicken) with skin and excess fat removed, ideally
At least two colors of vegetables (like bell peppers, carrots, etc.)
Some kind of dense carbohydrates (like Japanese sweet potatoes or Japanese pumpkin aka kabocha)
Some kind of healthy fat (like avocado, avocado oil, olive oil, etc.)
Some examples of what my plate looked like are to the right. While it was delicious, this formula came with some other problems and challenges. More on that below.
I followed this model with ridiculous levels of discipline. For me, it’s not necessarily that difficult, because I am one of those people who doesn’t get bored eating the same thing over and over. The “diet” plan seemed to work. Working out five days per week, drinking a lot of water, and getting plenty of rest, I started losing weight consistently over days and weeks.
The problem with most nutrition advice
There were two problems with the plan that made it unsustainable. First, the functional fitness program was brutal on my body and exhausting. Each day I found myself exhausted after a workout, but not in the good sort of way. My level of post-workout fatigue rose almost exponentially based on my exertion in class. The more energy expended, the more difficult it was focusing on work after returning to the office. The second issue was that I felt like a chemist with no chemistry background, trying to figure out what the “perfect” proportions of food were on my plate, and it felt like fast-moving target. For example, if I was lagging hard in a workout, it probably tied back to not eating enough dense carbs. It wasn’t crazy complex, but it was a lot of daily mental juggling, even with my super simple, highly repetitive diet. To make matters worse, the same doctor who pointed out to me that most weight lifting and functional fitness doesn’t correlate with longevity also pointed out to me that chicken, even lean chicken, is potentially just as bad for my arteries and cholesterol level as red meat.
By the end of the month-long nutrition challenge, I was completely worn out, not by the diet, but by the combination of regular high-intensity effort and the diet. Sure, I lost about 15 kilograms, but I didn’t feel good. To make matters much worse, each month brought more injury, which made it that much harder. This wasn’t sustainable. What I came to realize is that the nutrition advice I received from almost everyone over a decade was framed in a metrics-based focus: Losing weight, gaining muscle, etc., and each “program” was very successful for what it was designed to produce as a specific outcome. I just hadn’t yet figured out that each of those outcomes was not going to yield the basic result I wanted: To be happier and healthier in my own life, not theirs.
I was frustrated to the point where I quit the gym. Instead, I started swimming, which was a great relief from day one, minute one. I also started meditating again, and I even started experimenting with cold exposure (that’s a whole different story). I started to recover from the gym accidents. The pain started to subside, and I had a lot of time to think.
discovering Whole-food, plant-based
At this point I realized that out of all the things I had tried spanning a decade, there was one thing I had never tried: A whole-food, plant based diet. Going vegan, I thought. Isn’t that just a hippie thing, for sickly looking dietary extremists? Everything I had ever heard growing up about vegans was always in a negative light. Strangely, I never knew why that was. It made me wonder, if so many people are opposed to it, why is that? I wanted to know. There was one more thing in the back of my mind as I thought about this. An idea that would not go away. I had read Rich Roll’s book Finding Ultra. I also remembered something I had watched on Youtube by Rich Roll. Rich is one of the most accomplished athletes on the planet, and he did it all in his forties, completely plant-based. He is a living argument and fact pattern that immediately disqualifies every vegan bigot on the planet.
I thought, what have I got to lose? I decided to give a whole-food, plant-based diet a chance. I consider myself an amateur scientist. I believe in data and experiments that validate hypotheses and theories. I’m a learner first and foremost, so why not repeat someone else’s experiment for which there appears to be some evidence, and see if it works? Let’s try it for a month and see how it goes.
Basically, a whole-food, plant-based is going vegan, while also excluding a few things that count as vegan.
So the rules of my experiment were based on what Rich Roll documented in his final, pivotal experiment:
Eat as many plants as possible, and as minimally processed as possible
If it has a face or a mother, it’s not on the menu
No dairy. No eggs, milk, or cheese. If its a by-product of something that has a face or a mother, it’s not on the menu
No oils and oil-based dressings
As few processed foods as possible. I made exceptions for sliced jalapeños and sriracha sauce when I couldn’t buy the raw equivalent
That also means no sugar and no processed starches like breads and pastas.
