health

Iron Man

Vegan diet, determination, support and
training lead to healthy lifestyle.

JOYCE WISWELL CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A

ABOVE: Before changing
his lifestyle: Ira Goldberg
at 400 pounds with his
wife, Nancy.
TOP: Ira Goldberg of
Farmington Hills with his
Iron Man medal in 2017 in
Santa Rosa, Calif.

t nearly 400 pounds, Ira Goldberg
was lying on the floor one night,
watching TV. When he tried to stand
up, he wasn’t sure he’d make it.
“It was a complete struggle to get off the
ground, and I had a very sobering thought:
If this is the best life has to offer you, you
are missing the boat,” he recalled. “I was
47 years old and the quality of my life was
pretty substandard.”
Goldberg, a teacher at Berkley High
School, was taking 11 medications and
injecting insulin twice a day for his type 2
diabetes.
“As my physician put it, it’s a matter of
how often you want to inject yourself. I was
not even coming close to controlling my
diabetes and already starting to show the
early signs of kidney disease,” he said.
That night, he vowed to change course.
Five years later, he’s shed some 200 pounds,
completely recovered from diabetes,
requires zero medications — and attained
the lofty title of Iron Man, a grueling feat
completed by just 0.01
percent of the world’s
population.
How did the
Farmington Hills
resident go from mor-
bidly obese to elite
athlete in just a few
years?
“It was a process of
learning new habits
and changing my
life in terms of how
I could,” he said. “I
adopted a plant-based
lifestyle and am completely vegan. Eighty
percent of the food I would get in trouble
with is not even an option anymore, so it’s a
line that won’t be crossed.”

FIRST STEPS

Though he’d never run competitively — or
even around the block — Goldberg became
intrigued by an ad he saw for the San
Francisco Marathon.
“It was very, very enticing because you
run over the Golden Gate Bridge,” he said.
“I turned to my wife, Nancy, and said, ‘I am
going to do that.’ She said, ‘You’re crazy. If
you’re going to train for a run, why train for
one of the hilliest ones?’”
Undeterred, Goldberg signed up for the
half-marathon in San Francisco just one
year later. “Every day when I went to the
gym I would envision myself running over
the Golden Gate Bridge,” he said. “It was a

beautiful run, and I knew
I had done the hard work
to get there. But the
bridge was so encased
in fog, everything I had
envisioned was out the
window. It was still a
great moment.”
His appetite whet-
ted, Goldberg still never
dreamed he’d do some-
thing as arduous as the
Iron Man competition,
which entails swimming
for 2.4 miles, biking for
112 miles and running
26.2 miles. “Steve Elkus,
a parent of one of my
students, said, ‘If I can do
it, you can do it,’ and he
started training me and
really encouraging me,”
Goldberg said.
He gave it a go on a day in September
2016 in Chattanooga, Tenn., where the heat
index hit 107 degrees. “The first half was
fantastic, and the second half was like a
scene from the movie Platoon,” Goldberg
said. “Forty percent of the field did not fin-
ish. I was 1 mile from the finish when I liter-
ally passed out on the bike. The last thing I
remember was the sound of my helmet hit-
ting the pavement.”
Rather than view it as a failure, Goldberg
decided to consider it a momentary set-
back. “Not completing was one of the best
things that could have happened to me. I
learned that I am a bigger person than what
happened at this one moment in time. How
determined can I be to finish this goal?”
Plenty determined, in fact. Less than a
year later, in July 2017, Goldberg competed
again in Santa Rosa, Calif. After 15 hours
and 30 minutes of continuous motion, he
crossed the finish line and heard the words
he’d been dreaming of — “Congratulations,
you are an Iron Man” — uttered by Mike
Reilly, the event’s famed voice.
“It was a very emotional moment. You’re
in so much discomfort but on the other
hand, it’s kind of like your life flashes before
you, and I really mean that,” Goldberg said.
“For every time someone said, ‘You can’t do
this, you’re not capable of that,’ you realize
you knocked every single barrier down. I
thought of that 400-pound person who had
no reasonable right to expect that he would
earn the title Iron Man, and I thought of
both my parents, who would have been so
unbelievably proud.”

BOTH SIDES NOW

Goldberg, who attends Congregation Beth
Ahm in West Bloomfield, still holds onto
two pairs of clothing from his former life to
remind himself how far he has come.
“I look at them and think I never, ever
want to go back there, but I also look at
that person with a great amount of compas-
sion,” he said. “I always lived my life with
a tremendous amount of dignity and self-
respect, but I would beat myself up over
being 400 pounds. It was very liberating to
get to that point where I could say I was
genuinely proud of who I am as a person.”
Giving up all animal products also
changed Goldberg’s outlook in an unex-
pected way.
“This has opened the door to exploring
how Judaism addresses animal welfare in a
very real way. Going vegan has caused me to
ask deeper questions about the way we care
for the animals we share the Earth with. Life
is such a central core part of Judaism. Why
do we give life to something with the intent
of just taking it away?”
But he’s not about to get on a soapbox to
extol the rights of animals.
“Most of my friends — and my wife — are
not vegan and I want to keep them,” he said.
“My focal point is what is on my plate, not
what is on theirs.” •

Learn more about the Iron Man competition, which
Goldberg said has “a huge Jewish contingent,” at iron-
man.com.

jn

June 28 • 2018

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