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Genie in a bottle: when your best health-improvement efforts fail, modern medicine is on the case - Cool Down

Men's Fitness, Dec, 2002 by Jeff Weinstock

I take Lipitor.

There are worse confessions. I wear a rug is worse. I can't fix a flat tire is a lot worse.

Still, I get one of two reactions from people: pity, as if I said I take insulin, or dread, as if I said I take estrogen. Pity and dread are not what I need. What I need is someone to invent nonfat flan, or air-popped popcorn that doesn't taste like shoulder pads.

I am a high cholesterolic, irrevocably and evermore. It ain't me, people, it's my liver, at least the section of it that came from my mother's side, which manufactures cholesterol faster than my body can move it out. Hence, it collects, and my doctor will say to me, "Your LDL is 202. Normal is 130, so you need to work on it."

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Work on it? You work on it. My diet was a model of bland deprivation. I hadn't eaten so much as a Lorna Doone since Bob Barker stopped coloring his hair. The last time I had French toast, a baby back rib, a link sausage, a basket of fries, there were three television networks, two Berlins, one long-distance option and no Olsen twins.

I had resisted going on Lipitor because of the dishonor in it. It felt like an admission: I am a slob. Save me. I saw an endocrinologist, who said that to forgo the pill I'd have to wipe fat out from my diet entirely. I followed orders, I toed the line. I ate plain pasta--that's pasta without sauce. You may as well eat wicker. The doctor said give it six months. I gave it three. Then the oddest thing: My cholesterol count disintegrated, shot down to 185.

But this was not a diet with legs. I was steaming more things than a dry cleaners. Do I dare to eat a Pringle? I loosened the reins. I restored a few things to my meals: taste, luxury, Prego. My cholesterol began to edge up with each retest. 192. 202. 216. 240.

Surrender was at hand. My heredity had proven to be as irreversible as a carpet stain. I would throw my liver on the mercy of science. I approached the pharmacist without shame: Give me the White Lady. Twenty minutes later, a bottle of thin, ivory atorvastatin calcium tablets was mine.

In short order, the 10-milligram miracle worker took my cholesterol down 100 points. One time I tested it, it was 148. You could race slot cars through my arteries, they were so clear.

I got brave; I got vengeful. I had a score to settle and its name was dessert. "Who wants dessert?" the waiter would ask. My response never faltered: "None for me, thanks, I'm good." No apple tart. No creme brulee with chocolate shavings. No assorted biscotti tray. Not even a lousy macadamia nut.

On the evening of my wedding anniversary, Lipitor providing cover, I came calling. "Anything for dessert?" I scanned the menu. First item: chocolate bread pudding. "I'll have the chocolate bread budding," I said with such a flourish, it was as if I were naming a ship. Then I hit him with this: "And warm it up, would you?" Yeah, my man, warm it up. Make it glide. And I want the pastry chef to carry it out on a throne and I want you to feed it to me. You know what, pal? Bring me two.

That was a one-time indulgence. Life cannot be all chocolate bread pudding and fried calamari. But neither should it be strictly grilled trout and defatted soy crisps. I have found a middle ground, where gluttony and denial meet. I've yet to go to the mountaintop, to sample the wickedest of treats, as forbidden as white dress shoes.

Cheesecake, I'm comin' for you, because I can.

Genie in a bottle: when your best health-improvement efforts fail, modern medicine is on the case - Cool Down

Men's Fitness, Dec, 2002 by Jeff Weinstock

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