Alcohol was entirely out during the first month
I was able to create a collection of a few recipes I could make over and over, while including variation by mixing up different seasonal fruits and veggies. A typical day looked like this:
A green smoothie for breakfast, usually made with spinach or kale, hemp seeds, chia seed, berries and with ice water or sometimes organic almond milk.
Lunch usually consisted of what some people call a buddha bowl. In my case, I would make a big bowl of veggies with a hefty serving of quinoa and lentils - usually batched in advance - with salsa fresca on top, chopped jalapeños, and some avocado.
Dinner is usually a gigantic salad, like the one below. I found endless variety of fruits and veggies, and I would add organic beans, sliced beets and other things I love. The texture, flavor and color is fantastic, and with enough variety, I didn’t miss dressings and oils at all. In fact, all of these ingredients come together in a wonderful way, like a little juice from the Japanese mikan creating a light citrusy flavor.
I also started experimenting with vegan chili, using Rich Roll and Julie Piatt’s recipe as a base. This is how I discovered tempeh. Later on, I started to experiment with seared and blacked firm tofu for vegan tacos, using lettuce shells instead of tortillas. SO good.
The results I would look for in the experiment should match those that Rich described in his experience. Heightened levels of energy. Together with consistent exercise, a consistent reduction in weight. Maybe and most important, simply feeling better.
So I launched into the experiment, completely committed. Maybe being old makes you realize how much the Devil is in the details, so I assumed that it wasn’t going to be an easy transition, no more than running a marathon is easy for a newbie. I would need to work into it, expect challenges, including those that seem like show-stoppers, and find ways to overcome them. So even prior to starting, I mapped out my support plan. I tried to think of everything that could go wrong, and what my contingency plan would be for overcoming it. That way, when things do go wrong, I don’t need to think about it- I can just follow the protocol. I think a lot of my approach comes from studying Japanese planning and continuous improvement theory for over two decades. Japanese tend to play the long game. They create plans for long-term outcomes, because they know short wins alone do not create long-term success. Japanese tend to think and plan decades out into the future.
Stacking the odds in my favor for a plant-powered lifestyle
So here are a few things that made this experiment easier:
I found something that works for me. In my case, it’s Mexican food. I’m from Southern California originally. One of the ways I satiated myself was learning how to make a good Salsa Fresca out of tomatoes, onions and cilantro. I love spicy food, so chopped jalapeños and sriracha sauce is a must for me. This helped me make otherwise boring food not boring. Thank you so much Costco. I never in my life imagined signing up for you again, but I’m in Japan, so hey.
Family support. Choosing to do this, I was going to go against the grain of what my family was eating, so I needed to make sure that my wife was fully on board with it. After all, we were going to be eating together every night. My goal was to be the only one for whom this was in any way difficult. If my wife was expending energy preparing the family meal, I wanted to make sure that my plant-based meal prep, including any different shopping, was 100% my responsibility.
Batching. I bought glass Tupperware sufficient to store 2-3 days worth of cooked quinoa, cooked lentils, chopped veggies, etc. in the fridge. This helped enormously. When you get most of your calories from vegetables, you immediately notice that the caloric density is different: You can eat an enormous plate of broccoli and cauliflower, with a huge delicious salad, and find yourself hungry in just 1-2 hours later. Always having good foods on hand makes it easy to prepare something on-demand, fast, to feed the beast.
Water. Lots of water. Most of the time you think you’re hungry, it’s actually just your body craving hydration. I found that 80% of the time, downing an extra 1000ml of water would make what I thought was hunger disappear for a couple hours.
Meditation. This was a big deal for me. There is no better way to describe how the human thinking organ screws up your day than Pixar’s movie Inside-Out. The brain is a noisy box, so finding a way to quiet it and remain focused is essential. I have a hard time with meditation. For me, the Wim Hof breath work was perfect. I coupled this with cold therapy, which I’m now basically addicted to.
