"Wheelchair by 60." Game On.

"They told me I wasn't going to live to be 60. You might live that long, but you'll be in a wheelchair."

That's what I heard when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, between my two near-death experiences. Nobody could tell me how long I'd had it. The doctors said I could have had it my whole life, quietly, until the exacerbations started crippling me in the years before the diagnosis. I'd been skipping across the surface of life like a rock on a pond. The diagnosis stopped the skip.

My answer was two words. "All right, game on."

What do you do with a prediction like that?

You decide what it means. A prediction is somebody's best guess about how things usually go.

"Game on" isn't denial. I knew exactly what I'd been told. It's a choice about how to respond. I could treat the prediction as a verdict and start living like the man in it, or I could treat it as the opponent and get to work. Resilience is a choice.

That's also why I never lead with the diagnosis as a tragedy. It's part of my story, and it's real. It's also the reason I have something worth teaching.

What changed?

At my lowest I weighed 171 pounds. I'm six foot four. I was sick, and I looked it.

That diagnosis came around age 30. I've been living with MS for about 30 years since, and today I'm 61, 225 pounds at about 9% body fat, and I train five days a week. I changed it with food, fitness, rest, and hydration. Fuel the body like it matters. Train it hard and consistently. Sleep eight or more hours. Drink the water.

I train on a split routine, one body part a day, heaviest weight I can move with good form. I eat to a plan, every meal. I protect my bedtime, because you can't out-train bad sleep. None of it happens by accident.

None of that is exotic. That's the point. The tools that changed my life are available to every man reading this. What made the difference was treating them as non-negotiable, for decades.

Is this advice for someone with MS?

No, and I want to be clear about it. This is my lived experience. It is not a protocol, and it is not a recommendation for anyone else's treatment. Every body is different and every case of MS is different. If you're living with a diagnosis, work with your physician on every decision about your care.

What I can tell you is what I personally do, and what the attitude did for me. The numbers are here if you want the receipts. The attitude is the part that transfers. Somebody, at some point, will tell you what you can't do. You get to decide whether that's a verdict or a starting gun.

Everybody gets dealt something. I say it all the time: we're all knee-deep in mud, the billionaire and the person sleeping on the street. Two steps forward, one step back. Mine happened to come with a diagnosis and a prediction. Yours might be a business that collapsed, a body you've let go, or a marriage that ended. The mud is real for everybody. What you do in it is the choice.

I'm 61, and I'm still not in the wheelchair. Game on.

What has someone told you that you can't do?

~b