My "before" picture is me in the family line-up at Karen's daughter's wedding--- two weeks after my myocardial infarction, and a stent into my lower anterior descending (aka "widow-maker") coronary artery.

I look like I've got a bloody beach-ball down the front of my suit.

Fourteen months later, after 5-6 days a week in the gym, I've taken off 20 pounds. But that actually is taking off 40 pounds of fat and putting on 20 of muscle.

I no longer eat butter; or very much beef.

My body fat percentage is 13%... the edge of the "athlete" range for men.

A typical "cardio" work-out is 10 minutes on a treadmill at 4.3MPH and 15-degrees; 54 floors on a stair-mill, 20 minutes on an elliptical cross-country course. Then maybe ten minutes of rowing. And then two circuits of weight-training.

I celebrated my six-month anniversary of my MI doing the Philadelphia Lung Association "Fight for Air Climb," 55 floors up a sky-scraper in 14 minutes. I celebrated one year by doing the same climb in 9:36 on a stair-mill.

I'm hoping to post a respectable "Masters Class" score in the event this Spring.

I'm just about the same jeans size as I was at half my age, 26 years ago.

This is hard work. And on the eating side, it's not one decision, but a dozen decisions a day and hundred a week and a thousand a year.

It's abandoning the cart (trolley) and choosing to carry the two 31-pound boxes of cat-litter from the back of PetSmart to the cashier and to the car. (The cashier remarked, "well that'd be the work-out for the day as she watched me curl them onto the belt." Yes, it would, and was.)

It's worth it.

And I *should* have done this before needing to save my life a procedure that cost $US70,000 retail and about $US15,000 at the insurance rates. Not to mention that a heart attack really hurts. A lot.