A consistent sleep schedule. This is really important. Getting your rest is critical. The noisy brain box drives the rest of the machine, so it needs time to rejuvenate at night. The best way to make this happen is just to set a schedule and then stick to it. You’ll figure out everything else later.
Make sure you have someone you can talk with. Talking with someone you trust can really help you stay on course. For me, it’s my wife. She’s my rock.
learning more from the experts
I spent hours upon hours reading everything I could on whole-food, plant-based diets. While there is a lot of great information available on Youtube and via Google Search, one account of transitioning to a purely plant-powered diet resonated for me more than anything else. That was Rich Roll’s story. But there was much, much more I found over a period of several months. To save you time, if you’re interested, here is some of the list that to me are the most compelling, objective and useful stories or lectures out there:
Dr. Esselstyn on “Rectangularizing” Life’s Journey. Or why you can have a 95% chance at living to age 77, or better yet, 93.
Dr. Esselstyn on preventing and reversing heart disease.
Dr. Esselstyn’s TED talk on making heart attacks history.
Netflix must-watch: Game Changers.
Rip Esselstyn plant-strong & healthy living, or why you’ll never look at an erection the same way again.
Rip Esselstyn TedX Austin interview with Rich Roll.
Nimai Delgado: "How Eating Plants Changed My Life - How It Could Change Yours" | Talks at Google
Nimai Delgado: VEGAN BODYBUILDING PEAK WEEK WORKOUT - NIMAI DELGADO
Dr. Michael Greger | How Not To Die | Talks at Google
What all of the messages from these experts have in common
I quickly noticed a pattern listening to all of the experts. None of them are pitching a diet. All of them are talking about a complete life change that starts with what you put in your body, and that affects every aspect of your life: Physical, emotional, intellectual, even spiritual.
So I thought about what I would need to do and how I would need to change. It came down to two things:
First, I needed to think about food differently. Rich Roll calls it changing his relationship with food. For me, it meant I had to stop thinking about the instant gratification that comes with various foods I love, either by habit or just because I’m a foodie. Basically, I had to realize that I have an addiction with food that is not healthy, and just like an alcoholic determined to change and recover, I would need to start with changing my relationship with food.
Next, I needed a look at this as overall lifestyle change, not a diet. Back to the analogy of the alcoholic, it’s not just about making a decision to quit. It also means changing the environment in support of ongoing recovery, like avoiding bars. For me, it would mean less about the presence of tasty foods that are meat-based, fried, etc. I mean, seriously, I would have to move to a different country. My brother likened the entire country of Japan to what it was like visiting grandma when we were kids. Every 5 minutes she would emerge from the kitchen and ask “would you kids like a tasty snack?” That’s fundamentally what it’s like living in Japan. Delicious, aromatic and visually gorgeous food is everywhere.
What to expect when you Start a whole-food, plant-based diet
My first month-long experiment with a whole-food, plant based diet was successful by a few measures.
Higher energy level
After 8 days, I started waking up with unbelievable energy that was sustained throughout each day. My energy level was higher than I had ever experienced before.
Increased sleep quality
After 10 days, I noticed that I was sleeping better. Waking up was also easier.
Improved mental clarity
Also after the first 10 days, I felt that my mental awareness and acuity changed. It was like a fog lifted that I wasn’t even aware of. At first, it felt a bit like you have an unfair advantage, but then I realized this is what normal feels like.
Faster recovery
I noticed that I also started healing faster. Little things like scrapes and cuts healed much faster than before. It reminded me of the speed with which my little kids heal. As I went from my thirties to my forties, everything including healing slowed down. About three weeks into the first month, I felt a little bit like I was beginning to age in reverse.
Improving Regularity
Regarding the more basic functionality of the body: Bowel movements became super regular. Rip Esselstyn pointed out in his video that with all the fiber in a plant-based diet, you become as regular as a Swiss commuter train. I tend to relate more with the Hankyu railway in Kobe. Not just because of the train’s color, but because they’re always on time, they’re pretty light, and its always a great experience. Ok, enough of that.
