Marine Corps veteran Bill Jollie started living a lifestyle focused on health eating, physical activity.
Editor's note: Lifestyle medicine is a medical specialty that applies six pillars — a whole-food, plant-predominant eating pattern, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances and positive social connections. Many individuals who adapt lifestyle medicine experience a transformation in their health and wellness, in addition to treatment of existing ailments such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.
In partnership with the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and the US Air Force Lifestyle and Performance Medicine Working Group, The American Legion is sharing success stories of four military members who have embraced lifestyle medicine. Each of the next four weeks, the Legion will share one of those stories on legion.org.
A triathlon saved my life.
It’d been 15 years since I left the Marine Corps Reserves, and it showed. I hadn’t exercised, ate way too much processed junk, and was 4 pounds away from having obesity in May 2011.
My buddy Coy invited me to train with him for a September sprint triathlon. As the summer progressed, I knew something was off. After only five laps in the pool, I’d have to hold onto the side to catch my breath before climbing out. A few months later, Coy and I were doing a training brick where we swam then went into a run. A mile into our run Coy says, “Damn Jollie, I didn’t know you had asthma!” I was wheezing so much, it literally sounded like I had swallowed a whistle!
I called my primary care physician when I got home and said, “I’m coming in tomorrow. The albuterol inhaler isn’t cutting it.”
A CT showed that I had enlarged lymph nodes all over my body, but the largest was a 4.5 cm node in the middle of my chest pressing against my airway. That’s what was causing the wheeze!
I was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) on Dec. 7, 2011 (fittingly, Pearl Harbor Day). I was 39 years old, had a wonderful wife Tracy and two amazing daughters, Kelsey (14) and Katie (10). When I asked my first oncologist the obligatory, “So doc, how long do I have?,” without any bedside manner or emotion, he told Tracy and I that I had “about 10 years to live.”
Let that sink in for a moment. Tracy and I went out to my truck and balled. We also quickly got a new oncologist at a world class academic center who specialized in CLL. I promised myself I would do everything I could to stick around as long as possible for my family. I began reading everything I could consume to become faster, stronger and healthier. I was determined cancer wasn’t going to kick my ass!
I started six rounds of chemotherapy in January 2012 and finished in June. Every 28 days for six months I would get chemo on a Thursday and Friday. Saturday night and Sunday sucked. Think back to the worst hangover you ever had, but imagine you had the flu at the same time. That was chemo! But by the next Wednesday, I was feeling good enough to go for a walk, and by the following weekend I was back to training. I was much slower, and I had days when I was too weak to train and sometimes work, but I just took a day or two off and then started back at it slowly.
The thing is, I had already been training since the prior May. Five months after I finished six rounds of chemotherapy, I completed the Marine Corps Marathon;16 months after chemo, I completed my first Olympic distance triathlon; and five years after chemo, I completed my first 70.3-mile Ironman. Oo-freaking-rah!
Throw in endurance swims, another Olympic tri, another 70.3 Ironman and a ton of trail races, and I’d worked my way up to my first ultra-marathon in April 2023. An ankle injury took me out in 2024, but I’m having surgery in January 2025 and will get back to training for my next ultra next summer.
I’ll be 53 soon.
Dec. 7, 2024, I celebrated 13 years as a survivor!
I’m not just training for my next race, I’m training for my life and my family (by the way, we adopted Ensley 7 years ago when she was only five days old). I’m also training for my 75, 85 and 95-year-old self! I don’t want to just live; I want to thrive. Do you want to be a 75-year-old who needs a walker or a 75-year-old who’s still out on the trails and living life to the fullest with your family and friends? Which path do you want to take?
I didn’t know it, but I naturally started living lifestyle medicine. That’s the cool thing about lifestyle medicine. It is the way we were built to live!
Today, I eat a plant-forward diet. I still love burnt meat, but I’ve significantly limited meats full of saturated fats and frequently eat breakfast and lunch without any meat. I love craft beer, but usually only have a couple of beers a month now. I’m asleep between 9-10 p.m. every night and am up at 5 in the morning. I’ve had to stick to the gym this year due to my ankle, but being out in nature on the trails or riding my bike is my therapy. Smelling nature, seeing amazing views, listening to the birds wake or the running water in a small creek – this is how we were built to live! Plus, it’s a pretty great time to talk to God.
It turns out that getting cancer was a blessing! It was the motivation I needed to change my life after 15 years of being inactive and eating loads of junk food.
Now, I don’t bother counting calories or tracking macros. I track my weight and my day’s exercise every morning. The two numbers which matter most to me are my resting heart rate (47 bpm) and the Garmin Fitness Age on my watch which ranges between 23-27 when training. It’s much higher now since I haven’t been training as heavily due to my ankle injury, but I’ll get back below 30 soon. I love this feeling because Garmin Fitness Age is the average VO2max of every male who uses a Garmin. So, if I have a fitness age of 27, that means I’m as fit as the average 27-year-old male…at age 52! You can’t buy that feeling! My most recent laboratory tests and biomarkers from my doctor were just as impressive: resting HR 52, total cholesterol 156, BP 117/73, and body mass index 26.5.
Since I have been given this amazing gift, I felt propelled to use it to help others achieve similar successes. I started Interrupt Hunger (501c3) in 2023 to help others get healthy. Our motto is MOVE EAT GIVE, and we help folks “Lose weight while feeding the hungry!” We have a “Donate Your Weight” program which helps you celebrate your weight loss victories by donating $1.00 for every pound you lose. Lose five pounds, donate $5; 100% of the proceeds benefit a food pantry near you. You’re literally helping feed your hungry neighbors.
I also started the MOVE EAT GIVE by Interrupt Hunger podcast in early 2024. We host experts in Exercise Is Medicine, Food Is Medicine and Food Insecurity, and every other episode features someone who has lost 10% of their body weight or more to share exactly how they did it. It is serendipity that about one-third of my guests have been lifestyle medicine experts certified by the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine. I didn’t intentionally seek out lifestyle medicine experts – it just happened.
We are launching a couple of additional programs next year which I am excited about. One is a Health Hub concept where instead of asking individuals to be healthy on their own (impossible), we will be meeting people where they are and bringing healthy living to them.
Additionally, I hope to teach both businesses and schools how to garden, cook, create more opportunities for physical activity and give back. We’ll inject community into each one of our core pillars. In the last years of World War II, 20 million backyard and community gardens produced 40% of our nation’s produce. If we are going to reverse obesity and chronic disease in America, we need to teach folks how to grow their own produce and how to cook it.
If I could share one message with other veterans, it would be that you can absolutely get back the feeling of amazing health that you had in the military. It doesn’t matter how old you are or how out of shape you are, you just need to start. And it is OK to ask for help.
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