By Dr. Seun Sowemimo
On December 16, 2021, I committed to making health and wellness improvements and instilling better habits, challenging my patients to do the same.
Here’s my progress report six months later:
My inspiration was a December Instagram graphic that asked, Where will you be six months from today? As I decorated the Christmas tree, it was hard to look forward to the summer of 2022. From a health and wellness perspective, I decided to take the challenge and see what progress I could make.
Here we are, June 16, 2022, six months later, and I’m sharing my progress. One thing I realized—you can make significant changes in 6 months. I also feel it’s a more manageable timeframe than those New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve outlined my progress–and works still in progress:
Diet & Nutrition
I think the whole world seems to have finally jumped on the whole food plant-based nutrition wagon, and that’s great. It’s so easy now—in two minutes, you can pop on TicTok to find a plant-based recipe for dinner. Equally important, the 16 or 18-hour intermittent fasting practice is also essential to my weight management. It serves my mental and physical health well every day.
I need to try harder to curtail the times I veer off my nutrition course, usually toward meat.
Fitness
I work out in my basement gym during the cold months, but my true joy is getting on my bike and taking a good 30-mile day-long ride. Most of the time, I bike with my friends, but occasionally I go alone to think. Pure fun, pure joy. I can burn well over 2,500 calories with this effort.
I’m not one to sit around; I’ll gather my family and we’ll play basketball together in the driveway, play in the pool or take a long walk around our neighborhood. It’s important for my wife and me to instill the many benefits of sports and fitness into our kids.
Free time to devote to fitness is a luxury for me, so I’m considering reaching out to a personal trainer to help me get to the next fitness level. Losing 40 pounds over the past few years makes working out easier, that’s for certain.
Emotional Health
Stress reduction remains key to my line of work. I turn to music and reading. I really enjoy music while performing surgery. Everyone in the operating room knows our room always gets you bopping to some Afrobeats.
Spiritual Health
In good times and bad, God guides me to a better place. Our church is a place of peace, friendship and community. I continue to be devoted to my faith, as does my family. During the difficult days of Covid and now the constant barrage of troubling events in the world, my faith in God carries me forward.
Intellectual Health
I continue to study Blue Zone populations to understand the lifestyle that supports their remarkable longevity and chronic disease-free lives. I passionately share this information with my patients, particularly those diagnosed with obesity.
A major life goal was achieved in May when I launched my online health course, Dr. Seun’s Weight Loss Plan, to help people worldwide easily and successfully manage their weight, wellness and overall quality of life by adopting four simple nutrition changes.
All in all, I’ll give myself a B for progress over the past six months. I also feel grateful that my overall health continues to be disease-free, thanks to:
- A micronutrient-rich plant-based diet
- Focusing on calorie-dense foods so I can eat more and weigh less
- Intermittent fasting 4-5 days/week from 8 pm until noon the next day (16 hours)
- Finding fitness activities that I truly enjoy
The Next Six Months
I need to add more fun to my life. I’m still figuring out what that means, but it includes being with my wife, kids, friends and large family. We all work so hard. But we also need to walk away, breathe fresh air, laugh and enjoy the pure simplicity of being alive.
I hope you’ll think back about the past six months and give yourself credit for trying to improve your wellness and health.
I built Prime Surgicare under the premise of helping people become healthier in all aspects of their lives, which promotes a better quality of life.
Thank you for taking the ride with me. The best is yet to come. Cheers.