Where do I start….?

I woke up in the ICU.

At first, everything was blurry. As my eyes adjusted, I started taking in my surroundings. I quickly realized I was in a different country. Different language. Different voices. Different everything.

And then it came back to me—how I got there.

Earlier that day, I’d been out for a walk. Everything felt normal. I reached a spot where I planned to sit down, have a drink, maybe something to eat.

Then my chest started tightening.

The pain radiated across my shoulders, from one side to the other. I started sweating profusely. I knew immediately something wasn’t right, and that I needed help.

The next thing I remember, I woke up in the ICU.

For a moment, I was just trying to get my bearings—figuring out whether I was still on this earth or not. That’s when I learned I’d had a full blockage. A heart attack. And suddenly, I was being ushered into what they called the “recovery phase.”

But all I could think was:

Where do I go from here?

Where do I start?

Before I was discharged, there was another surprise.

I was told I had Type 2 diabetes.

That’s when things became very real.

I was scrambling to understand what that actually meant. How do I translate this into action? What do I do next? I was alone, in a foreign country, and completely disoriented.

I’ve always been someone who plans. I like knowing what’s next. And for the first time, I didn’t.

All I knew was this: I was alive. I was breathing.

So I had to stop and reflect. I needed a plan. I needed to understand what recovery really meant.

I remember looking at my hand as I was finally leaving the hospital. I was carrying a bag full of prescriptions—medications, insulin, instructions on how to use all of it. I was being told this was for the rest of my life.

There was no time to fully digest that.

All I could do was clear my head and focus on the next step. Follow the medical guidance, yes—but there was no roadmap for how to rebuild my life.

So I created one.

That’s where the five pillars came from.

Rather than trying to fix everything at once, I focused on mastering one area at a time—using structure instead of panic, intention instead of overwhelm. These pillars became the foundation of how I repaired my broken metabolic health and slowly got back on track.

Those five pillars are:

Supplementation

Nutrition

Sleep

Stress

Movement

I was overwhelmed. Completely overloaded. But this structure gave me something solid to stand on.

This blog is my story of how I used these five pillars to guide my recovery over the years—physically, mentally, and cardiovascularly. Today, I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been in my life.

I’m inviting you to come along as I dive into each pillar.

You may not have had the same wake-up call I did. But somewhere in your life, I’m confident at least one of these pillars is an area you’d like to improve.

And that’s the point.

You can’t fix your entire life in one sweeping motion. It doesn’t work that way. That’s why “I want to lose weight” so often fails—it’s a short-term goal without understanding the root cause.

Why is the weight there in the first place?

Is it nutrition? Sleep? Stress? Something else entirely?

When you stop chasing short-term results and start building long-term foundations, sustainability becomes possible.

That’s the formula that works.

Thanks for being here. I look forward to having you along as I go deeper into each pillar—sharing what helped me, and what might help you or the people you care about.