Reducing inflammation
Within the first two weeks, I lost a significant amount of weight. Using an ultrasound body scanner, I was able to confirm that I didn’t lose any muscle tissue. What I lost was bloat related to inflammation. After the first two weeks, I also noticed my shoes fit better, my shirts were a little looser, as was my watch. In fact, by the end of the month I did something I hadn’t done in 20 years: I visited the watch shop and had them take out a link. My watch had become so loose it was starting to spin around my wrist.
The “before” photo here is embarrassing, but it really captures how I was feeling, both physically and emotionally. I was trying so hard, putting so much effort in, only to feel like I as falling two steps back for every one step forward. The “after” photo makes me excited, because I remember feeling so much energy that I was practically vibrating.
Reversing chronic conditions
Finally, I noticed a significant, almost dramatic improvement in a condition that’s been bothering me for a few years. I have a genetic, inherited condition that makes my joints hurt especially during cold weather. It’s a type of arthritis. The body weight added over the years just made it worse, and the extreme activity in the gym just aggravated things that resulted in painful injuries. By the end of the third week on a pure plant- based diet, the pain in my knees going down stairs or running up double or triple stairs was reduced by about 90%.
Was the experiment worth it?
A chance to spend three more decades with these guys, while feeling better and with more energy for more adventures together? Yes please.
Yes. It was the first time I was able to cut through all the noise and all the belief systems to reveal an approach at health and wellness that is truly, deeply authentic. After the first month, I traveled to Tokyo for some work, meeting some friends and colleagues from California. It didn’t take much to fall off the wagon by consuming some of the delicacies within reach. It only took a few days to feel all the measurable results going in the opposite direction, which was a major learning by itself.
What I gained by trying a whole-food, plant-based lifestyle was an understanding of how powerful and valuable the impact is on my life. Today, I understand what I can do to give myself a solid 95% change of living at least 30 more years. And yes, I’ll take it.
Other concluding thoughts
Special interests create confusion and chaos
After 10 years of trial and error, I have been able to reduce an increasingly complex system of information and misinformation to some core elements of simplicity. This wasn’t easy. There are a lot of forces at work that shape our environment, and not necessarily for the better. Lobbyists in the meat industry will stop at nothing to keep people eating meat. The same goes for anyone with a financial interest in anything: Olive oil, orange juice, you name it. If there’s a market for a product, there’s someone out there trying to keep that market alive. Unfortunately, the results of a biased approach are always the same. Perceived near-term successes in diets are almost always short-lived. The Sisyphus-like punishment of being on the trial-and-error hamster wheel is enough to cause a lot of people to give up.
Your plate predicts performance
I think the same can be said for exercise, but for a different reason. Even if you have an athletic background, it’s easy to get frustrated when some workout routine, sports or gym doesn’t work. This happened to me. I love running, cycling and weight lifting, but all three of these were doomed to end in frustration because I was missing the prerequisite: A healthy relationship with food. I am not saying that what you eat will magically transform you into a top performing athlete. That takes years of training, dedication, practice and much, much more. What I am saying is that enjoying any sport starts with a healthy relationship with food. I may start weightlifting again in the future, but only as a result of my body getting stronger and healthier from a plant-based diet.
My next experiment: Japanese cuisine
I am about to perform another plant-based diet experiment for another 30 days. This time, I am looking at the experiment as an opportunity to craft my own a plant-powered lifestyle in Japan. Before the 1950s, Japanese didn’t each anywhere near the volumes of meat they do today. It just wasn’t as widely available. So I have to believe that the foundation of Japan’s delicious culinary arts is mostly based on plants and fish, which makes me wonder: How can I explore Japanese cuisine with its near-infinite variety exclusively focused on plants. This challenge really excites me.
Are you interested in joining me by crafting your own 30-day plant-powered lifestyle experiment? Let me know in the comments, or drop me a line on Twitter.
