“All I wanted was a healthy retirement. Virta helped me get it.”

By Doug J., on Virta for 15 months

After 42 years on the job as an Elevator Mechanic, I was ready to hang up my hard hat and dive into retirement. Unfortunately, I was off to a rough start. I spent my last year fighting (and thankfully beating) prostate cancer. But with that battle behind me, I vowed to work toward a healthy retirement—emphasis on healthy.

Now, anyone who knows me or have worked with me in the last 10 or so years knows that I was not a small guy. I had been healthy most of my life—that is until I hit 40. That’s when I started to really gain weight. At over 260 pounds at my heaviest, it was very difficult to bend over to do anything. Tying my shoes felt like I was collapsing a lung. I really wasn’t comfortable in my own skin. I constantly felt tired and sore. But my real wake up call came when I changed doctors.  

One of the first questions my new doctor asked was if I was taking by diabetes medications regularly. I was puzzled. What diabetes medications? My A1c was 7.3%. I was told it was good we caught it early and was prescribed meds to control it.

Six months later I was reading the latest issue of the Elevator Construction Magazine. As I was thumbing through it, an article about a newly offered diabetes reversal benefit caught my eye. After reading the first paragraph about Virta I was hooked. This was for me. I went online right away and applied.

Before Virta, I had very unhealthy eating habits. I Loved the sweets, loved the carbs and was overeating most of the time. I had no idea how much it was impacting my life. My Virta Team had me shift my diet and provided recipes that I could try. What my wife and I learned right away was how delicious most of the Virta recipies were. That’s when things really clicked. I realized this was something I could really do.

In those first few months, I watched the weight fall off. I was feeling better, had more energy, and was excited to step on the scale each morning. It became a new goal of mine to get below 200 pounds (which I hadn’t seen since I was 40 years old). But after those first few months, I got kinda stuck. I was just north of 200 pounds struggling to break that barrier to reach my goal of 195lbs and feeling very frustrated. My Virta health coach helped me identify what was holding me back (turned out to be the shot of irish cream in my morning cup of coffee ). And with that one little change, I was right back on track.

Today I am thrilled to say I am below 200 pounds and I feel great. My doctor recently gave me the greatest gift—a clean bill of health. My A1c is down to 5.0% and my cholesterol looks great. She told me to keep doing whatever I was doing.

I love being able to build and fix things. I’ve never been afraid to take things apart to see how they work, fix what not working and put them back together. But for years, I wasn’t able to fix my own health. For that, I needed Virta. And I’m forever thankful to NEI for providing Virta before it was too late.

Now I’m living a healthy retirement doing the things that I love and having quality time with my family and especially the grandkids—things I wouldn’t have had the energy to do before. It’s like everyday is Saturday. (Sorry to those still clocking in. Your time will come.